Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (140 page)

11
. Most studies of this question list 23,000 deserters from North Carolina. This was more than a fifth of all Confederate deserters and nearly twice as many as from any other state. But working from samples of North Carolina regimental rosters, Richard Reid concluded that the total number of deserters from the state should be reduced to about 14,000. While still higher than any other state, this total would give North Carolina a desertion rate not appreciably greater than the average for all Confederate states. Reid, "A Test Case of the 'Crying Evil': Desertion among North Carolina Troops during the Civil War,"
North Carolina Historical Review
, 58 (1981), 234–62. But Reid's data are based primarily on the regiments enlisted during the first year of the war, and the records for many of these regiments are complete only through late 1864. Since desertion from later-organized regiments tended to be higher than from those formed early in the war, and since desertions increased disastrously in the last months of the conflict when it became clear that the war was lost, Reid's estimate of 14,000 deserters appears to be too low.

state resembled east Tennessee and West Virginia in socio-economic structure and unionist leanings. The inaccessibility of this region to northern armies, however, inhibited the development there of a significant unionist political movement before 1863. In that year the Order of the Heroes of America, a secret peace society, attained a large following in piedmont and upcountry North Carolina as war weariness and defeatism grew after Gettysburg. Thousands of deserters returned to the state, where in alliance with "tories" and draft-dodgers they gained virtual control of whole counties.
¹²

North Carolina's most powerful political leaders were Zebulon B. Vance and William W. Holden. An antebellum Whig and in 1861 a conditional unionist, Vance commanded a regiment in the Army of Northern Virginia before winning the governorship in 1862. Though he feuded with Davis over matters of state versus Confederate authority, Vance backed the war effort and continued to "fight the Yankees and fuss with the Confederacy" until the end.
¹³
Holden was of another stripe. Beginning his career as a Whig, he became a Democratic secessionist in the 1850s but broke with the party and resisted secession until the last moment in 1861. As editor of the Raleigh
North Carolina Standard
he championed civil liberties and attacked administration policies during the war. Emphasizing the rich man's war/poor man's fight theme, Holden won a large following among yeoman farmers and workingmen. His "Conservative party," composed mainly of old Whigs and conditional unionists, had supported Vance for governor on a platform of state sovereignty within the Confederacy. By the summer of 1863, however, Holden became convinced that the South could not win the war

12
. Georgia Lee Tatum,
Disloyalty in the Confederacy
(Chapel Hill, 1934), 107–35; William T. Auman and David D. Scarboro, "The Heroes of America in Civil War North Carolina,"
North Carolina Historical Review
, 58 (1981), 327–63; William T. Auman, "Neighbor against Neighbor: The Inner Civil War in the Randolph County Area of Confederate North Carolina,"
North Carolina Historical Review
, 61 (1984), 59–92.

13
. John G. Barrett,
The Civil War in North Carolina
(Chapel Hill, 1963), 242.

and that conscription, impressment, "military despotism," and economic ruin represented a greater threat to North Carolinians than reunion with the United States.

Aided by the Heroes of America, Holden and his associates organized more than a hundred antiwar meetings which adopted resolutions lifted from
Standard
editorials urging negotiations for an "honorable peace." What this meant was anybody's guess; to committed Confederates it looked like treason. One observer unsympathetic to Holden reported in August 1863 that at several peace meetings in the western part of the state "the most treasonable language was uttered, and Union flags raised." In September 1863 a War Department official noted that Holden's followers "are throwing off all disguises and have begun to hold 'Union' meetings in some of the western counties. . . . Reconstruction is openly advocated."
¹⁴
A brigade in Longstreet's corps en route to Bragg's army stopped in Raleigh on September 9 and plundered Holden's newspaper office, whereupon a mob of Holden's supporters next day demolished the office of Raleigh's pro-administration newspaper.

Against this background at least five and perhaps eight of the congressmen elected from North Carolina in 1863 were "reported to be in favor of peace." The meaning of this remained unclear, but after the elections Holden began to call for North Carolina to invoke its sovereignty and open separate negotiations with the North. He insisted that such a course would produce Confederate independence, but few took that seriously. As one of Holden's backers put it in a letter to Governor Vance, "we want this war stopped, we will take peace on
any terms
that are
honorable
. We would prefer our independence, if that were possible, but let us prefer
reconstruction
infinitely to
subjugation."
¹⁵

Vance had earlier vouched for Holden's loyalty, but by the end of 1863 he became convinced that the editor wanted to take North Carolina out of the Confederacy. This he could not tolerate. "I will see the Conservative party blown into a thousand atoms and Holden and his understrappers in hell," exclaimed the governor, "before I will consent to a course which I think would bring dishonor and ruin upon both state and Confederacy." Yet Vance could not move precipitately, for he

14
. J. C. McRae to Peter Mallett, Aug. 21, 1863, in
O.R.
, Ser. I, Vol. 29, pt. 2, p. 660; Younger, ed.,
Inside the Confederate Government
, 103–4.

