Circa1865

The other General Lee, and not kin to the more famous one, Stephen Dill Lee was a veteran of the early Virginia campaigns, Vicksburg, the Atlanta Campaign, and ended the war with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina. After 1865 Lee was deeply involved in reviving his own plantation, and later dedicated his life, as Robert E. Lee did earlier, to educating young Southern men who faced the challenge of rebuilding their devastated country. In late April 1906, he delivered a speech in New Orleans to the sons of the men he led in battle. In his remarks he said:

“To you, sons of Confederate veterans, we will commit the vindication of the cause for which we fought. To your strength will be given the defense of the Confederate soldiers’ good name, the guardianship of his history, the emulation of his virtues, the perpetuation of those principles which he loved and which you love also, and those ideals which made him glorious and which you also cherish.”

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

General Lee’s New Ideas in Education

“In 1880 General Lee became the first president of the Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College, now Mississippi State University. [The] Father of industrial education in the South, no other citizen had such a far-reaching and penetrating influence upon the agricultural and industrial development of the Southern States.

Lee advanced in his day a new thought to Southern-bred collegians. He believed that education and manual labor should go together.

In making his first report to his Board of Trustees, he said: “All students are required to work from two to three hours a day . . . on the farm, among the stock, in the garden . . . shops or grounds . . . Our experience shows that students who work . . . stand highest in their classes and enjoy better health. It also inculcates and retains habits of industry at that period of life when education is being obtained . . . It makes labor honorable and demonstrates that labor and a high standard of liberal and scientific education are not incompatible, and go hand-in-hand with the struggle of life, and in developing our industries and resources . . .”

Lee warned the South that unless its farmers learned the science of modern agriculture their lands would be owned by strangers. “Knowledge is power,” he said, “in every department of life – as important to the farmer as the professional man.”

He foresaw that electricity would play in the industrialization of the South, and in his report of 1893 he wrote:

“I deem it most important that the boys of Mississippi be instructed in an electrical laboratory to fit them for industrial pursuits now just ahead.” That same year he began a crusade for an appropriation to equip such a laboratory and provide electric lights for the college grounds and dormitories.

At times combatting an unsympathetic legislature and the hosts of ignorance, “Old Steve,” as he was affectionately called, pioneered with new methods of instruction and introduced departments in the mechanical arts and engineering.

Experiments at the college revealed the surprising fact that cotton seed, which had been a waste and a liability, had a feed and food value, and a new industry emerged from the soil. The first creamery in the Gulf States was established at the college and the foundation laid for a more diversified agricultural development.

Under Lee’s leadership the advantages of diversified agriculture and drainage were fully demonstrated and the value of scientific farming definitely proved among a people whose methods were comparatively primitive.

The cultivation of better grasses and the introduction of improved herds changed the agricultural complexion of the “Magnolia State” [and] graduates went forth with a new faith in farming. The development of this new idea in education spread to other States and created a demand for students to fill positions as teachers, managers of farms and creameries, and professors and instructors in other agricultural colleges and at agricultural experiment stations.

Stephen Dill Lee died in 1908. In the devastation that followed in the wake of Appomattox, with a social order disrupted, an economic system destroyed, and the flower of Southern manhood killed or maimed, Lee the soldier became a builder.”

(Sons of the South, Clayton Rand, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961, pg. 160)

The following quotation copied from the “Annual Reports, 1861-65, of the United States Sanitary Commission, appeared in the July issue of Confederate Veteran magazine in 1930. It is extracted from a published statement in Boston by Gen. Samuel G. Howe, in early 1862. He laments the lack of moral fortitude in the average Northern soldier.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

That “Superior” Army

“Our men in the field do not lack food, or clothing, or money, but they do lack noble watchwords and inspiring ideas, such as are worth fighting and dying for. The Southern soldier has what at least serves him as such; for he believes that he fights in defense of country, home, and rights; and he strikes vehemently, and with a will.

