The Civil War Monitor Ranks UNRULY WOMEN One of Best Books on The Confederate Home Front!

 

My thanks to Anne Sarah Rubin and The Civil War Monitor for this honor! —vb

The Five Best Books on the Confederate Homefront

POSTED 10/23/2020 BY Anne Sarah Rubin 

FRANK LESLIE’S ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER In a New Orleans cemetery in 1863, a woman and her daughters adorn the graves of loved ones killed during the war.

For decades, books about the Confederate homefront were often books about elite white slave-owning women—first Lost Cause-era flowery homages to their patriotism and dedication to the Confederacy, then more critical analyses drawing on the reams of letters and diaries they left behind. The homefront was often constructed as a bounded space, generally far away from the battlefield, virtually untouched by the messiness of combat. The war might intrude, in the form of letters or visits from furloughed kin, or sometimes “Yankee” interlopers disrupting the world of women. Of course, the Confederate homefront was never so simple, and the late-20th-century social history revolution brought new insights to the field. In general, works about the homefront written since the 1970s have fallen into two categories: community studies (which could encompass either a single city or county, a group of counties, or even an entire state) and more thematic or overarching approaches.

As historians became increasingly interested in questions of nationalism, class conflict, and loyalty within the Confederacy, the homefront took on new prominence, as those historians explored the impact of ordinary citizens on the outcome of the war. Historians recognized that even when the Confederacy was winning victories on the battlefield, it was losing ground at home, as the institution of slavery crumbled and food supplies dwindled. African Americans played a crucial role in this struggle as they resisted and ran to Union lines. Given the geographic size of the Confederacy, it’s impossible to think of the homefront as a single space; rather there were multiple fronts, one for every household. This list is by its very nature idiosyncratic, but I think taken together these five books give a sense of the breadth and richness of this topic.

THE DIARY OF DOLLY LUNT BURGE, 1848–1879
(University of Georgia Press, 1997)
Edited by Christine Jacobsen Carter

Dolly Lunt Burge was an affluent young widow in Georgia when she began her diary in 1848, far from her family and native Maine. By the time she wrote her last entry in 1879, she had been married and widowed twice more, raised a family, ran a large plantation, and managed its transition to free labor. She is less well known than other Confederate diarists like Mary Chesnut or Sarah Morgan, but no less eloquent. The long span of her entries gives the reader the texture and rhythm of daily life, showing the degree to which her home was relatively untouched by the war until 1864. Burge’s diary comes alive when she describes William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea enveloping her property, and then in the years after as she coped—often angrily—with the upending of her world that came with emancipation. Although her entries taper off considerably during Reconstruction, their inclusion in this published version remind us that the war at home did not end when the battles did.

UNRULY WOMEN: THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL AND SEXUAL CONTROL IN THE OLD SOUTH

(University of North Carolina Press, 1992)
By Victoria E. Bynum

Victoria Bynum’s study of “unruly” women in the North Carolina Piedmont revolutionized the study of the Civil War homefront. What made her subjects unruly was their unwillingness to be contained by the power of the state in the antebellum and war years: complaining publicly about abuse by men, engaging in forbidden sexual behaviors, and finally defying or challenging the Confederacy. Bynum’s subjects are not elites like Dolly Burge; rather they are non-slaveholding whites, free blacks, and enslaved women. Their common struggles to survive during wartime led them to turn to petty theft, prostitution, illegal trade, and at times open protest (as during bread riots). Bynum mines court records and a variety of other public documents to excavate the lives of women (and their families) who were left out of Lost Cause tales of dedicated women and faithful slaves. The class conflict and dissent that she uncovers complicates the picture of a largely unified Confederacy with only isolated pockets of unionism. Rather, it was a place full of internal conflict, and those conflicts often grew out of family concerns rather than the lofty rhetoric of liberty and secession. But as Bynum shows, the personal could quickly become the political.
 

OUT OF THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE PLANTATION HOUSEHOLD
(Cambridge University Press, 2008)
By Thavolia Glymph

Thavolia Glymph’s brilliant and searing book turns the home—or household—into a literal battlefield. Her work reminds readers that the mythical plantation household was never peaceful and free of violence, and was always a site of work and struggle. She systematically dismantles the myth that there was any kind of sisterhood or affinity between mistresses and the women who labored for them. Rather, enslaved women resisted when they could, pushing back against their female owners, who in turn responded physically. Enslaved women seized on wartime upheaval to further disrupt the institution of slavery and emancipate themselves. Glymph’s work takes Dolly Lunt Burge’s postwar complaints about the challenges of free labor and turns them around, showing how freedwomen sought to control their own labor in ways that had previously been impossible. Freedwomen, traditionally seen as relatively powerless, are shown articulating their rights as both workers and citizens. This beautifully written book forces us to reconsider the myths that often shrouded elite white women in a mantle of gentility and manners, reminding us of the brutality at the heart of the Civil War-era South.
 

ROUTES OF WAR: THE WORLD OF MOVEMENT IN THE CONFEDERATE SOUTH
(Harvard University Press, 2012)
By Yael A. Sternhell

When we think of the homefront, we think of a static place: a farm, a neighborhood, a city. In the powerfully original Routes of War, Yael Sternhell puts the Confederacy in motion. Its roads were constantly flooded with people—soldiers moving around the landscape from camp to battlefield, but also stragglers and deserters, and thousands upon thousands of refugees, both white and black. This vast swirl of humanity was rarely organized, and created a powerful sense of disorder among civilians, many of whom came to believe that the Confederate state could not protect them from internal as well as external enemies. White southerners who thought they were safely behind the lines saw their fields raided and trampled by their own soldiers as they marched to the front; later in the war, deserters on the move literally embodied the Confederacy’s collapse. By far the most disturbing change to white southerners came with the presence of African-American refugees, who ran to Union lines or otherwise sought their freedom. The roads, rather than binding the Confederacy together, seemed to be the fraying threads of its disintegration.
 

EMBATTLED FREEDOM: JOURNEYS THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR’S SLAVE REFUGEE CAMPS
(University of North Carolina Press, 2018)
By Amy Murrell Taylor

The 500,000 African Americans who fled to the Union lines and became known as “contrabands” (or in Taylor’s preferred phrase, “slave refugees”) forged new lives in the worst of circumstances. Their lives in Union refugee camps, as Taylor shows in her powerful and eloquent book, were a kind of semi-freedom, no longer bound to masters, but instead under the tight controls of the federal government. With meticulous research and deep sensitivity, Taylor reconstructs the lives of black men and women who struggled to survive against disease, mistreatment at the hands of Union soldiers, and repeated forced relocations. Some of the best chapters of this multiple prize-winning work look at the material conditions of refugee lives: the rations they received, the clothing and housing they did (and did not) get, the labor they were forced to provide. The refugee camps were a different kind of homefront, where the enemy was not opposing troops, but the elements and indifference.

ANNE SARAH RUBIN IS A PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, BALTIMORE COUNTY. SHE IS THE AUTHOR OF A SHATTERED NATION: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERACY (2005) AND THROUGH THE HEART OF DIXIE: SHERMAN’S MARCH AND AMERICAN MEMORY (2014) AND THE CO-EDITOR OF THE PERFECT SCOUT: A SOLDIER’S MEMOIR OF THE GREAT MARCH TO THE SEA AND THE CAMPAIGN OF THE CAROLINAS (2018).

This article appeared in the Fall 2020 (Vol. 10, No. 3) issue of The Civil War Monitor.

Caroline Moore Hulin of Montgomery Co, North Carolina: Wesleyan Methodist, Antislavery Unionist, Food Rioter (Victoria Bynum,  Long Shadow of the Civil War, p. 50. Photo courtesy of Elaine Reynolds).

Dissent, Desertion, and Unionism in the Confederate South: My Interview with “Red Strings & Maroons”

By Vikki Bynum

I first learned about the Red Strings—known formally as “The Heroes of America“—in 1983 while researching Civil War dissenters, deserters, and guerrilla bands in the North Carolina State Archives. The late historian William T. “Bill” Auman, who counted a few of his own kinfolk among this secret pro-Union organization, was at that time writing Civil War in the North Carolina Quaker Belt, and had already co-written a superb article with David D. Scarboro on the Red Strings. Between Bill’s work and the collections that I daily poured over at the Archives, a fascinating world of rebels and co-conspirators against the Confederacy unfolded before me, one that included ordinary white men and women, slaves, and free people of color. My first book, Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control, was the result. Although only two of Unruly Women’s chapters centered on the Civil War, my career as a scholar of Southern dissent had begun.

Rebel Deserters Coming Within Union Lines. Harpers Weekly, July 16, 1864

From the North Carolina Piedmont I moved my research into the Mississippi Piney Woods, where the old legend of The Free State of Jones begged for a modern treatment. Then it was on to Texas, where I found echoes of Jones County’s Free State among a band of “Jayhawkers” in the Big Thicket of East Texas.

Hoping to facilitate a public conversation about the role of dissent in the nineteenth century South, in 2008 I created this blog, Renegade South. Then came The Movie. In June 2016, STX Entertainment released the Hollywood version of The Free State of Jones, with none other than Matthew McConaughey playing guerrilla leader Newt Knight.

