Silk Flags and Cold Steel: The Piedmont

By William R. Trotter

Silk Flags and Cold Steel recalls the events that took place in the Piedmont region of North Carolina between late 1860 and mid-1865. Though the skirmishes in the Piedmont were more strategic than tactical, they were important to the health of the Southern cause. As long as the railways of North Carolina were operating freely and the state's farms were producing to capacity, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia could move, eat, fight, and replenish itself. North Carolina's relations with the Confederate government of Jefferson Davis were complex, touchy, and often antagonistic, for the state had been reluctant to secede and there was strong Unionist sentiment throughout the state. President Davis never particularly trusted North Carolina, a fact that blinded him to the state's strategic value. Paradoxically, no state contributed more to the Confederate cause in terms of manpower and resources than did North Carolina. Along with discussion of the political climate, the book presents accounts of the Salisbury prison, Sherman's march through the Carolinas, confrontations at Bentonville, Raleigh, and Greensboro, and Joe Johnston's surrender at Bennett's Farm.

William R. (Bill) Trotter is an essayist, book reviewer, and author of The Civil War in North Carolina and A Frozen Hell, among other books, as well as several short stories and novellas, and has twice been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. He wrote a monthly column called "The Desktop General" for PC Gamer magazine until 2004. He was the first recipient of the North Carolina English Teachers' Association "Lifetime Achievement Award." He lives in Greensboro, NC.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blair
• Release date: Feb 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9780895875501

William R. Trotter

William R. (Bill) Trotter wrote his first novel at the age of 14. It was not publishable, of course, but a senior editor at Viking Press liked it well enough to become a valued mentor over the next ten years. Since that time, he hasn’t looked back in forty-five years. Trotter eschewed the traditional graduate-school MFA route to literary respectability (and job security), choosing instead the goal of actually supporting his family entirely by writing. For a long time, he was only partially successful at this, but he finally said farewell to part-time “real jobs” in 1983 and has, in fact, earned his entire living by the sweat of his keyboard ever since. Trotter told an interviewer back in 1994: “I’ve worked in some of the grubbiest neighborhoods of the scribbler’s trade and deployed all my skills and obscene amounts of my time in projects that meant nothing at all to me personally and that most proper Literary Authors would consider demeaning. But my reasoning was this: I would approach every freelance job, no matter how unglamorous it was, with the idea that I could learn something from the work that I could apply, later, to the projects that were personally important; and that I would never submit work-for-hire that I would be ashamed to have my by-line attached to.” That ’s one reason why Trotter has been able to leap successfully from one genre to another. (That’s also the reason why his agent once told him: “You have the most interesting resume in the business, Bill, but that doesn’t necessarily make you marketable!”) To thousands of computer game addicts, he is “The Colonel”, the Senior Writer for “PC Gamer” magazine, whose monthly column about war and strategy games (“The Desktop General”) has run continuously for fifteen years. To fans of the horror and fantasy genres, he’s the respected author of compelling short stories and novellas, whose work has twice been nominated for the prestigious Bram Stoker Award. To aficionados of military history, he’s the author of the best-selling trilogy The Civil War in North Carolina and the definitive English-language history of the Russo-Finnish “Winter War”, A Frozen Hell. To music lovers, professional orchestra players, record collectors, and no small number of well-known conductors, he’s the author of a world-renowned biographer of the great Dimitri Mitropoulos, Priest of Music. To readers of mainstream literature, he’s a witty essayist, a respected book reviewer, and the author of four critically acclaimed novels, one of which has been optioned for a major motion picture. In early 2004, the North Carolina English Teachers’ Association chose him to be the first recipient of a special “Lifetime Achievement Award.” He lives in Greensboro, NC.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

I have always found more dead North Carolinians on the Virginia battlefields than from any other state…

— General James Longstreet

North Carolina’s role in the Civil War was more strategic than tactical — the big, epic battles were fought elsewhere. But battles there were, nearly a hundred of them, if you count the skirmishes, and on their outcome depended the strategic health of the Southern cause. As long as the railways of North Carolina were operating freely, and the state’s farms were producing to capacity, Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia could move, eat, fight, and replenish itself — if not on a luxurious scale, then at least on a subsistence level, enough to keep it in the field and fighting. As long as the coast of North Carolina continued to be reachable by the blockade runners, some trickle of vital imported supplies could get through.