Our men, alas! have no such ideas. The Union is to most of them an abstraction, and not an inspiring watchword. The sad truth should be known – that our army has no conscious, noble purpose; and our soldiers generally have not much stomach for fight.

Look at the opposing armies and you will see two striking truths. First, the Northern men are superior in numbers, virtue, intelligence, bodily strength, and real pluck; and yet on the whole they have been outgeneraled and badly beaten.

Second, the Northern army is better equipped, better clad, fed and lodged; and is in a far more comfortable condition, not only than the Southern army, but any other in the world; and yet, if the pay were stopped in both, the Northern army would probably mutiny at once, or crumble rapidly; while the Southern army would probably hold together for a long time, in some shape, if their cause seemed to demand it.

The animating spirit of the Southern soldier is rather moral than pecuniary; of the Northern soldier it is rather pecuniary than moral.”

(Gen. Samuel Howe, US Army, February 20, 1862, Confederate Veteran Magazine, July, 1930, pg. 251)

The battle flags carried by Southern units were usually presented in a similar manner as the Desoto Rifles of New Orleans in 1861: “Receive from your mothers and sisters, from those whose affections greet you, these colors woven by our feeble but reliant hands; and when this bright flag shall float before you on the battlefield, let it not only inspire you with the patriotic ambition of a soldier aspiring to his and his country’s honor and glory, but also may it be a sign that cherished loved ones appeal to you to save them from a fanatical and heartless foe.”

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

Unyielding Determination at Cemetery Hill

“Choking down their fear, and with their colorbearers leading them on, they started over the rise and then up into the face of the Yankee artillery. The guns on the hill “vomit[ed] forth a perfect storm of grape, canister, shrapnel, etc.” But their commander shouted “forward!” and on they marched, “over fences, ditches, through marshy fields”

After crossing the valley, the left flank of the Federal infantry behind a stone wall at the base of Cemetery Hill hit them with a sheet of flame and lead. Yet because of the darkness and the rolling nature of the terrain, their aim way high; most of the bullets shrieked overhead while the Louisiana Tigers kept going, up the hill and into the first line of [enemy] rifle pits.

The fighting became hand to hand as both brigades climbed the slope. One Southerner remembered “with bayonets and clubbed guns we drove them back” out of the Federals’ lines.

Seeing their forward lines break and the Rebels come screaming at them, the troops in the Federal second and third lines of rifle pits broke and ran. With [Brigadier-General Harry T.] Hays’ Tigers hot on their tails, the Federals retreated to the breastworks and emplacements around two batteries at the top of the hill . . . along the way scores of Federals surrendered, but the Confederates refused to stop and take them prisoner officially, instead simply ordered them to the rear.

It was pitch dark, but now the Louisianans and North Carolinians were in among the [enemy] guns on the crest. Here the fighting became “desperate,” recalled Capt. James F. Beall of the Twenty-first North Carolina:

“[B]ut like an unbroken wave, our maddened column rushed on, facing a continual stream of fire. After charging almost to the enemy’s [third] line, we were compelled to fall back, but only a short distance. The column reformed and charged again, but failed to dislodge the enemy. [Our] brigade held its ground with unyielding determination – ever keeping afloat our flag to battle and breeze.”

Over on the right of [Col. Isaac] Avery’s brigade the Sixth North Carolina had fought its way up . . . At least 75 Tarheels crossed the [enemy’s] wall, fighting with clubs, knives, stones, fists and anything else a man could use to defend himself or attack the enemy.

A Confederate colorbearer, probably from the Sixth North Carolina, jumped up on the wall, pistol in one hand, flag in the other. He shouted out “surrender you Yankees,” but a Federal stuck his bayonet into him and pulled the trigger of his rifle, blowing a hole clear through the Confederate. A Federal soldier grabbed for [the falling flag] at the same moment another Confederate grabbed the other end. The ensuing tug-of-war was won by the Rebel.

