Music on the Confederate Battlefield

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Fort Fisher Chapter 
(Presented on April 25, 2013 by Jennifer L. Beddoe)

The music of the War Between the States background celebrates lofty political ideals; union and states’ rights. It commemorates heroes and martyrs. It glimpses human dramas behind the fighting lines; the wife urges her husband to battle; the mother weeps for her son; the dying soldier clings to memories of home.

Music inspired by the War Between the States ranges from stirring band parade music to piano fantasies for concert audiences.  It identified and fixed images of meaning for citizens who were seeing their world changed by circumstances beyond their imagination. The songs had a singable melody, words repeated, and an uncomplicated piano arrangement.

On the home front, music was a mixture of Negro spirituals, gospel tunes, minstrel and folk songs, transmitted orally rather than in print. Both sides borrowed music and changed the lyrics to express an opposing point of view.  Individual soldiers carried their homemade instruments, banjos, and violins. When darkness settled over the battlefield and soldiers bedded down, music and voices blended from both Union and Confederate camps.

The song “Dixie” written by Daniel Emmett in 1860 became the unofficial anthem of the Confederate States. This tune’s minstrel-show origins created a strong association of “Dixie” with the Old South. Today some view the song as offensive and racist while others see it as a legitimate part of Southern heritage.

Its words were taken up by the people, sung among the streets and soon carried to the battlefield where it became the great inspirational song of the Confederate Army. Today it is most often associated with those parts of the Southern United States where Old South traditions and legacies of the Confederacy live most strongly and are most widely celebrated and remembered.

I noticed that the music could be put into one of three categories.  Love songs – either for a girlfriend/boyfriend, mother/son or soldier for his home – Stories from the field – either about a battle or just about life as a soldier and Inspirational songs.

One of the most famous folk love ballads is “Aura Lee.” The lyricist was W.W. Fosdick and the composer was G.R.Poulton. This song was very popular with the Union soldiers as well as the confederate soldiers. Many nights, both sides would be camped so close to each other, they could hear the other side singing. Sometimes one side or the other would begin singing songs. Then the other side would pick it up. Before long they were singing and harmonizing together. They knew that tomorrow they would be aiming their guns at each other and death would again prevail. For a few brief moments, there was camaraderie as thoughts of home and sweethearts pushed away the horrors of war.

“Lorena” was another popular sentimental ballads sung around the campfire of the Confederate Army. It became identified with the Southern cause and “Hundreds of Southern girls were named for the song’s heroine.” The Reverend H.D.L. Webster moved to Zanesville, Ohio. He fell in love with Eleanor Blockson. She was in love with him and expected to marry him. Her father threatened to disinherit her if she married a poor preacher. She returned his ring and he left town. To get over his heartbreak, he wrote a poem, which he called “Lorena,” rearranging the letters of her name to avoid embarrassing her.

Music, reflecting moods and emotions, shows through in “The South I Love Thee More”. The writer embraces the South with its change and sorrow and calls it “Sacred” and loves it more.

“Take Your Gun and Go, John” was often sung by families at home. Singing was important to those left behind. Mothers and Fathers, sweethearts and wives, passed the long evenings at home singing songs about longing and being apart, waiting for their boy to return. The second verse refers to family shame if John had not enlisted for the Cause.

Battle Stories

The first battle of the War Between the States was fought at Bethel, Virginia on June 10, 1861.  The fame of this battle is remembered in the song,” The Battle at Bethel,” sung to the tune of Dixie.

The German Christmas carol “Oh Tannenbaum” provided the tune for “Maryland, My Maryland.“ It was adopted as the state song of Maryland in 1939.   On April 19, 1861, soldiers of the 6th Massachusetts Infantry passed through Baltimore, Maryland, on their way to Washington, D.C. A pro-secession mob attacked them, and the first blood of the War Between the Stats was shed. Although the lyrics to this fervently Southern Song suggest that Maryland was on the verge of joining the Confederacy, she remained loyal to the Union. A great relief as far as Abraham Lincoln was concerned, for a Confederate Maryland would have proved a thorn in the Union’s side.

The “Flight of Doodles” is also known as “Root Hog or Die” because it was sung to the tune of a popular minstrel melody of the same name. This song commemorates the smashing Confederate victory at the Battle of First Manassas on July 21, 1861. The title refers to the mad dash of the “Yankee Doodles” back to the safety of Washington following their defeat.

The term “root hog or die” is an old country expression meaning that one must often”work like the devil under terrible conditions” in order to survive-or as Emma Dusenberry of Arkansas put it,”All of us have got to work to make our own living. Hogs have to root in the woods or starve, and you have to work or starve.”

An example of daily camp life on the Front is the song,”Goober Peas.” “Soldiering can be a very dull job,” Says BellWiley in his Life of Johnny Reb.   One way of passing the time, when not on the march or at drill, was to get together around the campfire and enjoy some informal singing. This delightful Confederate song has a simplicity with that spirit of song making and rhyme that lets the mind forget the orders, the dust, and the blistering feet.

“Ridin A Raid” describes Stonewall watching his Rebels and encouraging them to fight for honor and right; a fighting song.

John Williamson Palmer was a physician, poet, playwright, and newspaper correspondent who wrote “Stonewall Jackson’s Way” during the Battle of Antietam in September 1862. The song was quickly put to music by and unknown composer and sung by Jackson’s men during the right remaining months of the General’s life. The line” pay off Ashby’s score” refers to General Turner Ashby, Jackson’s cavalry chief during his famous Valley campaign, who was killed by the Union troops while fighting a rear-guard action near Harrisonburg, Virginia, June 6, 1862.

