Western North Carolina during the 1840s and 1850s was very much a region of communities, and its development during that period was characterized by a subtle interplay of its residents' identities as parts of larger wholes. In social, economic, and particularly political terms, they came to see themselves as citizens of towns and/or counties within their mountain district, as westerners within North Carolina, as North Carolinians with the South, and as southerners within the nation. Through a growing awareness of their vested interests in all of these roles, they shaped their responses to the sectional crisis at mid-century.