Kenneth W. Noe, Southwest Virginia's Railroad: Modernization and the Sectional Crisis (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994).

SYNOPSIS:

Noe argues that Southwest Virginia was far from an economic backwater, resistant to the market economy, in the years leading up to the the Civil War. Instead, he finds that the region was remarkably energetic in its economic development, placing the shift in Appalachian history much earlier than other scholars such as Ronald D. Eller. Noe also finds high levels of slavery in subregions of Southwest Virginia in the 1850s and a clear linkage between the introduction of the railroad and the growth of slavery and cash crop agriculture, mainly wheat. Noe's book is part of a growing literature on Appalachia, from John Inscoe to Durwood Dunn and Gene Wilhelm, to find that slavery and market forces were at work in the region, connecting it to other parts of the South and developing in it a class structure built around slavery.

EXCERPT:

The Virginia and Tennessee Railroad "hastened the development of capitalistic, slave-based, cash crop agriculture in Southwest Virginia." (43)

"In a sense, both Northwest Virginia and Southwest Virginia, as well as the commercial minded of Arkansas, Western North Carolina, and East Tennessee, unloaded their ideology as well as their goods off the train. Not only did southern modernization and slavery go hand in hand, then, but the determination to defend slavery and the broader economic and social system it held on its back joined them." (7-8)

"In Southwest Virginia, as elsewhere in the South, modernization and the expansion of an institution as 'unmodern' as chattel slavery went hand-in-hand." (70)

"Mountain agriculture was commercialized quite early and to a surprisingly high degree. Many immigrants came to the region with commercial activities in mind, and, like Western North Carolinians and the East Tennesseans of Cades Cove, began producing for outside markets quite early." (32)

"Urbanization and industrialization, in sum, grew dramatically during the 1850s as results of the railroad and its links to the wider South." (66)

"All in all, the Seventh and Eighth Censuses reveal that slavery in Southwest Virginia was spreading out of the counties where the institution already had established itself and was establishing a foothold in more mountainous parts of the region." (78)

"The mountain farmer principally raised cereals, especially corn and oats, but also buckwheat, rye, and wheat." (33-34)

RELATIONSHIP:

We agree with Noe's argument that Virginia's western areas were moving simultaneously in the 1850s toward greater engagement with slavery and market commerce through the railroad. We agree also with Noe's emphasis on railroad development and the importance of Southwest Virginia's rail link to Richmond in contrast to Northwest Virginia's connection to Ohio. Noe's particular discussion of subregions and counties also supports our close analysis. For example, Noe examined agricultural change over the 1850s along the railroad and found an explosion in the cultivation of tobacco and wheat, both tied to increases in slave population in the region. (43) By 1856, 435 out of 643 workers on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad were enslaved. (82)

"Although Franklin's wealth was concentrated in its rural agricultural commodities, the county was a commercial hub with numerous businesses and shops more densely concentrated than its Southern counterpart."

"Enslaved labor was integral to Augusta's industries--woolen mills, distilleries, flour mills, lumber mills, and iron foundries--while skilled white artisan shops were small in number and scale and virtually free of enslaved labor."

"On a per capita basis, Franklin farmers grew far less corn and more wheat than their counterparts in Augusta, and their commitment to wheat was seen by many as both the symbol of the North's wealth and the evidence of its superior labor system."

"The richest farm households in Augusta, however, had a high correlation with relatively high wheat production and low corn production, and slavery enabled even greater success on these farms."

"The Chambersburg newspapers sold a greater range of products than their counterparts in Staunton, and businesses there faced greater competition as well."