Volume XIII
Number 43
March 23
1946
THE STATE
A Weekly Survey of North Carolina
Entered a* second-class matter. June 1, 1933, at the PostoHlce at Raleigh. North Carolina, under the Act of March 3. 1879.
Why more Republicans
Live in the mountains
II isn't just by accident that you will find
more Republicans in the western part of
the state than anywhere else. There are
two very good reasons for it.
SOMEONE recently asked the
question in The State as to
why there are more Republi¬
cans in western North Carolina
than in the eastern part of the
state.
There really are two very good
reasons for this political difference
with respect to geography.
In 1860 that territory west of
the Catawba River had very few
slaves. In fact, some of the remote
mountain counties did not have a
single Negro within their borders.
The area was more isolated than in
the east. The Civil War was re¬
garded by the people in the moun¬
tains as a “Nigger owners war,”
and they weren’t remotely inter¬
ested in it. They were accustomed
to doing their own manual labor,
without the aid of Negro slaves,
and couldn't, in their independent
spirit of thinking, conceive fighting
a war for the preservation of
slavery among their more wealthy
and snobbish neighbors.
Leadership in the mountain
counties, after the war started,
also had a hand in shaping events.
“Parson" Bronlow, East Tennessee
leader, aided by Andrew Johnson,
of Greeneville, Tenn., then Vice
president and later president of
the U. S. built up strong Union
sentiment in the mountain regions
of western North Carolina and
eastern Tenn.
Entered Union Army
As the Confederate authorities
became insistent, after passage of
the draft laws, that the mountain¬
eers enter the Confederate army,
By CLARENCE GRIFFIN
the lads either enlisted in the
army and then deserted to the
Union forces, or went into the
hills for "the duration.” Madison
County. N. C. sent more men into
the Union army than into the
Confederate army.
As you know. Eastern Tennessee
was held for the Union throughout
the war. A division was recruited,
outfitted and sent into Union
service, the men being volunteers
from the mountain counties of
western North Carolina and East¬
ern Tennessee. Greeneville. Tenn.,
in Greene County, adjoining Madi¬
son County, N. C. was headquar¬
ters. There is now a large, magnifi¬
cent monument on the courthouse
lawn at Greeneville to the soldiers
of Greene who fought with the
Union army. Buncombe, Swain,
Madison. Haywood. Cherokee.
Polk, Watauga. Wilkes and to a
lesser extent several of the other
mountain counties of this state
sent large numbers of men into
Union armies.
Hundreds of these men returned
home and drew federal pensions
the remainder of their lives.
Change in Politics
After the war pro-union, anti¬
secession sentiment swept the
state. To the men of the moun¬
tains, this did not mean any change
of personal opinion or prejudices,
and indeed did not mean any
change of political thought. Prior
to the war North Carolina was
one of the principal Whig states
of the union. In the early '60s the
Whig party along with the Know-
Nothings and other parties amal¬
gamated to form the present-day
Republican party. There is a popu¬
lar expression around here, near
election time, that if a North Caro¬
linian. particularly one from the
west, is scratched beneath the skin
one will find a Republican or
Whig.
As North Carolina was grad¬
ually released from the hands of
the carpet-bagger, the majority of
the people, in sympathy with the
Democrats of the other Southern
states (who had originally been
Democrats, not Whigs), were
swept into the new Democratic
party. In their hour of travail it
did not matter that they had been
staunch Whigs before’ the war.
They were turning to a new party
as their savior.
No Change in Mountains
Not so in the mountains. The
mountaineers were not visibly
touched by the Reconstruction.
Their isolation had kept them
from suffering any great property
losses during the war. Under the
Reconstruction regime in most
instances even the local people
conducted their county govern¬
ment in a manner to which they
had been accustomed for genera¬
tions. So when the Democrats
swept into power, there was small
reason for the mountain citizen¬
ship to change their mode of poli-
( Continued on page 33 I
THE STATE. March 23. 1946
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