Although the battles waged in North Carolina were not fought with huge numbers of men, and though they perhaps lacked the poetic drama of Gettysburg or Shiloh, they were just as harrowing in their intensity for the men who participated, and they formed vital pieces of the whole strategic pattern.

If the Confederates’ situation in North Carolina was under control, the entire Confederate cause benefitted — even in the faraway theaters of war. When the situation in North Carolina began to fall apart, politically as well as militarily, the rebel cause suffered. In the end, when the conquest of Fort Fisher brought the coastline of the state completely under Federal control, the Confederacy staggered under a mortal blow.

North Carolina’s relations with the Confederate government of Jefferson Davis were complex, touchy, and often antagonistic, for the state had been reluctant to secede and there was strong Union sentiment in many regions. President Davis never particularly trusted North Carolina, and this blinded him to the state’s vital strategic value. It can be said that Richmond’s neglect of North Carolina’s coastal defenses amounted to criminal negligence.

Paradoxically, no other state contributed more to the Confederate cause in terms of manpower and resources. If you count the Home Guard units — many of which did see some action — North Carolina’s flesh-and-blood contribution to the war amounted to 125,000 men, considerably more than the entire voting population of the state. Depending on various numbers, that works out to either one-sixth or one-seventh of the entire Confederate Army. In fact, there were periods during the last two years of the war when 50 percent of Lee’s army was comprised of North Carolina regiments.

Moreover, only about 20,000 of those men were conscripts. The rest were volunteers — 72 regiments’ worth.

The most revealing statistics, however, concern the Confederate dead. North Carolinians accounted for one-fifth of the Southern losses in the Seven Days’ Battle, one-third of the losses at Fredericksburg, and one-fourth of the losses at Gettysburg. (One regiment at Gettysburg, the 26th North Carolina, suffered 86 percent casualties.) In all, one-fourth of the total Confederate battlefield deaths were North Carolinian — close to 20,000 men. Another 23,000 North Carolinians died from diseases contracted under field conditions. And although it is true that 23,000 more deserted during the course of hostilities, one-third eventually returned to their units once they had finished their business at home. (That desertion rate may seem high, but it’s almost exactly the same as for all the other states in the Confederacy, as well as for many Union states.)

But a history of North Carolina in the Civil War is a far different thing than a history of the Civil War in North Carolina, and the purpose of this trilogy is to examine the events that took place within North Carolina’s borders. Civil War buffs, and some casual readers as well, may already be familiar with the amphibious campaigns that were mounted on the Outer Banks and along the great riverine estuaries of Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds; but generally, the Civil War era in North Carolina has received far less attention than the events of the Revolutionary War. And while it is true that there was no single Civil War campaign in North Carolina that matches, for epic drama, the 1781 contest between Lord Cornwallis and Nathanael Greene, it is manifestly untrue that nothing much happened in the state during the years 1861-65. A great many things happened, in both the political and military spheres, and they were nothing if not dramatic. Even in those localities which saw little or no fighting, there were profound disturbances in the old order of things — changes which led to new attitudes, opened new possibilities, and which helped, ultimately, to create a New South in which the Old North State would never again assume the Rip Van Winkle role she had filled so comfortably since the dawn of independence.

In organizing this trilogy according to geographical regions, I inevitably encountered some areas of overlap and ambiguity. When that happened, I followed the guidance of common sense rather than strictly adhering to the rules. For instance, although Stoneman’s Raid spilled over into large areas of the Piedmont, it began, ended, and was most effective in the mountain region. Therefore, the entire story of the raid will be found in Volume II (The Mountains), and not arbitrarily split along geographical lines between that book and this one. Similarly, I defy anyone to draw an exact line on the map and claim that the coastal plain begins on one side and the Piedmont on the other. For events taking place in the eastern portion of the state, I have used the course of the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad as a handy line of demarcation. In other words, what happened east of Goldsboro, the central stop on that line, will be found in Volume III, The Coast, and what happened in Goldsboro and points west will be recounted in The Piedmont.

I wish to extend my thanks to Robert Lock, for first suggesting and then actually commissioning this work. The daunting task of research was made considerably easier by the kind help of Steve Cattlet, archivist of the Greensboro Historical Museum, and by Doug Kerr and the rest of the gracious, helpful reference staff of the Greensboro Public Library, whose Carolina Collection is a treasury of source material, some of it exceedingly rare.

