On the twentieth of May 1861, in the Senate chamber of the State House in Raleigh, with the stroke of W. H. Edward's pen, the Ordinance of Secession severed the relations between North Carolina and "the other states united with her in the compact of government entitled the Constitution of the United States."(1) Almost exactly eleven years earlier, in the United States Congress, Edward Stanly of North Carolina had ended his speech in support of the Compromise of 1850 with "this Union can not be, shall not be destroyed."(2)
Why did public attitudes in North Carolina shift form traditionally conservative, mildly states rights, Unionism to active support for disunion and secession? The answer is politics, more specifically the collapse of national Whiggery and the resultant isolation of the Unionist Whig party in North Carolina.
Geography, Race, Wealth, and Political Background
North Carolinians, like their South Carolina cousins were influenced by the state's geography. The state is divided into three distinct geographical areas; the coastal plain or the East; the Piedmont; and the mountainous West(3).
The 36 counties of the East, consisting of the costal counties, the costal plain and the Sandhills, were the most populous and the wealthiest part of the state. Ten of its counties (Warren, Halifax, Franklin, Edgecomb, Northampton, Bertie, Pitt, Greene, Lenior, and Jones) had slave populations that were 50 to 70% of the total population. In the other 26 counties, slaves were 25 to 50% of the total population -- thus making the East the 'blackest' part of the state and the most sympathetic to the defense of slavery. However, the plantation system had only been marginally successful in the East. According to the Census of 1860, only 8.5% of the arable land was employed in the production of the Southern agricultural triumvirate of cotton, tobacco and rice. The majority of farms were held by prosperous yeomen farmers(4) -- mostly of English descent except the Scots in Cumberland and Moore counties. The region's farms led the state with an average value of $2138 and the highest average per capita income ($836). The East was a traditional stronghold of the Democratic party in the state, with the exception being the northeastern counties bordering on Virginia. These costal counties were very conservatively Whig and Unionist due to the keen local support for national harbor and waterway improvements.
The Piedmont could be termed North Carolina's transitional region. While slavery was well represented in this region, only three of the 31 Piedmont counties (Caswell on the Virginia border; Anson and Richmond on the South Carolina line) had slave populations of 50 to 70% of the population. The average slave population through the region was 24.4% of the total population -- with several counties (Cleveland, Union, Stanly, Montgomery, Moore, Randolph, Davidson, Forsythe, Guilford and Stokes) falling below 25%.
The white population of the Piedmont was also less homogenous than that of the East, with many German and Scots-Irish immigrants. The manufacture of textiles was increasing, with 30 mills throughout the region (the East, in contrast, had seven, all in Cumberland County). However, as was true throughout the state, the predominate social class was the independent yeoman farmer. The Piedmont was significantly less prosperous than the East, with an average farm value of $1729 and per capita income of $679. Politically, the Piedmont was traditionally Whig, with areas of Democratic strength.
The twenty Western counties were the least populous and poorest in the state. The area's counties were the 'whitest.' The density of slaves was far less than 25% of the region's total population. The yeoman farmers of the West were also far poorer, with an average farm value of $1354 and a regional per capita income of $345. Haywood County provides an example of the typical Western county. Less than 6,000 whites (61 of whom were slave holders) and 313 black slaves populated the county in 1860, making blacks .052% of the population.(5) The West was, through the 1840s, the stronghold of Whiggery in the state(6), with even far less enthusiasm for slavery and aristocracy.
Slavery had slightly declined in North Carolina since 1790. In that year, 31% of the state's families held slaves. In 1850, the number had dropped to 26.8% and by 1860 it had risen modestly to 27.7%.(7) This compares with 27.3% in Virginia and 47.1% for South Carolina in 1860.(8)
Historically, North Carolinians had tempered their Unionism with a healthy dose of state sovereignty. It took two state conventions -- the Hillsboro convention of 1788 and the Fayetteville Convention of 1789 -- to overcome concerns over federalism and ratify the Constitution.(9)
The first major slavery crisis, the Missouri Compromise and the controversy of 1819-1820 caused barely a ripple in the political ponds of North Carolina. Newspaper editorial discussion of the compromise debates was restrained and the state legislature passed no thundering polemics against Northern interference in Southern affairs.(10)
The 1830s & 1840s-- the rise of Tarheel Whiggery.
