The Secession Movement in North Carolina. By J.C. Sitterson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1939. Pp x + 285. Maps. Bibliography.).
North Carolina’s involvement in the Civil War has long been a source of pride for the Tar Heel State. Local lore proudly proclaims the large number of North Carolinians who gave their lives for the Confederate Cause; reputedly one in six Confederate soldiers killed in action were from the Old North State. Progressive historians have also noted North Carolina’s strong unionism, reluctant secession, and wartime Governor Zebulon Vance’s personal war against the Confederate high command. The most authoritative work on North Carolina’s journey into the Civil War is seventy years old, but no less important than when it was first published. Wedged between Virginia and South Carolina, North Carolina’s story lacks the dramatic sensationalism of its neighbors. Sitterson’s work shows that a lack of sensationalism does not mean that North Carolina’s march toward disunion lacked any of the drama or political theater that hallmarked the rest of the Civil War Era.
Sitterson’s opens his work with a history of state rights and North Carolina’s responses to the sectional crises of the Antebellum Era. North Carolina’s political history during the era was one of surprising Whig domination. Governor Richard Spaight’s administration was followed by a succession of Whig governors, most notable of which was John Motley Morehead. North Carolina consistently supported programs proposed by Whig leader Henry Clay. North Carolina voted with the three Whig victors in 1840 and 1848, and voted for Henry Clay in 1844. Although Whigs found more fertile political ground in North Carolina than in her southern neighbors, there was not consistent. Social and economic differences spilt the state in half; the western side of the state was mountainous and populated by yeomen farmers and small hamlets. Slavery was non-existent in much of Western North Carolina. East of Durham, where large fertile and flat portions of the state were, plantations became more common, particularly in the northeast corner of the state. Eastern North Carolina differed little from the Virginia Tidewater, and politically both states could neatly be divided between a more Unionist west and secessionist east. The 1850s were a quiet time in North Carolina. Native Tar Heel Hinton Rowan Helper, in 1857, published a work titles the Impending Crisis of the South. Helper’s work foretold not political disunion but an apocalyptic struggle in which the black and white races in the United States would attempt to exterminate each other. Helper was thoroughly antislavery, but his solution was forcible removal of blacks from southern society. In the short term, he proposed policies that might now hearken the term apartheid.
During the fateful year of 1860 North Carolina remained a voice of moderation in a chorus of increasingly virulent rhetoric. During the Secessionist Winter, North Carolina Democrats stood with Stephen Douglas in the convention. Once the split in the Democratic Party occurred, North Carolina effectively split its popular vote between John Bell and John Breckinridge. Breckinridge won the state, but North Carolina’s voters delivered a resounding blow to secession on two occasions. As tensions increased and the Deep South states began to secede North Carolina, along with her sister states of Tennessee and Virginia, remained staunchly unionist. The majority of North Carolinians had no interest in secession. A clique of politicians, led by Governor John Ellis, were intent on joining the Deep South, but their hands remained tied by popular sentiment.
The greatest boon to the minority of secession minded politicians in North Carolina was Abraham Lincoln’s decision to call up state volunteers to coerce the seceding states. A precipitous change took place in North Carolina’s political landscape, although even in the spring of 1861 North Carolinians seemed to be doing everything possible to stay out of the impending crisis. The machinations of the secessionists and the thought of fighting their neighbors ultimately proved too much even for North Carolina’s unionist majority. On May 20, 1861, North Carolina reluctantly seceded.
Sitterson’s work is definitive, although new popular works have been published focusing on North Carolina and the secession crisis. Much of the new scholarly work on North Carolina has been done in conjunction with the rest of the Upper and Border South. North Carolina’s story, although not as famous as that of its neighbors, deserves to be told because it is a tragic story. Daniel Crofts called the Tar Heels “reluctant Confederates”; As sad as North Carolina’s story was, their cheerless manner in reaching the decision to secede stood them well for the future. General William T. Sherman recalled to his men the fact that North Carolina the fact that the Tar Heels had “barely” seceded. Federal soldiers accorded the Old North State a reprieve from the destruction visited on South Carolina and Georgia, allowing North Carolina to lead the way to become a part of the industrial New South
Miles Smith Texas Christian University