A second song written by Captain G.W. Alexander, “The Southern Soldier” described the daily life of the foot soldier and was also sung to the tune”The Boy With the Auburn Hair.” It was a favorite camp song and reminded the soldiers of home.

Inspirational Camp Songs

Excluding “Dixie”, the most popular song in the South and with the Confederate army was “The Bonnie Blue Flag” written by Harry Macarthy. It was first presented by Marion Macarthy, sister of the author and “Arkansas comedian,” at the Varieties Theatre in New Orleans for one of Harry’s Personation Acts. Troops enroute to Virginia sang it at the New Orleans Academy of Music in September, 1861. The flag was displayed at the Mississippi Convention of January 9, 1861 which passed the act of secession, and the delegates chanted the new air. The words tell the story of secession and reveal the “temperament of the states at war and invite other states to join in. The song fans the Flames of War.

Brander Matthews tells us when General Butler was in command of New Orleans, he “made it very profitable by fining every man, woman, or child who sang, whistled, or played it on any instrument  $25.00, besides arresting the publisher, destroying the sheet music and fining him $500.00.

The success of the “Bonnie Blue Flag” in the South soon invited parody from the North. While a prisoner of war in Selma, Alabama, Col. J.L. Geddes of the Eighth Iowa Infantry wrote,” The Bonnie Blue Flag with the  Stripes and Stars”. It was sung by members of his regiment in answer to the Southern song.

“The Flag of Secession” is a song written in1862 celebrating the secession of the Southern states from the Union. The song is sung to the tune of “The Star Spangled Banner,” the national anthem of the United States. The author of the song is unknown.

“Richmond Is A Hard Road to Travel” takes you into the heart and soul of the soldier, expressing his mood and emotions.

Another camp song that cheered the heart and dispelled the gloom was the “Upidee Song.” It had a rousing chorus.

As the war progressed, the songs changed temperament, rhythm and mood. “We Conquer or Die” by James Pierpoint describes the war drum beating, prepare for the fight.”

“The Wearing of the Grey” describes the torment of the southern soul where justice and perfect rest are found alone in heaven with God’s Blessings. The melodies have gone from bright marching songs to a heavy hearted beat.

The War Between the States lasted for four long years.  During these years, numerous songs and ballads were composed. While many documents and artifacts of the War Between the States have not survived, most of the music has survived.

“Oh, I’m a Good Old Rebel” was written by Major Innes Randolph, Confederate States of America. The words give a musical legacy of the War and the attitude of the soldier towards the future.

O, I’m a good old Rebel,

Now that’s just what I am,

For this “Fair Land of Freedom”

I do not care at all;

I’m glad I fit against it –

I only wish we’d won,

And I don’t want no pardon

For anything I done.

I hates the Constitution,

This Great Republic too,

I hates the Freedman’s Buro,

In uniforms of blue;

I hates the nasty eagle,

With all his brags and fuss,

The lyin’, thievin’ Yankees,

I hates ‘em wuss and wuss.

I hates the Yankee nation

And everything they do,

I hates the Declaration

Of Independence too;

I hates the glorious Union –

‘Tis dripping with our blood –

I hates their striped banner,

I fit it all I could.

I followed old mass’ Robert

For four year, near about,

Got wounded in three places

And starved at Pint Lookout;

I cotch the rheumatism

A campin’ in the snow,

But I killed a chance of Yankees,

I’d like to kill some mo’.

Three hundred thousand Yankees

Is stiff in Southern dust;

We got three hundred thousand

Before they conquered us;

They died of Southern fever

And Southern steel and shot,

I wish they was three million

Instead of what we got.

I can’t take up my musket

And fight ‘em now no more,

But I ain’t going to love ‘em,

Now that is sarten sure;

And I don’t want no pardon

For what I was and am,

I won’t be reconstructed

And I don’t care a damn.

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The Food Riots of April 1863

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Fort Fisher Chapter 
(Presented on March 28, 2013 by D. Gayle Tabor)

From 1861 to 1863, the price of wheat tripled and butter and milk prices quadrupled. Salt, which at the time was the only practical meat preservative, was very expensive (if available at all) as a result of the Union blockade. Add to that the drought of 1862 and it is easy to see how food was a premium commodity in the homeland of the confederacy in April 1863.

When I began my research of this presentation, I began researching the bread riots in Richmond April 2, 1863. Although the Richmond Bread Riots were (are) and interesting subject I was quickly enamored with research by Davis Norris on the lesser known bread riot in Salisbury, NC. Because many of our chapter members have strong roots and ancestral ties to Salisbury, it seemed appropriate to concentrate my efforts for this presentation there.

During the war it was more profitable for plantation owners to grow cotton and tobacco instead of food. The cost of war for the Confederate government exceeded the tax revenue; to combat this legislation was enacted that exacerbated the situation by devaluing the Confederate currency and inflating the prices of goods.

On March 18, 1863 in Salisbury ~ 50 determined local women, identified as wives and mothers of Confederate soldiers believing that local merchants had been profiteering by raising the prices of necessary foods marched into downtown Salisbury and demanded that the merchants sell goods at government prices.

Obviously, 50 women didn’t just come to town one day storm the stores of merchants they suspected of being war profiteers. Remember this is 1863 – there was no telephone, email or even Facebook.

