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.

In the progress of the war men and circumstances change. At the commencement you were in Military I in Civil positions. Now my position is what your position was then. I find myself at the head of a Regment or Legion of Indians and Mountaineers,…

I hope a better spirit will prevail. North Carolina has shown considerable Union sentiment during the war and I believe a proper course by our would cause the slumbering fire to burst into a flame, which could not be quenched.

A civil war at home: Treatment of Unionists

W. H. Younce, The Adventures of a Conscript (Cincinnati: The Editor Pub. Co., 1901), pp. 57–62.

At home again.

Our purpose was to try to reach my father’s home that night, but about the middle…

Vance’s Proclamation. The “Hideous Mark” to be fixed on Cowards and Traitors to the Confederacy. THE FRIENDS OF THE UNION TO BE MADE INFAMOUS Woe to the Men who Refuse to Fight for the South. THE FATHER OR THE BROTHER WHO HARBORS OR…

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…

"They hung my son by the limb of a tree"

Drawing of a Civil War deserter being hanged from a tree.

It is tragic that the Civil War era is used to promote harmful divisions since it prevents us as a nation to gaining a full understanding of the war as it truly is: a complex, a layered crisis that involves much time and attention in order to gain a…

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…