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A city settled by Quakers on land opened up by the French and Indian War (1755–1763), Lynchburg had a population in 1860 of 6,853, including 3,802 free whites, 357 free blacks, and 2,694 enslaved African Americans. A leading center for the manufacture and sale of plug, or chewing, tobacco, Lynchburg enjoyed wealth, national prestige, and an abiding appreciation for industrial enterprise. Indeed, the community’s economic orientation inspired one visitor to comment that Lynchburg had “more the appearance of a Yankee town than any other in Virginia.” Appearances can be deceptive, however. Lynchburg’s tobacco “factories,” for instance, were typically Southern in that they used only rudimentary technology and depended on enslaved labor for most of the work. In addition, factory owners and other civic leaders modeled themselves not after the industrial managers of the North but after planter patriarchs of the countryside, treating both enslaved workers and less wealthy local