Browse Exhibits (20 total)

This exhibit traces General William Sherman of the Union Army and over 60,000 of his men as they marched through North Carolina at the end of the Civil War. Throughout the march, Sherman saw his army’s actions as tactics of war to suppress the rebellion and nothing more. However, the citizens of North Carolina took the actions of Sherman’s men more personally; this led to increased resistance and renewed devotion to the Confederate cause among the citizens. The resistance seen in Confederate accounts differs from previous historiography on the subject, as many historians have commonly reported that Sherman’s March destroyed the will of the Confederacy. The exhibit examines stories from three cities – Fayetteville, Goldsboro, and Raleigh. The sources came from Union soldiers, pro-Union newspapers within the state, and Confederate citizens and newspapers in North Carolina. 

This exhibit examines the personal reflections and motivations of the Captains and Pilots of blockade runners that sailed into and out of North Carolina's main Civil War port, Wilmington. This exhibit uses collections from the Captains and Pilots themselves describing their experiences while sailing their vessels and draws conclusions from their experiences as to why they chose to participate in the ordeal.  

This exhibit focuses on the Endor iron furnace, a Civil War era blast furnace which stands on the southern bank of the Deep River near Sanford, North Carolina.  The furnace produced iron during the war but little is known about much of its history.  Author Robert A. Wiesner published a book in 2007 entitled The Men of Endor: Their Works and Times 1861-1876 which sheds light on the history of the site; however, at the time he could find little evidence to the workings of the furnace under a group of investors known as the Downer Group who purchased the site in 1864 and held it for only seven months.  Using the advent of newly available evidence, this exhibit solves the mystery of what happened at Endor during these seven months and reveals the Endor Iron Furnace as an important piece in the Confederate railroad industry.

This exhibit focuses on the portion of the 1865 raid of General George Stoneman in Surry County, North Carolina, in order to address the significance of this portion of the raid within the context of North Carolina, as well as the American Civil War as a whole. In doing so, it explores primary and secondary resources, including the people involved, both military and civilian, and the events that took place as the Union troops progressed. Organized in a geographic manner, the exhibit uses the stories of locals, raiders, and historians to piece together a more comprehensive narrative of April 1-3, 1865 than has been previously available. Overall this exhibit testifies to the claim that Surry County is significant to the history of Stoneman’s raid based on the fact that it escaped major damage and devastation, unlike the other areas touched by the raid.

This exhibit will analyze and attempt to interpret Catherine Ann Devereux Edmondston's re-defined perception of southern womanhood throughout the course of the Civil War. A native of Halifax county, North Carolina and daughter of a wealthy plantation owning family, her diary provides insight to the racial, social, and gendered hierarchical structure of the South, during the 19th century. From the Antebellum era to Reconstruction, the transformation that turns her world upside down forces Catherine to absorb new responsibilities both in her public and private spheres, yet she remains loyal and confined in her separate gender sphere adhering to conventional gender expectations of Southern women.