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From Development To Desintegration: Elites And The Connectedness Of Mountain Communities In Western North Carolina From The Antebellum Period To The End Of The Civil War, Colin W. Hull

Honors Theses

This paper undertakes as study of western North Carolina and the connectedness of mountain communities as they developed and disintegrated over the course of the antebellum period and the American Civil War. The research and conclusions in this paper confront common stereotypes of Appalachia, which include individualism, backwardness, isolation, and unionism during the Civil War. These stereotypes and generalizations have been attributed to the region by early histories, outsider accounts, and popular representations and have led to a myth of an engrained mountain culture, embodying those stereotypes. Mountain communities were not stagnant and unchanged throughout the 19^th century, but …