Abstract:
This article examines the Appalachian Southern identity during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Contrary to 20th century historians' ideas of Civil War-era Appalachia as the pre-modern, unionist, and anti-slavery society, an analysis of a 1911 Waynesville, North Carolina, reception for the widow of Confederate hero Thomas J. \"Stonewall\" Jackson demonstrates that Appalachian communities not only supported the Confederacy but retained a strong identification with the myth of the \"Lost Cause\" into the 1910s. In the 1890s and 1910s reunions of Confederate veterans and celebrations of their military service were central to the public life of Haywood County, North Carolina.