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Did the Greeneville convention get around to selecting a name for their proposed state, or boundaries? If they took the line that now divides the eastern time zone from the central time zone, the resulting east Tennessee state would have a present population of about 2.1 million (a bit over 1/3 of Tennessee's 5.8 million)...if they included one more tier of counties to the west, that would have added about 125,000 more present-day inhabitants. The question is--would that have been a sufficient population base for the Tennessee Vols to recruit from?

The other consequence of splitting Tennessee would be that we would now have 51 states. How do you arrange the stars on the flag? 51 is divisible only by 3 and 17...you could treat it as 21 + 30 (just as the current 50 stars are treated as a combination of 20 + 30), but that still doesn't lead to a neat arrangement of stars.

There was a proposal in Congress during the Civil War to revert the rebellious states to territorial status, establishing a Territory of the South, after which the area would be carved into new states, with two states created in Appalachia while merging North and South Carolina. Fascinating!

...we would now have 51 states. How do you arrange the stars on the flag?

Three rows of 9, alternated with three rows of 8:

* * * * * * * * *
 * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
 * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
 * * * * * * * *

we would now have 51 states. How do you arrange the stars on the flag?

Or maybe something more creative:

            *
           * *
         * * * *
       * * * * * *
 * * * * * * * * * * * *
     * * * * * * * *
       * * * * * *
      * * *   * * *
     * *         * *
    *               *

Okay, I'll stop now...