LAND OF THE BRIGHT LEAF: YELLOW TOBACCO, ENVIRONMENT, AND CULTURE ALONG THE BORDER OF VIRGINIA AND NORTH CAROLINA by DREW A. SWANSON (Under the Direction of Paul Sutter) ABSTRACT Bright tobacco became the staple crop along the Piedmont border of Virginia and North Carolina around 1840. Although regional farmers had long cultivated tobacco, bright tobacco was a new variety of the old staple, and its culture transformed both land and people. Bright tobacco was a product of established tobacco culture, environmental conditions, and consumer preferences. The new crop brought amazing benefits: it grew best on the poorest Piedmont soils, land unsuited to other crops, and it sold for astonishingly high prices. Bright tobacco also supported a local manufacturing industry that produced chewing tobacco and cigarettes for national and global markets. But bright tobacco eventually impoverished both land and people. The crop’s culture led to severe soil erosion, deforestation, a dependency on commercial fertilizers, overproduction, and indebtedness. Bright tobacco culture’s environmental foundations also shaped regional race relations before and after emancipation. Regional African Americans’ prospects for landownership and independent labor, and white perceptions of black land stewardship, depended to an extent on white conceptions of crop and environment. Bright tobacco’s story was ultimately a tale of the degradation of land, landowners, and labor, but the crop’s decline had its roots in regional farmers’ desires for permanence, improved agriculture, and sustainability. INDEX WORDS: Tobacco, Southern environment, Agriculture, Soil, Erosion, Slavery, Fertilizer, Agricultural reform, Virginia, North Carolina, Piedmont, Deforestation LAND OF THE BRIGHT LEAF: YELLOW TOBACCO, ENVIRONMENT, AND CULTURE ALONG THE BORDER OF VIRGINIA AND NORTH CAROLINA by DREW A. SWANSON B.S., Lees-McRae College, 2001 M.A., Appalachian State University, 2004 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2010 © 2010 Drew A. Swanson All Rights Reserved LAND OF THE BRIGHT LEAF: YELLOW TOBACCO, ENVIRONMENT, AND CULTURE ALONG THE BORDER OF VIRGINIA AND NORTH CAROLINA by DREW A. SWANSON Major Professor: Paul Sutter Committee: John Inscoe Allan Kulikoff Kathleen Clark Shane Hamilton Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia December 2010 iv DEDICATION To Margaret, for keeping me sane - and to Ethan, for the happy insanity. I love you both. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My family’s long history with tobacco is at least partly to blame for this dissertation. I grew up in tobacco country. Fields of emerald green turning to golden yellow in late summer lined local roads, I was quite familiar with the sticky tar that coats one’s hands and clothes during priming (harvest), and I still have a deep aversion to tobacco rows longer than fifty yards or so. School started back from summer vacation only after Labor Day so that children could help their families prime, modern trailer-like bulk curing barns and older log tobacco barns crowded the edges of fields and dirt roads, and, rather than the ubiquitous southern firefly, I remember the sphinx moths whose larvae feed on tobacco leaves filling the evening sky. I am in part a child of tobacco fields and auction warehouses, and this dissertation is the fruit of that upbringing. Although I ceaselessly complained about tobacco work growing up, here I would like to thank my extended family for their inspiration, and for their appreciation of the value of work that takes place on paper as well as labor on the land. No one at the University of Georgia has done more to bring this dissertation to fruition, or to shape my scholarly life, than my advisor Paul Sutter. He patiently encouraged me to ask bigger questions and to provide more thoughtful answers. He has that rarest of talents: the ability to compliment without creating complaisance and to criticize without fostering resentment. I have never met a historian more dedicated to his craft or his students. Other scholars contributed their thoughtful comments over the course of the past five years. I was blessed with an unusually gifted committee. Despite hectic schedules and the demands of many other students, professors Kathleen Clark, Shane Hamilton, John Inscoe, and Allan Kulikoff all vi made this a better work, and held me to a high standard. The staff of the Virginia Historical Society provided valuable feedback at a 2009 Mellon Fellows Colloquium; and comments on presentations at the 2009 Southern FARES conference, a 2009 graduate student workshop at the University of Georgia, the 2010 meeting of the American Society of Environmental