Explanation: In the US Civil War, the Appalachian Mountains were a hotbed of support for the antislavery Union against the pro-slavery Confederate South.
A big part of this is that the Appalachian Mountains were (and still are) rural and poor, whereas the secession of the South was based wholly around the ultra-wealthy plantation owners and their interest in preserving slavery. As Appalachia was not good farmland for such endeavors, its population was almost entirely a bunch of poor farmers, miners, and woodsmen scraping a living off rocks. Slavery did exist in the Appalachian South, mind you (though also alongside significant anti-slavery sentiment), just not with the numbers or influence the institution had elsewhere in the South. Appalachia had little interest in seceding from the Union for the sake of rich slaveowners.
For that reason, not only did the Appalachian South resist Confederate efforts to tax and conscript them, but it also carried on a significant amount of guerilla warfare against the slaver bastards. West Virginia, notably, rebelled and then seceded from Virginia in order to rejoin the Union. The Union accepted their secession from secession, and West Virginia has been a state ever since.
Explanation: In the US Civil War, the Appalachian Mountains were a hotbed of support for the antislavery Union against the pro-slavery Confederate South.
A big part of this is that the Appalachian Mountains were (and still are) rural and poor, whereas the secession of the South was based wholly around the ultra-wealthy plantation owners and their interest in preserving slavery. As Appalachia was not good farmland for such endeavors, its population was almost entirely a bunch of poor farmers, miners, and woodsmen scraping a living off rocks. Slavery did exist in the Appalachian South, mind you (though also alongside significant anti-slavery sentiment), just not with the numbers or influence the institution had elsewhere in the South. Appalachia had little interest in seceding from the Union for the sake of rich slaveowners.
For that reason, not only did the Appalachian South resist Confederate efforts to tax and conscript them, but it also carried on a significant amount of guerilla warfare against the slaver bastards. West Virginia, notably, rebelled and then seceded from Virginia in order to rejoin the Union. The Union accepted their secession from secession, and West Virginia has been a state ever since.
Now it votes pseudo confederate. What do you think that says about the education of the region over time since the 1860’s?
I blame the rise of conservative talk radio in the 1990s. Hell, they voted for Dukakis in '88.
In 20 short years, it went from reliably Dem in presidential elections (exempting only total national blowouts) to impossibly Republican.
Progranda is a hell of a thing.
they never got past COAL.