The Jacksonian period brought the Whig / Opposition party into legislative power in North Carolina, where, in contrast to the rest of the South, Whiggery was seen as the party of the non slave holder and the Democratic party became identified with the elitist slave owner. Internal demands for increased direct participation in government were addressed by the new Whig majority with the reforms of the Constitutional convention of 1835, which did lower property qualifications for the franchise and increased direct participation through direct gubernatorial election. By the presidential election of 1836, the state legislature was solidly dominated by the Whigs; though Governor Edward Dudley, the first directly elected governor, was a Jacksonian Democrat. In 1840, the Whigs succeeded in capturing the governorship and would hold it for throughout the rest of the decade.(11) Increasing disenchantment with Andrew Jackson, however, did not mean that North Carolina was swayed by John C. Calhoun's strident disunionist rhetoric during the Nullification Crisis of 1831-32. The state's newspapers reflect no great impassioned support for South Carolina(12), nor did the legislature show any. In an admirable show of fence straddling, the legislature passed a resolution that first condemned South Carolina's nullification of the tariff and then continued by condemning Jackson and the Force Bill.(13)
The relatively conservative nature of the state's wings of the sectionalized national Whig and Democratic parties allowed for a high degree of unanimity in dealing with both sectional and national issues. Both Whigs and Democrats in North Carolina's Congressional delegation supported President Polk's decision to go to war with Mexico, but the NC Whig solons did not spare the President from criticism, despite the war's alleged character as a 'slave power conspiracy.'(14) The crisis over the Wilmot Proviso in 1846 and the ensuing congressional debates were marked by increased political argument throughout the state. The Proviso was perceived by the increasingly vocal states' rights faction of the Democrats(15) as an outrageous attack on Southern institutions. North Carolina's Southern Democratic leaders, like William H. Holden, the editor of the North Carolina Standard, began to echo, ever so softly in comparison to the Deep South's 'fire-eaters', the pro-slavery arguments of the most radical Southern Democrats. Ironically, David Wilmot was a Van Burenite Democrat, who represented the faction of Jackson's handpicked successor -- both as President and as party leader.
North Carolina's Whigs were also beginning to feel the stresses caused by the increasingly more vocal 'free-soil' Northern Whigs. The party's flagship newspaper, the Raleigh Standard, editorialized during the Wilmot debates that North Carolina would only join a southern confederacy if she were threatened by direct Federal involvement in her internal affairs.(16) This editorial statement is not only interesting for its seeming acceptance of the possibly of disunion under proper circumstances, but also for how it exposes the essential weakness of the sectionalized antebellum national political parties. Calhoun, during the Nullification Crisis, had quite rightly realized that no strong national party could be used as a vehicle to threaten disunion (thereby preserving Southern rights and slavery), since its very national make-up would dilute even the most resolute Southern minority. During Andrew Jackson's presidency, Jackson himself had served as the catalyst that unified both parties, both his own Democrats and the opposition Whigs. By the mid-1840s, however, the unifying effect of Jackson on both parties had waned and both had begun to coalesce into Northern and Southern wings, which generally had formerly agreed on national issues -- but now, sectional concerns were becoming national political issues.
