Abstract
The 1799 discovery of gold in the North Carolina piedmont began a decades-long conversation about the desirability of mining in the region. Within the pages of local and national periodicals, a debate unfolded that pivoted around issues central not to mining, but to agrarianism itself: morality, proper land management, and the relationship between industry and agriculture within North Carolina’s economy. Examining the rhetoric surrounding gold extraction offers insight into the nature of early national agricultural reform, as it indicates that at least some of the South’s agricultural reformers were not hardline agrarians but rather economic boosters in a more general sense. Reformers’ support of highly capitalized mining operations, unaffordable to most of the backcountry farmers who found gold on their land, and their derision of farmers working superficial deposits, suggests that, at least at times, they prioritized general economic improvement over the farmers they ostensibly sought to help.