More recently, public debates over the continued presence of pro-Confederate monuments throughout the South and beyond have stimulated interest in the origins of the “Lost Cause” version of Civil War history. “Lost Cause” history is shorthand for the popular belief that slavery did not cause the Civil War and that all Southerners—even so-called “good” slaves—were solidly united around protecting “states rights” and Southern honor through secession from the United States. That secession, of course, precipitated the Civil War.

Almost one hundred years ago, historians began demolishing the Lost Cause version of history by providing ample documentation that slavery did indeed cause the Civil War. And more recently historians have cast light on a far-from-“solid” South by exploring various insurrections and inner civil wars that raged against the Confederacy during the Civil War. The following podcast interview with Mitch, moderator of Red Strings & Maroons, gave me a wonderful opportunity to discuss my own research on Civil War dissent that began more than thirty years ago in the very region of North Carolina that inspired his blog. I hope you’ll give it a listen.

 

The Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina

PLEASE NOTE: This interview was conducted through the Red Strings And Maroons podcast. You can find similar interviews and more content on iTunes, their patreon page, or their podcasts website.

Landrums in Gray & Blue: Conflicting Loyalties in Piney Woods Mississippi (part 2)

This is the second of Ed Payne’s three-part series on the Landrum family of Civil War Mississippi. To read Part 1: “The Gray,” click here. —vb

Part 2: The Blue

 

By Ed Payne

On 25 March 1864, twenty-eight men from south Mississippi entered Fort Pike and signed papers agreeing to serve for three years as Union soldiers in the 1st New Orleans Infantry.  It would be the largest single day’s enrollment of Piney Woods men whose opposition to Confederate authority had grown over the course of the war.

Fort Pike was one of a series of coast fortifications constructed by the Federal government after the War of 1812.  Completed in 1826, the fort guarded the strait that connects Lake Pontchartrain with the Gulf of Mexico.   After Union forces captured New Orleans and portions of southern Louisiana in the spring of 1862, the fort became a garrison and training center.

Fort Pike, Louisiana, as it appears today

Confederate military operations targeting the deserters and conscription evaders in Jones and surrounding counties began in early March of 1864.  The commander of the first campaign, CSA Col. Henry Maury, noted with satisfaction the results:

“They have scattered in every direction . . . but most for Honey Island and the Coast.” 

Honey Island is a section of the Pearl River basin, about thirty miles east of Fort Pike.  The next step—a major one—would be to establish contact with the Federals and accept an offer to enlist.

Prior to March 25, only eighteen refugees from Mississippi had enrolled and they came in singularly or in twos or threes.  But between 25 March and 31 July 1864, an additional 184 joined the ranks of the 1st New Orleans.  Each man signed or affixed his mark to a document specifying that his service would be limited to the defense of New Orleans which essentially removed any concerns about having to face fellow Mississippians in combat.

The names of four Landrum men appear on the rolls for that day:  Thomas S. Landrum, who gave his age as 43; William P. Landrum, age 28; Henry Landrum, age 18; and John Landrum, age 19.  As related in Part 1, Thomas and William Pinkney Landrum were brothers and had enlisted together in the Confederate 2nd Battalion AL Light Artillery in February 1862.  They deserted in October following the Battle of Iuka.  Henry was the eldest son of Thomas while John was a first cousin (son of Jesse Marion Landrum).  Only Thomas could sign his name; the other three made their marks on the enlistment form.

The arrival of over two dozen men on a single day suggests they came as an organized group.  The military and pension records offer no hard evidence that Thomas Landrum served as their leader.  But the fact remains that 24 of the 28 men who enlisted that day were assigned to the same company—Company D—and that Thomas was simultaneously appointed their Sergeant.  A review of the timing of events in the Piney Woods is also suggestive.  CSA Captain A.F. Ramsey wrote his letter complaining about the activities of deserters led by “one Landrum of Jones County” on 8 March 1864, unaware that Col. Maury and his troops had arrived in the area a few days earlier.  Maury’s superior reported that his force consisted of 200 cavalrymen, a battalion of sharpshooters, and horse-drawn artillery.

Over a seven day period, the troops led by Maury captured and hung three deserters, then accepted the surrender of a dozen more.  This occurred two weeks prior to the group enlistment at Fort Pike.  Those members of the Newt Knight Band who joined the 1st New Orleans did so later—from April 30 to May 28—after a subsequent campaign led by CSA Col. Robert Lowry.  This lends credence to Rudy Leverett’s hypothesis in Legend of the Free State of Jones (pg 90-94) that Maury’s brief campaign may have skirmished with deserters other than those led by Newt Knight.  (Note 1)

Thomas Landrum’s enlistment in U.S. Army, 1st Regiment, New Orleans Volunteers

 

Once in uniform, Thomas apparently sought permission to bring in more refugees from Honey Island.  He and his son Henry received multiple leave authorizations from May through September of 1864.  Military officials probably welcomed the south Mississippians as a new source of manpower and saw Thomas as someone who could convince others to enlist.  But at the same time there existed a pressing need for noncommissioned officers to maintain records and train the influx of new recruits.  Thomas reverted to the rank of private in May.  His former position seems to have been filled by a young Irish emigrant who possessed clerical skills well beyond Thomas’s rudimentary literacy.

The impact of the two Confederate offensives against the deserters in the Piney Woods, combined with solicitation for troops at Fort Pike, resulted in May 1864 being the peak month for enrollment of Mississippians.  Seventy-seven men joined the 1st New Orleans that month, with another 40 in June-July but only three thereafter.  Other than the authorized leaves, military records are silent on what role Thomas played in mustering these Mississippians into the ranks of the 1st New Orleans.  Thomas merely stated, years later in an affidavit for a disability pension, that he contracted both sunstroke and diarrhea while transporting refugees across Lake Pontchartrain to New Orleans in the summer of 1864.

At Fort Pike and New Orleans, Piney Woods soldiers encountered a world far removed from anything in their past.  They made up only 15% of the troops in the 1st New Orleans, while at least 25% of their fellow soldiers were immigrants from countries such as Ireland, England, France, Germany, and Switzerland.  Fort Pike also served as the training base for members of the 74th U.S. Colored Troops, many of whom were newly emancipated slaves.  If the Mississippians did not previously know that the elimination of slavery had become a primary objective of the war, they soon learned otherwise.

Descriptions of conditions in the masonry fort range from Spartan to hellish: hot and humid in the summer, dank and chilly in the winter.  Living quarters were crowded and sanitation poor.  Many of the Piney Woods recruits proved highly susceptible to diseases.  While only 4.5% of non-Mississippians in the regiment died of disease, illness took the lives of 27.3% of the Mississippians—slightly more than 1 in 4.  The most common causes of death were small pox and chronic diarrhea.

A small pox victim

The high incidence of small pox among the Mississippians was due to lack of prior exposure in the rural settings of their previous homes. Those who survived exposure to the disease in cities and towns developed immunity.  The use of cow pox as a vaccination was proven effective in the 1790s, but over half a century later there was still no means for large scale inoculation.  Also, the lack of understanding about the mechanics of disease transmission resulted in soldiers contracting amoebic dysentery from polluted water sources.  This produced the chronic diarrhea that killed many and, for others, remained a lifelong malady.

The children of Jesse Marion Landrum suffered an especially heavy toll.  Jesse had three daughters married to men who joined the 1st New Orleans:  Delphane Dorcus Landrum (James W. Lee), Cynthia Ann Landrum (John Tucker), and Elizabeth Landrum (Thomas Holliman).  Not only did Jesse Marion Landrum’s son, John, die during Union service, so did the husbands of these three daughters.

But soldiers were not the only victims of disease.   Some of the refugees brought their families with them to New Orleans and they, too, fell ill in the urban setting.  According to a later deposition, Thomas settled his family in a house on Canal Street.  He had married Sarah Ann Crosby around 1841 and she bore him nine children.  Within months of her arrival, Sarah contracted small pox and died in October of 1864.  Within a year, three of their children also died:  Alexander, Linson, and Rebecca.

Linson B. Landrum, a brother of Thomas, was conscripted in October of 1863 (see Part 1).  By this point Confederate recordkeeping had become erratic, and no further records are found for Linson until May of 1864, when he appears on the rolls of the 8th AL Infantry.  A notation states that on 1 November 1864 he was transferred to the 48th MS Infantry (the unit into which he had been originally conscripted) which was stationed in the trenches outside Petersburg, Virginia.

On 24 December 1864 Linson crossed over to the Union lines and requested to take the oath of allegiance.  Unlike those Southern soldiers who avowed loyalty after being taken prisoner, Linson was accepted as a legitimate defector.  He declared his allegiance on 27 December.  Linson then requested that he be allowed to serve with his brothers in Louisiana.  Request granted, he arrived in New Orleans in February of 1865.   Two months later, on 19 April 1865, Linson died of fever.  He left a widow, Elizabeth Pitts Landrum, and eight children.