North Carolinians' reaction to Calhoun's caucus of Southern solons opposing the California and New Mexico bills was underwhelming. When Calhoun issued his "Southern Address" in January 1849, only two North Carolina members of Congress signed it and it was largely ignored throughout the state, even in the Democratic press. The Whig Raleigh Register, in its editorial of June 22, 1849, pointed out that both California and New Mexico were unsuited to slavery and there was no point in dissolving the Union over such an essentially trivial matter, except to gratify Calhoun. This remarkably practical sentiment, coming from a Southern paper, seems almost more suited to a conservative Northern Democratic paper. The state's Democrats were no more inclined to flock to Calhoun's banner of slavery, states-rights and disunion, as William H. Haywood wrote:
"No: Car. can never be for disunion because Congress does not consent to allow her slaves to go to California & be slaves still. The politicians who make that experiment upon our People will be wofully [sic] disappointed in the end."(17)
During the congressional elections of 1848, the state Democratic party made states-rights and pro-slavery Southern sectionalism the statewide issue. Because the Democrats ran a one issue campaign in which they failed to convince North Carolinians that these regional issues outweighed both national and state issues, the Whigs maintained their majority. A survey of letters and statements in Whig papers, however, suggests that the two state parties' positions were extremely similar on the issue. Based on letters written to Whig papers both during and after the election, North Carolina Whigs were becoming increasingly sectional partisans -- Southern Whigs. While few could be described as pro-slavery "fire-eaters," the constant, albeit lukewarm, theme seems to be that North Carolina should act in concert with the rest of the South.(18)
While the Democrats had not made any political gains in North Carolina's legislature or Congressional delegation, they had in made significant gains throughout the South, capturing all seven governors' races held that year (including North Carolina), and gaining congressional seats in four states, most notably in Virginia. Throughout the region, the Whigs had lost their political momentum. The party's national platform in the 1848 election had been to run the Mexican War hero Zachary Taylor as a man above party. Taylor had shrewdly run his campaign to appeal to a wide spectrum of voters and had tried to create a 'nonparty' administration.(19) Taylor's partisans were actually attempting more than most Whigs had planned on. His partisans sought the creation of a new political party to replace what they considered moribund Whiggery -- a "republican" party.(20) Taylor's policy, especially his patronage policies, seriously undermined his support among the party faithful in both sections and alienated both Northern and Southern Whig leaders.
Convention, Compromise Collapse and Recovery: The 1850s.
The opportunity for action in concert that followed was the call by the Southern Democrats for a Southern Convention in Nashville in June 1850, which again initially received little support throughout the state.(21) The Southern Rights activists throughout the state sought to use the increasing regional focus on the Nashville Convention to create a major political furor in North Carolina. At first, this seemed futile. The state was still solidly Whig and Southern Whigs had seized upon the Convention as a Southern Democratic secessionist ploy, even as the Compromise of 1850 was being constructed in Congress. Whig politicians and papers placed heavy emphasis on the state's overall lack of vital interest in the extension of slavery into New Mexico and California. In his speech of March 6, 1850, Congressman Edward Stanly spoke out against disunion by flatly stating the North Carolina did not object to the admittance of either California or New Mexico as free states, ending his speech with "this Union can not be, shall not be, destroyed."(22) The Fayetteville, NC North Carolina Argus editorialized that its readers were:
". . . heartily sick of the everlasting twaddle about the South -- the South -- that word of talismanic charm with Southern demagogues . . . In the name of dignity and self-respect, let us forebear against further gasconading."(23)
Still, the state's Southern' Rights radicals were not idle either. Prominent activists like the renegade Whig, Representative Thomas L. Clingman(24) organized Southern Rights conventions throughout the state, which became local battlegrounds between the various factions of States Rights and Unionist Whigs and Democrats over the propriety of North Carolina's participation in the convention. The increasing public awareness of the debates in Congress over the Compromise gradually overcame any pro-Convention momentum in the state. By May, even Holden, its most outspoken supporter, considered the Convention "dead."(25) Many delegates elected by the various local conventions went as far as to publicly state they would not attend. When the Convention convened, North Carolina was not represented.
The death of President Taylor on July 18, 1850 not only assured the passage of the Compromise of 1850, but also the temporary resurgence of the Whig party both throughout the South and in North Carolina. Millard Fillmore's championing of the Compromise, however, seriously fractured party loyalty among Northern Whigs, especially among the increasingly vocal 'free-soil' faction. Democrats were also split along sectional lines - with Southern Democrats opposing the Compromise. Both Southern Whigs and Northern 'party' Democrats, in supporting the compromise appealed that they were trying to save the Union. Southern Democrats saw the compromise as an insidious attack upon slavery and Southern rights, while the anti slavery Democrats revolted against the effort to enforce party discipline over principle.
The North Carolina's Congressional delegation's votes were pro-Compromise and conservatively pro-Southern, except the Democratic members (Ashe, Daniel, and Venable), who voted against most of the various provisions of the Compromise. The Whig members (except Clingman) voted in the majority on every item except the admission of California and the abolition of the slave trade in the Federal District.
