North Carolinians in the Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction

Abstract

Abraham Lincoln did not appear on the ballot in North Carolina during the 1860 presidential election.Instead, the state's popular support went to Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge.When South Carolina called for North Carolina's secession from the Union, the Old North State defeated secession by a slim 651 votes.A second secession convention comprised only of regional representatives convened on May 20, 1861, and, without the benefit of a popular vote, removed North Carolina from the Union.In spite of secession's rocky and contested greeting, North Carolina "suppl[ied] one-sixth of the Confederacy's soldiers [,] . . .nearly one-fourth of all its conscripts," and furnished "an uninterrupted stream of tax revenues, food from the tax-in-kind, and impressed commodities of all sorts" in support of the cause (2).Despite these undeniably critical contributions to the Confederate war effort, the state remained deeply ambivalent over the nature, meaning, and legacy of the War.While segments of society overwhelming and steadfastly supported the Confederacy, other constituencies remained intensely and unyieldingly loyal to the Union while still others' loyalties fluctuated.Such are the subjects of editor Paul D. Escott's new work.In nine interrelated essays, North Carolinians in the Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction investigates the complicated and deeply personal internal civil war North Carolinians waged against themselves.Examining such diverse issues as conflicting loyalties, guerilla warfare and the evolution of Union military policy, African American agency, Zebulon Vance's highly contested 1864 gubernatorial election, gender, race, and the evolution of the legal system, and the construction of a pointed and particular memory of the Civil War and of Reconstruction, this collection makes it abundantly clear that North Carolina's vicious inner civil war hinged on