Browse Items (76 total)

This document describes numerous situations that Western North Carolina Confederate soldiers were put through, which lead to their decision to desert from the army. Questions such as "Is my loyalty worth it if my family is starving?" and "What good…

On May 1, the legislature met ins special secession. Governor Eillis, in his message, Reviewed the theory on which the government of the United States was founded and discussed fully the Constitutional aspects of coercion. Assuming that the state…

Thomas Lanier Clingman was a unique man. Born and raised in western North Carolina, Clingman studied law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He later settled in the Ashville area where he bace a prominent politician. He strongly…

The great majority of the Klan’s victims were blacks; they were attacked and beaten everywhere in the county for many reasons. The raiders explained on one occasion that they were simply out whipping Radicals that night. In December, a disguised…

Holden, despairing of a fair trial in the civil courts, had resolved to try them by military commission. He therefore wrote Pearson a lengthy public letter on July 26, justifying his proclamations of insurrection and politely declining to surrender…

Slavery in the American South could not have existed without the authority of law defining slaves as the property of their masters. But the fact that slaves were also human beings placed limits on this harsh reality. When the rigor of the law and the…

As late as 1830, southern whites still sometimes debated whether slavery should, or could, be eliminated. The state of Virginia nearly abolished slavery in 1836, after the terror of Nat Turner’s Rebellion. In North Carolina, people wondered…

A detailed history of the anti-Lincoln and anti-war northern Democrats commonly known then as the "Copperheads." Weber details some of the plots and other schemes the Copperheads were involved in while trying to end the Civil War, which included…

North Carolina rapidly responded to the needs of its Confederate amputees. The General Assembly passed a resolution of January 23, 1866, asking Gov. Jonathan Worth "to make a contract with some manufacturer of artificial limbs to supply the need of…