t of the Appalachian Mountains.[22]

Virginia, which showed signs of discord longer than the other Atlantic
States, furnishes us a good example of how it worked out. The reform party
of the West finally forced the call of a convention in 1829, hoping in
vain to crush the aristocracy. Defeated in this first battle with the
conservatives, they secured the call of the Reform Convention in 1850 only
to find that two thirds of the State had become permanently attached to the
cause of maintaining slavery.[23] Samuel McDowell Moore, of Rockbridge
County in the Valley, said in the Convention of 1829-30 that slaves should
be free to enjoy their natural rights,[24] but a generation later the
people of that section would not have justified such an utterance in behalf
of freedom. The uplanders of South Carolina were early satisfied with such
changes as were made in the apportionment of representation in 1808, and
in the qualifications of voters in 1810.[25] Thereafter Calhoun's party,
proceeding on the theory of government by a concurrent majority, vanquished
what few liberal-minded men remained, and then proceeded to force their
policy on the whole country.

In the Appalachian Mountains, however, the settlers were loath to follow
the fortunes of the ardent pro-slavery element. Actual abolition was
never popular in western Virginia, but the love of the people of that
section for freedom kept them estranged from the slaveholding districts
of the State, which by 1850 had completely committed themselves to the
pro-slavery propaganda. In the Convention of 1829-30 Upshur said there
existed in a great portion of the West (of Virginia) a rooted antipathy
to the slave.[26] John Randolph was alarmed at the fanatical spirit on
the subject of slavery, which was growing up in Virginia. Some of this
sentiment continued in the mountains. The highlanders, therefore, found
themselves involved in a continuous embroglio because they were not moved
by reactionary influences which were unifying the South for its bold
effort to make slavery a national institution.[27]

The indoctrination of the backwoodsmen of North Carolina in the tenets of
slavery was effected without much difficulty because of less impediment in
the natural barriers, but a small proportion of the inhabitants of the
State residing in the mountainous districts continued anti-slavery. There
was an unusually strong anti-slavery element in Davie, Davidson, Granville
and Guilford countie