How did all these women know to congregate at a particular spot in Salisbury on the same day?

Logic suggests they had been meeting and talking with each other. They arrived on March 18th to perform an organized, systematic raid on Salisbury businesses.  This was no accident.

The women stopped at roughly six stores that afternoon, demanding the shopkeepers sell them the staples at the same price the government was paying, not the inflated consumer price.

If and when the merchants refused — and most of them did — the women helped themselves.

Some women took hatchets and broke down the doors. At Michael Brown’s establishment, they tried to break down the door to a storeroom before he agreed to give the women 10 barrels of flour for free.

In the end what a local newspaper described as the “Female Raid” had netted the women twenty three barrels of flour as well as quantities of molasses, salt, and even twenty dollars in cash.

At the end of the day the disgusted Brown dashed off a letter to the N.C. Gov. Zebulon Vance complaining about what happened in his store and others.

But the ladies weren’t to be out done and they sent their own letter to the Governor on March 21. The letter writer was a woman named Mary C. Moore (who is believed to be the organizer) although the later says it is from “Soldiers’ Wives” in Rowan County and was signed my Moore. The letter explained the women’s actions on March 18 and describing how they were justified, given the exorbitant, inflationary prices.

 AS A SIDE NOTE: It was common for women to write Vance, whom many saw as sexy, charming and the St. George of his day.

The unusual thing is the letter’s ending, in which Vance is invited to write back to “Mary C. Moore Salisbury NC.”

According to several of the historians I read, it’s rare to see the name of a common woman sticking her neck out for a social issue. Many recent historians have called her a heroine for showing courage in attaching her name to the letter.

At the start of the war volunteers for the Confederate army from Salisbury and surrounding Rowan County were predominately young, unmarried men. However by 1862 the demand for fresh troops brought about the increasing enlistment and conscription of older men with wives and families.

In a county like Rowan County, with a large number of small farms, the absence of a husband and father was a serious economic loss. The failure of the county to attempt to provide for soldiers’ families also contributed to the hardship.

The women’s 1863 letter to Vance said, meat prices were 75 cents to $1 a pound; flour, $50 a barrel; wood, $4 to $5 a load; molasses, $7 a gallon; meal, $4 to $5 a bushel; eggs, 50 to 60 cents a dozen; and chickens, $7 a dozen.

Meanwhile, the women of the day complained, their soldier husbands and sons were receiving only $11 a month pay, and women were only getting 50 cents for the sewing of lined pants for soldiers and 75 cents per coat.

The fact that the women involved in the incident were never prosecuted is oft used as evidence of the understanding and sympathy of their neighbors.  The Carolina Watchman Newspaper which extended its most scathing criticism when it reported the incident. But not to the women, but to the county commissioners who failed to provide adequate aid for soldiers’ families and who should “go, all blushing with shame for the scene enacted in our streets on Wednesday last.”

However recent research by Dr. Gary Freeze possibly shows the rest of the story. Dr Freeze’s research says that Mary C. Moore lived near the original Setzer School, which was east of China Grove and close to Old Concord Road.

She was white, poor and worked as a house servant of George Rendleman in a household that also employed free blacks as servants.

During the war, Andrew Rendlemen was thrown out of the Confederate Army for being disloyal and one of the Rendlemens’ neighbors, Allison Lippard, left the Confederacy and joined the Union army. According to Freeze Moore was living in a Unionist-leaning neighborhood or one, at the least, which had no enthusiasm for the Confederacy.

In 1864, a year after the riot, the neighborhood was accused of disloyalty, Freeze says, when a dozen of its men were linked to an anti-Confederate organization — the Heroes of America.

Later most of the accused recanted in 1864 by going before a magistrate and disavowing any connection to the “Heroes.”

Members also were known as the “Red Strings” because they secretly wore red thread in the lapel of their coats. The group was dedicated to helping Confederate deserters.

Freeze believes the Red Strings numbered only in the dozens in Rowan, but their membership was much larger in counties to the north and west of Rowan. Interestingly enough the name of Union Grove in Iredell County came from its Union loyalties.

Freeeze says if he had not seen Mary Moore’s name in the letter to Vance, he never would have connected the Bread Riot women to southern Rowan. His conclusion, “The women who came to the Bread Riot were not very pro-Confederacy to begin with,” Freeze says.

He believes they were middle-class women, fed up with having little food and money and angry with the speculators who were hoarding staples before sending them out of state for high prices in return.

They were not women wearing the hoop-skirt fashions of the day.

“They were country women in big bonnets,” and the “riot” was a true act of defiance in the elitist society Salisbury represented.

Freeze says he still has many unanswered questions. Did the women go home and come back the next day to divide up their take? If not, where did they stay? He’s also trying to track down more information on Mary Moore, such as what her middle initial “C” stood for, so he might be able to do more genealogical research.

An interesting side note: During 1864, when there was a statewide effort to suppress anti-Confederate sentiment, the Setzer School community was the only place in Rowan County to vote against Zeb Vance, the sexy governor who apparently never wrote back to Mary Moore.

On April 13, 1863 Governor Vance issued a proclamation making it illegal to export food and cloth out of the state for the next 30 days, and that prohibition — with exemptions for quartermasters of the military — was extended many times in efforts to squelch war profiteering for items needed at home.

In the capital of the Confederacy, Richmond the food the diversion of supplies from the home front to the war front boiled to the surface on April 2, 1863 when a group of hungry and desperate women descended upon the Confederate capitol in Richmond demanding relief.