Predictably there was heated editorializing on the editorial pages of the state's newspapers during the debates. The tone of the papers, however, was remarkably temperate compared to that of South Carolina. In Stanly's own district, for example, the Democratic New Bern Eastern Carolina Republican called on the voters to petition him to resign over his 'Union' speech. South Carolinians would not have been so calm. The May 17, 1850 Wilmington Journal provides an accurate appraisal of the attitude of most North Carolinians toward the final compromise:
"Perhaps this compromise is not all that Southern men could desire. In some respects it is not; but we believe the question is now narrowed down to this -- compromise or disunion. There is no use in deceiving ourselves. . . . To sum up all, this report and the bills accompanying it will be vehemently opposed by gentlemen form the extremes of both sections; but we think it will finally pass, and with some slight modifications, will be, if not acceptable, at least acquiesced in by the people of the country."(26)
Fillmore had signed the Fugitive Slave Law as part of the Compromise in the hopes of pacifying pro-slavery elements. In the immediate post-Compromise period, Southern Democrats tried to make a disunionist casus belli out of the anticipated failure of the Northern states to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law rigorously. In fact, no sooner was the ink dry on the Compromise than the Southern Democratic press throughout North Carolina begin to make the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law a bellwether for disunion. This sentiment was the opening argument in an increasingly strident campaign waged by disunionist partisans throughout the state. In November 1850 a series of "Southern' resolutions were introduced into both the House of Commons and the Senate by both Whigs and Democrats -- the more radical of which affirmed the right of secession and called on the state to take that course should the Fugitive Slave Law not be scrupulously enforced or be repealed. These resolutions frightened the legislature's conservative Whigs and the Unionist Democrats.
The final Senate resolutions of January 1851 reflected the state's dichotomy. The minority report of the Joint Committee resolved that (1) the Constitution was a union of sovereign states and (2) North Carolina had a right to withdraw from the Union. The first resolution passed 27 to 20; the second resolution failed, 31 to 16, with Unionist Democrats crossing the aisle to vote no. The House of Commons was never able to pass either any disunionist resolutions or any supporting the Compromise.(27)
During the Congressional campaigns of 1851 the Southern Democrats again ran on the issues of states rights, slavery and disunion. As in 1848, this platform failed to find favor with the voters. The Whigs maintained their seats and the Democrats' failure caused them to moderate their post election positions. In the state elections of the next year, however, the Democrats took an entirely different approach. They adopted the Whig position of defending the Compromise while emphasizing suffrage reform. They were successful in splitting yeomen farmers away from Whiggery and establishing themselves as the party of the common man, while maintaining a conservative pro-slavery stance. Governor David Reid, the first Democratic governor in ten years, was reelected and the party took control of the House of Commons. The Whigs retained a narrow majority in the Senate.(28)
The mortal blow to national Whiggery was the 1852 presidential campaign. The split between the northern 'free soil' Whigs and the southern faction resulted in a convention upset. Fillmore, who was loathed by northern Whigs for the odious Fugitive Slave Law, failed to secure his party's renomination. Northern Whigs took control of the convention and nominated Winfield Scott in his place. Scott was defeated by Franklin Pierce, whose silence on slavery made him acceptable to both northern and southern Democrats.
The schism in the Whig party was not healed by Pierce's victory. Over the next two years, the national party began to collapse as 'free soil' Whigs moved toward the nascent Republican party and the nativist American (or "Know Nothing") Party. In North Carolina, however, the state Whig party (which often acted in concert with the American party) remained a viable political force. Analysis of Whig voting correlation coefficients in the years 1848-1860 indicates that voting patterns remained constant in North Carolina.(29) While the Democrats' repositioned themselves as the party of the common man and exploited their public relations coup over the North Carolina Railroad,(30) the party also managed to keep intact the unbalanced apportionment that favored the East. Democrats also prevented any tax reform, especially on the crucial issue of taxing slave property at full value.
The major national crisis of the mid-1850s, the Kansas-Nebraska controversy, produced little heat in North Carolina. Both the state's parties supported the bill as a matter of regional solidarity.