Soldiers in the 1st New Orleans Infantry did not engage in combat, but the high death toll among the Mississippians deserves comment.  A remark I have heard more than once from descendants is that these men only joined for the bounty money being offered rather than because of any true Unionist convictions.  But a $25 bounty (with an additional $75 paid upon discharge) seems meager measured against a 1-in-4 chance of dying.  Nor can it be said that the enlistees were unaware of these odds.  Nearly 80% of the Piney Woods soldiers’ deaths occurred between July 1864 and January 1865, yet until the end of the war, the percentage of Mississippians who deserted was only 8.3% compared to 20.2% for other enlistees.  This indicates that the Mississippians who enlisted in the 1st New Orleans Infantry did so based on a strong set of convictions.

 

Coming Next: Ed Payne, “Part 3: Aftermath”

 NOTES:

1. While Newt Knight’s band may have eluded much of Maury’s operation, there is evidence of at least one contact.  A list of engagements fought by the Knight Company, presumed to have been written by Newt himself, includes “Battel of Big Creek Church February the 1 Jones Co 1864 a ginst Cornel Marre of Momile Ala and his artiley.”  The list may have been composed some time after the war, which would explain the error in the date (five weeks before Maury’s arrival in Jones County).   Thanks to Vikki Bynum for providing me a copy of this document.

Landrums in Gray & Blue: Conflicting Loyalties in Piney Woods Mississippi

By Ed Payne

Note: Nine years ago I began research on men from the Mississippi Piney Woods region who joined the Union 1st New Orleans Infantry Regiment in 1863-1864.  I eventually compiled a list of over 200 names (see Crossing the Rubicon of Loyalties).  Among them were four members of the Landrum family.  All four had pension files at the National Archives.  The files include affidavits by relatives and in-laws which led to more research.  In the end, I decided to examine both the Confederate and Union service of the Landrum men.  Part 1 examines their Confederate records, while Part 2 examines their Union service.   The third and final part summarizes the postwar lives of selected Landrum men and their wives.—ep.

 

Part 1 – The Gray

In 1873 former Confederate major Joel E. Welborn did not mince words when asked to characterize the loyalty of Thomas S. Landrum and his relations during the late war.  He wrote:

“The whole Landrum family & community was hostile to the Southern Confederacy from its inception to the close—In 1861 had some of them arrested by military authority for expressions of disloyalty to the South & would have executed them—but for the interference of influential friends . . . .”

Welborn penned his statement in behalf of Thomas Landrum’s claim to compensation for three mules turned over to the U.S. Army when he enlisted in 1864.  Such payments required proof of steadfast loyalty to the Union and thus might well have been denied if Welborn had chosen to mention Thomas’s prior service in the Confederacy.  But Welborn was either ignorant of this fact or, more likely, simply wanted to help a poor man get the payment due him.  (Note 1)

The Landrum family offers insights into the way in which the Civil War entangled those Southerners who did not share in the region’s passion for secession.  Once the war began, however, neutrality was not an option.  Landrum men would enlist as Confederate and Union soldiers, and two served in both armies—while one died trying.  They became, like the nation as a whole, a house divided by war.

Members of the Landrum family began to appear on south Mississippi censuses prior to statehood in 1817.  They were, like most of their neighbors, small scale farmers and herders who cleared scattered homesteads out of the region’s dense pine forests.  They showed no interest in becoming part of the slave-based cotton economy, staying put while others relocated to more fertile lands opened by Indian removal acts in the 1820s and 1830s.  (Note 2)

Federal Manuscript Census, Jones County, MS, 1850

A log cabin typical of those found in the 19th century piney woods

In this environment, John K. Bettersworth observed,

“Above all things else, the Piney Woodsman wished to be left to his own devices.”

But the country’s sectional divisions grew increasingly bitter during the 1850s and erupted into war in April of 1861.  During the first year of the conflict, Confederate military service was voluntary.  Everywhere, social pressure encouraged men to join the cause, but with less success in areas having minimal cotton production and few slaves.  On 16 April 1862 the situation changed when the Confederate Congress enacted its first Conscription Act.  The law decreed that healthy white males between the ages of 18 and 35 must serve, with only a handful of occupational exemptions.  (In September the upper age was extended to 45.)  Those who felt they had no stake in the fight now faced stark choices:  enlist in a local company, await the dishonor of having to be conscripted, or attempt the difficult task of evading Confederate authorities.

Through military records, I have traced the sons and grandsons of two Landrum brothers who settled in the Jones-Wayne county region:  Henry Marshall Landrum (ca 1795 – ca 1855) and Jesse Marion Landrum (ca 1801 – 4 Sep 1851).  It should be noted that the genealogy of the Landrum family is complicated by scant records, multiple persons sharing a common set of given names, and the occasional use of nicknames.  As I can best determine, the sons of two patriarchs (along with 2 grandsons who also saw service) were:

HENRY MARSHALL LANDRUM SR:

Thomas S. Landrum  (ca 1818 – 1898)

        Henry Landrum (1846 – 1923)

James Johnson Landrum  (1820 – 1886)

        William Henry Landrum  (1844 – 1918)

Linson B. Landrum  (ca 1823 – 1865)

Henry Marshall Landrum Jr  (1827 – 1900)

Samuel L. Landrum  (ca 1834 – 1910)

William Pinkney Landrum  (ca 1836 – 1890)

Elijah Landrum  (ca 1838 – bef 1866)

JESSE MARION LANDRUM SR:

Wiley H. Landrum  (ca 1828 – ca 1883)

Charles Landrum  (ca 1831 – 1857)

Lewis L. Landrum  (1836 – 1910)

William Manuel Landrum  (1839 – 1914)

John Landrum  (ca 1846 – 1865)

Jesse Marion Landrum Jr  (ca 1850 – 1930)

No military records can be tied with assurance to James Johnson Landrum.   Family stories tell of Elijah Landrum either dying during the war or being murdered, but again no records have been located.  Charles Landrum was murdered in 1857 (see The Lyons and the Landrums) and Jesse Marion Landrum Jr was young enough to be exempt from service.  Confederate military records have been located that seem to match the others listed.

On 24 February 1862, six weeks prior to the promulgation of the first Confederate Conscription Act, Thomas S. Landrum, William Henry Landrum, and William Pinkney Landrum trekked to Mobile, Alabama and enlisted in the 2nd Battalion AL Light Artillery.  All were assigned to Company C.  Thomas and William Pinkney were brothers and William Henry a nephew—the eldest son of James Johnson Landrum.  Thomas’s birth year is a matter of dispute, but it seems likely he had turned 40.  He left a wife and nine children back in Jones County.  William Pinkney would have been about age 25 and William Henry 18.  Both were single.  One month later Samuel, another son of Henry Marshall Landrum, also enrolled in the 2nd Battalion.

The 2nd Battalion AL might seem an odd choice since several units had formed in the Jones-Wayne county region.  There may have been kinship connection with three Alabama men named Landrum who joined the same battalion in October of 1861.  And if they lacked passion for the Southern cause, duty in what promised to be coastal defense would seem preferable to fighting in infantry units.  But if the Landrum family strongly opposed secession, why did these men enlist prior to the Conscription Act?  And especially why did Thomas, whose age put him outside the scope of conscription policies at that time?

The answer may lurk between the lines of the Joel E. Welborn affidavit quoted above.  Once the war began and tolerance of dissent by authorities eroded, Thomas and others in the family apparently came under threat for “expressions of disloyalty to the South.” Thomas may have found it prudent to volunteer for service and to do so in a unit some distance from where his views had aroused official ire.

A few weeks after the Conscription Act became law, four other Landrums signed up in Company C (“Jones County Rebels”) of the 7th Battalion MS Infantry: Henry (aka H.M.) “Laundrum” and J.S., L.L. and W.M. Landrum.  Henry seems to have been Henry Marshall Landrum Jr, while L.L. and W.M. were Lewis and William Manuel, both sons of Jesse Marion Landrum.  The identity of “J.S.” at this point remains an open question.  Henry had a short military career.  Records show him as being discharged on 20 July 1862 without explanation.  Rounding out the enlistments that year, in September Wiley H. Landrum—another son of Jesse—joined the 15th Battalion AL Partisan Rangers (later merged into the 56th Partisan Rangers).

The 7th Battalion MS Infantry participated in the Battle of Iuka, in northern Mississippi, on 19 September 1862.  So did Company C of the 2nd Battalion AL Light Artillery, its mission of coast defense giving way to the exigencies of war.  The Confederate forces suffered a major defeat and withdrew the next day.  The muster roll for J.S. Landrum states he “died on retreat from Iuka.”  For Thomas, William Pinkney, and William Henry Landrum, the battle and their subsequent transfer to Capt Tobin’s TN Light Artillery apparently marked a turning point.  All three deserted on 7 October.  On 1 November both Lewis and William Manuel Landrum were listed as absent without leave from the 7th Battalion MS.  Meanwhile, Samuel Landrum, who had been enrolled in a different company of the 2nd Battalion AL Light Infantry, was assigned to the defense of Chattanooga, Tennessee.  He deserted from Missionary Ridge in early July and made his way back home.

The Landrum men who returned to Jones County were later joined by others, such as future Knight Band member Jasper Collins.  Collins also fought at Iuka but walked away in disgust when he learned of the Confederate Congress’s passage of the “Twenty Negro Law” in October 1862.  This legislation granted planters one military exemption for every 20 slaves owned.  The law increased the perception among yeoman soldiers that they were shouldering a disproportionate share of the fight (see Ye Oldest Native). Still, many stayed in the Confederate ranks and others, after periods of unauthorized leave, ended up back with their units.