What was left of the Sixth cleared the ridge and captured the Federal guns, then retreated down the side of the hill to the stone wall, taking their battle flag with them.

When the first colorbearer of the Twenty-first North Carolina was killed while charging up the hill, the flag was picked up by Major Alexander Miller. When Miller went down, Pvt. J.W. Bennett picked it up, and was also shot. Four more men of the Twenty-first North Carolina were killed carrying the flag, then Capt. James Beall picked it up. “The hour was one of horror,” recalled Beall:

“Amid the incessant roar of cannon, the din of musketry, and the glare of bursting shells making the darkness intermittent – adding awfulness to the scene – the hoarse shouts of friend and foe, the piteous cries of wounded and dying, one could well imagine, (if it were proper to say it), that “war is hell . . .”

To remain was certain capture, to retreat was almost certain death. Few, except the wounded and dead, were left behind. Here, these brave North Carolinians ‘stood, few and faint, but fearless still.”

(The Damned Red Flags of the Rebellion, The Confederate Battle Flag at Gettysburg, Richard Rollins, Rank and File Publications, 1997, excerpts, pp. 131-134)

Sherman’s strength at Bentonville was initially 58,000 versus Johnston’s aggregate of about 20,000 men. On the way to reinforce Sherman were the 45,000 troops of Schofield, Terry and Cox, advancing from Goldsboro, New Bern and Wilmington — for a total of 103,000 versus 20,000. The author below erroneously suggests a much larger figure for Sherman’s total forces.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

For the Love of the Dear Old Homeland

“On March 7, 1865 General William T. Sherman and his army of mercenaries from Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland and Prussia was well as the northern United States, many of whom could not speak English, crossed the North Carolina State line. Behind them lay the smoking ruins of sacked Georgia and South Carolina cities, homeless widows and orphans and death by starvation.

At Laurel Hill, NC, Sherman halted to refresh his troops, and from here he wired Gen. Schofield in Wilmington that he would be in Goldsboro, NC [on] March 20, 1865. On March 12^th Sherman and his army of barbarians reached Fayetteville.

After plundering the residential section, it was then burned. Also destroyed were four cotton mills, the churches, banks, courthouse and warehouses. Sherman then moved on looting and burning. Any item that could not be carried, including furniture, carpets and farm equipment, was destroyed. Even the cabins of the slaves were robbed by the Yankees.

Following the fall of Wilmington, by the 7^th of March General Robert Hoke and his small division of [mostly North Carolina] brigades were near Kinston, NC. On the 8^th, Gen. Hoke and the division of [Daniel H.] Hill attacked the corps of Gen. Cox consisting of 13,056 Federal troops. The battle was a great victory for the Confederates with a loss to Cox of 1257 men.

General Joseph E. Johnston attacked Gen. Sherman at the hamlet of Bentonville on the 19^th of March, inflicting a signal repulse. Brigade after brigade of Federals were crushed, and but for the gallant charge of the Federals under Fearing the center would have been entirely destroyed.

After this defeat Gen. Sherman was unwilling to suffer another, so he waited for Gen. Schofield to join him, and this combined force consisted of over 160,000 troops. The Confederate corps of Gen. D.H. Hill numbered 2,687 men.

When Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army of half-starved veterans at Appomattox, Virginia, General Johnston was also forced to surrender, April 26, 1865, near Durham Station, NC, and the War for Southern Independence came to a close.

In regards to the Confederate soldiers of 1861-1865, Judge [Joseph de] Roulhac Hamilton wrote:

“How splendid and great they were in their modest, patient, earnest love of country! How strong they were in their young manhood, and pure they were in their faith, and constant they were in their principles. How they bore suffering and hardship, and how their lives were ready at the call of duty! Suffering they bore, duty they performed, and death they faced and met, all for the love of the dear old homeland; all this for the glory and honor of North Carolina.

