Yes David, somewhere I read that Kentucky remained in the Union. Must have been when I was at OSU. None-the-less if we check the records of men who fought in the Civil War it does become apparent that some counties (and areas) sent more men to enlist in the Union Army and others in the Confederate Army. Those in the Eastern part, mostly to the Union (exception, of course). Concidence that those counties have lagged behind in utilities,roads and educational grants? Maybe to you but not to the local residents who I would venture to say know more about their area of the country than you and I. Especially since neither one of us lives in the South, huh?

As for blaming the current infrastructure on the pro-rebel feelings, who controlled the destiny of those states for decade upon decade? The same group of people who lead before the war? (I note things seem to be doing well in Huntsville Alabama the last time I checked. You might know better about that.) I also note that those big money investors you mentioned came from outside the state of Tenseness. Money for the TVA and CC Camps came from the Federal Government not the State. As for all that electricity reaching into hollers and hills, I never saw much of it traveling with my folks as a kid. I did notice a lot of it in the other parts of the State.

The area of western North Carolina was poised in 1860 on the brink of growth and prosperity not dissimilar to that which occurred in the Northeast at the start of the Industrial Revolution....plentiful natural resources, particularly water power for cheap energy and back in the hills a plentiful supply of cheap labor. The prospects were excellent for a expanding economic base more like New England than South Carolina or Georgia. In 1860 the slave pop. was 9.5 slaves per square mile in North Carolina, in the mountain counties it was 4.5 per square mile. But that never happen did it? The community leaders...those who names would appear as Colonels and Captains and Majors of the various Confederate units raised in the mountains shared the same slavery interest as their flatland friends to the east. After the "Redemption" of the south, these men to the east would once again control the destiny of Western NC, just as their friends and descendants in other states would control their state affairs. Certainly any political voice from Unionist Appalachia or other former union areas was pitiful small in the affairs of the Ex-Confederate states for decades. There is an expression.. the Solid Democratic South isn't there? Of course that started to change when Nixon chose to reach out to Dixiecrats instead of blacks...well some change.