Effects of Early Nineteenth Century Transportation Disadvantage on the Agriculture of Eastern Tennessee

Southeastern Geographer Vol. 27, No. 1, May 1987, pp. 18-37 EFFECTS OF EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY TRANSPORTATION DISADVANTAGE ON THE AGRICULTURE OF EASTERN TENNESSEE Donald W. Buckwalter INTRODUCTION. Commercial agriculture in the South before the Civil War was usually associated with single cash crop systems dominated by cotton, tobacco, sugar cane, or rice. In the literature dealing with antebellum Southern agriculture, frequent mention is also made of commercial areas that specialized in other commodities: middle Tennessee and the Kentucky Blue Grass Region in livestock, and the Valley of Virginia in wheat. By contrast, eastern Tennessee is described as an area of subsistence farming, pioneer farming, or yeoman farming. (J) The region referred to as eastern Tennessee in this article coincides with the area identified as the East Tennessee District by the agricultural censuses of 1840, 1850, and 1860 (Fig. 1). Today this area encompasses 34 counties, about one-third of the total area of the state. Most of the region falls within the southern section of the Ridge and Valley physiographic province. (2) The valleys in this area typically have gently rolling terrain and reasonably fertile soils. Eastern Tennessee also includes portions of the Cumberland Plateau and the Smoky Mountains on the northwestern and southeastern flanks of the valley (Fig. 2). In the early nineteenth century, eastern Tennessee was more isolated from national market centers by terrain and distance than were surrounding regions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate why eastern Tennessee failed to develop as a viable commercial agricultural region in spite of the presence of physical resources that could have supported such development . The degree of commercialization and the role in the national economy of nonplantation areas in the antebellum South have been topics of controversy. While scholars such as North have indicated that the South depended on the Midwest for foodstuffs, Fishlow argued with this contention. (3) Hilliard cited evidence of food deficiencies in areas dominated by cotton plantations, but believed that local trade and Mr. Buckwalter is a graduate student in the Department of Geography at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, TN 37996. Vol. XXVII, No. 1 19 Fig. 1. The East Tennessee District, as defined by the agricultural censuses of 1840, 1850, and 1860, consisted of an area that encompasses 34 modern counties. Several of the modern boundaries shown on this map were established or altered after the period of study in this paper. The counties shaded were the top ten in eastern Tennessee in amount of improved farmland for both the 1850 and 1860 census. Source: U.S. Census ofAgriculture, 1840, 1850, and 1860. trade between regions within the South supplied more of these needs than intersectional trade with the Midwest. This position was generally supported by Lindstrom, but both she and Hilliard bemoaned the paucity of detailed data available on a geographical basis. (4) Analysis of the specific trade relationships of eastern Tennessee with other parts of the South and with national markets will help resolve these controversies. The first section of this study examines agriculture prior to the development of mechanized transportation. Commercial steamboat service came to eastern Tennessee in the 1830s and railroads extended into the region in the 1850s. Marketing options available to agricultural producers prior to these innovations are examined to determine their influence on the choice of commodities produced and on the prosperity of 20Southeastern Geographer Fig. 2. Eastern Tennessee's proximity to transportation barriers such as rapids and mountains restricted access to important commercial cities. The Blue Grass Region, Middle Tennessee, the Southern Piedmont, and the Valley of Virginia faced fewer natural barriers to overland and river transportation. Sources: Edwin H. Hammond, "Classes of Land Surface Form in the Forty-Eight States, U.S.A.," Annals of the Association ofAmerican Geographers, Vol. 54, no. 1, 1964, map supplement no. 4; and Donald Davidson, The Tennessee Vol. 1, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1946), frontispiece and p. 149. the region. The next section examines the nature of the agricultural system that emerged from the pre-steamboat/railroad era. Eastern Tennessee 's importance relative to competing regions and the nation is analyzed using data from the first three censuses of agriculture (1840, 1850, and 1860). The...