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Thomas C. Ruffin (1787-1870) was the elected judge of the Supreme Court of North Carolina from 1829 through 1852 and once again from 1858 through 1859. From 1833 until 1853, Thomas Ruffin served the Court as Chief Justice. Ruffin attended Princeton…

Ruffin's speech

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…

Thomas Clingman is often overlooked in the history of the Civil War yet he played an extremely crucial role in the political realm in the years prior to 1861. Clingman was Southern through and through yet secession was not on his agenda. He…

This map depicts the extensive system of locks, dams, and canals built on the Deep River and Cape Fear River. This existing infrastructure was one of the things which attracted the Confederate government to the Deep River Valley who were trying to…

In May of 1861, delegates from North Carolina voted to secede from the United States of America and join the Confederacy. But, a closer examination of antebellum North Carolina reveals a more complex story. For the decade leading up to the Civil War,…

The people around here are very poor as a general thing but very kind and hospitable. There is none of the treachery we have found in other places. I was talking with an old man today; he has lost six sons in the Army. He says they did not want to go…

For the second time I was made a prisoner of war and under the following circumstances, which I have mentioned but once before. Before I became engaged in the Blockade Running service, I was acting as mate on the Confederate steamer Flora MacDonald,…

Some of her trips were very exciting and hazardous. on one occasion there were four steamers leaving St. George, Bermuda, including the Advance, for Wilmington. But two of these arrived in Wilmington. One put back to Bermuda badly disabled; the other…

THE SCARE ON THE ROAD.

An instance of the deep sense of apprehension created by these bandits in all southeastern Carolina is afforded by a dream which Colonel W. H. Barnard, editor of the Wilmington Star, related to me. The Colonel's paper is…