County leaders continue to push for internal improvements that will benefit Appomattox Court House, including the construction of a plank road from there to Oakville, on the James River, to facilitate the shipment of tobacco to Richmond. Such outdated modes of transportation fail to keep pace with the impact of the railroad, and the agricultural barons of the upper Appomattox River valley suffer further economic embarrassment as the Panic of 1857 causes crop prices to plummet. The region has barely begun to recover from those financial woes when John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry aggravates the old horror of slave revolts with a new anxiety about abolitionist agitation.
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