Rebuffed by the Virginia Governor, the mob took their complaints to the streets and sparked a spontaneous protest by a crowd estimated in the thousands. Shouting “Bread, Bread, Bread!” the mob vented its frustrations by smashing store windows and looted their contents.

The chaos was curbed only when Confederate President Jefferson Davis called upon the crowd to disperse, backing up his entreaty with troops armed with fixed bayonets.

A personal Account of the Richmond Riots – A Richmond woman described the scene in a letter written to a friend on April 2, 1863:

“Something very sad has just happened in Richmond – something that makes me ashamed of all my jeremiads over the loss of the petty comforts and conveniences of life – hats, bonnets, gowns, stationery, books, magazines, dainty food.

Since the weather has been so pleasant, I have been in the habit of walking in the Capitol Square before breakfast every morning. . . Yesterday, upon arriving, I found within the gates a crowd of women and boys – several hundreds of them, standing quietly together.

I sat on a bench near, and one of the number left the rest and took the seat beside me. She was a pale, emaciated girl, not more than eighteen. . . As she raised her hand to remove her sunbonnet and use it for a fan, her loose calico sleeve slipped up and revealed the mere skeleton of an arm. She perceived my expression as I looked at it, and hastily pulled down her sleeve with a short laugh. ‘This is all that’s left of me’ she said. ‘It seems real funny, don’t it?. . .We are starving. As soon as enough of us get together, we are going to the bakeries and each of us will take a loaf of bread. That is little enough for the government to give us after it has taken all our men.’

. . . The crowd now rapidly increased, and numbered, I am sure, more than a thousand women and children. It grew and grew until it reached the dignity of a mob – a bread riot. They impressed all the light carts they met, and marched along silently and in order. They marched through Cary Street and Main, visiting the stores of the speculators and emptying them of their contents. Governor Letcher sent the mayor to read the Riot Act, and as this had no effect on the crowd. The city battalion came up. The women fell back with frightened eyes, but did not obey the order to disperse.

The President [Jefferson Davis] then appeared ascended a dray, and addressed them. It is, said he was received at first with hisses from the boys, but after he had spoken some little time with great kindness and sympathy, the women moved quietly on, taking their food with them. General Elze and General Winder wished to call troops from the camps to ‘suppress the women,’ but [Secretary of War James] Seddon, a wise man, declined to issue the order. While I write women and children are still standing in the streets, demanding food, and the government is issuing to them rations of rice.”

References: This eyewitness account appears in: Gallman, Matthew J., The Civil War Chronicle (2000)
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NORTH CAROLINA DIVISION SESQUICENTENNIAL LECTURE SERIES

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Fort Fisher Chapter

On Saturday, April 28 the North Carolina Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy Sesquicentennial Lecture Series will present author Jack E. Fryar, Jr. on the 1862 Yellow Fever Epidemic in the Wilmington area.  This lecture is free and open to all at 10:30 am at the Federal Point Historical Society’s History Center on Lake Park Blvd, Carolina Beach, NC.  This lecture is the first of four to be held in District VII by the North Carolina Division Sesquicentennial Committee.  All UDC members are encouraged to attend and wear UDC insignia.

Mr. Fryar, a native of the Cape Fear region has written a dozen books on the area.  In October 2011 he was the speaker for the Historical Evening at the NC Division Convention at Carolina Beach.  He has also served as an editor, publisher, tour guide and sports announcer in Wilmington, Durham and Chapel Hill.

Mark your calendars now and come to Carolina Beach to attend not only the lecture but to visit Fort Fisher with its museum and UDC monument.  In Wilmington you can visit the Oakdale Cemetery where victims of the yellow fever epidemic are buried in addition to Confederate soldiers and Rose Greenhow.

The Sesquicentennial Committee held lecture in 2011 in Salisbury (District III) at Catawba College with author Dr. Gary Freeze, in Greensboro (District IV) in partnership with the Greensboro Historical museum with author William Trotter, in Asheville (District I) at the Veterans Restoration Quarters with Dr. Freeze, in Charlotte (District II) in partnership with the Charlotte Museum of History with author Chris Hartley and in Durham (District VI) at the Bennett Place Historic Site with author Brenda McKean.

For more information contact NC division Sesquicentennial Committee Chairman Sue Curtis at 704-637-6411 or southpaws@salisbury.net

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N.C. marks sesquicentennial of secession

Posted on May 19, 2011 by Gayle Tabor

I thought this was a very interesting article in the Wilmington Star News today – May 19, 2011 – by Ben Steelman. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Wilmington waterfront as it appeared in 1857

One hundred fifty years ago, on May 20, 1861, 120 white men gathered in the House chamber of the State Capitol in Raleigh.

These were delegates to a special convention called by Gov. John W. Ellis to face one major question: Would North Carolina secede from the United States of America?

Without a single dissenting vote, all 120 delegates – including William S. Ashe and Robert H. Cowan of New Hanover County (which included Pender County at the time) and Thomas D. Meares of Brunswick County – chose secession.

The convention also voted to ratify the provisional Constitution of the Confederate States of America.

One of the delegates, David Schenck, described the scene in his journal as “a sea partly in storm, partly in calm, the Secessionists shouting and throwing up their hats and rejoicing, the Conservatives sitting quietly, calm, depressed.”

In Wilmington, a secessionist stronghold, city fathers celebrated the vote with the firing of a 90-cannon salute. On the evening of May 20, 1861, skyrockets burst in the sky over the Port City.

