|
1860-1865
5.3 Trace important military and political events of the war period,
and judge their significance to the outcome of the conflict.
Hunger was a significant impact
of the Civil War on every western North Carolinian. The poor felt
it more, and slaves worse still.
 
A Confederate Armory was
built and operated with some portion of slave labor in 1860 and
located at the corner of Eagle and Valley Street. Operations were
relocated to Columbia, SC in 1862. The armory was burned by Stoneman’s
Raid in 1865.
Stoneman's Army, with 3,000 Union
troops, entered Buncombe County on April 23, 1865 approaching from the
South along the Drover's Road, having been initially rebuffed by the
home guard at Swannanoa Gap. Townspeople lined the street to watch the
procession. As the Union soldiers marched up Main Street, the slaves
of several families used the protection of the Union forces to make
their way out of slavery. Having negotiated a peaceful march through
the region in return for food, a portion of the troops doubled back
and broke that agreement when they ransacked the town.
Stoneman’s
Raid
had proved the single most
liberating event of the war for mountain slaves, and even the slave
holders not directly in the path of Union forces had found that
they had lost much control of the slaves still with them.
—Heart of Confederate Appalachia:
Western North Carolina and the Civil War,
John Inscoe and Gordon McKinney, page 262
One day dear old Mammy came up
and said “Mistis, we have only a little meal in the house and
all this large family of white and black to feed what shall we do?”
Mother replied “Betsey I have done my best, I can do no more,
the Lord will provide.” …My Mother said she could not
now possibly feed the negroes who were not absolutely necessary
to the comfort of the family ; they should go to their emancipators
for help.
—Katherine Polk Gale, "Recollections
of Life in the Southern Confederacy,
1861-1865," in the Gale and Polk Family Papers #266, Southern
Historical
Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill.
All of Mrs. J. W. Patton's servants
left her and went with the Yankees, not a single one of all she
had remained to do a thing in the house or in the kitchen. They
even took her beautiful carriage and, crowding into it, drove off
in full possession.
—Mary Taylor Brown
to John Evans Brown,
June 20, 1865, pp.18-19, from the W. Vance Brown
Collection at Special Collections
at UNCA Ramsey Library.
Plantation owners sought protection
of family and slave property and moved inland to Buncombe County
and Flat Rock as the battles increased in the more agricultural South.
Several of these families recorded diaries that speak of life in Asheville
during that time.
The following day the troops began
to file by; they passed just in front of our lawn; you, with the
rest of the children accompanied by your nurses, went to a point
where you could have a view of them in passing...It took a long
while for these troops to pass. After they had all gone, it was
discovered that your Aunt Emily’s two nurses, with several
other negroes in the neighborhood , had joined forces and gone off
with the Yankees. Poor old Mammy and Altimore were terribly mortified
and grieved at the evidence of ingratitude; but we realized it was
the beginning of the general emancipation which would cause a complete
revolution in our lives.
—Katherine Polk Gale, "Recollections
of Life in the Southern Confederacy,
1861-1865," in the Gale and Polk Family Papers #266, Southern
Historical
Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill.
...In a remote corner of the place
was a large frame house which had been set apart of the use of the
wives and little children of some of the negro men who had been
hired to neighboring farmers; their payments [to the writer’s
family] were and paid in produce - bacon, wheat, corn, potatoes....There
were about twenty of them in all I think who were looked after,
clothed, fed and nursed when ill; they had plenty of firewood and
were made as comfortable as was possible. I think none of this body
of negroes left, as the Yankees passed through; whether they would
not forsake their husbands; we could not tell; they at all events
remained.
—Katherine Polk Gale, "Recollections
of Life in the Southern Confederacy,
1861-1865," in the Gale and Polk Family Papers #266, Southern
Historical
Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill.
|
|
|
