An arresting juxtaposition of continuity and change characterized the lives of Tennessee's white farm population during the Civil War era. Minor variations aside, antebellum patterns of wealth distribution and economic mobility survived the war to an impressive degree, strikingly resistant to the staggering economic losses that the war inflicted. Socioeconomic stability among whites coincided with revolutionary change between the races, however. Although the war had resulted neither in the downfall of the prewar elite nor in the proletarianization of the agricultural middle class, it had undeniably effected the “sudden and violent overthrow” of the southern labor system. With varying degrees of optimism and dismay, Tennesseans all across the state assumed that emancipation would lead to radical alterations in their agricultural economy. Keeping in mind that post-emancipation reorganization was an ongoing process, this chapter analyzes and compares changes in farm operations that had occurred by 1880. To highlight differences from antebellum patterns, it focuses on several of the same factors stressed in Chapter 1: the scale of farm operations, the structure of the farm community, the degree of self-sufficiency among individual farmers, and the level of income that farming afforded. The analysis should help not only to assess the extent of discontinuity during the Civil War era but also to evaluate the degree to which agricultural diversity divided the state during the early postbellum years.

Scale of Operations

“The New South”, Sidney Lanier proclaimed in an essay at the end of the nineteenth century, “means small farming”.