The Civil War was on, and North Carolina had sided with the South – although it took its time doing so. The Tar Heel State was the last to secede in 1861.

One hundred fifty years later, North Carolina is marking the sesquicentennial of secession with more calm than rejoicing. State officials are marking the anniversary “in a mood that is commemorative as opposed to celebratory,” said Keith Hardison, co-chairman of the N.C. Civil War 150 Committee, a panel with the state Department of Cultural Resources.

In Raleigh, the official commemoration on Friday will be a day-long symposium at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh on the subject of the Civil War in public memory. Keynote speaker will be Yale history professor David Blight on the topic, “Has Civil War memory united or divided America?” Other panels of scholars will cover such topics as Civil War fiction, how western and Eastern North Carolinians viewed the war differently, how African-Americans viewed the war and memories of the Civil War home front.

A more “family-friendly” program is planned Saturday, the 150th anniversary of the day the convention delegates ceremonially signed their names to the official Ordinance of Session.

The actual ordinance will be taken out and displayed at the old Capitol building at 1 E. Edenton St. in Raleigh, Hardison said. Throughout the day Saturday, costumed re-enactors will play delegates in the House chamber, repeating speeches that were actually delivered during the Convention. Re-enactors portraying state militia units will drill on the Capitol grounds while civilians in 1860s dress stroll and watch them, and a concert of period music is planned at noon by a re-created Civil War band. Admission is free.

A state divided

Why did North Carolina wait so long to secede? In part, the May 20 date was symbolic, said Harry Watson, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Pro-Confederates were eager to compare secession to the American colonies rebelling against British tyranny, Watson said in a phone interview. The May 20 date was potent, since the so-called “Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence” – allegedly the first call for the colonies to become an independent nation – was supposedly signed at Charlotte on May 20, 1775.

Most professional historians think the Mecklenburg Declaration is a hoax compounded decades after the American Revolution. “Mec Dec Day” is still an official state holiday, though, and the date May 20, 1775, appears on North Carolina’s state flag.

Beyond symbolism, however, North Carolinians were divided for quite a while, Watson said.

White North Carolinians accepted the institution of Negro slavery. Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for president, received not a single popular vote in North Carolina in 1860.

In fact, in 1856, when a Chapel Hill professor named Benjamin Hedrick said publicly that he’d like to vote for Republican presidential candidate John C. Fremont, he was summarily fired from the university and hounded from the state. The tiny minority of whites who expressed anti-slavery sentiments, such as the preacher Daniel Worth, also found it wise to move away.

Out of 630,000 whites who lived in North Carolina in 1860, however, only 27,000 owned slaves. Most were small holders, not planters; only four North Carolinians owned more than 300 slaves. In the hilly western part of the state, where slaves were few, Unionist sentiment was strong.

North Carolina’s governor, John W. Ellis, a wealthy planter from Rowan County, favored secession from the start, but he knew he was outnumbered.

North Carolinians quickly fell into three parties, Watson said: the secessionists, the Unionists and the conditional Unionists. This third group wanted North Carolina to stay in the Union, but with a few conditions.

In particular, they wanted president-elect Lincoln, who would not take office until March 4, 1861, and the Republicans in Congress to take no steps against slavery. They also wanted no “coercive steps,” or force, taken against the states which had already seceded.

Most North Carolinians, Ellis wrote a fellow governor, seemed to adopt a “wait and see” attitude.

Ready to go

In Southeastern North Carolina, however, where the slave population was large, most whites favored secession early on.

Wilmington, in fact, saw its first pro-secession meeting on Nov. 19, 1860, nearly a month before South Carolina’s secession convention.

When South Carolina did secede on Dec. 20, 1860, a local group called the “Cape Fear Minute Men” – again, harking back to the American Revolution – fired a 100-gun volley in salute.

Secession was “the one topic of the day,” local resident T.F. Wood recalled years later. Young men wore tiny pine cones on their jackets as pro-Southern emblems.

Local citizens petitioned Gov. Ellis for permission to seize Fort Johnston and Fort Caswell, near the mouth of the Cape Fear River, which were still held by U.S. Army caretakers. When Ellis refused – and when rumors flew that a U.S. warship was on the way to Fort Caswell – the “Minute Men” formed up.

Armed mostly with shotguns and hunting rifles, the group, led by Maj. John J. Hedrick, boarded river schooners at Wilmington, They sailed down to Smithville, as Southport was then known, and on Jan. 9, 1861, seized control of the two forts.

Gov. Ellis, not yet ready for a showdown, quickly telegraphed Hedrick and ordered him to give them back. The Minute Men withdrew and returned the forts’ keys to the ordnance sergeants in charge.

The sergeant at Fort Johnston, James Reilly, would side with the Confederacy and end up serving at Fort Fisher.

The still-loyal opposition

Not all local residents were rushing to the Confederate banner, though. While the Minute Men were marching on Jan. 9, Wilmington Mayor John Dawson and other local leaders held a pro-Union rally at Thalian Hall.

Former mayor Oscar G. Parsley, a merchant and banker, tried to organize a second Unionist rally on Jan. 11. Some 50 people turned out, but Parsley and his son were both hissed down and prevented from speaking, according to local historian Robert J. Cooke.

The Wilmington Journal, the local daily newspaper supporting the Democratic Party, came out for secession early. Its competition, the Wilmington Herald, edited by local lawyer Alfred M. Waddell, was less sure.

