I will be glad to do so. People have such misconceptions of Southern Appalachia. Strong Unionist sentiment in some counties while the next county might have a strong Confederate sentiment. Grouping all Appalachians together (East TN, West NC, North GA and so on) is like saying all Blacks or all Whites are just alike. Also at the time of the Civil War, rural Appalachia was not much more out of the mainstream than other parts of the rural South...or North. The county seats had wealthy merchants who traded with folks in the hills and were in contact with other markets in the South. There were of course folks who liked to live in isolation and choose to do so. My ancestors were well off by mountain standards, they were what you would call ...grazing farmers...they had a lot of mountain acreage. No, they didn't have slaves, they mostly kept hogs. You just turn them lose in the hills, let them eat nuts and such, round them up in the Autumn, corn feed them and drive them to South Carolina or Georgia. Like Rawhide only you poked hogs not cows...and you were walking. Some days you worked hard, a lot of days you didn't. That was the life of my g-g-grandfather and his relatives in Western NC and East TN. His grandson, my grandfather, worked from daylight to dark, six days a week. Sunday for Church and a little rest.
James Cump Turchin