"When, on one or two former occasions, -- after advancing the suggestion that the introduction of the Nebraska bill was premature, and expressing our well-grounded opinion of the motives of Douglas, the demagogue, in bringing it forward, -- we affirmed that since the issue had been raised, the South would be united . . . "(31)
The Kansas-Nebraska controversy was seen as a tactical victory by most Southern Democrats, since it preserved slavery in the territories. Unfortunately, as North Carolina Whigs predicted, it would also rouse the forces of Northern abolitionists, an outcome that they laid at the feet of their Southern Democratic opponents:
". . .The proposition to repeal the Missouri Compromise act will not fail to awaken the smothered fires of political anti-slavery from Maine to Iowa, with all its fearful consequences to the peace and happiness of the country. . . .
"This bill, at all events, will be the rallying cry for another anti-slavery agitation which will throw all that have preceded it in the shade. . . .
"Because the ambitious political aspirants of the democratic party would not suffer it to be so deferred. They want more agitation; they court it, and they mean to have it, that they may:
"'Ride the whirlwind and direct the storm.'"(32)
At the national political level, the Kansas-Nebraska controversy saw the final collapse of Whiggery and the absorption of most northern Whigs into the Republican party. The Democratic party was itself so severely fractionalized that its Northern and Southern wings became, for all intents, two parties.
In contrast to the collapse of their national party, North Carolina Whigs began to regain their political momentum after 1856. Whig political strategists realized that there was a great deal of grass-roots dissatisfaction with 'privilege' and 'aristocracy' within the state that manifested itself as tax resistance and anger at the corruption of the Buchanan administration(33). Whigs took up the banner of tax reform by attacking the Democrats on the "ad valorem" slave tax issue(34) and corruption. The Whig / American opposition made a strong showing in the 1860 gubernatorial race, with the Democratic candidate, John W. Ellis, winning only by a slim margin. Many Whigs were certain that they would crush the Democrats electorally in the 1862 elections. One Whig wrote "We have lost . . . by such a small vote -- but yet all the prestige of success is ours. . . . One more such a day & they are ruined. So may it be."(35)
The Election of 1860 and the Secession Crisis.
With the national party gone, however, North Carolina's Whigs and their American and Democratic Unionist allies had no real options during the 1860 presidential campaign. Supporting Lincoln and the Republican party, which was the only party sufficiently strong enough to carry the North, was unthinkable for a Southerner. The Democratic party, after the walk out of the Southern delegates to its Baltimore convention, had fractured into a northern party, which chose Stephen A. Douglas and a southern party whose candidate was former Vice President John C. Breckinridge. The Douglas Democrats endorsed a party platform that left the issue of slavery in the territories up to popular sovereignty. The Breckinridge Democrats' platform called for positive federal protection of slavery in the territories.
North Carolina's Whigs, with no national party organization, joined the coalition of border and upper South Whigs and Unionists in the Constitutional Union party, whose nominee was John Bell. Northern Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, who was seen by Southerners as a "black Republican" abolitionist.
The election of 1860 was actually two presidential elections, one in the South between Bell and Breckinridge, and one in the North between Douglas and Lincoln. Electorally, no Southern candidate could have won enough electoral votes to win, so the real race was between Douglas and Lincoln. Southern Unionists' best hope was that Bell would draw enough votes to send the election into the House of Representatives. There, it was hoped that moderation would prevail.
