This chapter discusses the expansion of the bright leaf tobacco culture. By the 1840s, Caswell, Halifax, and Pittsylvania counties had an active contingent of modernizing planters' and farmers' intent on spreading the message of agricultural reform across the Southside. While the message of agricultural reform initially challenged the development of bright tobacco, in the end reform advice would encourage the new crop's diffusion. Following the Civil War, bright tobacco culture would contribute to many of the conditions that antebellum reformers feared—from catastrophic soil erosion to a decline in farm diversity and profits—but the reformers' message actually stimulated the prewar growth of the crop.