That's one topic to be covered during a Tuesday lecture at the Culture Center by Auburn University history professor and Civil War author Kenneth W. Noe.

Noe's talk, "The Civil War in Appalachia," is part of the Civil War Scholars Lecture Series, funded with assistance from the West Virginia Humanities Council with additional support from the West Virginia Division of Culture and History. The program, which begins at 7 p.m., is free and open to the public.

Appalachian Civil War loyalties were determined by a number of factors, Noe said in a telephone interview.

"There is no easy answer," he said. "In some places, it did have to do with class and slave ownership, but I think that's been tremendously overplayed. [Civil War author and scholar] Ralph Mann argues that geographic orientation had a lot to do with it. If your family came to Appalachia from the South, you were more likely to support the Confederate cause."

Religion also played a role.

"Most people don't realize it, but 15 years before the war, the Methodist and Baptist churches were split nationally along north-south lines," Noe said. "Members were divided over issues like slave owners being able to become bishops or missionaries."

Stances taken by important local political figures and landowners influenced the way their less-connected neighbors viewed their loyalties.

"We're so used to thinking about Appalachia as being one place these days, but a common denominator for the region didn't really exist until the arrival of the coal industry," Noe said. "Prior to that, there were distinct settlement patterns across the region, and some places had stronger relationships with their state government than others."

Noe said that when he was growing up in the Blacksburg, Va., area, he and his classmates were under the impression that the Civil War took place somewhere else.

While Appalachia is not known for pivotal Civil War battles, "there were battles of some size, not to mention guerilla actions, all over these mountains," he said. "The Civil War absolutely happened in Appalachia. There was suffering, occupation and emancipation, and a lot of young men didn't come home."

Some of the region's early stereotyping came about during the war, according to Noe.

"It was a common assumption that mountaineers weren't politically aware at the time, while residents of other parts of the country were," he said. "But I've found that the people in the mountains were as much attuned to political issues like the expansion of slavery as anyone else."

Ohioan Rutherford B. Hayes, elected president in 1876, spent much of the war as a Union officer stationed at federal garrisons between Charleston and Gauley Bridge, where he "developed a very dark and negative view of the West Virginia mountains and the people who lived in them," Noe said.

"The stereotypical opinions of Hayes and others affected how the region was viewed long after the end of the war," Noe said. "In Hayes' case, it led to a federal decision to start suppressing the local manufacture of alcohol."

In addition to co-editing "The Civil War in Appalachia" and "Politics and Culture of the Civil War Era," Noe is the author of "Perryville: The Grand Havoc of Battle," and "Reluctant Rebels: The Confederates Who Joined the Army after 1861." In 2002, he received the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War nonfiction.

"Dr. Noe is without question the foremost scholar in the country on the Civil War in Appalachia and how this region's unique social, economic and cultural history shaped the decisions made by the people who lived here," said Beth White, director of the lecture series.

A reception and book signing will follow the lecture. Taylor Books will sell copies of Noe's books.

Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelham...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5169.