Browse Items (916 total)

Perhaps the best represented, and most well documented secessionist under the occupation of eastern North Carolina, James Rumley, a Carteret country court clerk. Rumley was a diarist that kept intensive notes about life under Union control from the…

"October 31, 1863.
Our citizens were startled today by the sudden appearance in town of James W. Bryan Esq., who lately came to New Bern from the Confederate lines under a flag of truce, and was called on business tot he Provost Marshall's office in…

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…

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…

Discussions between governor Zeb Vance, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis on the impact that desertion made on the Confederate effort during the Civil War. This article points out that popular support for the Confederacy was never "robust" in the…

For four years, Fort Fisher was the Achilles' heel of the Union blockade. As long as it stood, Wilmington would remain open. The odds were overwhelmingly in favor of the blockade-runners that came and went virtually on schedule, openly defying the…

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…

Senator Butler at Morganton Why he Doesn't Know a White Child from a Mullato. (Special to News and Observer) MORGANTON, N.C., June 18. - The mother of the mulatto child, who was taken up in his arms by Senator Butler on Saturday, is named Moffitt.…

The Winston Situation Holton & Co., has a Democratic Registrar arrested by a Federal Deputy Marshal because he will not register negro boys.

This is the situation that we would have if the incendiary advice that Knight of Wake, Gill of Vance, McNeill of Wilkes, and other Fusion leaders are giving, should be followed by the Negroes.