The mountain area of the Southern Appalachians supported the Union and drove a wedge of disaffection into the heart of the South.

Mountainous West Virginia was politically opposed to the tidewater plains of old Virginia, because slave labor did not pay on the barren "upright" farms of the Cumberland Plateau; whereas, it was remunerative on the wide fertile plantations of the coastal lowland.

The ethics of the question were obscured where conditions of soil and topography made the institution profitable.

In the mountains, as also in New England, a law of diminishing financial returns had for its corollary a law of increasing moral insight.

In this case, geographic conditions worked through the medium of direct economic effects to more important political and ethical results.
The roots of geographic influence often run far underground before coming to the surface, to sprout into some flowering growth; and to trace this back to its parent stem is the necessary but not easy task of the geographer.
[Sidenote: Time element.] The complexity of this problem does not end here.