To understand the problem of harmonizing freedom and slavery in
Appalachian America we must keep in mind two different stocks coming in
some cases from the same mother country and subject here to the same
government. Why they differed so widely was due to their peculiar ideals
formed prior to their emigration from Europe and to their environment in
the New World. To the tidewater came a class whose character and
purposes, although not altogether alike, easily enabled them to develop
into an aristocratic class. All of them were trying to lighten the
burdens of life. In this section favored with fertile soil, mild
climate, navigable streams and good harbors facilitating direct trade
with Europe, the conservative, easy-going, wealth-seeking, exploiting
adventurers finally fell back on the institution of slavery which
furnished the basis for a large plantation system of seeming
principalities. In the course of time too there arose in the few towns
of the coast a number of prosperous business men whose bearing was
equally as aristocratic as that of the masters of plantations.[1] These
elements constituted the rustic nobility which lorded it over the
unfortunate settlers whom the plantation system forced to go into the
interior to take up land. Eliminating thus an enterprising middle class,
the colonists tended to become more aristocratic near the shore.
In this congenial atmosphere the eastern people were content to dwell.
the East had the West in mind and said much about its inexhaustible
resources, but with the exception of obtaining there grants of land nothing
definite toward the conquest of this section was done because of the
handicap of slavery which precluded the possibility of a rapid expansion of
the plantation group in the slave States. Separated thus by high ranges of
mountains which prevented the unification of the interests of the sections,
the West was left for conquest by a hardy race of European dissenters
who were capable of a more rapid growth.[2] these were the Germans and
Scotch-Irish with a sprinkling of Huguenots, Quakers and poor whites who
had served their time as indentured servants in the east.[3] The unsettled
condition of Europe during its devastating wars of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries caused many of foreign stocks to seek homes in America
where they hoped to realize political liberty and religious freedom. Many
of these Germans first settled in the mountainous district of Pennsylvania
and Maryland and then migrated later to the lower part of the Shenandoah
Valley, while the Scotch-Irish took possession of the upper part of that
section. Thereafter the Shenandoah Valley became a thoroughfare for a
continuous movement of these immigrants toward the south into the uplands
and mountains of the Carolinas, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.[4]
Among the Germans were Mennonites, Lutherans, and Moravians, all of whom
believed in individual freedom, the divine right of secular power, and
personal responsibility.[5] The strongest stock among these immigrants,
however, were the Scotch-Irish, "a God-fearing, Sabbath-keeping,
covenant-adhering, liberty-loving, and tyrant-hating race," which had
formed its ideals under the influence of philosophy of John Calvin, John
Knox, Andrew Melville, and George Buchanan. By these thinkers they had been
taught to emphasize equality, freedom of conscience, and political liberty.
These stocks differed somewhat from each other, but they were equally
attached to practical religion, homely virtues, and democratic
institutions.[7] Being a kind and beneficent class with a tenacity for the
habits and customs of their fathers, they proved to be a valuable
contribution to the American stock. As they had no riches every man was to
be just what he could make himself. Equality and brotherly love became
their dominant traits. Common feeling and similarity of ideals made them
one people whose chief characteristic was individualism.[8] Differing thus
so widely from the easterners they were regarded by the aristocrats as "Men
of new blood" and "Wild Irish," who formed a barrier over which "none
ventured to leap and would venture to settle among."[9] No aristocrat
figuring conspicuously in the society of the East, where slavery made men
socially unequal, could feel comfortable on the frontier, where freedom
from competition with such labor prevented the development of caste.
The natural endowment of the West was so different from that of the East
that the former did not attract the people who settled in the Tidewater.
The mountaineers were in the midst of natural meadows, steep hills, narrow
valleys of hilly soil, and inexhaustible forests. In the East tobacco
and corn were the staple commodities. Cattle and hog raising became
profitable west of the mountains, while various other employments which
did not require so much vacant land were more popular near the sea.
Besides, when the dwellers near the coast sought the cheap labor which the
slave furnished the mountaineers encouraged the influx of freemen. It is
not strange then that we have no record of an early flourishing slave
plantation beyond the mountains. Kercheval gives an account of a settlement
by slaves and overseers on the large Carter grant situated on the west side
of the Shenandoah, but it seems that the settlement did not prosper as
such, for it soon passed into the hands of the Burwells and the Pages.[10]
The rise of slavery in the Tidewater section, however, established the
going of those settlers in the direction of government for the people. The
East began with indentured servants but soon found the system of slavery
more profitable. It was not long before the blacks constituted the masses
of the laboring population,[11] while on the expiration of their term of
service the indentured servants went west and helped to democratize the
frontier. Caste too was secured by the peculiar land tenure of the East.