William Henry Landrum returned to his light artillery battery on 13 March 1863.  He faced a charge of desertion but, with manpower needs paramount, served in the defense of Vicksburg. There, as he succinctly stated in a Texas Confederate pension application 50 years later, “I had my right arm shot off.”  The Mississippi River fortress city surrendered on 4 July after a 47 day siege.  Like thousands of half-starved Confederate troops, the maimed William H. Landrum was issued a parole and headed home.

The Battle of Vicksburg

The surrender of Vicksburg increased the number of war-weary and disillusioned soldiers returning to the Piney Woods.  The situation they confronted would only harden their feelings.  Confederate units had enforced “tax-in-kind” policies with vigor, stripping the already impoverished region of materials and food stores.  Whether they returned as deserters or parolees, men began to state openly that their service to the Confederacy had ended.

 

Newton Knight

Confederate authorities, after repeated warnings concerning the extent of the problem, sent Major Amos McLemore to deal with the situation.  But Major McLemore was shot on the evening of 5 October 1863, allegedly by renegade leader Newt Knight, and the simmering conflict became an internal war.

Within two weeks of the shooting of Major McLemore, authorities conscripted Linson B. Landrum, a younger brother of Thomas, into the 48th MS Infantry.  As noted, conscription was generally viewed as dishonorable but Linson apparently wanted his opposition to serving to be a matter of record.  A month later his brother Samuel returned to his unit under arrest.  Cousins Lewis and William Manuel Landrum reappeared on the rolls of the 7th Battalion in December 1863 after an absence of more than a year, but on the final muster roll available (January-February 1864) they were again absent.

Capt A. F. Ramsey of the Confederate 3rd MS wrote a letter on 8 March 1864 to the provost general of Alabama, Mississippi, and Eastern Louisiana lamenting the state of affairs he found while stationed in Perry County (south of Jones County).  He cited two bands of deserters, one led by a man named Edwards and another by a Landrum.  Could the “Captain Landrum” Ramsey mentioned have been Thomas S. Landrum?  That possibility will be discussed in Part 2 of this series.

The increasingly bold activities of the deserters caused Confederate officials to order two successive campaigns in March-April of 1864.  Those Landrums who had not returned to their Confederate units, voluntarily or under arrest, became hunted men.  At this point Thomas made the decision to move with others one hundred miles south to the swamps of the Pearl River basin known as “Honey Island.”  Once there, they would be within a few miles of Union troops stationed at Fort Pike, Louisiana.

Coming next: Ed Payne, “Part 2: The Blue”

NOTES

1.  Twenty years after writing his statement on the loyalty of Thomas Landrum, Joel E. Welborn testified at a hearing in 1895 concerning a claim by renegade leader Newt Knight.  Knight sought payment for himself and his men based on support they provided the Union cause during the Civil War.  Defense lawyers expected Welborn, as a former Confederate officer, to assist them by disputing Knight’s assertions of patriotism.  Instead, Welborn testified that he felt those whom he had known acted on “honest conviction” rather than merely to avoid arrest for desertion.  Nevertheless, the Knight claim was denied.  See Victoria Bynum, Long Shadow of the Civil War pgs 93-94.

2.  The Landrum family did not participate in slave-based agriculture, but the 1840 census shows that Henry M. Landrum Sr. had acquired one young female slave who probably served as a domestic.  The 1850 slave schedule for Wayne County showed the female to be age 20 with two children.  After Henry’s death, the 1860 slave schedule listed the female slave, now age 30, as belonging to his widow Jane (aka Rachel).  Henry’s son Linson (“L.B. Landrum”) was cited as owner of four children, ages 2 to 14.  Linson’s status as a slave owner did not seem to impact his opposition to the secessionist cause.

 

White Farm Women Protest Confederate Abuse: The North Carolina Civil War Home Front

By Vikki Bynum

During the American Civil War, many Southerners  expressed hostility to the Confederacy, beginning with strong opposition to secession, evasion and desertion of military service, and, finally, armed insurrections. Nonslaveholding whites, free people of color, and slaves— male and female alike—participated (sometimes together) in undermining the Confederacy,  ultimately crippling its ability to wage war effectively against Union forces.

Thanks to the movie The Free State of Jones more people than ever know that Jones County, Mississippi, was the site of one such insurrection. In my post of August 2, 2016, “Tracing South Mississippi’s Inner Civil War through Documents,” I noted that despite overwhelming evidence of multiple uprisings in South Mississippi, few if any letters have survived from Jones County women that describe firsthand their experiences of this insurrection.

The case is very different for North Carolina, however, and, as promised, I am offering a small sample of the many letters written by women during the war, and preserved by the North Carolina State Archives, that criticized Confederate policy.

Farm women particularly suffered from military seizure of farm produce, although official impressment and tax-in-kind laws were not passed until March-April 1863. Non-slaveholding families complained regularly and bitterly about commercial planters who cultivated cotton and tobacco at the expense of food crops, while simultaneously charging exorbitant prices for corn, bacon, and cotton thread. Add to that, frequent abuse of women and children whose husbands and fathers had deserted—described graphically by Phebe Crook in letter #3 and in an earlier Renegade South post—and we see the devastating effects of the Civil War on Southern home fronts as well as battlefields.

I’ve discussed these letters in various works (particularly in my books, Unruly Women and Long Shadow of the Civil War), but I’ve published them here in their entirety. For the sake of readability, I’ve added punctuation and occasional bracketed corrections, but have retained original spelling and prose whenever possible. The quaint spellings used by their authors sometimes make for slow reading, but remind us that these were plain rural folks of the 19^th century, rightly proud to be literate, and ready to hold their political leaders accountable. I think you’ll find the effort to read their words well worth your time!

 

The largest of the bread riots that erupted throughout the Civil War South in response to impressment policies occurred in the Confederate capital of Richmond, VA, on April 2, 1863.

Letter #1

Entitled “Blood or Bread,” this unsigned letter from anonymous citizens of Bryant Swamp to Governor Zebulon Vance is the most overtly political letter. Its opening paragraph, referring to “boath men & women” as the “common people” who will have “bread or blood,” suggests it may have been composed by men as well as women. A later sentence clearly reflects the voice of women, however, in its reference to “sons, brothers & husbands” forced to fight for the “big man’s Negros.” That same sentence warns that if bread is not forthcoming, “we will slaughter as we go.”

Note that the letter writers end by declaring they will call themselves “Regulators” in honor of those who similarly organized to protest corrupt government in pre-Revolutionary North Carolina. We know that a number of Jones County Unionists were descended from such Regulators. Obviously, so were many North Carolinians, and they clearly knew their history.

 

February 18, 1863

Attn. Z—   Vance, Governor of Nc,

Sir we take the privilege of writing you a few lines to inform you of a few things that is mooving at this time in the state of NC. The time has come that we the common people has to have bread or blood & we are bound—boath men & women—to hav it or die in the attempt.

Some of us has bin travling for the last month with the money in our pockets to buy corn & tryal [trial] men* that had a plenty & [we have] bin unable to buy a bushel holding on for a better price. We are willing to give & obligate two dollars a bushel but no more, for the idea is that the slave owner has the plantations & the lands to rais the bread stuffs & the common people is drove off in the [Civil] Ware to fight for the big man’s negro & he at home making nearly all the corn that is made & then because he has the play in his own fingers, he puts the price on his corn so as to take all the soldiers’ wages for a few bushels & then them that has worked hard & was in living circumstances with perhaps a good little homested & other thing[s] convenient for there wellbeing perhaps will be credited—until the debt will about take there land & everything they hav & then they will stop all & if not they will hav to rent there lands of there lords.

Sir, we hoos sons, brothers & husbands is now fighting for the big man’s negros are determined to hav bread out of there barns & that at a price that we can pay or we will slaughter as we go if this is the way we common people is to be treated in this Confederacy. We hope that you & your friends will be as smart** as Governor Elis [Ellis] & his friends was—take us out without the voice of the people & let us try to manage & defend our own state.

We hope sir that you will duly consider the above mentioned items & if it is in your power to remedy the present evils will do it speedly. It is not our desire to organize and commence operations, for if the precedent is laid it will be unanimous but if there is not steps taken soon[,] nessesity will drive us into measures that may prove awful. We don’t ask [for] meet [meat] on fair terms, for we can live on bread. Perhaps it would be better for you to [cane?] your proclamation that no man should sell in the state at more than $2 per bushel. You no best & if you can’t remedy Extosan [extortion] on the staff of life, we will, & as your subjects will make Examples of all who refuse to open there barn doors & appoint other men over there farms who perhaps will hav better harts. We no that this is unlawful at a common [normal] time, but we are shut up; we can’t trade with nobody, only those in the Confedersy & they can perish all those that has not and it seems that all harts is turnd to gizards.

Sir, consider this matter over & pleas send us a privat letter of instruction. Direct it to Bryant Swamp, post office Bladen county, Nc & to RL, as our company will be called Regulators.

