Dispossessing the poor, Part V - breaking Appalachia

 So far in this series of columns, I’ve asserted several points. By 1800, many people believed that anyone who existed outside the prevailing economic system, by being self-sufficient, was “backward” and needed civilizing. This included small, independent farmers, backwoodsmen, and Native Americans. Second, they believed that a good “shock” (increased poverty and hunger for white workers, literal dispossession for Native Americans) could help jolt them into their proper role in a modern, civilized country.

Those attitudes changed, very briefly, during the Market Revolution (roughly 1820s-1840s)…. which is odd, because the Market Revolution was the process by which the Industrial and Transportation Revolutions converged to create an economy that was more interdependent (and “modern”) than ever. However, part of that process was Manifest Destiny - the idea it was God’s ordained plan for Americans to take over all the territory in the West and stretch from Atlantic to Pacific (bringing enlightenment and “civilization” to Native Tribes along the way). In this narrative, pioneers going west were romanticized despite their initial disconnection from the economy. This included the “hardy frontiersmen” of Appalachia. Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett became enormously popular during this period, even more so after their deaths,

But that only went so far. By the LATE 1800s, when most of that western land had been opened up - that is, taken from Mexico and indigenous nations -   national attitudes about the initial western pioneers, and especially of people in Southern Appalachia, began to change. Like the Indians, they were viewed as obstacles to progress who needed to either get with the program or move out of the way. Moreover, big cities - specifically, the working classes there - were beginning to be viewed as “urban frontiers,” held in a similar low regard.

Toward the end of Reconstruction, the railroads were extended into Central and Southern Appalachia. Pre-Civil War, railroads in the South were geared toward places where cotton was produced. Now, though, in the 1870s, local business leaders were making deals with northern investors - first to bring in railways, then to open up coal mines. The lumber business exploded in the region, too, with timber companies frequently clearing off areas that would be used for mining. Now, there had been industry in Appalachia for the whole 19th century, from ironworks to saltpeter mines (a necessary component of gunpowder). By far, though, the vast majority of Appalachians lived on farms. Usually not big, commercial farms - mostly small family farms, where farmers produced enough for their families to live on and maybe a little bit extra for trade to get the (very small) luxuries they could afford. Some of those farmers were willing to sell out to coal and timber companies, but many were not. They were content with the lives and the mountains they loved.

All of a sudden, while Davy Crockett had been a national hero, his grandchildren’s generation in Appalachia was nationally reviled, made fun of, and held up as an example of a people “stuck” in the first three “levels of society” but not able to make it to the fourth, modern civilization. They were “backward,” impediments to progress, holding up the country’s journey to the future. They were violent, dangerous, immoral, feuding hillbillies who didn’t understand how to use the land or what was best for them, which was all used as evidence that the federal government should work together with business interests to civilize them. Things like the Panic of 1893 led to many Appalachians losing their farms or having no choice but to sell them to the new industries. By the early 1900s, many of those former independent farmers were working in the mines or the sawmills, for low wages and in dangerous conditions. There were few other options. When the mines left, it was shirt factories; when they left it was service jobs at chain stores. The low wages and poor working conditions persist, as deeply embedded as the stereotypes.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.