- Title
- North Carolina historical review [1947 : October]
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- Date
- October 1947
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-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
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North Carolina historical review [1947 : October]
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The North Carolina
Historical Review
Volume XXIV October, 1947 Number 4
THE TOE RIVER VALLEY TO 1865
By Jason Basil Deyton
The history of the more isolated sections of the mountains of
North Carolina has not received the attention from historians
that it justly deserves. Such accounts as have been written
are inadequate and in many cases totally misleading. The field
has been a rich one for the feature writer, who has loved to paint
lurid pictures of crime, laziness, and ignorance ; but such writers
have refused, or at least have failed, to see the progress that has
been made in these regions, and most of all they have failed to
understand that an intelligent planning and leadership have
been present quite as much as in the better known regions.
The notion has been spread abroad that the pockets in the
Carolina mountains were infested with an inferior people who
were incapable of self-direction, who were unambitious, shiftless,
reckless.
The truth of the matter is that these regions have been greatly
handicapped by geographical conditions but that, despite this
handicap, steady progress has been made. The people have
worked ; they have lived ; they have prospered. In addition, they
have always shown a keen interest in state and national affairs
and hav.e directed quite intelligently their own local affairs. If
they lagged somewhat behind other sections, it was not because
they were apathetic but because they had more difficult problems
to solve. This study of the development of the Toe River Valley
before 1865 attempts to show that progress was made in that
section under great handicaps; that it was populated by a
respectable class of people, alert, hard-working, intelligent, and
ambitious ; that this community was quite as capable of directing
itself as other communities; and that it was possessed of high
principles of democracy and nationalism.
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