Truly Yours. [no names follow]

A few months after this letter was sent, five Bladen County women broke into the grain warehouse at the Bladenboro depot in broad daylight. Though caught red-handed and arrested,  the women were supported by a community petition, dated April 13, 1864, that called on Governor Vance to pardon them.

*The term “trial men” is an old-fashioned phrase for men of authority

**Given that North Carolina seceded under Governor John Ellis without a direct vote from the people, I assume the petitioners’ reference to him as having been “smart” was meant sarcastically.

 

Letter #2:

Nancy L. Robbins to Lt. Col. A. C. McAlister, March 16, 1865, A. C. McAlister Papers.

Dear Sir,

I can informe you that one of them muls is [mine] and the other is J. W. Coner Jr.’s. If you don’t return them tomorrow moring I shall informe the govener of this. I am a solder’s wife, he of the 52nd North Carolina Reg’t, and this can be provied.

We air suffer for the use of them muls. We air out of bread and nothing to go to mill with. We are out of wood also and not one fourth of ground plowed yet.

If you don’t return the mules I shal be out there in the morning.

J. W. Conner Jr. , Nancy L. Robbins

 

Letter #3

(also discussed in an August 28, 2010 post)

Phebe Crook to Governor Zebulon Vance, September 15, 1864. Governors’ Papers, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.

A member of the Randolph County’s Wesleyan Methodist community, Phebe Crook addressed the governor with respect and reverence for his office. She then proceeded to tell him in no uncertain terms that Confederate militia, home guard, and vigilantes were arresting “poore old grey headed fathers” torturing young children, and knocking women around “as if they were bruts”—all to force them to reveal the whereabouts of their sons, fathers, and husbands.

Although Phebe truthfully claimed no biological kinship to men “in the woods,” she was related by marriage to three brothers—William, John, and Jesse Hulin—who would soon be murdered by Confederate soldiers for their refusal on religious grounds to fight in a slaveholders’ war.  Her emphasis here is on an unfair conscript system that forced many into military service for years while others escaped through enlistment in home guard units, thereby escaping the war while gunning down deserters. Phebe’s reference—twice—to deserters and their wives being treated as “bruts” is testimony to Confederacy’s frequent stereotyping of backwoods common folks as degraded and unworthy of its respect.

Mass grave of William, John, and Jesse Hulin, Lovejoy Chapel cemetery, Montgomery County, NC

 

Phebe Crook

Sept. 15^th, 1864

NC Davidson County

Mr. Vance Dear Sir,

I imbrace this opertunity of writing you a few lines in order to inform you of the conduct of our oficers and leading men of this county as you are appointed govenor of the state and that I Beleave that you are willing to Do all that you can in trying to protect the civil laws and writs of our county whearas I believe you are a Man of high feelings and one that is willing to Do your duty in every respect.

I will now inform you of some of the conduct of our Militia officers and Magistrats of this county. Thir imployment is hunting Deserters they say and the way they Manage to find them is taking up poore old grey headed fathers who has fought in the Old War* some of them and has done thir Duty in trying to support both the army and thir family and these men that has remained at home ever since the War commenced are taking them up and keeping them under gard without a mouthful to eat severl days and taking up the women and keeping under gard and Boxing thir jaws and nocking them about as if they were bruts and keeping them from thir little children that they hav almost wore our thir lifes in trying to make surport for them. And some of this women is in no fix to leav homes and others have little suckling infants not more then 2 months old and they have been taking up little children and Hang them until they turn black in the face trying to make them tell whear thir fathers is When the little children knows nothing atall about thir fathers.

Thir plea is they hav orders from the Govenner to do this and they also say that they hav orders from the govner to Burn up thir Barns and houses and Destroy all that they hav got to live on Because they hav a poor wore out son or husband that has served in the army. Some of them for 2 or 3 years and is almost Wore out and starved to Death and are eating their own Rations and these men that has remained at home ever since the War commenced will take thir guns and go out in the woods and shoot them down without Halting them as if they were Bruts or Murders and this men will also pilfer and plunder and steel on their creadits.

As for myself, I am a young Lady that has nether Husband, son, father, no brother in the woods. But I always like to [see] peple hav jestis and I think if this Most powerfull fighting men that has allways remained at home would go and fight the enemy and let thes poore wore out soldiers remain at [home] a little while and take a little rest that we would hav Better times. But they say that if they are called to go they will lie in the woods until they Rot before they will go to war.** And now why should thes men hav the power to punish men for a crime that they would be guilty of the same? So I will close by requesting and answer amediately.

Yours truly,

Phebe Crook

Salem church p.o.

Randolph County, N.C.

 

*Phebe had originally written “Revolution” instead of “Old War.”

**Here, Phebe is presumably referring to home guard soldiers.

 

Letter #4

Martha Sheets to Sheriff Aaron Saunders, Montgomery County, North Carolina, January 27, 1865, Criminal Action Papers, Montgomery County. North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.

Like Phebe Crook, Montgomery County farm wife Martha Sheets belonged to a Wesleyan Methodist community located in the heart of North Carolina’s Quaker Belt. Arrested early in 1865 for writing a “threatening letter” to the sheriff of her county if he did not provide her with corn, Martha’s language is startlingly direct. Her direct participation in Montgomery County’s inner civil war reveals the close ties of kinship, religion, and Unionism that bound guerrilla bands and local neighborhoods in common cause against the Confederacy.

While teaching at Texas State University, I read Martha’s letter to many a freshman history class during my unit on the Civil War!

 

January the 27, 1865

Mr. Aron Sanders

Martha Sheets didn’t go this far in threatening Sheriff Saunders, but she appeared ready to if necessary.

Dear Sur

I can tell you the truth but I dont reckond that you want to her hit. If you don’t send me too bushels of wheat and too bushels and a peck of corn in the corse of tenn days I will send enuf of Deserters to mak you sufer that you never sufered beefore. And send me good grain if you want to live. Pepel told me Whow mean you was before I went to see you, but I found you wors than they told me, and athout a grate alterrashen, you will go to the Devile—and that soon.

Ther you have got all of your suns at home and when my husband is gon and he has dun work for you and you try to denie hit. When this ware broke out you sad “goe Boys I’ll spend the last Doler for your fa[m]leys.” Drat your old sold [soul] you never have dun a thing for the pore wiming [women] yet, you nasty old Whelp.

You have told lys to get your suns out of this War and you don’t care for the rest that is gon, nor for ther famelys. Now you ma depend if you dont bring that grain to my dore you will sufer, and that bad.”

This from Martha A. Sheets

 

 

 

 

Review of “Lone Star Unionism” by Jim Schmidt, Moderator of “Civil War Medicine (And Writing)”

