Clinton is a city in and the county chair of Anderson County, Tennessee, United States. Clinton is included in the Knoxville metropolitan area. Its population was 10,056 at the 2020 census.

Prehistoric Native American habitation was not uncommon throughout the Clinch valley, especially during the Woodland period (1000 B.C. – 1000 A.D.) and the Mississippian period (1000–1550 A.D.). A number of such habitation sites were excavated in the 1930s and 1950s in anticipation of the construction of Norris Dam and Melton Hill Dam, respectively. The Melton Hill excavations uncovered two substantial Woodland get older villages along the Clinch at Bull Bluff and Freels Bend, both nearly 20 miles (32 km) downstream from Clinton.

By the period Euro-American explorers and long hunters arrived in the Clinch valley in the mid-18th century, what is now Anderson County was portion of a enormous stretch of land claimed by the Cherokee. Although the Treaty of Holston, signed in 1791, was meant as a intercession with the Cherokee to prohibit Euro-American settlement of the area including what is today Anderson County, the agreement became ineffective as more settlers moved through the Appalachian Mountains from Virginia and North Carolina into Tennessee. The antiquated settlers in Anderson County included the Wallace, Gibbs, Freels, Frost and Tunnell families. The flooding of white settlers into the Indian domain was cause for several skirmishes, which eased after the Treaty of Tellico in 1798 (including an origination lessening for the estate to be relinquished from the Cherokee monster the Tellico Blockhouse) allowed for greater ease in settling the area.

Founded in 1801, the town of Burrville was named in rave review of Aaron Burr, first-term Vice President under Thomas Jefferson. Land was agreed and partitioned for a courthouse, and Burrville was designated as the county chair for the newly formed Anderson County. The county was partitioned from portions of Grainger County and Knox County in 1801; neighboring Roane County was after that formed from a share of Knox County in 1801, making Anderson and Roane counties effectively “sister counties”.