And they were faithful unto thee, guard thou their names and fame, grand old mother of us all. If thy sons in the coming times shall learn the lesson of their heroism their lives inspired and their lives declared, then not one drop of blood was shed in vain.”

[General Robert F. Hoke’s said (excerpted) in a farewell address to his men:]

“The fortunes of war have turned the scale against us. The proud banners which you have waved so gloriously over many a field are to be furled at last; but they are not disgraced, my comrades. History will bear witness to your valor and succeeding generations will point with admiration to your grand struggle for constitutional freedom.

You have yielded to overwhelming numbers, not to superior valor. You are paroled prisoners, not slaves. The love of liberty, which led you into this contest, burns as brightly in your hearts as ever. Cherish it. Associate it with the history of your past. Transmit it to your children. Teach them the rights of freedom, and teach them to maintain them.

Teach them that the proudest day in all your proud career was that on which you enlisted as Southern soldiers, entering that holy brotherhood whose ties are now sealed by the blood of your compatriots who have fallen, and whose history is coeval with the brilliant record of the past four years.”

(Land of the Golden River, Volume 2, Lewis Philip Hall, Hall’s Enterprises, 1980, pp. 101-103)

“We had lived in South Carolina less than five years when I was dipped deep in the fiery spirit of Southern patriotism. This was the Confederate reunion of 1903, held in our home town of Columbia. It was but one in a long line of reunions.

In South Carolina they had a way of placing the first in the year 1876 — “the grandest reunion ever held in any State, one of the most sublime spectacles ever witnessed,” “thrilling the hearts” of the people of Columbia. They called it the first, but “there were no invitations, no elaborate programme, no committees of reception, no assignment of quarters, no reduced rates of transportation, no bands of music, no streamers flying.”

Of it they said: “The State was prostrate. The people had with marvelous patience restrained themselves from tearing at the throat of the Radical party. Hampton had been elected governor, and yet the tyrannical party would not yield.” (Wade Hampton and his “red shirts” had just overthrown Reconstruction.)  At that moment, the story goes — “It was the supreme moment of the crisis” — there appeared, coming into Columbia from every direction, by all the highways, “men in apparel which had become the most glorious badge of service since the history of the world — those faded jackets of grey.”

They came, it is said, ten thousand of them, converging on Columbia, making their way straight to the headquarters of the Democratic Party. They were resolved, they said, “to make this State one vast cemetery of free men rather than the home of slaves.”

Their voices shouted hoarsely, “Hampton!” “Forth came the great captain who stilled the tumult with a wave of his hand.” He said, “My countrymen, all is well. Go home and be of good cheer. I have been elected governor of South Carolina, and by the eternal God, I will be governor or there shall be none.”

I remember nothing of the Lost Cause movement before the Confederate reunion of 1903. I may have been drinking it in since the time of my babyhood . . . In 1903 I was verily baptized in its sentiments. In the air we felt a sense of urgency, as though the chance might never come again to honor the old men.

The oratory stressed it: “Ranks of the men who fought beneath the Stars and Bars — the beautiful Southern Cross — are thinner . . .” “Pathos . . . there cannot be many more reunions for these oaks of the Confederacy . . .”

“Not far from taps . . . for the many ties that bind will soon be severed . . . the high tribute is but their honor due.”

(The Making of a Southerner, Katherine Du Pre Lumpkin, UGA Press, 1991, (original 1946), pp. 112-114)

Wilmington, N.C.

Aug. 12^th, 1862

“A man and every man ought to render to his country volunteer service in times when civil war is showering down its drowning torrents of rain from the cloud of desolation. No death is more honorable than one on a battle-field, especially when waving the sword or charging the steel bayonette into the steady and advancing columns of an inveterate enemy. We who survive this war will not only feel proud but will be the remains of a jaded army at which our parents and relatives will feel proud. It makes me feel almost ecstatic when I think of being on a bloody battle-field and know that I have at home a brother and sister who can say that they have a brother among a band of others trying to protect his home and country.”