Historians, a 2010 Workshop in the History of Environment and Agriculture, and the 2010 Graduate Association for African American History Conference at the University of Memphis all shaped this dissertation’s final form. Individual conversations with Jim Giesen, Tim Silver, Claire Strom, Mark Hersey, Chris Manganiello, Levi Van Sant, Tom Okie, Philip Harrington, Leonard Lanier, Kathi Nehls, Michele Lansdown, Tim Johnson, and Jesse Pope also influenced my thinking. Archivists at the University of Georgia’s Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, the Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia, the Virginia Historical Society, the University of North Carolina’s Southern Historical Collection, the Georgia Historical Society, Duke University’s Special Collections, the Southeastern Branch of the National Archives and Records Administration, and clerks at the Caswell, Halifax, and Pittsylvania courthouses made research a pleasure. The University of Georgia’s interlibrary loan librarians also provided yeoman’s service unearthing rare pamphlets, newspapers, and books on my behalf. A number of organizations provided generous financial support that made much of the following research feasible. The Willson Center for Humanities and Arts furnished a Graduate Student Research and Performance Grant to fund research travel, as well as the Janelle Padgett Knight Graduate Award that allowed me to present my findings to an audience of my peers. The Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill provided a Joel R. Williamson Visiting Scholar Grant, the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at the vii University of Georgia furnished a Research Award, the university’s graduate school provided a Dean’s Award in Arts and Humanities, and the Virginia Historical Society granted an Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellowship. Although not directly tied to this dissertation, a two-year research fellowship from the Wormsloe Institute for Environmental History proved the most helpful of all, as it provided invaluable time away from the classroom. This funding made the dissertation easier, but the most important support for this project came from a dedicated advisor, a supportive history department at the University of Georgia, and my understanding – and patient – family and friends. All of the people listed above deserve much of the credit for this dissertation, but I alone am responsible for its flaws. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.............................................................................................................v LIST OF TABLES...........................................................................................................................x LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... xi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: HOW DID SUCH A POOR LAND MAKE PEOPLE SO RICH, AND HOW DID THEY SO QUICKLY BECOME POOR AGAIN? .........................1 2 ON THE BACK OF TOBACCO: SOWING THE SEEDS OF A PLANTATION CULTURE ...................................................................................................................21 3 LET THERE BE BRIGHT: THE EMERGENCE OF YELLOW TOBACCO CULTIVATION ..........................................................................................................59 4 BRIGHT LEAF, BRIGHT PROSPECTS: AGRICULTURAL REFORM AND THE LURE OF YELLOW TOBACCO.............................................................................105 5 BRIGHT LEAF DURING THE CIVIL WAR: ADVERSITY AND OPPORTUNITY IN THE SOUTHSIDE ...............................................................................................153 6 FIRE IN THE FIELDS: RECONSTRUCTING LABOR AND LAND FOLLOWING THE CIVIL WAR......................................................................................................189 7 A BARREN AND FRUITFUL LAND: BRIGHT LEAF’S GROWING CRISIS ....234 8 THE DECLINE OF THE BORDER: BECOMING A NEW SOUTH......................278 9 EPILOGUE................................................................................................................311 ix BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................324 APPENDIX ANTEBELLUM TOBACCO PRICES............................................................................366 x LIST OF TABLES Page Table 2.1: Combined free and slave populations of Caswell County, North Carolina, and Halifax and Pittsylvania counties, Virginia, from 1790 to 1860 ....................................................35 Table 2.2: Slaveholders in 1860 in Caswell, Halifax, and Pittsylvania counties...........................39