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.
C. G. Woodson
Footnotes
[[return]]1. Wertenbaker, "Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia," 31.
[[return]]2. Exactly how many of each race settled in the Appalachian region we cannot tell, but we know that they came in large numbers, after the year 1735. A few important facts and names may give some idea as to the extent of this immigration. The Shenandoah Valley attracted many. Most prominent among those who were instrumental in settling the Valley was the Scotchman, John Lewis, the ancestor of so many families of the mountains. The Dutchmen, John and Isaac Van Meter, were among the first to buy land from Joist Hite, probably the first settler in the Valley. Among other adventurers of this frontier were Benjamin Allen, Riley Moore, and William White, of Maryland, who settled in the Shenandoah in 1734; Robert Harper and others who, in the same year, settled Richard Morgan's grant near Harper's Ferry; and Howard, Walker, and Rutledge, who took up land on what became the Fairfax Manor on the South Branch. In 1738 some Quakers came from Pennsylvania to occupy the Ross Survey of 40,000 acres near Winchester Farm in what is now Frederick County, Virginia. In the following year John and James Lindsay reached Long Marsh, and Isaac Larne of New Jersey the same district about the same time; while Joseph Carter of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, built his cabin on the Opequon near Winchester in 1743, and Joseph Hampton with his two sons came from Maryland to Buck Marsh near Berryville. But it is a more important fact that Burden, a Scotch-Irishman, obtained a large grant of land and settled it with hundreds of his race during the period from 1736 to 1743, and employed an agent to continue the work. With Burden came the McDowells, Alexanders, Campbells, McClungs, McCampbells, McCowans, and McKees, Prestons, Browns, Wallaces, Wilsons, McCues, and Caruthers. They settled the upper waters of the Shenandoah and the James, while the Germans had by this time well covered the territory between what is known as Harrisonburg and the present site of Harper's Ferry. See Maury, "Physical Survey," 42; Virginia Magazine, IX, 337-352; Washington's Journal, 47-48; Wayland, "German Element of the Shenandoah," 110.
[[return]]3. Wayland, "German Element of the Shenandoah," 28-30; Virginia Historical Register, III, 10.