15
. Tatum,
Disloyalty
, 125 and n.; "An Old Friend" to Vance, Jan. 2, 1864, in W. Buck Yearns and John G. Barrett, eds.,
North Carolina Civil War Documentary
(Chapel Hill, 1980), 296.

believed that a majority of North Carolinians supported Holden. So the governor sought Jefferson Davis's help to outflank the peace movement. In a letter to the president on December 30, Vance urged "some effort at negotiation with the enemy" to allay "the sources of discontent in North Carolina." Of course, added Vance hastily, the South could negotiate only on the basis of independence. If these "fair terms are rejected," as he expected them to be, "it will tend greatly to strengthen and intensify the war feeling, and will rally all classes to more cordial support of the government."
¹⁶

The Machiavellian subtlety of Vance's suggestion eluded Davis.
¹⁷
What possible good could an offer of peace achieve? he replied. It would merely be treated as a confession of weakness. "That despot" Lincoln had already made clear that the South could have peace only by "emancipating all our slaves, swearing allegiance and obedience to him and his proclamations, and becoming in point of fact the slaves of our own negroes." The true path to peace, Davis lectured Vance, was to continue the war "until the enemy is beaten out of his vain confidence in our subjugation." North Carolina must do her part in this struggle; instead of dallying with traitors, Vance must "abandon a policy of conciliation and set them at defiance."
¹⁸

Davis took his own advice. In a message to Congress on February 3, 1864, urging passage of the law to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, he said that such legislation was needed to deal with "citizens of well-known disloyalty" who were seeking to "accomplish treason under the form of the law." Holden knew this meant him. On February 24 he announced that he was suspending publication of the
Standard
because, he later explained, "if I could not continue to print as a free man I would not print at all."
¹⁹
But this did not stop the peace movement;

16
. Vance to W. A. Graham, Jan. 1, 1864, quoted in Richard E. Yates,
The Confederacy and Zeb Vance
(Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1958), 95; Vance to Davis, Dec. 30, 1863, in Rowland,
Davis
, VI, 141–42.

17
. It also eluded the astute Mary Boykin Chesnut and her husband James, who was Davis's aide de camp. They interpreted Vance's letter as a suggestion for accepting peace without victory, a death knell for the Confederacy. Woodward,
Chesnut's Civil War
, 527.

18
. Davis to Vance, Jan. 8, 1864, in Rowland,
Davis
, VI, 143–46.

19
.
Ibid.
, 165; Horace W. Raper, "William W. Holden and the Peace Movement in North Carolina,"
North Carolina Historical
Review, 31 (1954), 509–10. Holden resumed publication of the
Standard
in May.

on the contrary, a week later Holden announced his intention to run against Vance for governor in the midsummer election.

This was the most serious internal threat to the Confederacy so far. Most observers expected Holden to win. But Vance went on the offensive and in a clever campaign captured much of the peace vote on a war platform. "We all want peace," the spell-binding governor told audiences. The question was how to get it. Holden's plan for a separate state convention would lead North Carolina back into the Union. "Instead of getting your sons back to the plow and fireside, they would be drafted . . . to fight alongside of [Lincoln's] negro troops in exterminating the white men, women, and children of the South." The only way to obtain a real peace was "to fight it out
now"
and win the war despite its mismanagement by Richmond.
²⁰

Vance succeeded in pinning the reconstructionist label on Holden. A timely exposure late in the campaign of the Heroes of America as a treasonable organization secretly aiding Holden gave the editor's candidacy the
coup de grâce
. Few believed Holden's denial of any connection with the society. North Carolina soldiers at the front damned Holden for disgracing the state. "There has been a good many N. Carolinians shot in this army for desertion," wrote a private. "Old traitor Holden is Responsible for the most of it. . . . I think the N C soldiers passing through Raleigh on Furlough ought to stop and hang the old son of a bitch." On election day Vance smothered Holden, winning 88 percent of the soldier vote and 77 percent of the civilian vote. North Carolina remained safe for the Confederacy.
²¹

II

The signs of southern disaffection in the fall of 1863 encouraged Lincoln to announce a policy for the reconstruction of recanting Confederates. "Whereas it is now desired by some persons heretofore engaged in said rebellion to resume their allegiance to the United States, and to reinaugrate loyal State governments," declared the president in a proclamation on December 8, he offered pardon and amnesty to such persons

20
. Yearns and Barrett, eds.,
North Carolina Civil War Documentary
, 302–4.

21
. Richard Bardolph, "Inconstant Rebels: Desertion of North Carolina Troops in the Civil War,"
North Carolina Historical Review
, 41 (1964), 184. See also Marc W. Kruman,
Parties and Politics in North Carolina
, 1836–1865 (Baton Rouge, 1983), 249–65.

who took an oath of allegiance to the United States and to all of its laws and proclamations concerning slavery. (Confederate government officials and high-ranking military officers were exempted from this blanket offer of amnesty.) Whenever the number of persons in any state taking the oath reached 10 percent of the number of voters in 1860, this loyal nucleus could form a state government which would be recognized by the president. To Congress, of course, belonged the right to decide whether to seat the senators and representatives elected from such states.
²²

This deceptively simple document grew from multiple layers of experience and debate during the previous two years. By the end of 1863 a consensus existed among Republicans that the pieces of the old Union could not be cobbled together. One piece lost but not lamented was slavery; another that must go was the prominent role played in southern politics by the old state's-rights secessionists. Beyond this, however, a spectrum of opinions could be found in the Republican party concerning both the process and substance of reconstruction.