The king and the proprietors granted land for small sums on feudal terms.
The grantees in their turn settled these holdings in fee tail on the oldest
son in accordance with the law of primogeniture. This produced a class
described by Jefferson who said: "There were then aristocrats, half-breeds,
pretenders, a solid independent yeomanry, looking askance at those above,
yet not venturing to jostle them, and last and lowest, a seculum of beings
called overseers, the most abject, degraded and unprincipled race, always
cap in hand to the Dons who employed them for furnishing material for the
exercise of their price."[12]
In the course of colonial development the people of the mountains were
usually referred to as frontiersmen dwelling in the West. This "West" was
for a number of years known as the region beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains
and later beyond the Alleghenies. A more satisfactory dividing line,
however, is the historical line of demarcation between the East and West
which moved toward the mountains in the proportion that the western section
became connected with the East and indoctrinated by its proslavery
propagandists. In none of these parts, however, not even far south, were
the eastern people able to bring the frontiersmen altogether around to
their way of thinking. Their ideals and environment caused them to have
differing opinions as to the extent, character, and foundations of local
self-government, differing conceptions of the meaning of representative
institutions, differing ideas of the magnitude of governmental power over
the individual, and differing theories of the relations of church and
State. The East having accepted caste as the basis of its society naturally
adopted the policy of government by a favorite minority, the West inclined
more and more toward democracy. The latter considered representatives only
those who had been elected as such by a majority of the people of the
district in which they lived; the former believed in a more restricted
electorate, and the representation of districts and interests, rather than
that of numbers.[13] Furthermore, almost from the founding of the colonies
there was court party consisting of the rich planters and favorites
composing the coterie of royal officials generally opposed by a country
party of men who, either denied certain privileges or unaccustomed to
participation in the affairs of privileged classes, felt that the
interests of the lowly were different. As the frontier moved westward the
line of cleavage tended to become identical with that between the
privileged classes and the small farmers, between the lowlanders and the
uplanders, between capital and labor, and finally between the East and
West.
The frontiersmen did not long delay in translating some of their political
theories into action. The aristocratic East could not do things to suit
the mountaineers who were struggling to get the government nearer to them.
At times, therefore, their endeavors to abolish government for the people
resulted in violent frontier uprisings like that of Bacon's Rebellion
in Virginia and the War of Regulation in North Carolina. In all of these
cases the cause was practically the same. These pioneers had observed
with jealous eye the policy which bestowed all political honors on the
descendants of a few wealthy families living upon the tide or along the
banks of the larger streams. They were, therefore, inclined to advance
with quick pace toward revolution.[14] On finding such leaders as James
Otis, Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, the frontiersmen instituted such
a movement in behalf of freedom that it resulted in the Revolutionary
War.[15] These patriots' advocacy of freedom, too, was not half-hearted.
When they demanded liberty for the colonists they spoke also for the
slaves, so emphasizing the necessity for abolition that observers from afar
thought that the institution would of itself soon pass away.[16]
In the reorganization of the governments necessitated by the overthrow
of the British, however, the frontiersmen were unfortunate in that
they lacked constructive leadership adequate to having their ideas
incorporated into the new constitutions. Availing themselves of their
opportunity, the aristocrats of the coast fortified themselves in their
advantageous position by establishing State governments based on the
representation of interests, the restriction of suffrage, and the
ineligibility of the poor to office.[17] Moreover, efforts were made
even to continue in a different form the Established Church against which
the dissenting frontiersmen had fought for more than a century. In the
other Atlantic States where such distinctions were not made in framing
their constitutions, the conservatives resorted to other schemes to keep
the power in the hands of the rich planters near the sea. When the
Appalachian Americans awoke to the situation then they were against a
stone wall. The so-called rights of man were subjected to restrictions
which in our day could not exist. The right to hold office and to vote
were not dependent upon manhood qualifications but on a white skin,
religious opinions, the payment of taxes, and wealth. In South Carolina a
person desiring to vote must believe in the existence of a God, in a future
state of reward and punishment, and have a freehold of fifty acres of land.
