To many antebellum Americans, Appalachia was a frightening wilderness of lawlessness, peril, robbers, and hidden dangers. The extensive media coverage of horse stealing and scalping raids profiled the region’s residents as intrinsically violent. After the Civil War, this characterization continued to permeate perceptions of the area and news of the conflict between the Hatfields and the Mc Coys, as well as the bloodshed associated with the coal labor strikes, cemented Appalachia’s violent reputation. Blood in the Hills: A History of Violence in Appalachia provides an in-depth historical analysis of hostility in the region from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Editor Bruce E. Stewart discusses aspects of the Appalachian violence culture, examining skirmishes with the native population, conflicts resulting from the region’s rapid modernization, and violence as a function of social control. The contributors also address geographical isolation and ethnicity, kinship, gender, class, and race with the purpose of shedding light on an often-stereotyped regional past. Blood in the Hills does not attempt to apologize for the region but uses detailed research and analysis to explain it, delving into the social and political factors that have defined Appalachia throughout its violent history.
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Introduction
Violence, Statecraft, and Statehood in the Early Republic: The State of Franklin
Devoted to Hardships, Danger, and Devastation: The Landscape of Indian and White Violence in Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania, from 1753 to 1800
Our Mad Young Men: Authority and Violence in Cherokee Country
The Ferocious Character of Antebellum Georgia’s Gold Country: Frontier Lawlessness and Violence in Fact and Fiction
A Possession, or an Absence of Ears: The Shape of Violence in Travel Narratives about the Mountain South, 1779-1835
Violence Against Slaces as a Catalyst in Changing Attitudes Toward Slavery: an 1857 Case Study in East Tennessee
These Big-Boned, Semi-Barbarian People: Moonshining and the Myth of Violent Appalachia, 1870-1900
Deep in the Shades of Ill-Starred Georgia’s Wood: The Murder of Elder Joseph Standing in Late-Nineteenth Century Appalachian Georgia
Race and Violence in Urbanizing Appalachia: The Roanoke Riot of 1893
Assassins and Feudists: Politics and Death in the Bluegrass and the Mountains of Kentucky
A Hard-Bitten Lot: Non-Strike Violence in the Early Southern West Virginia Smokeless Coalfields, 1880-1910
The Largest Manhunt in Western North Carolina’s History: The Story of Broadus Miller
The Murder of Thomas Price: Image, Identity, and Violence in Western North Carolina
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Bruce E. Stewart is associate professor of history at Appalachian State University.