(Letter, to Dear Sister from Brother, Joseph Kinsey Papers, East Carolina University Manuscript Collection)

The war nearly over in early April 1865 and Southern regiments vastly outnumbered and starving, the defense of Fort Gregg by the decimated Thirty-seventh North Carolina demonstrated the resolve to continue the struggle for independence. Like the earlier heroic defense of Fort McAllister in Georgia, Fort Gregg can be easily compared to the embattled Texians at the Alamo.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

Two Hundred-Fifty Half-Starved North Carolina Heroes

“The Federal infantry soon came into sight. One Mississippian later wrote: “Ah, what a contrast, what a soul-sickening spectacle to behold. 25,000 men, flushed with recent victory, to be hurled against 250 . . . half-starved heroes, whose hearts of steel [quailed] not even at such fearful odds.”

“About ten o’clock the enemy commenced charging with four or five lines,” Lieutenant [Dallas M.] Rigler [of Mecklenburg County] would write a few years after the war. “We did not fire until they were within forty yards, and then gave them one volley; they wavered, and then the first line gave way; the second came forward, and came within thirty yards of the fort. We yelled and fired – they stood a few seconds and then broke. The third retreated also, but the fourth and fifth came to the ditch around the fort.

While this fighting was in the front, one line came in the rear and almost got inside the fort through the door. About twenty men charged them, drove them back. About eleven o’clock they scaled the walls of the fort, and for several minutes we had a hand to hand fight. We used the bayonet, and killed almost all of them that came on top.”

Private [Angelum M.] Garrison [of Mecklenburg County] chronicled: “A man of Company D, of our regiment, volunteered to shoot while three of us loaded, and we did the best that was possible. This soldier of Company D took good aim, and I think he must have killed or wounded scores of the enemy.”

Twenty-year old Lieutenant [Dallas M.] Rigler would conclude his story of the defense of the fort:

“About half-past eleven they attempted to scale the walls again. We met them with the bayonets, and for several minutes it was the most desperate struggle I ever witnessed; but it did not last long. Soon they were all killed or knocked back, and then a deafening shout [arose] from our boys. [But] by this time the ammunition was almost out, and our men threw bats and rocks at them in the ditch. No ammunition would we get, and after a short struggle, they took the fort, and some few did fire on us after they got possession, but their officers tried to stop them.”

General [Cadmus] Wilcox would add this, viewing things from outside the fort while in the Confederate lines: “As they [Federals] appeared at this point [Fort Gregg], they were either shot or thrust off with the bayonet . . . Again and again this was done. At length numbers prevailed, and the parapet of the little work was thickly covered with men, six [Northern regimental] flags seen on it at one time; and from this dense mass a close, and of necessity destructive fire, was poured down upon the devoted band within.”

(The Thirty-seventh North Carolina Troops, Tar Heels in the Army of Northern Virginia, Michael C. Hardy, McFarland & Company, 2003, pp. 228-229)

Lincoln, controlled by a disjointed Republican party, was unable to recognize that he was waging war upon free Americans who followed the very words of Jefferson’s Declaration. Former Governor William A. Graham, in his Hillsboro, North Carolina speech of April 27, 1861 and nearly a month before his State seceded, explains the logical and peaceful course Lincoln could have taken to defuse the crisis and thereby saved the lives of a million Americans, the Constitution and as well as the Union he claimed to be saving.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

Nothing Less Than a War of Conquest

“We are in the midst of great events. For months past our political skies have been dark and lowering. The country has stood in anxious suspense on the perilous edge of civil war. It is well known that I among others, have insisted, that the election of Mr. Lincoln . . . obnoxious as were his own avowals of sentiment in relation to slavery in the South, and still more obnoxious as was the spirit of hostility to us, which animated the mass of his party followers, was not a sufficient cause for a dismemberment of this Government, and the destruction of the Union . . .

