Several studies of racial violence in the southern highlands document its frequency and intensity. In a book on such tensions in Kentucky, George Wright noted that the state’s mountain residents lynched fewer African Americans than did other Kentuckians but at a rate fully proportionate to its smaller black and white populace. Fitzhugh Brundage made the startling discovery that no area of Virginia saw more black lynch victims than did its mountain counties. Of a total of seventy blacks lynched in Virginia between 1880 and 1930, no less than twenty-four lost their lives in southwestern counties, a phenomenon Brundage credits to the “furious pace” of the region’s postwar social and economic transformations, particularly the influx of itinerant black and foreign workers into mining and lumber camps. The fact that most such incidents occurred in towns, the centers of this change, rather than in the hills or countryside, confirms the economic roots of this particular expression of mountain racism.38
These findings confirm the findings of recent scholarship on Appalachian race relations: that despite significant demographic variables in the biracial populace of the highland and lowland South, blacks in the mountains—as slaves and as freedmen, as ironworkers and coalminers, as sharecroppers or leased convicts—were subject to the same sorts of exploitation, abuse, and prejudice faced by blacks throughout the nineteenth-century South. But the rationale that drove the region’s black presence may have stemmed from different factors. Historian Kenneth Noe, in his study of slaves and railroad building in southwest Virginia, noted the paradox that the forces of modernization in antebellum Appalachia were enterprises dependent on the most “unmodern” of institutions, slavery.39 The stories of both Sam Williams and Booker T. Washington, as ironworker and coalminer, reflect that truth. They also illustrate the extent of postemancipation dependencies between the region’s continued industrial development and racial exploitation.
Yet this was only one of several trends or themes that characterized the realities of an African American presence in the mountain South during its formative years. By simply acknowledging and including the region’s African Americans in our study of Appalachian history, we more fully appreciate the social, economic, and political complexities that have always characterized the southern highland experience but that have for far too long been obscured by more simplistic misconceptions and stereotypes, especially those that suggest a “racial innocence” and “Anglo-Saxon purity.” Blacks were vital players, sometimes as unwilling and unfree victims of white mountain residents, sometimes as free agents whose ambition and drive allowed for somewhat better opportunities either within or beyond the region. As we begin to recover more of their stories, we should become increasingly aware that, for better or worse, southern highlanders, white and black, shared much in common with other southerners and other Americans in the long and often turbulent history of their interactions.
NOTES
1. Charles B. Dew, Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994). The account of Williams’s life is drawn from Dew’s book and from his essay “Sam Williams, Forgeman: The Life of an Industrial Slave at Buffalo Forge, Virginia,” in Race, Region, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward, ed. J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 199–240, reprinted in Appalachians and Race: The Mountain South from Slavery to Segregation, ed. John C. Inscoe (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 74–100.
2. Washington himself was never certain of his birth date and wrote on different occasions that he was born in 1857, 1858, or 1859. See Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1901 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 325n1. On speculation regarding his paternity, see ibid., 3–5.
3. Ibid., 6–7. In his autobiography, Washington referred to the Burroughs farm as a plantation, implying a much larger operation than was actually the case. See Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery: An Autobiography (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1901), chap. 1.
4. Washington, Up from Slavery, 26.
5. John E. Stealey III, The Kanawha Salt Business and Western Markets (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), chap. 3.
6. Washington, Up from Slavery, 26–27.
7. Ibid., 38–39.
8. Washington engaged in much political and religious activity during the years of his return to West Virginia in the late 1870s. See ibid., 75–79, 92–93;Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 93–96. For the political and religious tradition among West Virginia African Americans in which Washington participated, see Joe William Trotter Jr., Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915–1932 (Urbana: Univerity of Illinois Press, 1990), chaps. 1 and 2 (which deal with the late nineteenth century).
9. William Brewer, “Moonshining in Georgia,” Cosmopolitan 23 (June 1897): 132; Ellen Churchill Semple, “The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains: A Study in Anthropogeography,” in Appalachian Images in Folk and Popular Culture, ed. W. K. McNeil (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1989), 150–51.