SILK FLAGS AND COLD STEEL

Too clearly, even then, [North Carolina] saw the end from the beginning; but what was left for her, when the clouds lowered and the storm at last broke, but to stand where the God of nature had placed her, and where affection and interest both inclined her — in the South and with the South….

— Cornelia Phillips Spencer

It was a scene that could have been an out-take from Gone With the Wind. The time: ten o’clock in the morning, May 5, 1860. The place: a green field framed by a grove of oak trees. It was a clear, spring morning in the central North Carolina region known as the Piedmont, warm and scented with flowers. In the background stood the stolid prim-faced buildings of the Edgeworth Female Seminary — rectitude sculptured in red brick — and in the foreground, frocked and top-hatted, stood the citizens of Greensboro, North Carolina, their ears cocked toward Market Street to catch the first tap of drums on the breeze. Off to one side of the field, in formation, stood the band from Salisbury, renowned as the finest in the Piedmont. Golden coronas of light blazed from the bells of their cornets.

For the ladies of Edgeworth Female Seminary, the day was doubly exciting. It was a spring holiday for them, highlighted by the coronation of the Queen of the May. There would be a gala parade, with costumes, bowls of punch on the lawn, music and chatter, quadrilles to be danced. What’s more, every reputable bachelor in Guilford County would be on hand.

The day would open with a special ritual: a grandly ceremonial presentation, by the May Queen, of a new battle flag to the Guilford Grays, the county’s first and fanciest company of soldiers.

The May Queen’s name was Mary Harper Morehead (Mamie to her friends and erstwhile beaus) and this was a day she had been looking forward to all spring. Her uncle, former Governor Morehead, was one of the founders of Edgeworth Female Seminary. Like most of the Morehead girls, Mary Harper was more endowed with grace and bearing than with good looks. But on this day, in her elegant yellow gown, with her chestnut hair carefully coiled in ringlets and her cheeks aglow beneath her May Queen’s crown, there was a radiance about her, a luster in her eyes that would draw many young men to compete for a place on her dance card.

Mary Harper stood now in the morning light, trying to curb her impatience by studying the ribbons and pom-poms and gaily colored lanterns that festooned the trees around the royal grove. As soon as the Guilford Grays arrived and took their position at the end of the procession, the cortege would advance across the lawn for the opening ceremonies: the crowning of the Queen and her presentation of the flag.

It was a lovely flag, and Mary Harper had spent a long, rapturous interlude studying it earlier that morning, running her groomed, articulate fingers over the sensuous, heavy, blue silk. The design had been executed in Philadelphia (it would have been preferable to do it locally, rather than in the North, but the machinery and workmanship were just not to be found in this part of the South), and no expense had been spared. Measuring five by six feet, it was a brave and commanding ensign. On one side was the coat of arms of North Carolina, encircled by a wreath of oak leaves and acorns. Atop the wreath was a spread-winged eagle clutching a scroll embroidered with the motto E Pluribus Unum. Below the wreath was another symmetrical scroll bearing the words Greensboro, North Carolina. The same motifs were repeated on the flag’s reverse side, except that the scroll above the wreath said Guilford Grays and the scroll below said Organized March 5th, 1860. In the center of the wreath were the words Presented by the Ladies of Edgeworth Female Seminary, May 5th, 1860.

While Mary Harper Morehead waited, palpitant amid her costumed attendants, the Guilford Grays themselves were marching down Market Street toward the Seminary Grounds, cheered by citizens on the curb and tagged by yelping urchins. Founded in January, in the Guilford County Courthouse in Greensboro, the Grays were typical of the many hundreds of local militia companies that were springing up spontaneously, all over the South. While most of the young men who joined the Grays were, at this point, more sympathetic to the Union than to the concept of secession, they were all motivated by a feeling of unease about the future and a conviction that, whatever happened in terms of national politics, the South would be better off if her states at least presented a picture of military preparedness.

An all-volunteer unit, the Grays also elected their officers, as was the common practice in those days. The officers were drawn from some of the most prominent families in Guilford County. Handsome young John Sloan was elected captain; a Morehead boy, James, was his second lieutenant; and Henry Gorrell, son of a widely known attorney, was the ensign. The officers received their commissions from Governor John Ellis on March 15, 1860 — the 79th anniversary of the historic Revolutionary War Battle of Guilford Courthouse.