The Southern Democratic effort was even more vain. Throughout the South, the radical disunionist 'fire-eaters' did not actively support the far more moderate Breckinridge, who did not publicly advocate secession. The most radical actually wanted a 'black Republican' victory as their casus belli for disunion. North Carolina's Democrats were further split by a schism in their own ranks. Governor Ellis, despite his personal support of secession, publicly supported Breckinridge, while the fiery editor of the Standard, William Holden, initially supported Douglas. Holden had broken with the state Democrats in 1856, when he had failed to convince the party leadership that his efforts as its fiercest editorial partisan had earned him the gubernatorial nomination. Holden reversed himself and supported Breckinridge after Douglas' ill-considered anti secession "coercion speech" in Raleigh during the campaign.(36)
Throughout the campaign, the state's Whigs held Unionist rallies under the guise of the Bell campaign. While most North Carolinians were still convinced that a Lincoln administration would be anti Southern and abolitionist, these rallies effectively consolidated Unionist sentiment. Despite Lincoln's victory, there was no popular support for secession based purely on a Republican presidency.(37)
Throughout the winter of 1860/61, North Carolina, along with the rest of the Upper and Border South, tried to strike a middle course between secession and Union. As the first seven Deep South states, led by South Carolina, seceded and the Montgomery Convention began the work of organizing a Southern confederacy, North Carolinian secessionists found themselves walking an increasingly difficult middle ground. On January 29, 1861, the General Assembly passed a bill authorizing a public referendum on a secession convention. Despite heavy support from prominent Unionists who felt that they could control a convention, the question was defeated, 47, 648 votes to 46, 346.(38)
The furor over the Federal Arsenal in Fayetteville and the forts at the mouth of the Cape Fear was a microcosm of the state's schizophrenic position. In October 1860, Fayetteville's Mayor, Archibald McLean, and a number of prominent citizens, made an unusual request of the Arsenal's long-term commander, Captain James Bradford. They requested that he ask the War Department for troops to secure the Arsenal against an unspecified threat. Bradford, who may have had secessionist leanings, refused to do so.(39) McLean then took the even more unusual step of communicating this request directly to the Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, who ordered General Winfield Scott to send a company of the 2nd Artillery Regiment from New York to Fayetteville. When Governor Ellis discovered this, he immediately requested that the troops be withdrawn and Floyd indicated he would do so(40). Ellis then began to worry about the strategic Cape Fear forts, Johnston and Caswell and whether Washington intended to garrison them.(41) Plans were made to seize them, and the Arsenal in Fayetteville, should the state secede.
On the January 9, 1861, troops of the 30th Regiment of the state militia from Wilmington, led by secessionist Colonel John L. Cantwell, prematurely seized the two forts and occupied them on the basis of a rumor that the Federal government had already ordered troops south to garrison them. Ellis, realizing that this could have immense political repercussions for the secessionists, ordered the forts returned immediately. He then wrote President Buchanan, explaining that the forts had been seized through a "popular uprising" and seeking assurances that the government did not intend to garrison the forts. Secretary of War Floyd assured him that Buchanan did not intend to.(42)
Correspondence between Governor Ellis, Senator Clingman and Confederate President Jefferson Davis(43) during this period shows that these men were convinced that North Carolina must secede and join the Confederacy, but the overwhelming Unionist sentiment throughout the populace was inimical to secession, unless, as the prophetic editorialist of the Register had predicted during the Wilmot Proviso crisis, the Federal government acted in a way that threaten North Carolina's domestic affairs. North Carolinians were not disposed to follow South Carolina's lead without cause:
"We should never leave the Union on account of South Carolina. We should not follow the lead of such a domineering State. If we have to leave the Union, we should not be dragged out by a State whose citizens consider themselves to be our superiors in every respect."
The spark that turned Unionism into reluctant disunion came on April 15, 1861 when President Lincoln requested North Carolina supply two regiments of militia in the wake of the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter, in Charleston, SC. North Carolinians were stunned. The state's Unionists might disagree over the legality of secession, but the idea that the Federal government would use armed force to coerce their fellow Southerners succeeded where disunionist rhetoric had failed. One of the state's most prominent Unionists, Zebulon B. Vance, a fiery Whig congressman from the West, was addressing a Unionist rally when the word of Lincoln's levy reached him.
"For myself, I will say that I was canvassing for the Union with al my strength; I was addressing a large and excited crowd, large numbers of whom were armed, and literally had my arm extended upward in pleading for peace and the Union of our Fathers, when the telegraphic news was announced of the firing on Sumter and [the] President's call for seventy-five thousand volunteers. When my hand came down from that impassioned gesticulation, it fell slowly and sadly by the side of a Secessionist."(44)
Millions of other Tarheels agreed with him. On April 17, Governor Ellis called a special session of the General Assembly, which met on May 1. The legislature scheduled elections for a convention for May 13. The delegates met on May 20, 1861 and passed the final ordinance unanimously that same day.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Joseph C. Sitterson, The Secession Movement in North Carolina, (Chapel Hill, UNC Press, 1939)
Bill Cecil-Frousman, Common Whites; Class and Culture in Antebellum North Carolina, (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1992).
James Boykin, North Carolina in 1861, (NY: Bookman Association, 1961)
Daniel W. Crofts, Reluctant Confederates; Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis, (Chapel Hill: UNC, 1989).