10. John C. Campbell, The Southern Highlander and His Homeland (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1921), 94.
11. Edward J. Cabbell, “Black Invisibility and Racism in Appalachia: An Informal Survey,” in Blacks in Appalachia, ed. William H. Turner and Edward J. Cabbell (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986), 3–10 (quotes on p. 3).
12. On the distribution of slaves in Appalachia, see Robert P. Stuckert, “Black Populations of the Southern Appalachian Mountains,” Phylon 48 (June 1987): 141–51. On the postwar demographic shifts in the region, see William H. Turner, “The Demography of Black Appalachia, Past and Present,” in Blacks in Appalachia, ed. Turner and Cabbell, 237–61.
13. On blacks in Appalachian coalfields, see Ronald L. Lewis, Black Coal Miners in America: Race, Class, and Community Conflict, 1780–1980 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987), chap. 7; Lewis, “From Peasant to Proletarian: The Migration of Southern Blacks to the Central Appalachian Coalfields,” Journal of Southern History 55 (Feb. 1989): 77–102; Trotter, Coal, Class, and Color, chap. 1.
14. Theda Perdue, Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 1580–1866 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1979).
15. Edward J. Phifer, “Slavery in Microcosm: Burke County, North Carolina,” Journal of Southern History 28 (May 1962): 137–65; John C. Inscoe, Mountain Masters: Slavery and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989), chaps. 1–3; J Susanne S. Simmons, “Augusta County’s Other Pioneers: The African American Presence in Frontier Augusta County [Va.],” in Diversity and Accommodation: Essays on the Cultural Composition of the Virginia Frontier, ed. Michael J. Puglisi (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 159–71; Ellen Eslinger, “The Shape of Slavery on Virginia’s Kentucky Frontier, 1775–1800,” Diversity and Accommodation, ed. Puglisi, 172–94.
16. Phifer, “Slavery in Microcosm,” 139–42; Inscoe, Mountain Masters, chap. 3; Kenneth W. Noe, Southwest Virginia’s Railroad: Modernization and the Sectional Crisis (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), chap. 4; Mary Beth Pudup, “Social Class and Economic Development in Southeastern Kentucky, 1820–1880,” in Appalachian Frontiers: Settlement, Society, and Development in the Pre-Industrial Era, ed. Robert D. Mitchell (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991), 235–60.
17. Inscoe, Mountain Masters, 70.
18. James S. Buckingham, The Slave States of America, 2:193, quoted in ibid., 70.
19. Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Back Country in the Winter of 1853–54 (New York: Mason Bros., 1860), 254, 226–27.
20. Charles Lanman, Letters from the Allegheny Mountains (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1849), 314.
21. Stealey, Kanawha Salt Business, chap. 2. On Clay County, Kentucky, see Kathleen M. Blee and Dwight B. Billings, The Road to Poverty: The Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Blee and Billings, “Race and the Roots of Appalachian Poverty:
Clay County, Kentucky, 1850–1910,” in Appalachians and Race, ed. Inscoe, 165–88.
22. Lewis, Black Coal Miners in America, chap. 1.
23. On the North Carolina gold rush, see Edward W. Phifer Jr., “Champagne at Brindletown: The Story of the Burke County Gold Rush, 1829–1833,” North Carolina Historical Review 40 (Oct. 1963): 489–500; Inscoe, Mountain Masters, 71–73, 92–98. On Georgia, see David W. Williams, The Georgia Gold Rush: Twenty-niners, Cherokees, and Gold Fever (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993); Williams, “Georgia’s Forgotten Miners: African Americans and the Georgia Gold Rush of 1829,” in Appalachians and Race, ed. Inscoe, 40–49.
24. John E. Stealey, “Slavery in the Kanawha Salt Industry,” in Appalachians and Race, ed. Inscoe, 51–54; Inscoe, Mountain Masters, 76–81; Susanne J. Simmons and Nancy T. Sorrells, “Slave Hire and the Development of Slavery in Augusta County, Virginia,” in After the Backcountry: Rural Life in the Great Valley of Virginia, 1800–1900, ed. Kenneth E. Koons and Warren R. Hofstra (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000), 169–84.
