From the author: “No actual [Civil War] campaigns were conducted in the mountains of East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, Southwestern Virginia, and the Piedmont section of NC until the last weeks of the war. Yet every community was touched by recruitment and conscription of men, impressment of horses and supplies, taxes, and neighborhood skirmishes. Very little has been written about the impact of the war on the communities outside the battle areas. My study was made in an effort to reveal the effect of the war before as well as during the cavalry march known as Stoneman’s Raid.”