Civil_War_Quarterly_-_Spring_2016_

(Jacob Rumans) #1
prison. Most who made the trip successfully
did so at night. During the war, Carter said,
Colonel Brownlow and his regiment par-
ticipated in more than 50 battles and skir-
mishes. Brownlow had four horses shot
from under him and was severely wounded
at the Battle of Franklin in November 1864.
Like Tennessee, pro-Union sentiment in
North Carolina was concentrated in but
not confined to the mountains on its west-
ern side. An estimated four to six percent
of white males in North Carolina were
Unionists, and 35 of its 90 counties expe-
rienced some kind of guerrilla activity. In
coastal North Carolina, the 1st and 2nd
North Carolina (Union) Volunteer Infantry
were organized. In western North Carolina

the 2nd and 3rd North Carolina (Union)
Mounted Infantry were organized. A New
York Tribunecorrespondent reported that
the men in North Carolina’s 1st and 2nd
Union Regiments had “a bitter and malig-
nant feeling toward their disloyal neighbors
and hated slavery and slaveholders whom
they believed responsible [for their impov-
erished] condition.”
The eastern regiments were promised
they would not have to leave North Car-
olina and that their families would be pro-

tected by troops from the North, which
usually accompanied them on their opera-
tions. The 2nd North Carolina enlisted
Confederate deserters and poor men
attracted by a $300 bounty. The western
regiments, which were told to take no pris-
oners and shoot guerrillas on sight, were
much feared by Confederate civilians.
In central North Carolina there were
long-established antislavery Quaker and
Moravian communities. Anti-Confederate
activities by members of these communi-
ties included helping escaped Union POWs
and runaway slaves and convincing Con-
federate soldiers to desert. Deserters from
the Confederate Army and men hiding out
in Quaker Belt counties to avoid being con-

scripted responded to bullying and physical
abuse by turning to guerrilla warfare.
(Some Quakers and Moravians owned
slaves and fought for the Confederacy.) In
Virginia, Confederate General Thomas
“Stonewall” Jackson sent troops to round
up Mennonites who refused to serve in the
Confederate Army. Concerned that they
might aim rifles badly, he assigned them to
noncombat duties.
By war’s end, an estimated 100,000 men
had deserted from the Confederate Army.

Desertion was most prevalent among poor
men and those fighting near their homes.
Mountainous North Georgia, which
accounted for the majority of Georgia’s
Confederate deserters, provided only 14
percent of its Confederate units. More than
50 percent of Georgia’s Confederate vol-
unteer infantry companies hailed from its
plantation belt counties. Their desertion
rates were among the lowest in the state.
Deserters in both the Union and Confed-
erate armies might face firing squads. The
Federal government encouraged men to
desert from the Confederate Army by par-
doning and restoring their citizenship rights
and allowing them to go home if they took
a loyalty oath to the Union. In August 1864,
Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses Grant rewarded
Confederate deserters with monetary incen-
tives and transport home. By that time
many Confederate soldiers were underfed,
shoeless, lice infested, and clad in rags.
Bands of deserters hid out in the South
Carolina hill country. A force of more than
500 deserters controlled an area at the bor-
der with North Carolina; their desertion
rate was the highest in the Confederacy.
These deserters fought with Confederate
forces, stole supplies, robbed supporters of
the Confederacy, and burned their prop-
erty. No white Union Army units were
organized in South Carolina.
In North Carolina in 1863, 13 Unionists
were executed without trial in Madison
County, a Unionist stronghold. Their exe-
cution was the result of armed Unionists
stealing salt, a valuable commodity in the
Confederacy, and looting the homes of
secessionists, including that of a colonel in
command of a Confederate army regiment.
His wife and three small children, two of
whom shortly afterward died of scarlet
fever, were terrorized. Some of the Union-
ists were deserters from the colonel’s own
regiment.
The colonel and his regiment left Ten-
nessee, where they were guarding another
stockpile of salt, to deal with the Unionist
band. Hoping this would force the Union-
ists’ wives and mothers to reveal where they
were, these women were brutally tortured.
All the Unionists who were executed

Tennessee Unionist William “Parson” Brownlow is surrounded by supporters after his release from
prison on charges of treason against the Confederate government. An unapologetic Brownlow, later
governor of Tennessee and a U.S. senator, called secessionists “imps from Hell.”

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