Browse Exhibits (10 total)

This exhibit discusses Goldsboro and it's occupation by General Sherman and his 100,000 plus troops during the weeks of March and April of 1865. It outlines the goals of Sherman while he was in Goldsboro. More importantly it discusses the treatment of the citizens inside the city of Goldsboro, and how it differed from the treatment of citizens on the outskirts of Goldsboro. General Schofield set up a security perimeter around Goldsboro shortly before Sherman arrived to prevent pillaging of the city by the infamous "bummers" of Sherman's army. The exhibit outlines detailed accounts from individuals within the city of Goldsboro, as well as the citizens on the outskirts of Goldsboro. These accounts help add to the historiography of the Carolinas Campaign, which argues that Sherman destroyed morale in the South. This exhibit seeks to show while that that may have occurred in some places in Goldsboro, there was still a will to fight a resist the Union there. The focus will be specifically in Goldsboro, and how Sherman treated the city differently than any other city he occupied. The sources in the exhibit are first hand accounts from citizens, soldiers of the Union army, and a response from General Sherman himself. 

A study in U.S. history will show that John Brown's raid had a substantial impact on the people of Virginia, but a deeper look will show how it affected other states, especially those which did not desire secession.This exhibit will discuss how John Brown's raid was perceived in North Carolina from 1859 to 1861, focusing primarily on the immediate response to the raid, and the affect it had on politics. The most profound affect was the increased fear toward Northern militant abolitionists, which prompted many North Carolinians to demand a trained and armed militia. 

The Ku Klux Klan was known to be active in certain parts of North Carolina, but Klan activity and other white supremacist group activity became prominent in many counties of the state in the post-Reconstruction years. Once Union soldiers were no longer occupying the south, white supremacist groups began to dominate the landscape in the south and started a violent campaign to disenfranchise, lynch, and terrorize African Americans. When the Union soldiers left after Reconstruction, suddenly African Americans found themselves in very desperate and dangerous situations, sometimes life was even more tragic and terrifying than the pre-Civil War slavery years. The drastically negative changes that took place in these African American's lives help modern historians understand why and how violence and disenfranchisement protracted the rights, civil liberities, and safety of African Americans in the south until well into the 20th cnetury when the Civil Rights Movement began to gain a foothold in the U.S.

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.

As the Civil War raged on, Wilmington, North Carolina became invalubale as a port of entry for the Confederate Staes of America. But what did the Confederate High Command think of Wilmington? Did they recognize its importance and act accordingly? What do thier correspondences say about how they percieved of Wilmington? And what of the Union? Could the Union's perception of Wilmington reflect upon the Confederacy?