The seven States, however, stretching from our Southern frontier to the confines of Mexico, one by one in rapid succession have declared themselves separated from the Government of the United States, and formed a new confederation.

They found in the election which had taken place sufficient cause of occasion, in their estimation, for this hitherto untried course of proceeding, and levied armies to defend it by force. The authorities of the United States denied the right of secession claimed by these States, and the danger became great of a collision of arms.

The issue was made, but evaded under the administration of [President James] Buchanan. Its solution by Mr. Lincoln has been a matter of anxious contemplation to the people of the country since his accession to power. Whatever may be the true construction of the Constitution, or the President’s idea of his duty to enforce the laws, a wise statesmanship cannot close its eyes to the facts.

It is impossible to treat so extensive a revolution like a petty rebellion; for if suppressed by force, it would be at the expense of desolation and ruin to the country. He should have dealt with it . . . [and] yielded to the necessities by which he was surrounded, and adjusted by arrangement what he found impossible to control by force, or if possible, only at a sacrifice to the nation itself never to be repaired.

Had Mr. Lincoln risen to the height of the great occasion, promptly withdrawn his troops from fortifications which he could not defend; convened Congress in extra session; recommended and procured the passage of a law, or amendment to the Constitution, acknowledging the independence of the seceded States . . . he might yet have maintained a Union of twenty-seven contented States . . . And after an experiment of a few years, there might, and in my opinion probably would have been, a re-annexation of the seceded States themselves.

But instead of this bold and magnanimous policy, his action has been vacillating. His inaugural address in equivocal, interpreted by some, on its first appearance as portending force, assurances are thrown out that his intentions are only peaceful. And when the public mind in all the eight [Southern States] that had not seceded, was settling down in the conviction that the forts were to be evacuated and repose was to be allowed, so favorable to conciliation and harmony, a Proclamation suddenly bursts upon the country announcing a determination on coercion, and calling for a militia force so great as to endanger the safety of more than the seceded States.

Careless of any terms of conciliation, or adjustments of differences with the border States, he resolves, but not till after his own adherents have been demoralized by his hesitation and professions of peace, on the application of force to maintain the authority of the Government in the States which have withdrawn, and requires us to cooperate as instruments in their subjugation.

The sober sense of the people of North Carolina had met this question, and for themselves have settled it. Ardent in their attachment to the Constitution and the Union, they had condemned separate State secession as rash and precipitate . . . as long as there was hope of an adjustment of sectional differences, they were unwilling to part with the Government . . . But the President gives to the question new alternatives.

These are, on the one hand, to join with him in a war of conquest, for it is nothing less, against our brethren of the seceding States, or, on the other, resistance to and throwing off the obligations of the Federal Constitution. Of the two, we do not hesitate to accept the latter.

And withal, we cannot exclude from our contemplation the idea, that when [the seceded States] shall be subdued upon the issues involved in the contest, our turn will come next; our only exemption above theirs being, like the victims of Cyclops, we shall be last to be devoured.”

(The Papers of William A. Graham, Volume V, 1857-1863, J.G. Hamilton, Max Williams, editors, NCAH, 1973, excerpts, pp. 244-247)

With their men away at war, American women in the South did the farm work, raised children alone, and prayed their husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, and uncles would return home alive. Lincoln’s war upon the South cost the lives of some 260,000 Southern men.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

Universal Mourning in the South

“Cornelia Phillips Spencer was married six years before becoming a widow at age thirty-six. Her journal read: “May, 1862, My hearing is going, and with it youth, hope, and love. There remains for me nothing but to sit at home and remember.” Commentating on Spencer’s diary, author Wright described the “universal mourning” in the South had made her own loss seem less burdensome because at least her husband had not died “horribly in battle, or lain lingering and mutilated in hospitals.”

Another diarist, Sarah E. Mercer, recorded that her brother Oliver (called Buddy), had to return to camp even though he was not well. She said, “Tears are such a solace . . .” In less than three weeks, he would be among the dead at Gettysburg.