The result of secession “may be a dreadful civil war, a civil war such as the civilized world has never seen,” the Herald editorialized.

Another local Unionist leader was George Davis, a lawyer who was prominent in the old Whig party. Davis was one of North Carolina’s five delegates to a massive peace conference, held Feb. 4-27 in Washington, in a last minute effort to work out a compromise.

Sometimes called the “Old Gentlemen’s Convention” from all the veteran politicians involved – former President John Tyler served as chairman – the meeting favored ideas proposed by Sen. John J. Crittenden of Kentucky. It drew up a constitutional amendment that, among other things, would ban the federal government from interfering with slavery anywhere it was presently established.

That amendment got nowhere in Congress, where it was opposed by both Republicans and Southern hardliners, who preferred to go ahead and secede.

Davis came home empty-handed. On March 2, he spoke at a public meeting in Wilmington, announcing that the Union could be preserved “only with dishonor to the South” and changed his stand to secession. Waddell announced his conversion to secession on Jan. 29.

On Feb. 28, 1861, North Carolina held a statewide referendum on whether or not to hold a secession convention. That move was rejected by a margin of 651 votes, out of 96,000 cast. In New Hanover County, however, the vote was 797 for a convention and 191 against.

At the same time, however, voters were asked to choose delegates to the convention in case it was approved. In that election, 74 of the delegates-to-be were Unionist and only 46 secessionist.

North Carolina still wasn’t ready to leave the Union. In the west, leaders like young Zebulon B. Vance were organizing huge anti-secession rallies.

The call for troops

“Fort Sumter had to happen first,” Watson said.

On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces opened fire on Fort Sumter, a coastal defense fort still held by a small U.S. Army garrison.

President Lincoln responded by trying to send a relief fleet to the fort, most of which didn’t arrive until after the garrison had surrendered on April 13. Then, on April 15, he called for 75,000 troops from the states to quell the “insurrection.”

This was the coercion the conditional Unionists could not stand. Their numbers quickly shifted to the Confederate camp.

“Fellow citizens,” Vance told one assembly after Lincoln’s call for troops, “I died last night a Union man. I am resurrected today a Secession man.”

On April 17, the U.S. secretary of war, Simon Cameron, telegraphed Gov. Ellis to request two regiments of militia from North Carolina. Ellis clearly relished his reply: “I can be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of the country and to this war upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North Carolina.”

The Confederacy, however, could get all the troops it wanted.

“Ellis began to behave as if North Carolina had already seceded,” Watson said.

He promptly ordered the seizure of all forts on the North Carolina coast. On April 15, Col. John L. Cantwell led the Wilmington Light Infantry, the German Volunteers, the Wilmington Rifle Guards and the Cape Fear Light Artillery in seizing forts Johnston and Caswell once again. This time, the militia stayed put. On April 20, the Charlotte Grays took the U.S. Mint in Charlotte, and on April 22, other militiamen seized the federal arsenal at Fayetteville.

Ellis, meanwhile, called the legislature back into session on May 1, 1861. It very quickly passed a bill calling for the assemblage of a 120-member convention with unrestricted powers.

The convention’s delegates were elected on May 13. The first session was scheduled for May 20.

Ellis would die suddenly on July 7, 1861, just seven weeks after secession. Zeb Vance would be elected governor in 1862. Alfred Moore Waddell would leave the newspaper business to serve in the Confederate cavalry, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Years late, he would re-emerge as a ringleader in the Wilmington “riot” of 1898.

And George Davis, the Wilmington lawyer who sought compromise, would become a Confederate senator and the last attorney general of the Confederacy.

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United Daughters of the Confederacy welcome guests to their Virginia headquarters

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Fort Fisher Chapter

From the Richmond Dispatch

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The March by E.L. Doctorow (book report)

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Kaye Lavin
Presented by Kaye Lavin  17 March 2011

As the War Between the States was moving toward its inevitable conclusion, General William Tecumseh Sherman marched 60,000 Union troops through Georgia and the Carolinas, leaving a 60-mile-wide trail of death, destruction, looting, thievery and chaos.  Sherman’s march produced hundreds of thousands of deaths and untold collateral damage.

In The March: A Novel, E.L. Doctorow has put his unique stamp on these events by staying close to historical fact, naming real people and places and then imagining the rest, as he did in Ragtime. In this powerful novel, Doctorow gets deep inside the pillage, cruelty and destruction—as well as the care and burgeoning love that sprung up in their wake. William Tecumseh Sherman (“Uncle Billy” to his troops) is depicted as a man of complex moods and varying abilities, whose need for glory sometimes obscures his military acumen. Sherman is a well-drawn character, pictured as a crazy tactical genius pitted against his West Point counterparts.

The characters depicted on the march are those people high and low, white and black, whose lives are forever changed by war. Most of the many characters are equally well-drawn and psychologically deep, including Pearl, a newly freed slave whose father was her former plantation master; Colonel Wrede Sartorius, a German born army surgeon; Arly and Will, two Confederate soldiers whose appearance and reappearance in Union and Confederate uniforms is both amusing and ultimately suspenseful; Stephen Walsh, a Union soldier who finds himself spending a lot of time with Pearl; and Emily Thompson, a dispossessed Southern white woman who ends up as a nurse to Dr. Sartorious.

Though his lyrical prose sometimes shades into sentimentality when it strays from what people are feeling or saying, Doctorow’s gift for getting into the heads of a remarkable variety of characters, famous or ordinary, make this a kind of grim Civil War Canterbury Tales. On reaching the novel’s last pages, the reader feels wonder that this nation was ever able to heal after so brutal, and personal, a conflict.

