Browse Items (916 total)

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…

Historian David Williams relays that “roughly 200,000 blacks, most of them refugees from slavery, served in the Union armed forces." (Williams 2014, 5) Though many people may not know this fact, runaway slaves' participation in the Union army…

Behold! the furious storm is rolling, Which border fiends, confederates, raise, The dogs of war, let loose, are howing, And lo! our infant cities blaze, And shall we calmly view the ruin, While lawless force with giant stride,Spreads desolation far…

Over 10,000 enslaved persons seeking freedom fled to eastern North Carolina, primarily to New Bern and Roanoke Island,after the region was captured by Union troops in 1862. Once behind Union lines these African Americans supported the U.S. war…

SPECIAL ORDERS, HDQRS. SEVENTEENTH ARMY CORPS, Numbers 63. Near Rockfish Creek, N. C., March 10, 1865. I. Division commanders will cause a sufficient number of good cattle to be collected in the country to have fifteen days' supply of beef…

My Dear Wife and Children I take the pleasure to drop you a few lines to let you now that I am well at this time hoping these lines may Reach your kind hands and find you injoying the same blessing I want you to Rite to me as soon as this comes to…

On March 22 and 23, delegates from twenty-five counties assembled in Goldsboro and organized the Southern Rights Party. They urged the legislature to reconvene and demanded that North Carolina join the Confederacy.

In this chapter from Social Science History, the author discusses the personal and political reasons for desertion in the Confederate Army of North Carolina. Giuffre's main thesis states that desertion was used as a form of resistance by small…

State v. Mann This is one of those cases which a Court will always regret being brought into judgement--One in which principles of policy urge the Judge to a decision in discord wiht the feelings of the man. But intil the condition of our population…