¶ … New South" on the state of North Carolina following the close of the Civil War, historian John G. Barrett notes that "the state's detachment from the main contours of Southern plantation life and Northern free-labor society contributed greatly to its future status after Lee's surrender in 1865." 1 As this statement indicates, North Carolina, once part of the southern Confederacy, faced numerous problems associated with its isolation and the downfall of plantation life which depended heavily on slavery.
At the beginning of the "War Between the States," only seven percent of households in North Carolina owned slaves, but as the war progressed, this number rose sharply throughout most of the state. Yet poor farmers concentrated primarily on the production of foodstuffs for their own households and found it very difficult to deliver their goods to the main towns and cities, due to the fact that railroads had not yet penetrated a good portion of the state. But compared to other regions of the South, North Carolina differed significantly from the traditional stereotype of southern Appalachia as a land of isolation, ignorance, and egalitarian poverty. Households valued self-sufficiency but sought to obtain it in part through commercial involvement in local and regional trading networks. Access to land was relatively widespread, but the proportional distribution of wealth was significantly concentrated. The state itself was "diverse, competitive, and potentially full of conflict," 2 but the greatest threat to social stability stemmed not from the intrusion of the marketplace, but from the pressures of rapid population growth against a severely limited supply of cultivable land. The impact of the Industrial Revolution also affected the state and like other regions, the effects of Southern Reconstruction could be seen everywhere, not to mention the influx of carpetbaggers and entrepreneurs eager to take advantage of North Carolina's diverse natural resources. Thus, the state experienced a new birth and suffered for many years without the benefits of slavery and its membership in the Confederacy.
NOTES
Barrett, John G. The Civil War in North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963: 134.
Carbone, John S. The Civil War in Coastal North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1976: 57.