Drill was conducted every Friday night in the vacant second story of an old cotton factory. In early April, the company received its arms: 50 stand of unrifled flintlock muskets from the Fayetteville Arsenal (not until war actually broke out would the Grays receive modern percussion-cap rifles). A stand of arms, in those days, was standard nomenclature for a single musket with accessories: cartridge pouch, bayonet, and belt.

The Guilford Grays drilled with their muskets according to the tactical doctrines set forth by General Winfield Scott back around the time of the Mexican War. By the time of the May Day parade, their marching was still more notable for its zest than for its precision, but that mattered little. Most of what they would learn about the realities of modern warfare would be derived from brutally direct on-the-job training.

Still, the Guilford Grays made a brave sight on that sun-washed morning in May, stepping out manfully, chests swelling in their splendid uniforms. They were outfitted in single-breasted frock coats with two rows of brass buttons, matching gray pants with black stripes along the outward seams, waist belts of shiny black leather, cross belts of white webbing, with the entire ensemble topped by a jaunty gray cap with pom-pom.

The sun flashed on their bayonets and the store-bought polish of the officers’ new swords as they swung down Market Street and approached the grounds of the Seminary. At the head of the column, a kettle drummer, a bass drummer, and a bandy-legged fifer named Old Jake Mebane shrilled and whomped and thundered bravely.

Swinging smartly onto the grounds to the cheers of the crowd and sighs of the ladies, the Grays took their position at the end of the May Queen’s procession, and the ceremonies began. The Salisbury band crashed into a triumphal march, and 14 gaily dressed Maids of Honor led the parade. Following them came ten flower maidens who scattered petals from overflowing baskets, laying down a fragrant carpet for those who walked behind. Next came two pages, bearing the Queen’s crown and scepter. Mary Harper herself followed in the center of the procession, flanked by Miss Mary Arendell costumed as Lady Hope and Miss Hennie Erwin costumed as The Archbishop. Behind the Queen came more maids of honor and pages, and behind them — a dazzle of steel and brass — the Guilford Grays.

Inside the sacred grove, the Archbishop crowned the Queen. A standard bearer came near and handed Mary Harper the banner. She advanced to the head of the Grays’ formation and addressed them in the high-flown Victorian rodomontade that seemed to come so naturally to educated people during this period:

In the name of my subjects, the fair donors of Edgeworth, I present this banner to the Guilford Grays.

Feign would we have it a banner of peace, and have inscribed on its graceful folds peace on earth, good will to man, for our womanly natures shrink from the horrors of war and bloodshed.

But we have placed upon it the oak, fit emblem of the firm, heroic spirits over which it is to float. Strength, energy, and decision mark the character of the sons of Guilford, whose noble sires have taught their sons to know but one fear — the fear of doing wrong.

Miss Morehead’s concluding remarks — which were censored out of John Sloan’s postwar account of the event — revealed something of the political climate in this part of North Carolina, only one year before the war: Proudly in days past have the banners of our country waved o’er yon Battlefield, where our fathers fought for freedom from a tyrant’s power. This their motto: ‘Union in Strength,’ and we their daughters would have this, our banner, unfurled only in some noble cause, and quiveringly through our soft Southern breezes echo forth the same glorious theme: Union! Union!

Ensign Gorrell accepted the flag on behalf of the company, and responded to her word-bouquet with a few verbal flourishes of his own:

Most noble Queen, on the part of the Guilford Grays, I accept this beautiful banner, for which I tender the thanks of those whom I represent.

Your majesty calls to remembrance the days of Auld Lang Syne, when the banners of our country proudly and triumphantly waved over our own battlefield, and when our fathers, on the soil of Old Guilford, struck for their altars and their fires. Here, indeed, was fought the great battle of the South; here was decided the great struggle of the Revolution; here was achieved the great victory of American over British generalship; here was evidence the great military talent and skill of Nathanael Greene, the blacksmith boy, whose immortal name our town bears.

If any earthly pride be justifiable, are not the sons of Guilford entitled to entertain it? If any spot on earth be appropriate for the presentation of a banner of peace, where will you find it, if it be not here, five miles from the battlefield…here, at Guilford Court House, in the boro of Nathanael Greene; here, in the classic grounds of old Edgeworth, surrounded by beauty and intelligence, in the presence of our wives, our sisters, and our sweethearts….

