[TML] Gerrymandering, was Re: Threadjack Counties

[Richard Aiken]

On 9/6/07, Anthony Jackson <ajackson at iii.com> wrote:
>
> Richard Aiken wrote:
>
> > I like pointing out to folks that if Lincoln had just had a few more
> troops
> > handy, there would probably be a state of "East Tennessee" today.  Every
> > county around here voted solidly against secession.
>
> Interesting. Was there a long-standing grudge that would encourage
> splitting independent of the secession issue?


I guess you could say that.  Most folk in East Tennessee at the time were
poor farmers.  At least here in Gatlinburg, few had even enough cash money
to file claim on the farmland they were squatting on.  There *were* some
slave owners - IIRC my county of Sevier had a dozen or so, according to the
1860 census - but most owned only a handful of slaves.  Nobody came anywhere
close to the rich folks around Nashville and Memphis, with their scores of
laborers and house servants.

So it was a case of the poor mistrusting the wealthy.  In a new nation where
the power rested firmly in the hands of rich slaveowners, poor whites would
have even less of a say than they already did.  Or - at least - that seems
to be the true historical reason.  Naturally, in hindsight, folk like to say
it was because East Tennessee was more enlightened that the rest of the
State.  <snort!>

-- 
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident."  Robert A. Heinlein