Hugh Talmadge Lefler and Albert Ray Newsome, The History of a Southern State; NORTH CAROLINA, 3RD edition, (Chapel Hill: UNC, 1973).
William Freehling , Road to Disunion; Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854, (NY: Oxford, 1990).
Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s, (NY: Norton, 1978).
Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men; The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War, (NY: Oxford, 1970).
Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution; Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South, (NY: Vintage, 1989)
Bruce Levine, Half Slave and Half Free; The Roots of the Civil War, (NY: Hill & Wang, 1994).
Guion Griffis Johnson, Antebellum North Carolina; A Social History, (Chapel Hill: UNC, 1937).
Somerset Publishers, Inc., Encyclopedia of North Carolina, (NY: Somerset, 1992).
William C. Harris, North Carolina and the Coming of the Civil War, (Raleigh, Dept of Archives and History, 1988)
Bvt. Lieut. Col. Robert N. Scott, Ed., The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of The Official Records of The Union And Confederate Armies, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1880, 129 Series: Carmel, IN: Guild Press, 1996; CD-ROM).
Frontis W. Johnston, Ed., The Papers of Zebulon Baird Vance,; Volume I 1843-1862,(Raleigh, NC: State of NC, 1963).
Richard D. Starnes, "The Stirring Strains of Dixie: The Civil War and Southern Identity in Haywood County, in The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. LXXIV, No. 3, July 1997 (Raleigh, NC: NC Division of Archives and History), 237-259.
John C. Inscoe, Mountain masters, Slavery, and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina, (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1989).
1. Ordinance of Secession, May 20, 1861, Raleigh, NC.
2. Quoted in Joseph C. Sitterson, The Secession Movement in North Carolina, (Chapel Hill, UNC, 1939), 67-68.
3. Additional demographic and economic information is taken from Guion Griffis Johnson, Antebellum North Carolina, (Chapel Hill: UNC, 1937) Chapters II-IV and is based on those of the US Census Office, Statistics of the United States (including mortality, property, &c.), (Washington: 1866).
4. Farmers accounted for 45.5% of the population of NC in 1860, while only 0.6% (121 individuals) gave their occupation as "planter." Johnson, Antebellum NC, 55. Another measure of the lack of importance of the traditional planter class in antebellum NC is found in the Raleigh Register's breakdown of the 1834 General Assembly, with 145 out of 199 being farmers. Ibid, 63.
5. Richard D. Starnes, "The Stirring Strains of Dixie: The Civil War and Southern Identity in Haywood County, in The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. LXXIV, No. 3, July 1997 (Raleigh, NC: NC Division of Archives and History), 240.
6. In the presidential election of 1844, the Whig candidate, Henry Clay, carried every Western county with a majority. John C. Inscoe, Mountain masters, Slavery, and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina, (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1989), 183-184.
7. Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s, (NY: Norton, 1978), 289. Holt uses figures derived from James A. McPherson's The Negro's Civil War, (NY: Vintage Books, 1965) and James G. Randall & David Donald, The Civil War and Reconstruction (2nd ed. Rev.;Boston: Heath & Co., 1968 gives a percentage of 29.1%. Johnson's figures are the same as those of the census.
8. These are Holt's figures. I did not have access to census data for these states.
9. Hugh Talmadge Lefler and Albert Ray Newsome, The History of a Southern State; NORTH CAROLINA, 3RD edition, (Chapel Hill: UNC, 1973), 283-285
10. Sitterson, The Secession Movement in NC, 30.
11. John Morehead (1841-1845); William Graham (1845-49); and Charles Manly (1849-1851). Encyclopedia of North Carolina, (NY: Somerset, 1992), 159-163.
12. Sitterson, 31. The Raleigh Standard of Sept. 29, 1836, itself a partisan Democratic party organ, railed against Southern Democrat aristocrats / Calhounist Nullifiers and its Whig / Opposition foes in its editorial which stated "Republican farmers look at this! See the estimation you are held in by the nullifiers and federalists. It has ever been their doctrine that the 'common people' . . . incapable and unfit to manage Government matters -- ..."Johnson, Antebellum NC, 75.