“I cannot look to the future, it is too dark. All is dark, dark, dark. The fate of our country is in a thick mist, too dark and thick to see through.” Still grieving, Mercer three days later declared, “Pity that the politicians were not obliged to do all the fighting themselves. Me thinks there would be considerably less blood shed . . .” Major Brooks visited the family and gave them the contents of Buddy’s pockets. Mercer said, “We can have no hopes of ever getting is dear remains, as they were left on Yankee soil. We do not even know if he was buried.”

Elizabeth Robeson had several sons in service. A religious woman, she questioned her faith as did other women. Entries in her diary are as follows:

“May 18^th – but all God does is right, though he moves in a mysterious way. He takes the young and leaves the aged for some wise purpose, but we shortsighted mortals cannot see it.”

“Jun 1, 1862 – Mr. W. Cain came in and said that he heard our boys (Bladen Guards) were in the battle and were cut to pieces. Many a better woman than I am has been bereaved of their only child, but I feel as if I could not bear up under it.”

Henry Fuller was wounded in June of 1862 at Seven Pines, Virginia. His wife Ann “went to Richmond in search of him but was unable to find even an ambulance driver, since it was almost impossible to keep up with the troops. She did find the man who placed him in the ambulance and was told that he was seriously wounded with a Minnie ball through his head. After several days of fruitless inquiry, she was forced to return home empty handed and the fate of her husband was never known.”

Fuller remained on the farm and raised her three children. Foraging Union troops took everything on the place at the close of the war. “

(Blood and War at My Doorstep, North Carolinians in the War Between the States, Volume II, Brenda McKean, Xlibris, pp. 640-641)

In 1866, war governor of North Carolina Zebulon B. Vance addressed the Andrew Post, No. 15 of the Grand Army of the Republic and described his patriotic actions in April 1861. A prewar Unionist, Vance instructed the audience that Lincoln and his party offered no reasonable compromise or peaceful alternatives to the South peacefully withdrawing and seeking a more perfect Union.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

If War Must Come, I Prefer To Be With My Own People

“. . . [T]he people of North Carolina, more perhaps than those of any of the eleven seceding States, were devoted to the Union. They had always regarded it with sincerest reverence and affection, and they left it slowly and with sorrow. They were actuated by an honest conviction . . . that their constitutional rights were endangered, not be the mere election of Mr. Lincoln, as others did, but by the course which subsequent events were compelled to take in consequence of the ideas which were behind him.

The Union men of the State, of whom I was one, whatever may have been their doubts of the propriety of secession, were unanimous in the opinion that it was neither right nor safe to permit the general government to coerce a State. But when Fort Sumter was fired upon, immediately followed by Mr. Lincoln’s call for “volunteers to suppress the insurrection,” the whole situation was changed instantly.

The Union men had every prop knocked from under them, and by stress of their own position were plunged into a secession movement. I immediately, with altered voice and manner, called upon the assembled multitude to volunteer, not to fight against but for South Carolina. I said, if war must come I prefer to be with my own people. If we had to shed blood, I preferred to shed Northern rather than Southern blood.

If we had to slay, I had rather slay strangers than my own kindred and neighbors; and that it was better, whether right or wrong, that communities and States should go together and face the horrors of war in a body — sharing a common fate, rather than endure the unspeakable calamities of internecine strife.

To those at all acquainted with the atrocities which have been inflicted upon the divided communities of Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee, the humanity of my action will be apparent. I went and shared the fate of the people of my native State, having first done all I could to preserve the peace and secure the unanimity of the people to avert, as much as possible, the calamities of war.

I do not regret that course. I do not believe there is an honorable man within my hearing to-night who, under the same circumstances, would not have done as I did . . .”

(Life of Zebulon B. Vance, Clement Dowd, Observer Publishing and Printing House, 1897, pp. 439-442)