A History of Appalachia

6. The Challenge to Cohee Society, 1820-1860

6 The Challenge to Cohee Society, 1820-1860 IN RECENT YEARS, a substantial literature has emerged exploring the nature of antebellum Southern society that particularly probes the question of why the relatively poorer, non-slaveholding whites largely supported secession. In the early 1940s, Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker even suggested the question of why what he called "Cohee Civilization" did not stop the spread of plantation America before a bloody war was necessary. More recently, some scholars in the tradition of the New Social History claim to see a class struggle developing within the Old South, between the substantial yeomen and the paternalistic, plantation elite. Yet there are others who claim that although the loyalty of non-slaveholders passed through a period of political confusion, in the end, their ultimate loyalty was to the planter elite, who did indeed speak for the whole white South. Surely a careful look at the life and society in the southern mountains should prove useful. A sense of backcountry or of Cohee separateness, whether sectional or class-based, did in fact develop within the slave states, and their opposition to the tidewater planters seems to have been quite finnly established by 1830. There were clear differences between the two. Planter society was essentially aristocratic, and its aims and values were derivative of the way of life of the English country gentlemen . Cohee society, on the other hand, was much more democratic and took its clues from the yeoman tradition in Europe. In America, a substantial difference in economic interests and values emerged. Though both were agricultural, planter society was tied to slave-pro- The Challenge to Cohee Society 81 duced crops such as tobacco and cotton, and both of these products were geared to capitalistic production to be sold on a world market. The Cohee economy, on the other hand, produced a diversityofcrops, such as com, animals, and wheat, and geared its production mainly to home or local needs. When the yeoman farmers did produce for a market, it was usually hogs, chickens, and other livestock, and was sold seasonally on long drives to southern cities. Planter society in the Old South supported "establishment" institutions such as formerly state-supported churches, the Presbyterians , and the Anglicans. This society also supported the existing power balance that was then in place in Southern state governments. Cohee citizens in Southernstates supported dissenter and sectarianchurches, such as the Baptists, Methodists, or Brethren, and found themselves frequently at theological odds with Southernplanters during the years between 1820 and 1860. The small, pre-capitalist farmer of the antebellum period generally shared a yeomanesque mentality, which contrasted with the market-oriented approach to agriculture that the slave-owning, plantation elite possessed. The planters also took partin the existing power balance put in place by the constitutional compromises, which counted slaves for purposes of legislative representation but denied blacks the right to vote. In 1829-1831, for example, "Trans-Allegheny Virginia"-then relatively the more prosperous and more populous section ofthe state if only white populations were counted, the area with most of the state's newspapers, and an area where the population grew most rapidly between 1800 and 1830-began bringing pressure for constitutional revision concerning representation in the state legislature. Under different circumstances, eastern Virginia might have continued to make legislative concessions to the faster-growing areas in the mountainous west. But Tidewater Virginia was then caught in a deep depreSSion, because its older tobacco lands were giving out. Furthermore, in the heat of late August 1831, the Nat Turner Insurrection , the Old South's largest slave revolt, resulted in the death of sixty-one whites and an unknown number of blacks. When the Legislature reconvened in 1831 to consider the new State Constitution, the Old South witnessed its last full-blown debate on the slavery issue. The westerners argued strongly for some scheme of emancipation that would end slavery in Virginia, noting that the presence of a large number of slaves gave whites in the Tidewater areas what they considered unwarranted strength in the Leg- 82 The New Nation and the Appalachian Backwoods islature. Slaves did not have the vote, of course, but were counted for representation purposes. Furthermore, the hysteria caused by Nat Turner's Insurrection had the initial effect of causing a temporary revulsion against slavery. After a remarkably full and free debate, the legislature voted by only 73 to 58 to reject emancipation and to retain...