Nathan L. Bachman

Bachman was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He attended several colleges, including the former Southwestern Presbyterian University in Clarksville, Tennessee (the predecessor institution to the current Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee; the campus is the current setting of Austin Peay State University), Central University in Richmond, Kentucky (now merged with Centre College in Danville, Kentucky), and Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. He then returned home, attending the former law school of the former University of Chattanooga (now the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) before actually graduating from the law school of the University of Virginia in 1903. He began the practice of law in Chattanooga that same year.

Bachman was Chattanooga city attorney from 1906 to 1908 and circuit court judge from 1912 to 1918. In 1918 he became an Associate Justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court, resigining in 1924 to run for the U.S. Senate. His 1924 campaign was unsuccessful and he returned to the practice of law.

However, on February 28, 1933 Bachman was appointed to the United States Senate by governor of Tennessee Hill McAlister to the unexpired term of Senator Cordell Hull, who had resigned to accept the appointment of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the office of Secretary of State. In November, 1934, Bachman was elected to the balance of Hull's unexpired term. He completed the term to which Hull had been elected and was subsequently elected to a full term in his own right in 1936. He died in Washington, D.C. the next spring after having served less than four months of that term. His father was Dr. Jonathan W. Bachman, Confederate veteran and former pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga.

Bachman was also an active Civitan.

The Bachman Tubes are highway tunnels on U.S. Highway 41 through Missionary Ridge connecting Chattanooga with the adjacent town of East Ridge, which are named in his father's honor.