Flinging wide his arm, Gorrell declaimed a verse in honor of the ladies: No braver dames had Sparta/No nobler matrons Rome/Then let us laud and honor them/E’en in their own green homes.

And there can be no doubt that every man in the company felt a thrill of emotion at Gorrell’s concluding words:

…and while we pay to their memories the grateful tribute of a sigh, we would again express our thanks to their daughters for this beautiful banner, and as a token of our gratitude, we, the Guilford Grays, do here beneath its graceful folds pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, and swear for them to live, them to love, and, if need be, for them to die.

That last pledge would certainly be kept. Not quite a year later, on April 18, 1861, the Guilford Grays said farewell to their mothers, sisters, and sweethearts, marched to the Greensboro railroad depot beneath that same blue silken banner, and went to war. After a dreary and uneventful period of garrison duty at Fort Macon on the Outer Banks, the Grays received their baptism of fire at the Battle of New Bern and slogged through the rest of the war in the thick of things, seeing action at Fredericksburg, Spottsylvania, The Wilderness, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and a host of smaller engagements. Early in the war, Ensign Gorrell returned to Greensboro and raised his own company of men; he died, on June 21, 1862, leading a charge against a Federal stronghold at Chickahominy. Of the other 180 men on the original muster of the Guilford Grays, one dozen were still in the ranks at the time of Lee’s surrender. The rest were dead, or maimed for life.

The blue silk flag, caressed on that soft clear morning by both the sun and the May Queen’s gentle hands, hangs today in the Confederate Museum in Richmond, Virginia. On its tattered surface can be read the story of what happened between that glorious spring morning in 1860 and the ashen day in May 1865 when General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the last Confederate army east of the Mississippi — at a railroad siding only one mile distant from the oak-shaded lawns of Edgeworth Female Seminary.

All that is left of the cause they went to war for — so innocent, so ardent, with such full and tender hearts — are some fading flags and the last stubborn embers of pride.

NORTH CAROLINA ON THE EVE OF WAR

The Confederacy, by definition, was not a nation. To the detriment of its wartime effectiveness, it was not even a monolithic political bloc. Instead, it was subdivided between the hard-core cotton-producing states of the Deep South and the more diversified tier of states of the Upper South. The former bloc seized upon the idea of secession early and with an emotional commitment that was simply not duplicated, except in scattered areas, in the latter group of states. Most of the inhabitants of the Upper South sought respect for Southern rights and advantage for Southern economic interests within the accepted framework of the Union. They were wary of rabid secessionists and abolitionists alike.

This attitude was common in the Upper South among those who did not own slaves as well as among those who did. Those who didn’t hold slaves were wary of the abolitionist movement because it would not only set loose all the Negroes, but also would establish them on an equal legal footing with the lower class of whites — and virtually all of these whites viewed with dire alarm the prospect of having to compete with blacks for scarce economic resources.

As the events of the 1860s began to unfold, North Carolina was in no hurry to secede from the Union. All things considered, the Federal system had been pretty good to the state. Agricultural conditions in North Carolina did not favor the creation of vast cotton plantations — in most places where it was planted, the soil yielded a mediocre grade of cotton, and that grudgingly — so the state was spared the labor-intensive economics of the plantations and their consequent dependence on slavery. The dirt farmers of the Piedmont and the mountainous western areas of North Carolina had never owned slaves, and most didn’t particularly want to own them, either. They certainly weren’t anxious to spill their blood to preserve such a dubious institution. So long as the main issue was one of abolitionist versus plantation aristocrats, slavery was not an issue likely to draw North Carolina into a war.

According to the census of 1860, the state’s population totaled 992,622 people, making it the twelfth most populous state in the nation. Included in that figure were 331,000 slaves, 30,500 free Negroes, and about 11,000 American Indians. Only one-quarter of the population was living in urban areas.

Despite the construction of 60 new miles of railroad and another 500 miles of plank road during the late 1850s, North Carolina in 1860 remained essentially a backward, undeveloped, agricultural state. Her vast coastline was treacherous, and of her many ports, only Wilmington did any significant business with the outside world. The other ports were largely intracoastal centers of commerce. Agricultural development was retarded by poor transportation and obsolete technology. Nevertheless, even if the state’s red-clay soil was not much good for cotton, it was just fine for corn, oats, barley, tobacco, sweet potatoes, rye, and rice, so the state ranked near the top in the Confederacy in terms of agricultural output.

