Yankee Industrialists and Appalachia

One result of the Yankee victory in the War of Northern Aggression that tends to be overlooked is the effect it had on Appalachia. Typically, when the story of the War and Appalachia is told historians tend to focus, usually overstating, the amount of Appalachian opposition to the Confederacy. The truth is that the Confederacy was far more popular than most left-wing historians are willing to admit. For example, in what is now West Virginia, secession from the Union was very popular. A much larger and more real impact of the War on the region was the birth of the horrible conditions the coalminers faced due to Yankee industrialists.

With the fall of the Confederacy and with that the end of the aristocratic Dixian ruling class, Yankee industrialists saw an opportunity to move in. In turn, they would buy up land in the region and forcing the natives to work in the coalmines. And indeed, through lies and manipulation, that is exactly what happened. So, within a few decades after the end of the War, coal country was no longer owned by the native Dixians who lived there, but by Yankee companies who proceeded to brutally exploit the land and her people.

During the Dixian aristocracy Appalachians may have been poor, but they were at least independent. Now, in the postbellum period, they had been reduced practically to serfdom on land their grandfathers once called their own. I want to be careful here not to overstate the poverty of the region that long predated the Yankees. It is a tough land to scratch out a living. But, the fact remains that they were an independent people, something they would lose in the 20th century. Unfortunately, Appalachians were turned from poor, yet proud, farmers and hunters to cogs in a giant industrial machine, subjected to dirty, dangerous work. Cave-ins and explosions were common and if that did not kill you, black lung would be in your future.

By the 1920s, there finally was pushback. The miners attempted armed rebellion, but it cost them dearly. When they rose up, President Warren Harding, yet another Yankee Republican, sent in the army. They even had bombs dropped on them from airplanes. Apart from our War for Independence, this is the largest uprising in American history. While they never were able to recover their lost independence, they were able to earn better working conditions and pay, allowing them to better provide for their families.  

Despite the victories gained, in many ways it was short lived. As regulations began to destroy the mining industry, jobs were lost with nothing in return, except low paying retail. To make matters worse, because of the nature of the work, injuries were common. And, as the jobs dried up, new Yankee companies, this time the pharmaceutical industry, launched a campaign to move highly addictive opioids into the region. Naturally, they fraudulently marketed their product as “non-addictive.” We see the results now – a massive addiction crisis that has destroyed many lives, not just in Appalachia, but all over the South.

What has happened to Appalachia, with first Yankee industrialists and then Big Pharma, shows a very clear line of distinction between the true, nationalist Right and the disingenuous, corporatist Right. Our loyalties are to our people and to their betterment, not to a corporation’s profit line or a company’s theoretical concept of rights. Yet, I have debated people who insist that the pharmaceutical industry did nothing wrong and defend them, even as they committed both fraud and bribery. Their first impulse is to defend big business, thinking this is conservatism.

It is the same impulse that causes them to defend the importation of cheap labor, which ends up destroying the working class’ ability to earn a family wage, driving down the native birthrate and causing a demographic shift to occur even earlier. This is the sort of conservatism that not only fails to actually conserve anything, but actually works to undermine the traditional order of our society far more quickly. It is an impulse that we must resist, the identification of our interests with corporate interests has been a disaster for us.

Our greatest minds and leaders knew better and so should we, this is why men like George Wallace would attack big business. He, unlike the Chamber of Commerce lapdogs, knew that his loyalty was to his people, not to capitalism. Remember, in 1968 Wallace was attacked on the pages of the National Review as a “Country and Western Marxist” because he would not tow their neoliberal, corporatist line. More tellingly, William Buckley attacked him for supporting differing economic policies if those policies would benefit Dixie. But, that was the point, Wallace knew that his loyalty was to his people and what his people needed might not be reduced into a single set of dogmatic economic principles.

Appalachia needs nationalists that care about her people, not corporate, Yankee (or native) stooges.

-By Dixie Anon