Mountain Masters: Slavery and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina

By John C. Inscoe

Book Overview

Antebellum Southern Appalachia has long been seen as a classless and essentially slaveless region - one so alienated and isolated from other parts of the South that, with the onset of the Civil War, highlanders opposed both secession and Confederate war efforts. In a multifaceted challenge to these basic assumptions about Appalachian society in the mid-nineteenth century, John Inscoe reveals new variations on the diverse motives and rationales that drove Southerners, particularly in the Upper South, out of the Union.
Mountain Masters vividly portrays the wealth, family connections, commercial activities, and governmental power of the slaveholding elite that controlled the social, economic, and political development of western North Carolina. In examining the role played by slavery in shaping the political consciousness of mountain residents, the book also provides fresh insights into the nature of southern class interaction, community structure, and master-slave relationships.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870499335
• ISBN13: 9780870499333
• Release Date: August 1996
• Publisher: Univ Tennessee Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Masterful Study of Slavery --Destroys Many Myths

John C. Inscoe is probably one of the most prolific scholars on Southern Appalachian History; Mountain Masters is in many ways the work that firmly planted him in the historiographic tradition of Western North Carolina. Mountain Masters relies on many primary sources (not just a wide variety of them, but a thorough use of them as well) to portray what slavery was really like in Western North Carolina through the Civil War. In opposition to many popular notions, in which slavery didn't exist or was marginal in Western North Carolina, John Inscoe revealed that Western North Carolina was not very different from the rest of the south in trading, selling, buying, and working slaves. Though the patterns of slavery were different in many cases, the institution was still very strong in the region and had a profound impact on the politics, society, and cultural values of the people of the mountains. This book ought to be read by every North Carolina scholar, every slavery scholar, and certainly by every scholar who studies the Southern Appalachians. It is beautifully written and engaging.