Southside Virginia Before, During, and After the Civil War

This region of Virginia, roughly the area between Petersburg and Lynchburg, down to the North Carolina line, is called the “Southside” as it lies south of the James River.

Before the War

Before the Civil War, the region’s economy and society largely revolved around the institution of slavery. Unlike many parts of the Antebellum South, in Southside Virginia a majority of White families owned enslaved people and benefited directly from their labor. For example, 60% of White households in Appomattox County were slaveholders, while in the states of the future Confederacy it was roughly one-third.

The production of dark leaf tobacco accounted for much of the wealth in the countryside as well as in the cities, where tobacco warehouses and factories employed many workers, free and enslaved. Across the landscape, which contained more open farmland than today, small towns and villages like Appomattox Court House offered farmers and planters a place to conduct business and legal affairs while socializing with their neighbors.

During the War

Aside from heavy battles near Petersburg and Lynchburg, as well as the occasional Federal cavalry raid, this largely pro-Confederate region witnessed little fighting. However, the populace experienced the effects of the war none the less. Shortages of essential goods, inflation of Confederate currency, and a loss of manpower all dramatically changed daily life, especially for women and children, White and Black.

Throughout the conflict, the vast majority of White men served in the Confederate Army. Tens of thousands of enslaved and free Black men were impressed or drafted by the Confederacy as laborers, teamsters, and other non-combatants. Physically, the mostly rural area was largely spared the devastation seen in other parts of Virginia and the South. The coming of the armies during the Appomattox Campaign in April 1865 changed everything.

After the War

With the defeat of the Army of Northern Virginia, Federal victory and emancipation brought about many changes. Newly freed African Americans constituted more than half of the population; their labor in the tobacco fields was now uncertain. This, combined with the death of thousands of White men during the war, put Southside Virginia into severe economic decline.

Tobacco production dropped by two-thirds and property values were cut in half (compared with 1860). Meanwhile, African Americans struggled to turn their emancipation into real freedom. Sharecropping and tenant farming became the reality for many residents, White and Black. The failures of Reconstruction, the continuing realities of Jim Crow segregation and disenfranchisement, and limited economic opportunities caused many to leave the region by the early 20th Century.