In Virginia the right of suffrage was restricted to freeholders possessing
one hundred acres of land. Senators in North Carolina had to own three
hundred acres of land; representatives in South Carolina were required
to have a 500 acre freehold and 10 Negroes; and in Georgia 250 acres
and support the Protestant religion.[18] In all of these slave States,
suffering from such unpopular government, the mountaineers developed into
a reform party persistently demanding that the sense of the people be taken
on the question of calling together their representatives to remove certain
defects from the constitutions. It was the contest between the aristocrats
and the progressive westerner. The aristocrats' idea of government was
developed from the "English Scion--the liberty of kings, lords, and
commons, with different grades of society acting independently of all
foreign powers." The ideals of the westerners were principally those of the
Scotch-Irish, working for "civil liberty in fee simple, and an open road to
civil honors, secured to the poorest and feeblest members of society."[19]
The eastern planters, of course, regarded this as an attack on their system
and fearlessly denounced these rebellious wild men of the hills. In taking
this position, these conservatives brought down upon their heads all of the
ire that the frontiersmen had felt for the British prior to the American
Revolution. The easterners were regarded in the mountains as a party bent
upon establishing in this country a régime equally as oppressive as the
British government. The frontiersmen saw in slavery the cause of the whole
trouble. They, therefore, hated the institution and endeavored more than
ever to keep their section open to free labor. They hated the slave as
such, not as a man. On the early southern frontier there was more prejudice
against the slaveholder than against the Negro.[20] There was the feeling
that this was not a country for a laboring class so undeveloped as the
African slaves, then being brought to these shores to serve as a basis for
a government differing radically from that in quest of which the
frontiersmen had left their homes in Europe.
This struggle reached its climax in different States at various periods.
In Maryland the contest differed somewhat from that of other Southern
States because of the contiguity of that commonwealth with Pennsylvania,
which early set such examples of abolition and democratic government that
a slave State near by could not go so far in fortifying an aristocratic
governing class. In Virginia the situation was much more critical than
elsewhere. Unlike the other Atlantic States, which wisely provided
roads and canals to unify the diverse interests of the sections, that
commonwealth left the trans-Alleghany district to continue in its own way
as a center of insurgency from which war was waged against the established
order of things.[21] In most States, however, the contest was decided by
the invention of the cotton gin and other mechanical appliances which, in
effecting an industrial revolution throughout the world, gave rise to the
plantation system found profitable to supply the increasing demand for
cotton. In the course of the subsequent expansion of slavery, many of the
uplanders and mountaineers were gradually won to the support of that
institution. Realizing gradually a community of interests with the eastern
planters, their ill-feeling against them tended to diminish. Abolition
societies which had once flourished among the whites of the uplands tended
to decline and by 1840 there were practically no abolitionists in the South
living east of the Appalachian Mountains.[22]
Virginia, which showed signs of discord longer than the other Atlantic
States, furnishes us a good example of how it worked out. The reform party
of the West finally forced the call of a convention in 1829, hoping in
vain to crush the aristocracy. Defeated in this first battle with the
conservatives, they secured the call of the Reform Convention in 1850 only
to find that two thirds of the State had become permanently attached to the
cause of maintaining slavery.[23] Samuel McDowell Moore, of Rockbridge
County in the Valley, said in the Convention of 1829-30 that slaves should
be free to enjoy their natural rights,[24] but a generation later the
people of that section would not have justified such an utterance in behalf
of freedom. The uplanders of South Carolina were early satisfied with such
changes as were made in the apportionment of representation in 1808, and
in the qualifications of voters in 1810.[25] Thereafter Calhoun's party,
proceeding on the theory of government by a concurrent majority, vanquished
what few liberal-minded men remained, and then proceeded to force their
policy on the whole country.
