[PW] "Mountain Empire" name origin

[swguardian-stumpers at yahoo.com]

This may have had a hand in the origin of the term for that area of the country. "Mountain empire" is in the last sentance: 
   
  Try another territorial aspect of the case. There is a bed of mountains abutting 
on the left bank of the Ohio, which covers all Western Virginia, and all Eastern 
Kentucky, to the width, from east to west, in those two States, of three or four 
hundred miles. These mountains stretching southwestwardly, pass entirely through 
Tennessee—cover the back parts of North Carolina and Georgia—heavily invade the 
northern part of Alabama—and make a figure even in the back parts of South Carolina 
and the eastern parts of Mississippi; having a course of, perhaps, seven or eight 
hundred miles, and running far south of the northern limit of profitable cotton 
culture. It is a region of 300,000 square miles—trenching upon eight or nine Slave 
States, though nearly destitute of slaves itself—trenching upon at least five cotton 
States, though raising no cotton itself. The western part of Maryland and two-thirds 
of Pennsylvania, are embraced in the northeastern continuation of this remarkable 
region. Can anything that passes under the name of statesmanship, be more preposterous, 
than the notion of permanent peace on this continent, founded on the abnegation of a 
common and paramount government, and the idea of the supercilious domination of the 
cotton interest and the slave trade, over such a mountain empire, so located, and so 
peopled? 
   
  Robert Jefferson Breckinridge, "The Civil War: Its Nature and End (Cincinnati: Office 
of the Danville Review, 1861)," Southern Unionist Pamphlets and the Civil War, ed. 
Jon L. Wakelyn (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999) 30 

  A later 1939 reference confirms the usage of the term: 
   
  The southwestern part of the State of Virginia is often designated the Mountain Empire 
[note 1] because its mountain ranges are rich in scenic beauty and fertile valleys. 
It is a blue grass region famous for producing fine beef cattle, and is one of the richest 
sections of the state. 
  
Note 1 An interview with Captain Victor Hunt Harding, Secretary of the National Democratic 
Congress Resection Committee, Washington, D.C., April 10, 1939.  
   
  George Earlie Shankle, American Nicknames: Their Origin and Significance, 2nd ed. 
(New York: H. Wilson, 1955) 306 

Bristol Library <bplref at gmail.com> wrote:
  Hello,
This is actually a regional question, but so far I've had no luck in finding
the answer locally so thought I would ask the Collective Wisdom (and people
who have access to newspaper databases!)

The region of southwest Virginia, east Tennessee, and parts of West Virginia
and Kentucky is sometimes referred to as "the Mountain Empire." We're
trying to find the origin of the term. A local historian thinks it might be
related to an effort to form a new state in that area in the 1800s; other
references seem to link it to the early 1900s with the lumber and coal
companies formed more or less an empire of their own, but no one seems to
have a definite answer. I've contacted Mountain Empire Community College
and the reference person there is also searching for the origin. A number
of businesses and governmental entities have adopted the term as part of
their names but again, no one seems to know the origin. We have a book,
Double Destiny, copyrighted 1956 which uses the term in the jacket copy:
"... the people in the "Mountain Empire"--the highlands country he calls his
own." I take this to mean the term was already fairly well known by that
time at least.

TIA for any help,
Jeanne
-- 
Bristol Public Library
Bristol, VA/TN
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.....................
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom 
of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power  than  by violent and sudden usurpations." ~James Madison, speech,  Virginia  Convention, 1788

Sue Watkins