Reconstruction's Ragged Edge: The Politics of Postwar Life in the Southern Mountains by Steven E. Nash (review)

In terms of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the southern mountains are probably best known for having relatively few black residents and a strong contingent of Union supporters. This demographic reality might lead us to think that the region remained relatively untouched by the most significant Reconstruction conflicts. Yet these areas were also hotbeds of extralegal violence, indicating that Reconstruction did in fact affect Appalachian communities. Steven E. Nash draws together these strands and places small mountain communities within a larger story of sweeping political, economic, and social changes, and he argues that these communities were central to Reconstruction nationally. Not only did white Republicans cooperate with their black neighbors and the federal government to transform regional power structures in western North Carolina, but circumstances in these counties influenced overall state policy as well. Mountaineers shaped Reconstruction at both the micro and the macro levels.

Nash begins by situating western North Carolina in its antebellum context, but he quickly moves to the region's transition from slavery to freedom and from war to peace. As mountaineers adapted to their changing circumstances, loyalty became a significant but fluid way they understood each other and their larger communities and measured social, racial, and political relationships. Loyalty could not be taken for granted, and it was not a simple dichotomy; rather, loyalty was measured by degrees. With so much in flux, even loyalty among so-called anti-Confederates was unpredictable; and after losing to conservatives in 1865 and 1866, they turned to the federal government for help in securing control of local politics. Though the military was an important presence, it was Freedmen's Bureau agents who "became the conduit of federal power for mountaineers of all races," and they forced white anti-Confederates to accept black men as their political partners in a national Republican Party (p. 90). This alliance reshaped the landscape of western North Carolina and turned the region into an enclave of seemingly solid Republican support.

Republican power was not as solid as it appeared, however, and the second half of Reconstruction's Ragged Edge: The Politics of Postwar Life in the Southern Mountains untangles the many strands of its demise. The twin forces of violence and regional development retied the connections between white supremacy and the future of the region. Nash's careful uncovering of how these forces joined race and progress may be his most significant contribution. Republicans did not break ties with their black allies outright, but as they fought for internal improvements, especially long-awaited railroads, their biracial coalition crumbled under the pressures of bipartisan cooperation. "Ku Klux Klan assaults and intimidation began the process," Nash writes, "and a market-oriented New South would finish it" (p. 150). Progress is not necessarily positive, and social justice turned out to be a price most mountaineers were willing to pay in order to secure a spot for their region in a changing economic order. African Americans in the mountains and across the South suffered the consequences of their onetime allies' gradual repudiation.

At its heart, this book is about power. Wartime hostility among white communities, class tensions, racial conflict, and jurisdictional contests meant that power remained up for grabs through the postwar period, especially as inter- and intraparty loyalties shifted. The shape and trajectory of these power struggles were slightly different in the mountains than in other parts of the South, but they were not wholly dissimilar. These mountain communities were on the edge of Reconstruction, as the title suggests, and there were limits to how much influence they wielded at the state level. But it is at the edges that we can discern the shape of the whole. A broader look at the region, by incorporating mountain communities in other states in the southern Appalachians would have made Nash's claims stronger, but...