Note: If you think the recently-released movie, The Free State of Jones, is either fictional or the story of an isolated Southern revolt against the Confederacy, think again. Jim Schmidt reviews a collection of essays all about Unionism and dissent in Civil War Texas. –Vikki Bynum The Free State of  . . . Texas! by Jim Schmidt Reading this book and writing this review comes at a great time with the forthcoming release of the much-anticipated film, The Free State of Jones! And as you’ll see below, there is a specific connection between the book and the film! First, I want to thank the kind people at the University of Oklahoma Press for sending me a review copy of  Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance: Other Sides of Civil War Texas (2016), edited by Jesús F. de la Teja.   One of the great benefits of an edited volume of essays is that it gives the opportunity for scholars to write on interesting, but focused, topics that may not warrant book-length treatment; this book also makes accessible a collection of scholarship presented at a symposium at Texas State University in 2014. On both counts, OU Press has done readers a great favor. I was originally attracted to this book for several reasons: a) my own reading, research, and writing as relates to Civil War-era Texas, as expressed in my own book, Galveston and the Civil War (2012) b) an interest in Southern Unionists and other examples of dissent and resistance (including slaves and abolitionists), especially in Texas (e.g., see posts here and here) c) I was already acquainted with and admire the work of four of its contributors: Victoria E. Bynum, W. Caleb McDaniel, Richard B. McCaslin, and Walter D. Kamphoefner. If one takes the main title of the book as its presumed mission, I’d say it satisfies it only if very broadly defined.  However, in terms of the subtitle – “Other Sides of Civil War Texas” – it excels in its scope, originality, and scholarship. The publisher’s overview: Most histories of Civil War Texas—some starring the fabled Hood’s Brigade, Terry’s Texas Rangers, or one or another military figure—depict the Lone Star State as having joined the Confederacy as a matter of course and as having later emerged from the war relatively unscathed. Yet as the contributors to this volume amply demonstrate, the often neglected stories of Texas Unionists and dissenters paint a far more complicated picture. Ranging in time from the late 1850s to the end of Reconstruction, Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance restores a missing layer of complexity to the history of Civil War Texas. The authors—all noted scholars of Texas and Civil War history—show that slaves, freedmen and freedwomen, Tejanos, German immigrants, and white women all took part in the struggle, even though some never found themselves on a battlefield. Their stories depict the Civil War as a conflict not only between North and South but also between neighbors, friends, and family members. By framing their stories in the analytical context of the “long Civil War,” Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance reveals how friends and neighbors became enemies and how the resulting violence, often at the hands of secessionists, crossed racial and ethnic lines. The chapters also show how ex-Confederates and their descendants, as well as former slaves, sought to give historical meaning to their experiences and find their place as citizens of the newly re-formed nation. Concluding with an account of the origins of Juneteenth—the nationally celebrated holiday marking June 19, 1865, when emancipation was announced in Texas—Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance challenges the collective historical memory of Civil War Texas and its place in both the Confederacy and the United States. It provides material for a fresh narrative, one including people on the margins of history and dispelling the myth of a monolithically Confederate Texas. And now to the review! I’m going to start with what I thought were the strongest contributions: Victoria Bynum’s “East Texas Unionism: Warren J. Collins, Big Thicket Jayhawker” is excellent.  It’s Bynum’s book, The Free State of Jones, Movie Edition: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War, that is the basis for the forthcoming film, and the chapter comes closes to what I hoped the book would encompass in terms of exploring themes of Texas Unionism.  It’s a terrific integration of folklore, geography, family migration from Mississippi to Texas, backwoods life, conflict between poor whites and commercial planters, participation of Collins family members in Newt Knight’s Unionist guerilla band in Mississippi, and a transition into 20th century political life.  The research is exceptional and the story is very interesting. I had the privilege and pleasure of seeing Walter D. Kamphoefner speak about Germans and the Civil War several years ago when I still lived in Texas.  Like Bynum, his chapter – “New Americans or New Southerners? Unionist German Texans” – also comes close to what I was hoping from in the book’s mission.  It’s a very good summary of German-American sentiment in Texas in the Civil War era, and in other states, including Missouri, where I live now, so it also appealed to me on that level.  Her examines slave ownership, voting records, enlistment in Union and Confederate units, post-war recriminations and/or assimilation, analysis of German-American correspondence and more.  An especially interesting aspect was the adoption of the German language by some African-Americans in Texas. Apart from a disappointing, unnecessary, and uncharitable ad hominem insult that closes the chapter, it is an excellent piece of work. I have interviewed Caleb W. McDaniel on this blog before and admire his scholarship very much, and his chapter – “Involuntary Removals: “Refugeed Slaves” in Confederate Texas” – does not disappoint.  The focus of the chapter is the influx of slaves into Texas in the war years – swelling the estimated slave population by an additional 50,000-150,000, owing to an exodus of slaveholders from other states, especially Louisiana and Arkansas.  The best part of this chapter dispels the myth of the “faithful slave” and discusses African-Americans Unionism and dissent, especially in terms of runaways. What’s especially impressive about McDaniel’s contribution – and most others in the book – is that they are original contributions to scholarship and literature and that shows up in the diligence in the research as evidenced in the endnotes.  Especially interesting in McDaniel’s case is his utilization of the Weeks family correspondence. McDaniel’s chapter is actually one of at least four chapters that focuses on the African-American experience in Texas in the era.  Other chapters focuses on “Slave flight,” “African-American women and racial violence,” and “Juneteenth.”Of the three besides McDaniel’s, “Slave flight” relied too heavily on newspaper accounts and did not exhibit the breadth or depth of research that other contributions in this book did; likewise, the chapter on Juneteenth did not add much in the way of new scholarship in my opinion.  However, Rebecca A. Czuchry’s chapter, “”In Defense of Their Families: African-American Women, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and Racial Violence During Reconstruction in Texas,” was exceptional and one of the strongest in the book. It makes for interesting, if uncomfortable, reading owing to an emphasis on the sexual crimes against African-American women in post-war Texas.  Richard B. McCaslin’s Tainted Breeze: The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas, 1862, is one of my favorite books, and he builds on it with his excellent chapter, “A Texas Reign of Terror: Anti-Unionist Violence in North Texas.”  Another chapter in the book – on Edmund J. Davis – was interesting, but offered little more than straight biography. The introductory chapter on “Collective Memory of a Confederate Texas” was interesting but seemed an odd choice t introduce the other subject matter. In terms of learning something new, I really enjoyed Omar Valerio-Jimenez’s chapter, “Although We Are the Last Soldiers: Citizenship, Ideology, and Tejano Unionism,” as it was an entirely new subject to me and it was an outstanding contribution to this group. Of the 10 chapters in the book, 6 are truly outstanding, and the others are average or above – it’s a good mix of material and highly recommended reading. 4 to 4 1/2 stars out of 5, for sure. The one thing I would have liked to seen covered was a discussion of institutionalized suppression of civil liberties in Texas by the Confederate government – something along the lines of Mark Neely’s (1999) Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism. My own research indicates there is a lot to explore in terms of secret police activities, imprisonment, confiscation of property, etc., against Unionists in Texas. Many thanks again to the University of Oklahoma Press.

A Southern Unionist Poem, 1864

By Vikki Bynum

Many years ago, while researching my doctoral dissertation in the North Carolina State Archives, I came across a curious poem in the official papers of Civil War Governor Zeb Vance. Anonymously written in 1864, the poem celebrates the mounting victories of the Union army over Confederate forces, with its author(s) taking particular delight in taunting Governor Vance. The poem ends by lauding the courage of North Carolina’s pro-Union women as they faced down Confederate soldiers determined to learn the whereabouts of their sons and husbands.

I discovered the poem at the same time that I was researching the inner civil war that raged between Confederate and anti-Confederate forces in the North Carolina Piedmont—specifically, in the heart of its Quaker Belt, at the apex of Randolph, Montgomery, and Moore Counties (see map below). I was struck by how closely the poem fit the events of that region, particularly the clashes between Wesleyan Methodist Unionists and Confederate militia and home guard soldiers. So perfectly did the poem’s final stanza about “bold” Unionist women describe what I found in state and local records, that I quoted it in Unruly Women (p. 131).

The mass gravestone of three brothers who lost their lives in these clashes—William, John, and Jesse Hulin—with its single engraved description, “Murdered,” is pictured below.

Grave of William, John, and Jesse Hulin, Lovejoy Chapel cemetery, Montgomery County, NC. Photograph courtesy of Elaine Reynolds

Despite how closely the 1864 poem parallels events occurring simultaneously in Montgomery County, a single place name written in its margins, “Taylorsville,” indicates that it originated in Alexander County, located further to the west and just outside the Quaker Belt (see map below).

The northern portion of Alexander County shares borders with northern Iredell and southern Wilkes counties, both considered part of the Quaker Belt, which was a hotbed of southern dissent during the Civil War. Alexander County shared in that history of dissent, despite the presence today of a monument to the Confederacy on its courthouse lawn. Like so many southern counties, Alexander’s Civil War history is far more complicated than Lost Cause histories and monuments would indicate.

In his recently published study of the Civil War in the North Carolina Quaker Belt, William T. Auman reported that Confederate authorities were compelled to station a regiment of some 300 Home Guard soldiers in a region that included northern Alexander County. Citing numerous examples of clashes in this region, Auman described several that occurred specifically in Alexander. At one point, he wrote, two Home Guard soldiers were reported to Governor Vance as having “presented their guns at a Lady in Alexander last week.” So also were a number of Guardsmen reportedly shot by deserters.The old Union flag “waves every day,” read one letter from an Alexander County citizen to a soldier in the field. Replied the soldier, “I hope it will Wave over me bee fore long.” (From Auman, Civil War in the NC Quaker Belt)

The poem, predicting victory for the Union and its loyal southern and northern citizens and shame for Governor Vance, is printed here in its entirety, with original spelling intact:

This war is strange on every hand
We hear its song from every land
The Yankees are victorious
In every Battle they hav faught
For twelve months or there abought
They renderd themslfvs glorious

Then why will the rebbles forse Stand
And against the union armey contend
When they see thir mighty power
Reason would teach them that they was rong
And all that to thir [word smeared] belongs
If they reflect one hour

The union fast is gaining ground
In evry state and all around
We hear the men complaining
Jeff Davis they will overthrow
And to the union they will go
And stil thir caus keeps ganing

They do believe that Govner Vance
Would slip rite back if he’d the chance
Into the glorious union
If they’d promis him a pritty seat
To sit at Abriham Lincoln’s feet
He [would] quickly take communion

I could not believe that antie Zeb
Would hav turned out to be a reb
Although his actions prouved it
When he tuck holt of the govner’s chiear
Confederate caus to him was dear
For fiear that he might loose it

Then my little lawyer Zeb
Think of the blood that you hav shed
And begin to make repentance
Before your frightend ghost doeth stand
Before the judge of all the land
And hear its awful sentence

Let old Jeff davis wag along
And all that to his caus belong
They’ll travel on together
In a short time they’ll see thir fate
When thir cause is lost and it’s too late
And thir forses they can’t geather

Carolina fair and mountain land
Hath for the Union tuck a stand
Hir men ar bould and dairing
The rebble citizens doeth leave
And at thir fate doeth cry and grieve
And goes off quite desparing

Then my Union friends we’ll chiear
For glorious news we soon shall hear
[word smeared] libberty’s banner flying
The vanquisht armeys of the foe
Will soon be heard of hear no more
For they will leave a crying

Then chiear up you Union ladies bold
For of your courige must be told
How youv withstood abuses
When your property they’d take
The witty ansers you would make
That would vanish thir rude forces

—Anonymous

NC in 1860, with Quaker Belt Counties shaded in gray, and Alexander County shaded in red.