Information from reviews on Amazon.com

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The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (book Report)

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Fort Fisher Chapter
Presented by Kaye Lavin  17 Feb 2011

The Killer Angels: A Novel of the Civil War is a historical novel by Michael Shaara that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975. The book tells the story of four days of the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War: June 30, 1863, as the troops of both the Union and the Confederacy move into battle around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and July 1, July 2, and July 3, when the battle was fought.  The story is character driven and told from the perspective of various protagonists.  A film adaptation of the novel, titled Gettysburg, was released in 1993 ($4.99 dvd on Amazon).

Beginning with the famous section about Longstreet’s spy Harrison gathering information about the movements and positions of the Federals, each day is told primarily from the perspectives of commanders of the two armies, including Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet for the Confederacy, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and John Buford for the Union. Most chapters describe the emotion-laden decisions of these officers as they went into battle. Maps depicting the positioning of the troops as they went to battle, as they advanced, add to the sense of authenticity as decisions are made to advance and retreat with the armies. The author also uses the story of Gettysburg, one of the largest battles in the history of North America, to relate the causes of the Civil War and the motivations that led old friends to face each other on the battlefield.

Comparison

The novel is sometimes compared to Stephen Crane‘s The Red Badge of Courage for its depiction of the war, but Shaara emphasizes the decisions, motivations, and actions of generals and colonels in the battle more than the common soldiers. Shaara explained that he was aiming to produce an epic military study modeled after William Shakespeare‘s Henry V. His choice for a specific subject was inspired by a family vacation that Shaara took to the site of the battle in 1966. Shaara’s son Jeffrey Shaara expanded the story by adding a prequel, Gods and Generals and a sequel, The Last Full Measure.

Characters

Publication of The Killer Angels and release of the movie have had two significant influences on modern perceptions of the Civil War. First, the actions of Chamberlain and the 20th Maine Infantry on Little Round Top have achieved enormous public awareness. Visitors touring the Gettysburg Battlefield rank the 20th Maine monument as their most important stop. Second, since Shaara used the memoirs of General James Longstreet as a prime source for his history, the book has renewed the modern re-evaluation of Longstreet’s reputation, damaged since the 1870s by the Lost Cause writers, such as Jubal A. Early.

General H. Norman Schwarzkopf described The Killer Angels as “the best and most realistic historical novel about war that I have ever read.” The filmmaker Ken Burns has mentioned the influence of the book in developing his interest in the Civil War and his subsequent production of the PBS series on the subject.

Information from wickipedia.org

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War Time Medicine

Posted on February 4, 2011 by Fort Fisher Chapter 
(Presented on January 20, 2011 by Jennifer L. Beddoe)

The state of medicine in the 1860’s was bleak.  Most medical advances were made during, or after the War Between the States.  It has been said that the War Between the States was fought at the end of the “medical Middle Ages”, that is how backward medicine was during this time.

The Confederacy quickly saw the need for a recognized group of army doctors and established a medical corps right away.  Many doctors and surgeons who enlisted just to fight were quickly made officers and given the responsibility of caring for the sick and wounded troops.  Up until 1862 doctors were required to bring their own equipment, bandages, medicines, etc. but in 1862 the government realized the need to supply the doctors with the tools they needed.  Even with an established medical corps, there was no true organization of medical staff.  On July 1st, 1861, Samuel Preston Moore was appointed acting Surgeon General of the Confederacy.  He was an experienced physician and a regimented

Samuel Preston Moore

organized individual and immediately began turning things around.  He designed a barracks type hospital layout that is still used by the Army to this day.  He also increased the recruiting standards for doctors, employing an entrance exam that had to be passed before someone could enlist as a doctor.  He pushed for better sanitation and a uniform standard of care that all military doctors had to conform to.  He was able to get around the lack of medicines available because of blockades by creating laboratories that produced most of what was needed from plant materials that were indigenous to the South.  Moore transformed the medical corps into the most effective department in the Confederate Army and his leadership was responsible for saving thousands of lives.

There were two main causes of death for soldiers during the war.  The biggest cause of death was from illness.  Twice as many men died from illness then gunshot wounds.  The environment in the camps was horrible.  The dirty conditions, lack of good food, clothing or shelter led to dysentery, measles, small pox, pneumonia and malaria outbreaks that ran unchecked.  Because of the close quarters, it was almost impossible to avoid any illness that might be running through the camp.  Prison conditions were even worse.

The second major cause of death was from wounds suffered in battle.  Nothing was known about infections or the importance of keeping things clean and sterile.  Even a small wound could easily get infected and lead to death or amputation.

A gunshot wound in the torso, especially a serious one almost always resulted in death.  A serious wound to the arm or leg was dealt with in the only way the doctors knew – amputation. Chloroform was used routinely as an anesthetic and was very effective in reducing the trauma associated with the procedure.  When done correctly, the soldier would feel no pain, but not be fully knocked out.  Stonewall Jackson stated that he remembered the sound of the saw cutting through his arm but did not recall feeling any pain.  Good doctors could perform an amputation in less than 10 minutes and sometimes worked 20 hours a day.  It was not unusual to see a stack of limbs five feet high at the end of a day.  Doctors didn’t take the time to wash their hands or instruments between surgeries, but even in these unsanitary conditions approximately 75% of soldiers that had a limb amputated survived.

