Becoming Appalachia: The emergence of an American subculture, 1840--1860

For most of the twentieth century, the prevailing interpretation of nineteenth-century southern Appalachia pictured a region predominated by a traditional, relatively egalitarian, folk society of unacquisitive, subsistence-oriented, small yeomen farmers. As such, it was a haven of Jeffersonian Democracy in America. In recent years, revisionist historians severely questioned this interpretation. They claimed Appalachia was not that different from other parts of the United States. Tied into the rising market economy and dominated by large landowners, it contained the full array nineteenth-century Americans---striving entrepreneurs, industrial workers, highly commercial farmers, slaves, tenant farmers, and other landless agricultural workers.;This study looks at this debate. First, it compares the region's antebellum political economy with the rest of the nation. Second it details the economic development of the region and examines the various strategies employed by farmers throughout the southern highlands. Third, it determines the percentages of commercial and subsistence farmers in three different locations by using the 1860 census returns to analyze the amount and value of agricultural surplus produced by individual farms. Finally, this study explores the issue of regional boundaries and definition, and highlights significant differences between various subregions within southern Appalachia.;To a large degree, the interpretive debate rests upon the definition of regional boundaries. If scholars use an expansive definition of the region, one that includes all of West Virginia and the entire ridge and valley terrain from Maryland to Georgia, its economic profile looks similar to the rest of the nation. If the regional borders contain a smaller area centered on the Blue Ridge and the Cumberland Plateau, nineteenth-century Appalachia indeed becomes a region where subsistence farmers could thrive.;This study argues that a significant number of Americans retreated into the relatively more isolated areas of the mountains to escape the striving competitive nature of mainstream American capitalism. At the same time, more entrepreneurial people left the mountains for better economic opportunities elsewhere. The result was the emergence of a new American region known as Appalachia.