North Carolinians had a deep, traditional aversion to taxes, and the statewide tax base — only about $1 million for all of 1860 — was too shallow to permit much in the way of dramatic improvements. The various sections of the state were still, in 1860, more isolated from one another than they were from neighboring states. Conservatism and sectionalism go hand in hand, and those two adjectives clearly apply to antebellum North Carolina. Individualism, too, was one of the more endearing by-products of the state’s provincial, socially stratified way of life, and with it came a certain impatience with enshrined authority — a trait that later would be reflected in Governor Zebulon Vance’s squabbles with the Confederate government in Richmond and in the citizens’ unending complaints to the governor.

The average small farmer and his family owned no slaves, lived in a crude log house of one or two rooms, wore the simplest kind of clothing, and survived on a limited, monotonous, but basically healthy diet. Domestic labor was apportioned as it had been a century before: the men farmed and the women did all the household chores. Toil was constant and life followed a predictable yearly cycle, with the exception of special events such as church picnics or rousing public hangings. Social life revolved around militia musters and court sessions, both of which furnished a good excuse to leave the plow for a day or to catch the local horse races.

Here and there were pockets of real hillbilly squalor and degeneracy — the type of poor white trash that even poor whites disdain to associate with — but you had to travel some bad back roads to find them. The vast majority of lower-class whites in North Carolina were industrious, honest, God-fearing, stoutly independent people. They would need all the strength they possessed, for upon them would fall all of the war’s most terrible burdens, both at the fighting fronts and at home.

When North Carolina signed the freshly inked Constitution as one of the original 13 states in the Union, it was a marriage vow the state took seriously. In the two generations since the Revolution, links had been forged in commerce, culture, and politics between the state and the Union. The connections were not tenuous.

Yet neither was the connective tissue that bound the state to the rest of the South. In the last years before the war, there was growing resentment, not uncolored by envy, of the industrial might and commercial clout of the Northeast. There was also a pervasive attitude that while slavery was not an especially laudable institution, it was a necessary social mechanism for keeping order (controlling the Negroes).

At the start of 1860, the state’s electorate was divided into four more or less distinct groupings. On the extreme left were the pro-Union zealots, and on the far right were the passionate pro-slavery secessionists. In the middle could be found those who sought, with diminishing success, to remain strictly neutral, along with a much larger faction that was pro-Southern. That is, they were vaguely pro-slavery (or anti-abolitionist; the distinction is subtle, but for many it existed) and strongly pro-North Carolina. This middle-of-the-road mass of people was against secession until Abraham Lincoln’s election. A lot of them changed their minds quickly afterward.

In the context of the times, the fact that most North Carolinians did not own slaves turned out to be less important than it might appear. There were more ties between slaveholders and non-slaveholders than there were differences. Aside from sharing the same landscape, they were bound together by a backward economic system in which the prosperity of one class bore directly on the prosperity of the other. Both classes held to, or were at least constantly exposed to, the same ideologies, the same folklore, the same shared assumptions about how things ought to be in the world around them. Finally, there was a lot of blood kinship between slaveholders and non-slaveholders. Rich cousin and poor cousin alike, all shared a common identity as North Carolinians — although as the war dragged on and the system grew strained and fragmented, that particular bond tended to break down before the demonstrably true popular notion that it was a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.

It is not wise, however, to categorize antebellum North Carolinians too rigidly. The situation in 1860 was fluid and extraordinarily complex, and many conflicting impulses tugged at the minds and hearts of the electorate. Documentation from the period is useful only for pinpointing specific examples and mapping out trends. Unionists, neutrals, and secessionists all coexisted, intermingled, and intermarried. Pockets of ideological concentration can be identified here and there — such as the pro-Union Quaker Belt centered in Guilford, Forsyth, and Randolph Counties — but on the whole, the picture that emerges from the historical records is more mottled than clear-cut. The lines between political positions tended to become very blurry on a personal level. A man who might, in theory, advocate remaining in the Union might also, at the same time and for strictly personal reasons, be passionately pro-slavery. Things were not simple, and the issues were not clearly defined. It required the galvanizing force of outside events to make them seem so.

Having a general sympathy for the concept of the Federal Union was one thing, but knowing where to draw the line in support of states’ rights was another. It was common in 1860 for editors and politicians in North Carolina to declaim that secession should be resorted to only as a last resort, but exactly what conditions should trigger a last resort? How much pressure from the North should the average citizen tolerate before drawing the line?