15. I will characterize the pro-slavery North Carolina Democrats that sympathized with radical Southern disunionists, or were themselves disunionists, as 'Southern Democrats' to differentiate them from 'Union' Democrats -- who might be pro-slavery, but were anti-secession.
17. W.H. Haywood to Martin Van Buren, May 30, 1849, quoted in Sitterson, 50.
21. Only Holden's Standard approved of the Nashville Convention, saying that if Congress was to attack the institution of slavery, North Carolina should challenge.
22. Quoted in Sitterson, 67-68.
23. North Carolina Newspapers File, Cumberland County Public Library, Fayetteville, NC.
24. Clingman is notable for several aspects. Along with A.W. Granville, Democrat, Granville County, he was North Carolina's 'fire-eater' in a House delegation noted for its conservative nature. A Whig, he transformed himself from into a 'fire-eater' after his failure to win reelection in 1845 when he was accused of being anti-slavery. He was reelected in 1847. He also represented a Western district with a very low incidence of slave holders. He became a Southern Rights Democrat in the mid-1850s when a Democratic majority made his goal of becoming a Senator possible,. Sitterson, 65, 88 and Inscoe, Mountain Masters, 184-186.
25. Holden to David S. Reid, June 1, 1850. Quoted in Sitterson, 62.
26. Furman University 19th Century Documents Project (http://www.furman.edu/ ~benson/docs/).
28. William C. Harris, North Carolina and the Coming of the Civil War, (Raleigh, Dept of Archives and History, 1988), 19. Daniel
29. Daniel Crofts, Reluctant Confederates; Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis, (Chapel Hill: UNC, 1989). 55-59.
30. Whigs consistently supported this project and their votes made it possible, but since it was constructed under Democratic governors W. H. Holden managed to project it as a Democratic effort. Crofts, Reluctant Confederates, 61.
31. Furman University 19th Century Documents Project (http://www.furman.edu/~benson/docs/); North CarolinaRegister, Raleigh, NC: 22 February 1854.
32. Furman University 19th Century Documents Project: North Carolina Register, Raleigh, NC 1 February 1854.
33. Taxes had increased over 300% from 1854 to 1860.
34. Slave taxes were set on a per capita basis, excluded certain slaves and were linked to the capitation tax on white males between 21 and 45. This favored slave holders and insured taxpayers could only raise the taxes on slaves by raising their own taxes. This enraged non-slave holders. Crofts, 61.
36. Harris, NC and the Coming of the Civil War, 31-32.
38. The support of Unionists like Zebulon B. Vance for a secession convention make these numbers interesting. Obviously some of the 'yes' votes reflect those of Unionists who wanted a convention in order to engage and defeat the state's disunionists. Of the 120 possible delegates elected (although the convention was defeated), 80 were Unionists. Harris, 45.
39. Bradford, who had commanded the Arsenal for almost all of its existence, resigned from the Army after the post-secession seizure of the Arsenal and served as its Confederate commander. Notes 39-41 are referenced in note 42.
40. The company, however, did in fact move to Fayetteville and was present when the Arsenal was seized by State militia on April 15, 1861. The unit was allowed to depart the state with all arms and equipment.
41. There was one ordnance sergeant caretaker at each fort.
42. Bvt. Lieut. Col. Robert N. Scott, Ed., The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of The Official Records of The Union And Confederate Armies, . Washington: Government Printing Office, 1880, 129 Series: Carmel, IN: Guild Press, 1996 (CD-ROM) (hereafter referred to as O.R.s), Series I-- Volume 1 [S# 1] Chapter V ,Correspondence and Orders Relating to Affairs in North Carolina from October 20, 1860, to May 20, 1861, 481-487.
43. O.R.s, Series I-- Volume 1 [S# 1] Chapter V, 486 and Series I--Volume LI/2 [S# 108, Confederate Correspondence, Orders, And Returns Relating To Operations In Maryland, Eastern North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia (Except Southwestern), And West Virginia.--#1, 3-17.
44. Letter, Z. B. Vance to Mrs Z. B. Vance, June 19, 29, July 21, 1861, quoted in Frontis W. Johnston, Ed., The Papers of Zebulon Baird Vance,; Volume I 1843-1862, (Raleigh, NC: State of NC, 1963), xxxviii.