Remembering William T. Auman, Civil War Historian

At the state archives I found the testimony of a wife about the killing of her [Unionist] husband. He was shot while plowing . . .  .  A man walked up, squatted down took aim, and BANG!, shot him. While dying, he told his young daughter, who was right there by his side all the time, that he loved her and wanted her to take good care of the dresses that he recently bought her. Made tears come–this is why I love history. Fiction is boring in comparison.

William T. Auman to Victoria Bynum, January 19, 1987

I recently learned that my favorite historian of North Carolina Civil War Unionists, William T. “Bill” Auman, had revised and published his important 1988 dissertation detailing North Carolina’s inner civil war. I no sooner learned this exciting news when I discovered that Bill passed away in April, 2013, shortly before his manuscript went to press. Saddened by the news, and disappointed that I can never congratulate Bill on his accomplishment, I want, nevertheless, to pay tribute to his work. Certainly, historians and others interested in Civil War dissenters and guerrillas will want to read Bill Auman’s Civil War in the North Carolina Quaker Belt. 

My friendship and scholarly relationship with Bill goes back to our years as history doctoral students–he, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, me at the University of California, San Diego. I first learned of his research shortly after returning to California from North Carolina after completing a year of research (1982-83) on the dissertation that eventually became my first book, Unruly Women (1992).  While still in North Carolina, I’d become excited by what I found in the Civil War court records of Montgomery County, as well as the Governors’ Papers, of the North Carolina State Archives. So, what began as a study of women during the antebellum years of Granville, Orange, and Montgomery Counties, North Carolina, was  now expanded to the war years in order to include women from pro-Union families who tangled with the Confederacy over the status and whereabouts of their outlier/deserter husbands and sons. With that decision, my research began to dovetail with Bill Auman’s.

Very soon, I discovered Bill’s work on Southern Unionists of the Randolph County area (a region that included Montgomery County). After completing his M.A. thesis on the topic in 1978, Bill had published three articles between 1981 and 1984 on the region’s Wesleyan Methodist Unionists, on the underground Unionist organization known as the Heroes of American, and on Unionist leader Bryan Tyson of Moore County. Carefully researched and meticulously argued, those articles put me on the fast track to understanding the political context in which Montgomery County women (such as Martha Sheets, Caroline Hulin, and Phoebe Crook)  confronted local pro-Confederate citizens for their abuse of local families who opposed secession and refused to support the Confederacy.

On a return trip to North Carolina in 1984, I attempted to locate Bill at the university, but learned that he had returned home for the summer. Instead, we spoke by telephone, and were both excited to share our mutual interest in Quaker Belt Unionists. At that point, we began writing one another (too early for email!), and sharing our ideas. Bill was the expert on the Quaker Belt’s inner civil war; I was the newcomer, and, besides, only a slice of my dissertation concerned the Wesleyan Methodist Unionists of Montgomery County. But it was more than that. Bill’s expertise emanated not only from superb training, but also from his personal background.  A native of Randolph County, he was descended from several of the Unionist families of which he wrote, and thoroughly immersed in the geography, culture, and kinship of the region.

After corresponding for two years, during which time Bill read and critiqued several of Unruly Women’s chapters-in-progress, we met for the first time in Chicago, at the December 1986 convention of the American Historical Association (AHA). We spent a lively afternoon discussing not only our research, but the history profession in general. As anyone who knew Bill Auman can tell you, he was irreverent in his judgments of academia, and preferred to remain outside its hallowed halls as much as possible. He was delighted to learn that I enjoyed country and bluegrass music, and wrote to me about his love of the Sandy Creek Boys, the Bass Mountain Boys, and Raymond Fairchild, who he described as a “genuine North Carolina Cherokee raised on the Reservation.” Bill himself had learned to play a five-string guitar from the “good ole boys” he’d met at fiddler’s conventions.

By then, I was teaching at Southwest Texas University in San Marcos, TX (later renamed Texas State University). Bill did not yet have a teaching position, but in 1988, simultaneously with finishing his dissertation, he accepted a position at Georgia Southern University. By 1990, he’d moved on to the University of the Ozarks.

In 1991, Bill and I served together on a panel of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) in St. Louis. He presented a paper on “The Origins of Dissent in Confederate North Carolina”; I served as a commentor. And that, I’m sorry to say, was our last contact, either in person or by letter.

I can’t say why we lost touch, but I can guess. We were both terribly busy by 1991, working full-time with heavy teaching loads and dissertations waiting to be turned into books. In one of his final letters to me, Bill declared that “the pace is unbelievable. Too much for an old man. Jeepers.” In another, he commented that three of the four courses he was teaching were totally new preparations. And, of course, there were always conference papers and book reviews waiting to be written. Such is the life of the newly-minted PhD–that is, if you’re lucky enough to have a job in your profession.

I think around this time Bill abandoned his teaching position in the Ozarks and headed back home. It was always the scholarship, after all, that he loved. His research was inseparable from his love of North Carolina, and when he did return to teaching it would be there, in his home state.

As the preeminent historian of Civil War dissenters in central North Carolina, Bill has long been, and remains, the authority on that region’s most notorious Civil War guerrilla, Bill Owens. No one, I believe, knows more about Owens’ anti-Confederate activities and his violent death in 1865 at the hands of a lynch mob than Bill Auman. In fact, the guerrilla Bill lived at the apex of Randolph, Montgomery, and Moore Counties, very close to the ancestors of the historian Bill.

At a certain point, Bill Auman told me long ago, an old-timer of the neighborhood had taken him to the original home of Bill Owens.  And so, much of what I wrote about Bill Owens and his wife–who was famously abused by local Confederate officials–in Unruly Women, and later in Long Shadow of the Civil War (2010), was enhanced by Auman’s insights into an otherwise elusive couple.

A problem emerged for me, however, as I wrote about Bill Owens and his wife for my latest book, Long Shadow of the Civil War. Based on Auman’s own research, Bill Owens was lynched in 1865. And yet, Auman identified William Bailey Owens and his wife, Mary, of Moore County as the guerrilla couple, although that Bill Owens was still alive in 1880 according to federal manuscript population censuses. Furthermore, the same censuses revealed another William Owens living just a few miles away, over the county line in Montgomery, who, appropriate to having been lynched, disappears from the census after 1870. This William Owens had a wife named Adeline, and this Bill Owens, I suspected, was the guerrilla Bill Owens.

Frankly, I wasn’t certain that I was correct. Bill Auman, after all, was thoroughly familiar with the people and neighborhoods of the Randolph County area. And what about the old timer who had taken him to visit Bill Owens’s original homestead? Still, I kept coming back to the fact that a man lynched in 1865 could not be alive in 1880, and so I respectfully presented my theory that Bill and Adeline Owens of Montgomery County were the “real” Owenses in my 2010 book, Long Shadow of the Civil War.

Turns out I was in for a third surprise when I received my Kindle edition of Civil War in the North Carolina Quaker Belt. I was shocked and delighted to discover that Bill had read Long Shadow of the Civil War, seen the footnote in which I reported my belief that he had incorrectly identified Bill Owens, reconsidered the evidence, and now agreed with me.

I guess that makes it official: William Owens and his wife, Adeline, of Montgomery County, NC, and not William Bailey Owens and his wife Mary, of Moore County, is our guerrilla couple. Thank you, Bill, for this final posthumous judgment. Oh, how I wish I’d written directly to you about my concerns so we could have reached that conclusion together while you were still alive.

R.I.P. Bill Auman.

Vikki Bynum

William T. Auman’s Civil War in the North Carolina Quaker Belt is available via Amazon.

Symposium, April 5, 2014: “Lone Star Unionism and Dissent,” presented by the Center for the Study of the Southwest, Texas State University

If you’re interested in Southern Unionism, especially within the Lone Star State, the upcoming symposium will be of great interest to you. Lots of great scholars and papers, and I’m honored to be included. My talk will be on Warren Jacob Collins, leader of the Unionist “Jayhawkers” of the East Texas Big Thicket. Warren was part of a Unionist family that included Jasper Collins of Mississippi, a member of the Knight Company of “Free State of Jones” fame.

Hope to see you there!

Vikki Bynum

APRIL 5, 2014, SATURDAY   |   SYMPOSIUM
8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
LONE STAR UNIONISM AND DISSENT: The Other Civil-War Texas

Support for the Union in Texas and rejection of the Confederacy did not solely consist of Sam Houston’s famous refusal to take oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. Before, during, and after the Civil War, significant numbers of Texans of all social, economic, and ethnic groups actively opposed the dominant southern slaveocracy for a variety of reasons. This symposium explores the diversity of that opposition and challenges the myth of a monolithic pro-Confederate Texas.

Presented by Texas State’s Center for the Study of the Southwest, this all-day symposium offers two morning sessions and one afternoon session of three presentations each, followed by keynote address and a Q&A period.