In the Appalachian Mountains, however, the settlers were loath to follow
the fortunes of the ardent pro-slavery element. Actual abolition was
never popular in western Virginia, but the love of the people of that
section for freedom kept them estranged from the slaveholding districts
of the State, which by 1850 had completely committed themselves to the
pro-slavery propaganda. In the Convention of 1829-30 Upshur said there
existed in a great portion of the West (of Virginia) a rooted antipathy
to the slave.[26] John Randolph was alarmed at the fanatical spirit on
the subject of slavery, which was growing up in Virginia. Some of this
sentiment continued in the mountains. The highlanders, therefore, found
themselves involved in a continuous embroglio because they were not moved
by reactionary influences which were unifying the South for its bold
effort to make slavery a national institution.[27]
The indoctrination of the backwoodsmen of North Carolina in the tenets of
slavery was effected without much difficulty because of less impediment in
the natural barriers, but a small proportion of the inhabitants of the
State residing in the mountainous districts continued anti-slavery. There
was an unusually strong anti-slavery element in Davie, Davidson, Granville
and Guilford counties. The efforts of this liberal group, too, were not
long in taking organized form. While there were several local organizations
operating in various parts, the efforts of the anti-slavery people centered
around the North Carolina Manumission Society. It had over forty branches
at one time, besides several associations of women, all extending into
seven or eight of the most populous counties of the State. This society
denounced the importation and exportation of slaves, and favored providing
for manumissions, legalizing slave contracts for the purchase of freedom,
and enacting a law that at a certain age all persons should be born
free.[28] That these reformers had considerable influence is evidenced by
the fact that in 1826 a member of the manumission society was elected to
the State Senate. In 1824 and 1826 two thousand slaves were freed in North
Carolina.[29] Among the distinguished men who at times supported this
movement in various ways were Hinton Rowan Helper, Benjamin S. Hedrick,
Daniel R. Goodloe, Eli W. Caruthers, and Lunsford Lane, a colored orator
and lecturer of considerable ability.[30] They constituted a hopeless
minority, however, for the liberal element saw their hopes completely
blasted in the triumph of the slave party in the Convention of 1835, which
made everything subservient to the institution of slavery.
In the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee conditions were a little more
encouraging, especially between 1817 and 1830. The anti-slavery work in
Kentucky seemed to owe its beginning to certain "Emancipating Baptists."
Early in the history of that State six Baptist preachers, Carter Tarrant,
David Darrow, John Sutton, Donald Holmes, Jacob Gregg, and George Smith,
began an anti-slavery campaign, maintaining that there should be no
fellowship with slaveholders.[31] They were unable to effect much, however,
because of the fact that they had no extensive organization through
which to extend their efforts. Every church remained free to decide for
itself and even in Northern States the Baptists later winked at slavery.
More effective than these efforts of the Baptists was the work of the
Scotch-Irish. Led by David Rice, a minister of the Presbyterian Church,
the anti-slavery element tried to exclude slavery from the State when
framing its first constitution in the Convention of 1792.[32] Another
effort thus to amend the fundamental law was made at the session of the
legislature of 1797-98, and had it not been for the excitement aroused by
the Alien and Sedition Laws, the bill probably would have passed.[33]
Many successful efforts were made through the anti-slavery bodies. The
society known as "Friends of Humanity" was organized in Kentucky in 1807.
It had a constitution signed by eleven preachers and thirteen laymen.
The organization was in existence as late as 1813. The records of the
abolitionists show that there was another such society near Frankfort
between 1809 and 1823.[34] Birney then appeared in the State and gave his
influence to the cause with a view to promoting the exportation of Negroes
to Liberia.[35] A number of citizens also memorialized Congress to colonize
the Negroes on the public lands in the West.[36] In the later twenties an
effort was made to unite the endeavors of many wealthy and influential
persons who were then interested in promoting abolition. Lacking a vigorous
and forceful leader, they appealed to Henry Clay, who refused.[37] They
fought on, however, for years to come. A contributor to the _Western
Luminary_ said, in 1830, that the people of Kentucky were finding slavery
a burden.[38] Evidently a good many of them had come to this conclusion,
for a bill providing for emancipation introduced in the Legislature was
postponed indefinitely by a vote of 18 to 11.[39] So favorable were
conditions in Kentucky at this time that it was said that Tennessee was
watching Kentucky with the expectation of following her lead should the
latter become a free State as was then expected.
