In the fall of 1865, two Union officers stationed in East Tennessee during the Civil War - Hiram Chamberlain and John Wilder -- decided to stay in the South to pursue business careers. They recognized potential in the "untapped" resources they had seen during military operations in this part of the state. Within the space of four years, Chamberlain and Wilder had recruited business partners, built an operating iron furnace in the Upper Tennessee River Valley (the Roane Iron Company), and established a company town at Rockwood, Tennessee. Twenty years later, in some parts of Appalachia, new planned towns were being established by land companies that wanted to develop model industrial real estate ventures. In the Upper Tennessee River Valley, these new towns - Cardiff, Harriman, and Lenoir City, Tennessee - were planned to be the quintessential places for industrial production and urban living as they were characterized by urban/sanitary reform ideals, temperance tenets, and distinctive urban landscapes. In Appalachian Aspirations, John Benhart presents the story of the evolution of capitalism and regional development in the Upper Tennessee River Valley in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Assembles biographical stories of famous leaders and unknown activists, covering the 18th century up to 1970. Relates to enslaved artisans, interracial unionism, immigration, Jewish radicalism and gender, the New Black Politics, reverse migration in World War II, the United Farm Workers Union, etc.