This book is a state-wide study of Tennessee's agricultural population between 1850 and 1880, which relies on massive samples of census data as well as plantation accounts, Freedmen's Bureau Records, and the Tennessee Civil War Veterans Questionnaires. Although the study applauds scholars' growing appreciation of southern diversity during the nineteenth century, it argues that recent scholarship both oversimplifies distinctions between Black Belt and Upcountry and exaggerates the socioeconomic heterogeneity of the South as a whole.