The main factor in promoting the work in Tennessee was, as in Kentucky,
the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian stock. They opposed slavery in word and in
deed, purchasing and setting free a number of colored men. Among these
liberal westerners was organized the "Manumission Society of Tennessee,"
represented for years in the American Convention of Abolition Societies by
Benjamin Lundy.[40] The Tennessee organization once had twenty branches and
a membership of six hundred.[41] Among its promoters were Charles Osborn,
Elihu Swain, John Underhill, Jesse Willis, John Cannady, John Swain, David
Maulsby, John Rankin, Jesse Lockhart, and John Morgan.[42] They advocated
at first immediate and unconditional emancipation, but soon seeing that the
realization of this policy was impossible, they receded from this advanced
position and memorialized their representatives to provide for gradual
emancipation, the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, the
prevention of the separation of families, the prohibition of the interstate
slave trade, the restriction of slavery, the general improvement of colored
people through church and school, and especially the establishment among
them of the right of marriage.[43] To procure the abolition of slavery by
argument, other persons of this section organized another body, known as
the "Moral Religious Manumission Society of West Tennessee."[44] It once
had a large membership and tended to increase and spread the agitation in
behalf of abolition.
In view of these favorable tendencies, it was thought up to 1830 that
Tennessee, following the lead of Kentucky, would become a free State.[45]
But just as the expansion of slavery into the interior of the Atlantic
States attached those districts to the fortunes of the slaveholding class,
it happened in some cases in the mountains which to some extent became
indoctrinated by the teaching of the defenders of slavery. Then the ardent
slavery debate in Congress and the bold agitation, like that of the
immediatists led by William Lloyd Garrison, alienated the support which
some mountaineers had willingly given the cause. Abolition in these States,
therefore, began to weaken and rapidly declined during the thirties.[46]
Because of a heterogeneous membership, these organizations tended to
develop into other societies representing differing ideas of anti-slavery
factions which had at times made it impossible for them to cooperate
effectively in carrying out any plan. The slaveholders who had been members
formed branches of the American Colonization Society, while the radical
element fell back upon organizing branches of the Underground Railroad to
cooperate with those of their number who, seeing that it was impossible
to attain their end in the Southern mountains, had moved into the
Northwest Territory to colonize the freedmen and aid the escape of
slaves.[47] Among these workers who had thus changed their base of
operation were not only such noted men as Joshua Coffin, Benjamin Lundy,
and James G. Birney, but less distinguished workers like John Rankin, of
Ripley; James Gilliland, of Red Oak; Jesse Lockhart, of Russellville;
Robert Dobbins, of Sardinia; Samuel Crothers, of Greenfield; Hugh L.
Fullerton, of Chillicothe, and William Dickey, of Ross or Fayette County,
Ohio. There were other southern abolitionists who settled and established
stations of the Underground Railroad In Bond, Putnam, and Bureau Counties,
Illinois.[48] The Underground Railroad was thus enabled to extend into
the heart of the South by way of the Cumberland Mountains. Over this Ohio
and Kentucky route, culminating chiefly in Cleveland, Sandusky, and
Detroit, more fugitives found their way to freedom than through any other
avenue.[49] The limestone caves were of much assistance to them. The
operation of the system extended through Tennessee into northern Georgia
and Alabama, following the Appalachian highland as it juts like a
peninsula into the South. Dillingham, John Brown, and Harriet Tubman used
these routes.
Let us consider, then, the attitude of these mountaineers toward slaves.
All of them were not abolitionists. Some slavery existed among them. The
attack on the institution, then, in these parts was not altogether
opposition to an institution foreign to the mountaineers. The frontiersmen
hated slavery, hated the slave as such, but, as we have observed above,
hated the eastern planter worse than they hated the slave. As there was a
scarcity of slaves in that country they generally dwelt at home with their
masters. Slavery among these liberal people, therefore, continued
patriarchal and so desirous were they that the institution should remain
such that they favored the admission of the State of Missouri as a slave
State,[50] not to promote slavery but to expand it that each master, having
a smaller number of Negroes, might keep them in close and helpful contact.
Consistently with this policy many of the frontier Baptists, Scotch-Irish
and Methodists continued to emphasize the education of the blacks as the
correlative of emancipation. They urged the masters to give their servants
all proper advantages for acquiring knowledge of their duty both to man and
to God. In large towns slaves were permitted to acquire the rudiments of
education and in some of them free persons of color had well-regulated
schools.[51]
Two noteworthy efforts to educate Negroes were put forth in these parts. A
number of persons united in 1825 to found an institution for the education
of eight or ten Negro slaves with their families, to be operated under the
direction of the "Emancipating Labor Society of the State of Kentucky."