25. Kenneth W. Noe, “‘A Source of Great Economy?’ The Railroad and Slavery’s Expansion in Southwest Virginia, 1850–1860,” in Appalachians and Race, ed. Inscoe, 101–15; Inscoe, Mountain Masters, 79–81.
26. Wilma A. Dunaway, “Diaspora, Death, and Sexual Exploitation: Slave Families at Risk in the Mountain South,” Appalachian Journal 26 (Winter 1999): 128–49. See also Dunaway’s overview of the slave trade in Appalachia, “‘Put in Master’s Pocket’: Cotton Expansion and Interstate Slave Trading in the Mountain South,” in Appalachians and Race, ed. Inscoe, 116–32; George W. Featherstonaugh, Excursion through the Slave States (New York: Harper and Bros., 1844), 53–54.
27. See John Cimprich, “Slavery’s End in East Tennessee,” in Appalachians and Race, ed. Inscoe, 189–91; Robert Tracy McKenzie, “‘Oh! How Ours Is a Deplorable Condition’: The Economic Impact of the Civil War in Upper East Tennessee,” in The Civil War in Appalachia: Collected Essays, ed. Kenneth W. Noe and Shannon H. Wilson (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press), 200–203.
28. Cimprich, “Slavery’s End in East Tennessee,” 189–91; Stuart Sprague, “From Slavery to Freedom: African-Americans in Eastern Kentucky, 1860–1884,” Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association 5 (1993): 67–74.
29. See John C. Inscoe, “Mountain Masters as Confederate Entrepreneurs: The Profitability of Slavery in Western North Carolina, 1861–1865,” Slavery and Abolition 16 (Apr. 1995): 85–110; John C. Inscoe and Gordon B. McKinney, The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: The Civil War in Western North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 211–14. On eastern Kentucky, see Sprague, “From Slavery to Freedom,” 70.
30. On Stoneman’s Raid, see Ina W. Van Noppen, “The Significance of Stoneman’s Last Raid,” North Carolina Historical Review (Jan. 1961): 19–44, (Apr. 1961): 149-72, (July 1961): 341–61, (Oct. 1961): 500–526; Inscoe and McKinney, The Heart of Confederate Appalachia, 243–52, 261–63 (quote on p. 263, from Mary Taylor Brown to John Evans Brown, June 20, 1865, W. Vance Brown Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).
31. Robert P. Stuckert, “Black Populations of the Southern Appalachian Mountains,” Phylon 48 (June 1987): 141 (table 1), 145.
32. Sadie Smathers Patton, The Kingdom of the Happy Land (Asheville: Stephens Press, 1957); William Lynwood Montell, The Saga of Coe Ridge: A Study in Oral History (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1970).
33. Lewis, “From Peasant to Proletarian,” 77–102 (statistical data on pp. 81 and 87).
34. Lewis, Black Coal Miners in America, chap. 2, reprinted as “African American Convicts in the Coal Mines,” in Appalachians and Race, ed. Inscoe, 259–83.
35. Gordon B. McKinney, “Southern Mountain Republicans and the Negro, 1865–1900,” Journal of Southern History 41 (1975): 493–516, reprinted in Appalachians and Race, ed. Inscoe, 199–219.
36. Harlan, Booker T. Washington, chap. 4; Joe William Trotter Jr., “The Formation of Black Community in Southern West Virginia Coal Fields,” in Appalachians and Race, ed. Inscoe, 284–301; Lewis, “From Peasant to Proletarian,” 87–96.
37. Eric J. Olson, “Race Relations in Asheville, North Carolina: Three Incidents, 1868–1906,” in The Appalachian Experience: Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Appalachian Studies Conference, ed. Barry M. Buxton (Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1983), 153–56;Ann Field Alexander, “Like an Evil Wind: The Roanoke Riot of 1893 and the Lynching of Thomas Smith,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 100 (Apr. 1992): 173–206.
