Book description
Among the most pervasive of stereotypes imposed upon southern
highlanders is that they were white, opposed slavery, and supported
the Union before and during the Civil War, but the historical record
suggests far different realities. John C. Inscoe has spent much of his
scholarly career exploring the social, economic and political
significance of slavery and slaveholding in the mountain South and the
complex nature of the region's wartime loyalties, and the brutal
guerrilla warfare and home front traumas that stemmed from those
divisions. The essays here embrace both facts and fictions related to
those issues, often conveyed through intimate vignettes that focus on
individuals, families, and communities, keeping the human dimension at
the forefront of his insights and analysis. Drawing on the memories,
memoirs, and other testimony of slaves and free blacks, slaveholders
and abolitionists, guerrilla warriors, invading armies, and the
highland civilians they encountered, Inscoe considers this
multiplicity of perspectives and what is revealed about highlanders'
dual and overlapping identities as both a part of, and distinct from,
the South as a whole. He devotes attention to how the truths derived
from these contemporary voices were exploited, distorted, reshaped,
reinforced, or ignored by later generations of novelists, journalists,
filmmakers, dramatists, and even historians with differing agendas
over the course of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His
cast of characters includes John Henry, Frederick Law Olmsted and John
Brown, Andrew Johnson and Zebulon Vance, and those who later
interpreted their stories -- John Fox and John Ehle, Thomas Wolfe and
Charles Frazier, Emma Bell Miles and Harry Caudill, Carter Woodson and
W. J. Cash, Horace Kephart and John C. Campbell, even William Faulkner
and Flannery O'Connor. Their work and that of many others have
contributed much to either our understanding -- or misunderstanding --
of nineteenth century Appalachia and its place in the American imagination.
""John Inscoe's broad imagination, deep research, and
engaging writing over the past two decades have given us new ways to
think about Appalachia and the South. He has led the way in shaping
how we understand race and the Civil War in these contexts. He writes
with grace. His deep empathy for the people he studies is balanced by
a careful analysis of their thoughts and actions. John Inscoe
clarifies the complex history of Appalachia and, by extension, enables
us to see more clearly the South and the United States." --David
C. Hsiung, Juniata College, author of Two Worlds in the Tennessee
Mountains: Exploring the Origins of Appalachian Stereotypes" --
John C. Inscoe, professor at the University of Georgia, is the
author or editor of numerous books, including Appalachians and Race:
The Mountain South from Slavery to Segregation.
