Such a topography and such a cultural mind-set are to be contrasted with the vast bottomlands and culture of the parts of the Deep South that were historically associated with highly socialized plantation industry and culture. The contrast, however, is decisive, and is relevant to two features of Smoky Mountains history. One is the feature of Cherokee culture, which did not become marginalized until after 1830. In 1819, when white settlement first started in the area, the land in eastern Tennessee, western Carolina, and north Georgia belonged to the Cherokee nation. The status of the Cherokee people, almost alone among the indigenous Native American peoples, was at best ambiguous and at worst

Among those who did join the Confederate army from the piedmont region, there was a rather significant level of desertion, in significant part because of the news that soldiers received about the hardships that their families were obliged to endure on the home front. The war disrupted the ties of friendship and family in unprecedented ways, and--it was ever thus--when the men were absent women were obliged to undertake the job not only of homemaker but of homeplace manager as well, running the farms and businesses that their husbands, brothers, and fathers had run before the war began.

Brock, Darla. "'Our Hands Are at Your Service': The Story of Confederate Women in Memphis." West Tennessee Historical Society Papers 45 (1991): 19-34.

Some historians have interpreted the response of women in this part of the country as a significant determinant of the large numbers of desertions by West Carolinian/East Tennessee soldiers during the Civil War. "By writing discouraging letters to the North Carolina troops urging them to come home, many married women had a disastrous impact on military morale." Honey cites letters written by a woman whose child was dying and another who appealed to the governor of North Carolina to supply her with a sensible rationale for the war, as well as evidence that some women in the piedmont region actually created havens for deserters and for Union soldiers caught in the area. A woman who farmed sugar cane dressed her age-appropriate stepson in women's clothing for the duration in order to hide him from the Confederate conscriptors who regularly canvassed the piedmont for draftees.

I have 6 little children and my husband in the armey and what am I to do Slone wont let we Poor wemen have thread when he has it we know he has evry thing plenty he say he has not got it to spair when we go