As far as medications, there were not many available at this time.  There was no such thing as antibiotics or vaccines.  Doctors did not even realize that germs caused disease.  Even so, pharmaceuticals played an important role during the war.  Doctors carried a small amount of medications with them at all times, and there were supply trucks that followed the troops with larger quantities of the commonly used items.  Chloroform and ether were used as anesthetics for amputations.  Morphine was used as a pain killer, in spite of its highly addictive properties.  Calomel, a mercury based substance was used as a tonic for constipation, dysentery and diarrhea.  Because its main component was mercury, it was highly toxic and its use was banned in 1863.  This caused great controversy among the military doctors.  Probably the most common ingredient in many of the medicines and tonics that were prescribed during this time was whiskey.  Other medicines that were carried by doctors included:

Hydrochloric acid (HCl) was used to stop severe bleeding; a solution was poured on the wound which burnt the skin causing great scarring and deformities but stopped the bleeding.  HCl is a very corrosive acid that is currently used to remove rust from steel and in other large scale cleaning projects.  It also has other industrial uses.

Other common medicines used during this time include:

  • Atropine – derived from jimson weed and used as an anesthetic when chloroform was not available
  • Alum – used to stop bleeding
  • Baking Soda – for upset stomach
  • Castor Oil and olive oil – for constipation
  • Citrine Ointment – mercury and nitric acid (both very toxic materials) used to cure syphilis
  • Creosote– embalming fluid and also as a laxative and cough treatment
  • Ipecac – to induce vomiting, comes from a plant native to Brazil whose name translates to “road side sick making plant”
  • Dover’s Powder – ipecac and opium, used to fight against colds and flu, made people sweat
  • Ginger – for stomach upset
  • Turpentine – topically it was used to rub on wounds, taken internally to fight parasites
  • Quinine – used to treat malaria, in short supply in the south so the bark of the dogwood tree was used as a substitute
  • Rochelle Salt – a type of salt which today is used in electronics was used as a laxative
  • Cerate – mixture of wax and lard, combined with herbs and used as an ointment

Col Eli LIlly

Because of the horrible conditions faced by doctors during the war, many went on to become pioneers in medical advancements.  For example, a Union officer named Eli Lilly developed a pharmaceutical company after the war that is today the 10th largest pharmaceutical company in the world and was the first company to mass produce penicillin.

The war also saw great advancements in embalming practices.  Since families wanted their deceased loved ones returned to them, doctors were called upon to develop methods for preserving the bodies for the trip home.

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CONFEDERATE GOLIATH, THE BATTLE OF FORT FISHER (book Report)

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Kaye Lavin

Since we are the Fort Fisher Chapter of the UDC, I think it is important that we all read at least one book on the Fort’s history, and I highly recommend this month’s selection – Confederate Goliath: The Battle of Fort Fisher by Rod Gragg, published 1991, winner of the prestigious Fletcher Pratt Award presented to the author or editor of the best non-fiction book about the Civil War published during the previous calendar year.

Confederate Goliath is the remarkable story of the men and women caught in one of the most dramatic events of the American Civil War -  the Battle of Fort Fisher.

Protector of Wilmington, North Carolina, the South’s last surviving seaport, Fort Fisher was the largest coastal fortification in the Confederacy.  Defended by a small but courageous force, in late 1864 and early 1865 the fort became the target of the greatest naval bombardment of the war – followed by a furious and bloody joint assault by thousands of Federal soldiers and sailors.

Gragg crisply recounts the two attempts to blow up and storm Fort Fisher, but rather than a battle narrative, he gives us insights into a place and a people. The story of Fort Fisher is told through a memorable cast of characters – General Benjamin F. Butler, perhaps the most controversial officer in the Northern army; Colonel William Lamb, the brilliant young Southerner who commanded the fort; the cool-headed Federal commander, General Alfred H. Terry, who was admired by Lincoln and handpicked by Grant; Confederate General W. H. C. Whiting, whose adversaries included an invading enemy army and his own superior, the hapless General Braxton Bragg; Rear Admiral David D. Porter, whose thirst for glory led to tragic results on a North Carolina beach – and through the experiences and heroic deeds of many junior officers and enlisted men on both sides.

Based on exhaustive research into official records, unpublished memoirs, diaries, letters, and numerous first-person accounts, Confederate Goliath includes more than fifty period photographs and maps.

It is a powerful, moving narrative, which reports for the first time one of the unforgettable events of America’s bloodiest war.

This award-winning book was made into an Emmy-nominated documentary, aired on public broadcast stations throughout the country, and brings this dramatic battle to life through archival photographs, stunning 35mm cinematography and interviews with leading Civil War historians Rod Gragg, Chris E. Fonville, Jr., and James I. Robertson,Jr.

Both book and DVD are available for sale at Fort Fisher, and the paperback version is available on Amazon for $14.96. Info sources: inside jacket cover & Amazon.com.

Presented 20 January 2011 by Kaye Lavin

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A Confederate Soldier’s Prayer

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Fort Fisher Chapter

This prayer which was found on the body of a Southern soldier
1861-1865 was offered as the invocation at our February meeting by Chaplin, Gayle Tabor.

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve,
I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.

I asked God for health, that I might do greater things,
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.

I asked for riches, that I might be happy,
I was given poverty, that I might be wise.

I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men,
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God.

I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life,
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.

I got nothing that I asked for
- but everything I had hoped for.

Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.
I am among men, most richly blessed.

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