Browse Items (46 total)

The 1,600-foot structure across the Holston River at Strawberry Plains, Tennessee, was the scene of frequent skirmishing between the Federals and the Confederacy. For more than a year, Colonel Thomas and his Legion guarded the bridge. It was…

At the time of this photograph, taken in 1858, Thomas was 53 and had become, perhaps next to Zeb Vance, the most influential man in western North Carolina.

The Civil War has been so plagued by misinterpretation that it has made the period an arduous time to study for historians. The first and most obvious way is how the causes of the Civil War have changed depending on the interpreter. For example,…

At the Beginning of the Civil War, the Confederate States of America could hardly have foreseen the enormous problem that desertion in its army would have become. Amid the initial enthusiasm following the outbreak of the conflict, the rush of…

That the Confederate soldier has no superior in the annals of war is an article of the American Creed. His accomplishments against overwhelming odds, through four years of heroic suffering, are his monument. Magnificent in his forbearance and his…

A major problem that faced both armies during the Civil war was desertion. As the conflict dragged on into a protracted war of attrition, the loss of men through absenteeism struck hardest at the South. Before the end of 1861 it had become a problem…

The Salisbury National Cemetery is the only such cemetery in North Carolina: born out of a Confederate prison honoring the unknown Union dead. The cemetery houses almost four thousand Union veterans and six thousand U.S. veterans.

At Salisbury the dead were too numerous for Confederates to provide individual graves, and instead dumped the bodies into eighteen trenches. These trenches were heavily contested after the war as how many bodies were actually inside.

Several scholars have determined that western North Carolina men, like Sergeant Wyatt, deserted in larger numbers than their compatriots across the state did. Richard Reid’s 1981 study found a desertion rate of 16 percent for western North…

I have taken many classes in which the Civil War has either been briefly discussed or central to a class. Inevitably, when discussing the Civil War, the issues of the northern and southern pride make their respective appearances. One of the central…