About the same time Frances Wright was endeavoring to establish an
institution on the same order to improve the free blacks and mulattoes
in West Tennessee. It seems that this movement had the support of a goodly
number of persons, including George Fowler, and, it was said, Lafayette,
who had always been regarded as a friend of emancipation. According to
a letter from a clergyman of South Carolina, the first slave for this
institution went from the York district of that State. Exactly what these
enterprises were, however, it is difficult to determine. They were not well
supported and soon passed from public notice. Some have said that the
Tennessee project was a money-making scheme for the proprietors, and that
the Negroes taught there were in reality slaves. Others have defended the
work as a philanthropic effort so characteristic of the friends of freedom
in Appalachian America.[52]
The people of Eastern Tennessee were largely in favor of Negro education.
Around Maryville and Knoxville were found a considerable number of white
persons who were thus interested in the uplift of the belated race. Well
might such efforts be expected in Maryville, for the school of theology at
this place had gradually become so radical that according to the _Maryville
Intelligencer_ half of the students by 1841 declared their adherence to the
cause of abolition.[53] Consequently, they hoped not only to see such
doctrines triumph within the walls of that institution, but were
endeavoring to enlighten the Negroes of that community to prepare them for
the enjoyment of life as citizens in their own or some other country.[54]
Just as the people of Maryville had expressed themselves through _The
Intelligencer_, so did those of Knoxville find a spokesman in _The
Presbyterian Witness_. Excoriating those who had for centuries been finding
excuses for keeping the slaves in heathenism, the editor of this
publication said that there was not a solitary argument that might be urged
in favor of teaching a white man that might not be as properly urged in
favor of enlightening a man of color. "If one has a soul that will never
die," said he, "so has the other. Has one susceptibilities of improvement,
mentally, socially, and morally? So has the other. Is one bound by the laws
of God to improve the talents he has received from the Creator's hands? So
is the other. Is one embraced in the commands search the scriptures? So is
the other."[55] He maintained that unless masters could lawfully degrade
their slaves to the condition of beasts, they were just as much bound to
teach them to read the Bible as to teach any other class of their
population.
From a group in Kentucky came another helpful movement. Desiring to train
up white men who would eventually be able to do a work which public
sentiment then prevented the anti-slavery minority from carrying on, the
liberal element of Kentucky, under the leadership of John G. Fee and his
coworkers, established Berea College. Believing in the brotherhood of man
and the fatherhood of God, this institution incorporated into its charter
the bold declaration that "God hath made of one blood all nations that
dwell upon the face of the earth." This profession was not really put to a
test until after the Civil War, when the institution courageously met the
issue by accepting as students some colored soldiers who were returning
home wearing their uniforms.[56] The State has since prohibited the
co-education of the races.
With so many sympathizers with the oppressed in the back country, the South
had much difficulty in holding the mountaineers in line to force upon the
whole nation their policies, mainly determined by their desire for the
continuation of slavery. Many of the mountaineers accordingly deserted the
South in its opposition to the tariff and internal improvements, and when
that section saw that it had failed in economic competition with the North,
and realized that it had to leave the Union soon or never, the mountaineers
who had become commercially attached to the North and West boldly adhered
to these sections to maintain the Union. The highlanders of North Carolina
were finally reduced to secession with great difficulty; Eastern Tennessee
had to yield, but kept the State almost divided between the two causes;
timely dominated by Unionists with the support of troops, Kentucky stood
firm; and to continue attached to the Federal Government forty-eight
western counties of Virginia severed their connection with the essentially
slaveholding district and formed the loyal State of West Virginia.
In the mountainous region the public mind has been largely that of people
who have developed on free soil. They have always differed from the
dwellers in the district near the sea not only in their attitude toward
slavery but in the policy they have followed in dealing with the blacks
since the Civil War. One can observe even to-day such a difference in the
atmosphere of the two sections, that in passing from the tidewater to the
mountains it seems like going from one country into another. There is still
in the back country, of course, much of that lawlessness which shames the
South, but crime in that section is not peculiarly the persecution of the
Negro. Almost any one considered undesirable is dealt with unceremoniously.
In Appalachian America the races still maintain a sort of social contact.
White and black men work side by side, visit each other in their homes, and
often attend the same church to listen with delight to the Word spoken by
either a colored or white preacher.