Campbell's Choice | Big Stone Gap Publishing

cost of salt. Presumably, he paid the local plantation owners who supplied the food and clothing with Confederate money.

In the 1860 census Stuart is listed as having $12,000 in real estate, and $6,000 cash. In 1870, despite the general economic disaster visited on the Confederacy by the war, the census listed his estate as having been $325,000 in cash equivalents, and $400,000 in real estate. This was notwithstanding the loss of the economic value of his 2,000 slaves at an average price of $300 each.

At the end of the war, Palmer and Stuart as well as the local plantations of Washington, Smyth, and Russell Counties had all lost whatever wealth they had had tied up in Confederate money. The difference was that the plantation owners with whom they had done business during the war were bankrupt, and Palmer and Stuart still held considerable wealth in gold and in Union paper money.

Palmer rapidly bought up bankrupt plantations in the Glade Spring area. Stuart took his capital and bought up the fertile plantations across Clinch Mountain ... Continue to PAGE 36

CAMPBELL'S CHOICE	Page
INTRODUCTION	1
SALTVILLE GEOLOGY	1
SALTVILLE INDIANS	4
LEGAL MECHANISMS OF LAND TITLE OWNERSHIP IN VA.	6
THE SETTLEMENT OF SALTVILLE	13
INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION AROUND SALTVILLE BETWEEN THE PIONEER PERIOD AND THE CIVIL WAR	27
SALTVILLE IN THE CIVIL WAR	31
AFTER THE WAR	47
A MODERN CHEMICAL FACTORY	52
EPILOGUE	57
BIBLIOGRAPHY	61
INDEX	66

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