25 - War in Appalachia

Summary

Unlike most traditional arenas of the American Civil War, no single trait of the Appalachian experience fully captures its true nature. When reading the vast majority of Civil War texts, the conventional warfare of Gettysburg, the struggle between emancipation and slavery, and Lincoln’s presidential war powers are the story’s central elements. In Appalachia, however, that story was very different. While the region can lay claim to battles in the conventional sense, a well-defended system of slavery, and its own ambitious politicians, Appalachia’s Civil War also witnessed more guerrilla warfare and civil unrest than most other sections could imagine. Moreover, Appalachian residents endured these hardships in a region whose topography offered transgressors the privacy they needed and deprived their victims of the publicity that might have saved them their suffering. The region, too, was a comparative backwater to the political and military hotspots that have defined the conventional conflict. It would be easy to judge the region a hinterland and assume its insignificance, but the deterministic terrain, community instability, and pervasive fear combined to create a very dangerous environment over the long term. Simply put, while the citizens of Gettysburg endured the Civil War for six days and five nights, the mountaineers of Appalachia were exposed to direct threat for the full four years of war and nearly a year of postwar uncertainty.