Tennessee Cannabiz

From Moonshine to Main Street Series Seeds of the Republic From Moonshine to Main Street: Part 1 Seeds of the Republic When you peel back the layers of Tennessee history, you don’t just find whiskey barrels and fiddles — you find hemp. Long before it was called cannabis, long before it was branded a menace, hemp was a backbone crop in America. It clothed us, carried us, and even held together the sails that brought settlers across the ocean. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp. Washington kept careful notes in his farm journals about planting and harvesting it. Jefferson tinkered with hemp’s processing methods. Did Washington order all farmers to grow hemp? Not exactly — but he did urge them to. He believed it was so essential that he once wrote, “Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere!” Tennessee, with its fertile valleys and stubbornly self-reliant farmers, was no stranger to the crop. Hemp grew thick in the Volunteer State soil, ofte...