Reconstruction typically brings to mind war-torn plantations and battles over the meaning of freedom after the Civil War. Slavery was such a central part of southern life—permeating every aspect of southern society—that its demise affected every southerner across the region. Emancipation stands at the heart of post-Civil War southern history for good reason. But when historians examine western North Carolina, part of overwhelmingly white Southern Appalachia, other postwar issues demand consideration. Persistent wartime loyalties informed bitter power struggles between groups of white mountaine ... More

Reconstruction typically brings to mind war-torn plantations and battles over the meaning of freedom after the Civil War. Slavery was such a central part of southern life—permeating every aspect of southern society—that its demise affected every southerner across the region. Emancipation stands at the heart of post-Civil War southern history for good reason. But when historians examine western North Carolina, part of overwhelmingly white Southern Appalachia, other postwar issues demand consideration. Persistent wartime loyalties informed bitter power struggles between groups of white mountaineers determined to rule. For a brief period, an influx of federal governmental power enabled white anti-Confederates to ally with former slaves in order to lift the Republican Party to power at home and in the state as a whole. Republican success led to a violent response from a transformed class of white elites, clinging to the legitimacy of the antebellum period while pushing for greater integration into the market-oriented New South. Western North Carolina—far from “exceptional”—highlights the complex array of issues ranging from wartime loyalties, race, federal state power, and the integration of the mountain South into a national market system that made Reconstruction a pivotal moment in American history. It also reorients our view of reconstruction from the plantation districts to include the complex and diverse realities across the South that reshaped federal policy at the grassroots. Regions like western North Carolina played a critical part in that process.