Things began to change quickly in November 1860 when Lincoln was elected to the Presidency. North Carolinians felt and voiced dismay. The mere fact of Lincoln’s victory was enough to catalyze secession among the states of the Deep South. Yet even after the election, secessionist rhetoric in North Carolina remained oddly muted, cautious, and speculative. Newspaper editorials from the era give some idea of the state’s prevailing mood: If Mr. Lincoln contented himself with moral and legal moves against secession as a political fluke and slavery as an undesirable system, North Carolina, thank you very much, would prefer to sit out the whole business of seceding from the United States. But, the editors continued, if the North mobilized its troops, if Mr. Lincoln brandished the threat of armed force…at that point, North Carolina would have to take its stand.

Still, most North Carolinians prayed it would not come to that. They weren’t spoiling for war. There was much talk in Raleigh of calling a special statewide convention to debate the issue of secession, but the idea didn’t really get off the ground until 1861.

One advocate of secession, a Mr. Rayner of Raleigh, wrote to his friend Thomas Ruffin on Christmas Day 1860, to describe the mood in Hertford County, up in the northeast corner of the state. Rayner had gone home to attend to the putting up of my port, and he was mortified to find as far as I could ascertain that the feeling in that section was in great measure in favor of the Union at any and all hazards… [the population] would not lift a finger to protect rich mens’ Negroes. You may depend upon it, my dear Judge, that this feeling prevails to an extent you do not imagine.¹ Rayner concluded his letter by stating that, although he had hoped to stand for election to the secession convention, he now doubted he could win in his home district unless he declared himself a Union man, and this he would not do.

When North Carolina sent a delegation to the Confederate States organizing conference in Montgomery, Alabama, the representatives were in such an anomalous position that they were officially designated observers rather than participants. As such, they were excluded from all of the nonpublic functions of the conference where most of the real wheeling and dealing was actually done. One prominent newspaper began referring to the North Carolina group as political hermaphrodites because they were sorta so and sorta not so.

Nevertheless, the state was courted while its representatives were in Montgomery. In a resolution drafted on February 8, 1861, North Carolina was cited as being bound to the Confederate states by common history, common sympathy, a common honor, and a common danger.

Back home, however, a typical expression of the majority opinion was embodied in a statement issued after a citizens’ courthouse meeting in Alexander County on January 4: …although frantic and bad man [sic] in the Northern States have adopted obnocious [sic] laws…calculated to rouse the indignation of the South, redress should first be sought within the Union, not out of it. The gist of the Alexander County manifesto was that North Carolina should not allow itself to be stampeded into a rash course of action, but should stand true to its best convictions and allow President Lincoln a chance to work out a solution. North Carolina, after all, had invested 80 years in the Union and had even contributed significantly to its founding. Such an investment was not to be shrugged off in a fit of petulance or anger.

In some counties, pro-Union sentiment was so entrenched that secessionist politicians, in order to stand a chance of being elected to the convention, had to label themselves as belonging to a States Rights Union Ticket — a semantic sleight-of-hand that must have thoroughly confused many a man in the street.

Politics was the grand passion in North Carolina, a passion that cut across geographical and economic lines and was shared with equal zest by the rich coastal planter and the red-clay farmer. During the quarter-century preceding the outbreak of war, two political parties dominated the regional scene: the Democrats and the Whigs. Both parties were fairly evenly matched most of the time, and both were blessed with vigorous, able leaders, factors which made North Carolina a close state. Both Democrats and Whigs were active in their respective national party organizations, and North Carolinians held a number of high administrative and cabinet posts during the presidencies of Harrison, Fillmore, and Pierce.

Matching local affiliations to national issues, one finds that the North Carolina Whigs were in favor of protective tariffs, of the distribution to the states of profits obtained from the sale of public lands, and, in general, of a strong central Federal government. Toward the Constitution, the Whigs maintained a broadly constructionist attitude.

Democrats favored a stricter interpretation of the Constitution. They identified passionately with the cause of states’ rights and looked with suspicion on any high-profile Federal interference in state affairs.

Although each party slanted its rhetoric somewhat differently on the slavery issue, both were in basic agreement. They were in favor of maintaining the system, and orators from both parties were often heard lambasting the abolitionists. Both parties also agreed on the slavery issue as it pertained to newly opened territories. They believed that the frontier should be open to settlement by any citizen from any state in the Union, along with whatever property he elected to take with him into the new territory — including slaves, if he owned them.

