George, ten percent would seem to be to be fairly high....especially if someone decided you weren't paying your fair share...then you might get a whopping 50%. Had you already faced impressment of your animals,slaves, wagons for whatever the cause needed... That would be high price indeed. Not to mention that the government set the price you would be paid. This compensation was invariably pegged much lower than the inflated market value of the commodities taken. The property of suspected ( only suspected, mind you) Unionist was often impressed without a promissory note. How did you raise your family if you were forced to plow by hand like out of the stone age, after the government took your horse?

There was in fact sentiment in parts of East TN and West NC to form their own state at one time, but that came to naught. I think at the time West Virgina was formed, there were a lot of Yanks in that part of the country....not my field of expertise...However the Confederacy wasn't about to let East TN and West NC form a neutral State in their midst. Just like the United States wouldn't have let parts of Ohio and Indiana do so....though I don't think that they had any desire to do that, just giving an example. As for packing up and leaving, I believe that folks in NC had to have some sort of passport or decree to leave the State when the war started. Not that they wanted to anyway...what they really wanted was to be left alone...by any government, USA or CSA. These were the descendants of the same Over-The Mountain men who beat the Loyalist at Kings Mountain. Those folks didn't care about the Congress or the King, they wanted to be left out of the fight.. Until the British said that they would invaded them for harboring refugees. Result a bloody Civil War. You got the same thing in the War Between The States...father against son, brother against brother and friend against friend in Eastern TN.

Camp Turchin.