North Carolina in the American Civil War

• 1. Introduction

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  North Carolina went to war against a government its own people had recently voted to stay in. In February 1861, when secession was already sweeping other Southern states, North Carolinians held a popular vote on the question. The unionists carried it, but only narrowly. The feeling behind that result was preserved in words that circulated at the time: "The great popular heart is not now and never has been in this war. It was a revolution of the politicians, not the people."

  What changed? And for those who never believed in the cause, what did it mean to fight in a war they had not chosen? North Carolina's answers to those questions were shaped by geography, class, and a political crisis that moved faster than any popular feeling could follow.

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• 2. A State of Two Worlds

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  John C. Breckinridge, the Southern Democrat who ran for president in 1860, carried North Carolina's electoral votes. He was an adamant supporter of slavery who sought to extend it into the United States' western territories. North Carolina had backed Breckinridge rather than John Bell, the Constitutional Union candidate who won much of the Upper South. Yet in marked contrast to most states that supported Breckinridge, North Carolina proved reluctant to secede.

  The Coastal Plain had a long history of plantation agriculture and slavery. The western mountains were a different world entirely. Yeoman farmers in those highlands owned few or no slaves and had little stake in the plantation economy. Central and Eastern white North Carolinians were often more supportive of the Confederate cause. In the mountain communities to the west, loyalty to the Confederacy could not be assumed.

  Draft-dodging, desertion, and tax evasion were common during the war years, especially in the western part of the state. African Americans across the state, together with white North Carolinians who felt no tie to the Confederate cause, eventually enlisted in Union regiments. Roughly 15,000 North Carolinians ultimately served in the Union Army.

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• 3. The Road to Secession

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  Abraham Lincoln's proclamation of the 15th of April, 1861, asked the Union states to furnish 75,000 troops to suppress the rebellion. For North Carolina, that demand crossed a line. Like Arkansas, Tennessee, and Virginia, the state had hoped to remain uninvolved. But the call to send soldiers against fellow Southerners forced a choice.

  North Carolina formally seceded on the 20th of May, 1861. That date came after two prior shocks: the fall of Fort Sumter in South Carolina, and the secession of Virginia, the bellwether of the Upper South. The next day, on the 21st of May, North Carolina was admitted to the Confederate States. The law admitting the state required a presidential proclamation. Jefferson Davis, in a statement dated the 20th of July, confirmed that the proclamation had been made.

  The Confederate plan to embargo cotton shipments to Europe was meant to force foreign recognition of Confederate independence. It failed. The Union's naval blockade then cut deeply into North Carolina's international commerce. With fewer railroads than the North, the Confederacy's transportation network struggled under the additional strain. Runaway inflation and food shortages followed. In the spring of 1863, those shortages reached a breaking point, and food riots broke out in Salisbury.

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• 4. Mountains of Discontent

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  Historians John C. Inscoe and Gordon B. McKinney wrote about what became of North Carolina's western mountain communities during the war. In their words, "differing ideologies turned into opposing loyalties, and those divisions eventually proved as disruptive as anything imposed by outside armies." As Inscoe and McKinney described it, the conflict grew "far messier, less rational, and more mean-spirited, vindictive, and personal." The highlands had become a place of shelter for those fleeing the war.

  There was little formal military combat in the western districts. The psychological tensions there grew greater and greater. Neighbors holding opposing loyalties found themselves at odds in ways that had little to do with formal battle lines.

  One organized expression of western Unionism was a group called the Heroes of America. Numbering nearly 10,000 men, with a few possibly Black members among them, the Heroes of America were allied with the United States. Their work was practical: helping Southern Unionists reach safety behind U.S. lines. North Carolina Union troops also worked to occupy territory in the mountainous regions of both North Carolina and Tennessee, sometimes alongside soldiers from other states.

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• 5. War on Home Soil

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  From September 1861, Union Major General Ambrose Burnside began a campaign to capture key ports and cities along the North Carolina coast. As commander of the Department of North Carolina, he organized the North Carolina Expeditionary Corps. His successes at the Battle of Roanoke Island and the Battle of New Bern established Federal control across a stretch of the Carolina coast. Burnside's campaign ran from September 1861 through July 1862.

  In 1864, Confederate forces assumed the offensive in North Carolina. They failed to retake New Bern, but they reconquered Plymouth and held it for six months. Meanwhile, the Union Army made repeated attempts to capture Fort Fisher. A first assault, in late December 1864, failed. A second, in January 1865, succeeded.

  The war's final chapter in North Carolina arrived with General William Tecumseh Sherman. His army marched into the state in the war's closing days. The series of movements that followed became known as the Carolinas campaign. Union forces defeated Confederate troops at Averasborough and Bentonville. Then, in April 1865, General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered his army at Bennett Place, near Durham, to Sherman. That surrender essentially ended the war in the Eastern Theater.

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• 6. Soldiers on Two Sides

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  North Carolina troops played major roles in dozens of battles fought outside the state's borders. At Gettysburg, Tar Heels from North Carolina were prominent in Pickett's Charge. Their deployment to Pennsylvania reflected how broadly the Confederate war effort had drawn on the state's soldiers.

  The 3rd North Carolina Cavalry fought not for the Confederacy but for the Union. This regiment took part in the Battle of Bull's Gap and the Battle of Red Banks. They also participated in Stoneman's raids of 1864 and 1865, ranging across western North Carolina, southwest Virginia, and eastern Tennessee. The North Carolina-based XVIII Corps counted among the largest formations in the entire Union Army. Union forces seized Wilmington in 1865, at the time the largest city in North Carolina.

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• 7. Governors and Reconstruction

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  Governor John Willis Ellis had supported North Carolina's secession, but he died in office in July 1861. His successor, Henry Toole Clark, served until September 1862. Clark founded a Confederate prison within the state, established purchasing connections in Europe, and built a successful gunpowder mill. He declined to run for reelection.

  Zebulon Vance, a former Confederate colonel, succeeded Clark and increased state support for soldiers in the field. As the war continued, William Woods Holden became a quiet but persistent critic of the Confederate government. He led a peace movement in North Carolina. In 1864, he ran against the incumbent Governor Vance under the label of "peace candidate." Holden lost.

  After the war ended, North Carolina entered the Second Military District. Major General John M. Schofield held military authority for roughly a month. On the 29th of May, 1865, President Andrew Johnson proclaimed the appointment of William W. Holden as provisional governor. Johnson's terms required the state to declare its secession null, abolish slavery, and take an amnesty oath. Brigadier General Thomas H. Ruger succeeded Schofield. Ruger worked to cooperate with Holden on the path toward civilian governance, including overseeing the removal of most African American soldiers from North Carolina.

  The General Assembly ratified the Fourteenth Amendment on the 4th of July, 1868, formally readmitting North Carolina to the Union. On the 22nd of July, 1868, military authority over the state came to its formal close.

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