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.

Franklin farmers grew only half the value of the Augusta corn crop; instead, they concentrated on wheat. Their crop mix was on average 37 percent wheat, 34 percent corn, 7 percent rye, and 23 percent oats. In Augusta on average farmers devoted 59 percent of the crop production to corn, and 25 percent to wheat, 14 percent to oats, and 5 percent to rye. In both Augusta and Franklin the higher the farm value the more concentrated the farm became in wheat and the less concentrated (almost bushel for bushel) in corn. Soil type, too, played a role as those farmers in the best soil were more relatively more concentrated in wheat than in corn, and vice versa. In Augusta while slaveholders and nonslaveholders differed only slightly (less than 2 percent in their crop mix ratios), slaveholders managed to more than double the average value (dollars) in wheat and corn production of nonslaveholders.

Acres of Farm Land, 1860 (graph)

Agricultural Production, Franklin and Augusta Counties, 1860, by Percentages (table)

Agricultural Productivity, Augusta and Franklin County, 1860 (table)

Augusta County, Va., Agricultural Production (map)

Augusta County, Va., Soil Types (map)

Cash Value of Farms Per Capita Comparison, 1850 and 1860 (graph)

Franklin County, Pa., Agricultural Production (map)

Franklin County, Pa., Soil Types (map)

Regional Comparison (table)

Soil Types (table)

Wheat and Corn Production by Household Wealth (table)

Wheat and Corn Production in Dollars (table)

Related Historiography

Randolph B. Campbell, "Planters and Plain Folk: Harrison County, Texas, as a Test Case, 1850-1860," Journal of Southern History XL (No. 3), (1974): 369-398.

Carville Earle, "A Staple Interpretation of Slavery and Free Labor," Geographical Review LXVIII (1978): 51-65.

Sam Bowers Hilliard, Hog Meat and Hoecake: Food Supply in the Old South, 1840-1860 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972).

Kenneth E. Koons and Warren R. Hofstra, ed., After the Backcountry: Rural Life in the Great Valley of Virginia, 1800-1900 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000).

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

Edward Pessen, "How Different from Each Other Were the Antebellum North and South," American Historical Review 85 (1980): 1119-1149.

Harry L. Watson, Jacksonian Politics and Community Conflict: The Emergence of the Second American Party System in Cumberland County, North Carolina (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981).

Gavin Wright, Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy since the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1986).