Gradually, however, the Democrats assumed the mantle of the protectors of slavery. North Carolina Democrats drew much of their strength and most of their leadership from the plantation districts in the eastern part of the state. As time went by, the Democrats’ anti-abolitionist rhetoric grew more strident, and much of their ire was directed toward Unionists who wanted to separate the ownership of slaves from other property-rights issues.

The Whigs dodged the slavery issue whenever possible for the simple reason that they could not reach a consensus on what their platform ought to be. The so-called Federal Whigs — in whose ranks could be found such important figures as Governors John Morehead and William Graham — believed that no state had a right to drop out of the Union. The more ideologically severe party members, who called themselves States Rights Whigs, became more and more aligned with the Democrats over issues such as secession and the extension of slavery into newly opened lands.

There were men from every social and economic caste represented in the ranks of the Whigs, but generally it was not a party dominated by the so-called slavocracy. In counties where the slave population was small, the Whigs were usually the dominant political party. It was the Whigs who counterbalanced the emotional pull toward secession, at least until Lincoln’s call to arms pulled the rug out from under them.

Fifteen years earlier, the Whigs had opposed the Mexican War, regarding it as an unjust war against a weak neighbor fomented for the benefit of Democratic policies. The Democrats supported the war against Mexico and were gleeful over the annexation of Texas.

This forthright stand cost the Whigs a lot of support. The Democrats painted the Whigs as unpatriotic. The tide of history seemed to be turning against the Whigs, and sometime after 1850 they lost their edge. Their leadership declined in eloquence and effectiveness, and the Democrats gradually exercised more and more control over North Carolina’s political machinery.

The Great Compromise of 1850 caused remarkably little stir in the state. Most of North Carolina’s Congressmen supported it, and most citizens felt relieved that the nation was, for the moment, able to settle back down to business as usual. In truth, few of the state’s voters really cared all that much what happened in California, Oregon, or New Mexico — places that seemed, to most North Carolinians, about as remote as Mars.

In 1854, however, the Kansas-Nebraska Act did cause a tense quickening of events. The national Whig party structure collapsed, the anti-slavery Republican Party suddenly achieved national prominence, and sectional debates in Congress became much more acrimonious than had hitherto been the case. The gloves were coming off. During the Presidential election of 1856, North Carolina’s powerful Radical Democrats came out in favor of secession in the event of a Republican victory by John C. Fremont, an avowed abolitionist. But when the Democratic candidate, James Buchanan, won, the crisis atmosphere rapidly eased. For the moment.

The 1859 gubernatorial campaign in North Carolina was a cliff-hanger made even more dramatic by the shocking news, on the eve of the election, that John Brown had sparked a slave revolt in Virginia and had seized the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. During the gubernatorial campaign, the state’s Whigs had made a furious effort at reorganization, and their candidate, John Pool from Pasquotank County, ran a very close race with Democrat John Ellis, a secessionist from Rowan County. Pool lost by only 6,000 votes.

Lincoln was not on the ballot in North Carolina, in the presidential election of 1860. John C. Breckinridge carried the state, but only because he ran as a moderate (but pro-Southern) candidate, and then only by 4,000 votes. In October, Governor Ellis had probably spoken for the majority of North Carolinians when he declared that the mere election of Lincoln was not sufficient ground for dissolving the Union of States. A mere two weeks after Lincoln’s election, however, with secession imminent in the Deep South, Ellis moved to a more belligerent position. He stated that the time had come for North Carolina to hold high-level talks with the governments of the Deep South states, states identified with us in interest and in the wrongs we have suffered.

Until Lincoln’s election, the emotional climate in North Carolina had remained fairly stable. Now, blood grew hot and feelings ran high. Those who spoke for reason, for freedom of expression, and for calm, found themselves increasingly drowned out by the shriller voices of hatred, sectionalism, and secession. Those who spoke out against the growing irrationality were now likely to find their patriotism, if not their moral character, under challenge.

By the end of 1860, secessionist passions were swelling all across North Carolina. When the news arrived, on December 20, of South Carolina’s break with the Union, the people of Wilmington — long a hotbed of radical fervor — fired a 100-gun salute and held torchlight parades.

During the winter of 1860-61, seven Southern