38. George C. Wright, Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865–1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and “Legal Lynchings” (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), chap. 2 (see esp. table 4 on p. 73); W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), chap. 4. See also Brundage, “Racial Violence, Lynchings, and Modernization in the Mountain South,” in Appalachians and Race, ed. Inscoe, 302–16;Robert P. Stuckert, “Racial Violence in Southern Appalachia, 1880–1940,” Appalachian Heritage 20 (Spring 1992): 35–41.
39. Noe, “‘A Source of Great Economy?’” 103.
4
The Civil War and Reconstruction
Gordon B. McKinney
The years between 1860 and 1877 were a time of disruption and discord in the Southern mountains. Political, social, and economic life underwent enormous changes, and communities and families were torn asunder by war, the end of slavery, and financial collapse. For a variety of reasons, these events often became the focus of national attention and created the images and interest in Appalachia that would lead to the creation of the Appalachian stereotype. Despite the apparent revolutionary changes in the region during these years, there were also strong threads of continuity.
As the United States plunged into the controversies that led to the Civil War, the inhabitants of the Southern mountains became involved much against their wishes. One clear indication that the region would be in the center of the coming conflict was John Brown’s raid to free the slaves. His assault on the Federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in the mountains of northwestern Virginia on March 13, 1859, set the nation ablaze. Every indication is that European Americans in Appalachia—like other white southerners—were horrified by Brown’s actions and rallied to the support of the institution of slavery.1
The national political campaign of 1860 and its aftermath indicated that Appalachia was in some important ways different from the remainder of the South. During the 1860 presidential election, many voters in the region supported the Constitutional Union party in a vain effort to stave off regional conflict. During the secession crisis that followed the election of Abraham Lincoln, the majority of mountaineers resisted the move to create a separate Southern nation. This sentiment was strongest in East Tennessee, northwestern Virginia, western Maryland, and southeastern Kentucky. In a February 1861 referendum on secession, East Tennessee voters supported the Union by a 33,299 to 7,070 margin. In the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, western North Carolina, northern Georgia, and northern Alabama, voters usually opposed immediate secession. In some cases, they refused to accept the accomplished fact in their state, as when Winston County, Alabama, sought to withdraw from the state after the state seceded.2
Despite their opposition to secession, Appalachian people found themselves almost instantly at war. The earliest of these campaigns had immediate results. A Federal army under the overall leadership of General George B. McClellan entered the northwestern counties of Virginia. In a series of small battles in June 1861, including Philippi and Rich Mountain, this mountain region was cleared of Confederate troops. A convention met then at Wheeling to begin creating a separate state in the mountain region of northwestern Virginia. In October 1861, voters in this region approved the creation of the state of West Virginia. The Federal government initially refused to recognize the new government because its
new constitution still sanctioned slavery. After the state convention approved an amendment that mandated gradual emancipation of the slaves, the Lincoln administration recognized the new state of West Virginia on June 20, 1863. This action created an enduring reminder of the Union commitment of many Southern mountaineers.3
Mountain Unionists were active in other locations at this same time. In western Maryland, pro-Union candidates swept to victory in elections that ensured that their state would remain in the Union. A convention met in Greeneville, Tennessee, and sought a separation of East Tennessee from the remainder of the state; the Confederate state administration refused to agree to this request. East Tennessee Unionists did not temper their militancy, however, and took part in a sabotage campaign against the region’s railway bridges in November 1861. When expected support from the Federal army did not materialize, many of the perpetrators were executed by Confederate authorities. Other Unionist leaders, such as newspaper editor William G. Brownlow of Knoxville, were arrested and imprisoned. A clash between Federal and Confederate forces in Mill Springs in eastern Kentucky in January 1862 that brought a crushing defeat to the Confederate army further increased tensions in East Tennessee.4
Confederate military initiatives in the spring of 1862 brought large armies to the mountain regions for the first time. The most spectacular of these was the campaign of General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Jackson, a native of the new state of West Virginia, successfully evaded several Union forces seeking to destroy him and won decisive victories at Winchester and Port Royal. In August in eastern Kentucky, the small Confederate army of Kirby Smith was part of a broad movement of Confederate armies into Kentucky. Smith won a decisive victory at Richmond, Kentucky, but he was forced to retreat after the wider Confederate offensive failed.5
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