Both Augusta and Franklin were prosperous and diversified. Blessed with the advantages of rich soil, abundant water, and mild weather, both places grew vast quantities of grain, sustained towns, and depended on railroads that came into their counties. Both had thriving industrial sectors, sustained commercial newspapers and internal trade networks, traded intensely with other cities, and provided similar employment opportunities. The white class structure did not differ markedly between the Northern and Southern communities; similar proportions of propertyless and unskilled whites lived in both places. Non-slaveholders were not pushed onto marginal land in the Southern county. In fact, they were distributed across the landscape, and across the best land, in the same proportion as non-slaveholders. The same availability of excellent soil characterized the Northern county. Occupations did not differ between the two places, and the laboring classes were comprised of people of the same general age and wealth. (See, for example, Table: Occupations; and Table: Laborers)

In some significant ways, though, the economic structures of these places differed. By almost any measure, whites were wealthier in Augusta, for they owned more property and had larger farms than whites in Franklin. Some whites in Augusta accumulated huge fortunes in slaves as personal property. Women in Augusta outpaced their counterparts in Franklin, amassing larger real and personal estates. In addition, free blacks in Augusta were richer than black residents in Franklin. In the view of many whites in Augusta, their society was responsible for a higher standard of living, one that benefited all whites.

Slaves, too, Augusta's whites told each other, were better off in slavery than in freedom, and better off than the free laborers in the North. Other differences in the distribution of wealth require closer scrutiny of the geographic locus of wealth in these communities. For example, although household wealth was distributed in the same proportion in each county, wealth's geographic location was different. Augusta's wealth was proportionately greater in its town areas, while Franklin's was greater in its rural areas. Franklin's towns were more densely settled than Augusta's and more populated by lower classes, and Augusta's towns were the preferred locations for the residences of the county's wealthiest planters. Slaves as property boosted the wealth of town dwellers in Augusta, whether those slaves lived in the town or worked on outlying plantations. (See Table: Town and Rural Distribution of Household Wealth)

Slavery exerted profound effects on the very structures of population and production of Augusta. Enslaved people worked throughout the entire county, on every type of soil and in every kind of labor. The southern county generated smaller towns than its Northern counterpart and created industries confined to lower levels of processing. Farms that looked quite similar to those in Franklin in fact devoted their resources to different crop mixes. Slaveholders shifted their enslaved labor from agricultural to quasi-industrial work as the seasons changed. Those who worked in wheat fields also worked in distilleries, forests, and mines. The institution of slavery proved remarkably adaptable, and Augusta whites who did not own slaves hired them in great numbers. (See Table: Industries Using Enslaved Labor)

A remarkable but largely unspoken difference between the communities lay in their approaches to agricultural production, which constituted the basis of the economy in both places. Franklin and Augusta both grew large amounts of wheat, corn, hay, and other grains. Franklin's commitment to wheat production far exceeded Augusta's, and Franklin's wheat farmers were more productive on average and on a per acre basis than their Augusta counterparts, especially on the best soil. Augusta's corn production far exceeded Franklin's on average and on a per acre basis, and Augusta's farmers were more productive with this crop than Franklin's. The difference was more than one of preference. Corn was undoubtedly the crop that fed the enslaved population in Augusta and neighboring counties. It also was the primary raw material for more than twenty distilleries in the county employing enslaved labor throughout their operations. In Franklin wheat was considered the crop of a free labor society. (Map: Franklin Agricultural Production and Map: Augusta Agricultural Production)

Yet, to complicate matters, Augusta's white planters increasingly concentrated their enslaved labor on wheat, producing on the largest plantations a high level of productivity. The very largest planters were devoting some of their enslaved labor to compete with the free-labor wheat producers in Pennsylvania. Their success in producing wheat was remarkable and would not have gone unnoticed in the North. These planters, the richest in Augusta County, could use their enslaved labor to match the more mechanized Northern farms' productivity, and do so in a crop that was by tradition non-Southern and by cultivation non-labor intensive. Other places in the Upper South, especially the Eastern Shore of Maryland and the Delmarva Peninsula, were beginning to turn slavery toward wheat production as well. Augusta's large planters seemed to be quickly adapting to wheat production, so much so that their lack of experience with the crop proved a minor barrier to their potential success in the market. (See Table: Wheat and Corn Production)

Just as crop choices showed subtle differences, so did both places' investment in manufacturing. Augusta residents used enslaved labor to create localized agricultural systems and semi-finished manufacturing enterprises that exploited the availability of unskilled labor. Franklin residents, from small farms and skilled workshops, produced high-value goods for sale through national and international markets. Property owners in both places made efficient use of the resources of labor they commanded. Augusta planters chose to enter the wheat economy and deployed their enslaved labor across an array of agricultural and industrial tasks. Augusta's handful of skilled artisans, on the other hand, eschewed enslaved labor, perhaps unable or unwilling to afford it, while Franklin's numerous artisans made substantial capital investment in their businesses.

Just as Augusta's and Franklin's agricultural production exhibited subtle differences in crop mixes, so too did their infrastructures. While both places were highly networked, Franklin built more miles of major roadway per square mile in the county while Augusta concentrated on the minor roads connecting farms and smaller towns. Augusta's corn crop required local distribution on minor roads, and Franklin's wheat required greater access to markets through major roads. Augusta's wheat investment, though, was increasingly significant and so was its commitment to the major roads and railroads necessary to move it out of the county. Augusta built major roads when measured on a per capita basis just as energetically and successfully as Franklin. (See Map: Comparison, Railroads and Roads)

By their own lights, white people in both Franklin and Augusta were highly successful in 1860. Property holders and businessmen in both places had adjusted their resources to take advantage of the labor, land, transportation, raw materials, and skills available to them. In this respect Augusta and Franklin represented the wide region of the border, stretching from Virginia and Pennsylvania across Ohio and Kentucky. For the sixty counties along the border of slavery from the Mason-Dixon Line to the Ohio River, the farms in southern counties had a higher cash value, while the smaller farms in northern counties were more valuable on a per acre basis. (See Table: Regional Comparison)