The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War. By John C. Inscoe and Gordon B. McKinney. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Pp. xi, 368. $39.95.

Extract

This interesting study fits into the growing literature of community studies that seek to expand our knowledge of the Civil War beyond the battlefield and the lives of generals. It looks at that conflict in an understudied region, Western North Carolina, which local myth holds was a Unionist stronghold. As in most local lore, there is a grain of truth but more than an ounce of outright inaccuracy. John Inscoe has explored the role of slavery in Western North Carolina (WNC) in a very fine previous book, Mountain Masters: Slavery and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989). He and his coauthor continue the debunking of local legend here in this finely nuanced study of the communities of the mountain regions of North Carolina.