8:00 AM—CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST

8:30 AM — OPENING REMARKS
J. Frank de la Teja, director of Texas State’s Center for the Study of the Southwest

8:45–10:15 AM — SESSION ONE

Gray Ghost: Collective Memory of a Confederate Texas 
— Laura McLemore 
The “collective memory” of Confederate Texas is as elusive as a ghost. It is as lacking in definite shape as any restless spirit, and tracing manifestations of it is a challenge worthy of any ghost hunter. This nebulousness, like so many aspects of Texas history and memory, is inextricably linked with Texan identity, in itself a loaded term. From a survey of primary and secondary sources, however, a few conclusions emerge, the first and foremost of which is that Texans viewed and many continue to view themselves as “Texan” first and foremost. A second is that vast differences of geography and ethnic heritage mitigated against the formation of a genuinely “collective” memory of a Confederate Texas. A third is that Texas men were much more interested in getting back to making money than they were in memorializing a lost cause. This left the cultivation of “memory” to the ladies. McLemore explores the evidence for and the nature of collective memory of Confederate Texas through time.

The Problem of Slave Flight Before and During the Civil War 
— Andrew J. Torget
This presentation will focus on the problem that slave fight posed for Anglo Texans and Confederates, as enslaved people during the 1850s and 1860s escaped from plantations. The position of Texas along the far-western frontier of the American South, alongside Mexico, presented unique opportunities for enslaved people to flee their masters, leaving the state’s planters particularly concerned about the problem of slave flight and rebellion. The outbreak of the Civil War threatened to destabilize slaveholding in the state as it brought new opportunities for Texas slaves to escape, even as slaveholders from other parts of the Confederacy began shuttling slaves into Texas to isolate them from Union armies (and the opportunity to run to freedom across Union lines). Dr. Torget will examine both how the course of the war affected slave escapes in the state, and how Anglo Texans thought about both the threat of emancipation and the central problem that their enslaved servants posed: unionists in their midst.

Slaveholding Refugees in Wartime Texas 
— Caleb McDaniel
As Union armies occupied New Orleans and moved up the Mississippi River in late 1862 and 1863, slaveholding refugees from Louisiana poured across the border into Texas, bringing with them tens of thousands of enslaved people. As these slaveholders rented land, hired out slaves, moved back and forth across the border, and sometimes straddled the line between commitment to the Confederacy and grudging acceptance of Union gains, their presence created tensions with many native Texans who questioned their loyalty or feared the influx of “strange” people of color. As “outsiders” who were neither Unionists nor fully accepted by Confederate Texans, these refugees and the enslaved people they brought with them did not always fit neatly into the categories historians have used to understand wartime Texas. They reveal the heterogeneous and shifting nature of the state’s population as well as the multiple motives—economic, practical, familial, and ideological—that brought many strangers to Texas during the War.

10:15–10:30 AM — BREAK

10:30 AM–12:00 PM — SESSION TWO

New Americans or New Southerners? German Texans 
— Walter Kamphoefner
Texas, which was home to more than a quarter of Germans residing in the eleven Confederate states, was the only place with an appreciable rural German element, one that was large enough to play a role in politics and war. Just what role they played, however, still remains under dispute. In the popular media, various characterizations of Germans have portrayed them as everything from “fire-breathing secessionists” to “virtually all Unionists.” The range of scholarly opinion is nearly as broad. Older accounts often reflect the characterization of antebellum traveler Frederick Law Olmstead, portraying Germans as largely abolitionist in sentiment. More recent scholarship has cautioned against generalizing from a few radical Forty-eighters to the bulk of ordinary German immigrants. Kamphoefnel re-examines the role and attitudes of Texas Germans (and smaller continental European groups often allied with them) toward slavery, the Confederacy, and Reconstruction, drawing particularly on evidence from letters and from voter behavior. It also explores personal factors which made individuals more or less sympathetic to the Confederate cause.

Although We Are the Last Soldiers: Citizenship, Ideology, and Tejano Unionism 
— Omar S. Valerio-Jiménez
Mexican Texan resistance to the Confederacy and Tejano Unionism along the South Texas border will be examined by Valerio-Jiménez. He argues that Mexican Texans’ reactions to the U.S. Civil War were rooted in the relationships Mexicans had established with African Americans in the villas del norte (towns along the Rio Grande) during the Spanish and Mexican periods. Following U.S. annexation, Tejanos assisted runaway slaves who sought freedom in Mexico and they also intermarried with African Americans. The paper demonstrates that Mexican Texans who joined the Union Army did so for various reasons including anti-slavery sentiment, opposition to pro-Confederate local politicians, and expressions of U.S. citizenship. Although they endured hardships during the war and were not politically rewarded afterwards, Tejanos invoked their military service as a claim to U.S. citizenship.

Coerced Unionism: African American Testimonies of Violence During Reconstruction 
— Rebecca Czuchry
Immediately following the Civil War in 1865, African Americans in the former Confederacy faced extremely brutal violence perpetrated by whites. This was particularly true in Texas, a state known during the period for both violence and racial intolerance. Texas has been viewed by Reconstruction scholars as one of the most violent of the former Confederate states. Even so, the violent experience of former slaves in the state has not been fully examined. Although white Texans used violence to injure, kill, or control individuals, violence also served the larger purpose of creating a climate of fear in order to more easily subjugate and control the entire black community. Despite this brutal atmosphere, black Texans risked their lives by reporting acts of violence that occurred in their communities. Kosary  examines the testimonies of African Americans as a form of resistance; in testifying to federal officials, black Texans resisted re-subjugation and established a degree of autonomy and power over their own lives.

12:00 –1:30 PM — LUNCH BREAK

1:30 –3:00 PM — SESSION THREE

East Texas Unionism 
— Victoria Bynum
During the Civil War, Warren Jacob Collins of Hardin County, Texas, led a band of guerrillas that hid out in East Texas’s Big Thicket. Collins’s occasional appearance in Texas folklore as a backwoods, bare-knuckled fighter or, alternatively, the “Daniel Boone” of East Texas, has long obscured the deeply-held political views that led him (and six of his brothers) to support the Union against the Confederacy. A careful study of the Texas Collins brothers and the Big Thicket uprising reveals the uprising’s yeoman roots as well as its direct ties to the more famous yeoman uprising in Mississippi known as the “Free State of Jones.” The political postwar evolution of Warren J. Collins in turn provides a window on connections between Southern Unionism and the rise of third party challenges to the Democratic Party.

A Texas Reign of Terror: Anti-Unionist Violence in North Texas 
— Rick McCaslin 
Despite popular lore that tends to focus on events reinforcing common perceptions of Texan exceptionalism and virtues—which leads many Texans to assume their state emerged from the Civil War virtually unscathed—facts reveal many regions were deeply scarred by wartime experiences, and the violence did not come from invasions.  Confederate Texans proved just as intolerant of dissenters as Southerners in many other states, and they reacted just as violently to internal challenges. North Texas became the arena for many brutal operations against Unionists, which undermine claims of both exceptionalism and virtue by Texans concerning the Civil War. Instead, residents of the Lone Star State, like Southerners who lived elsewhere in the former Confederacy, had to reflect on a divided legacy that included not just the heroism of units such as Hood’s Texas Brigade, but also the viciousness of events such as the Great Hanging at Gainesville.

Three Cheers to Freedom and Equal Rights to All: Juneteenth and the Meaning of Citizenship 
— Elizabeth Hayes Turner
Occupying Union troops entered Texas in June more than two months after the Civil war had ended, but it was on June 19 (Juneteenth) that a portion of the 250,000 slaves—the last within the Confederacy—learned of their freedom. The emancipation announcement, made by General Gordon Granger in Galveston, tested the resolve of slavery supporters and began in earnest the development of a freedom tradition that has lasted to this day. During Juneteenth’s evolution from 1865 to the turn of the century, black communities came together annually to celebrate their liberation and to honor the president who had freed them. Over time, leaders and social justice activists used Juneteenth gatherings as a pragmatic way not only to remember with pride black state office holders but also to launch important goals for African Americans. The creation of Reconstruction government demonstrated that democracy could be carried out by a black and white voting populace, a memory that would later be suppressed by whites seeking to disfranchise black voters. As Reconstruction faded and Redeemers returned to state office, African Americans, through Juneteenth celebrations, kept alive the meaning of freedom, the history of their political participation, and the quest for full citizenship under the law.

3:00–3:15 PM — BREAK

3:15–3:45 PM — KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Edmund J. Davis: The Radicalization of a Texas Unionist 
— Carl Moneyhon
Edmund J. Davis was a prominent Texas politician in the antebellum era who supported the Union in the secession crisis of 1860-1861, fled the state and became a general in the Union Army, then returned after the war to become an important figure in the state’s Republican Party and ultimately the state’s governor. In the latter position he urged a new course for Texas, even supporting full rights for the state’s newly freed slaves. Moneyhon examines Davis’s course during these years, assessing the causes for the decisions he made. This examination shows, ultimately, the plight of an individual whose constitutional and legal views precluded his endorsement of the actions of the state’s Democratic majority. It illustrates how the uncompromising stance of the latter and their refusal to tolerate any wavering on the issue of secession and their justification of it following Confederate defeat forced unwanted decisions on a fundamentally conservative man. The fanatical position held by the Democratic leadership, in the end, radicalized Davis and accounts for the emergence of an individual willing to challenge their leadership and even the socio-economic status quo in Texas.

3:45 PM — GENERAL Q&A