In 1860, the population in North Carolina, with fewer than a million people, had dropped to twelfth place in the United States and slaves numbered one-third of the total population. There were more than thirty thousand free Blacks some of which, as strange as this may seem, were slave owners themselves.
The people differed greatly in wealth and social standing, partly because of the differences in mind and character inherited from their ancestors and partly because of differences in opportunities. Out of every hundred farms forty-one were less than fifty acres and only two were more than five hundred acres.
Seventy-two of every hundred white families did not own any slaves. In the entire state only 11 planters were reported by the U.S. census of 1860 with as many as two hundred slaves each, only four with three to four hundred each, and not one with as many as five hundred.
Thus, the great mass of white people belonged to the class of small farmers, tenants and woringinmen. These families had no slaves or servents and most of them lived in log houses of one or two poorly furnished rooms and had simple food and clothes. The small farmers and laborers were generally good, honest and indepedent people and did the best they could for themselves.
North Carolina was part of the South, but it was also one of the original 13 states of the Union. It tried to preserve the Union even after most of the Southern states had seceded. But when Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, Lincoln called on North Carolina and other states in the Union for troops to fight the Confederacy. "You will get no troops from North Carolina," replied
Governor John W. Ellis.
Lincoln's call for troops united North Carolina. If it must fight, it would fight for and not against the South.
Zebulon B. Vance, the beloved War Governor of North Carolina, expressed the feelings of most North Carolinians when he said, "If war must come I prefer to be with my own people."
Shorty thereafter, on May 20, 1861, North Carolina seceded from the Union making it the last Southern state to join the Confederacy save for Tenneesee which joined on June 8, 1861. Although North Carolina had not wanted to leave the Union and join the Confederacy until Lincoln's call for troops, no Confederate state gave or suffered more for the Southern cause.
North Carolina furnished about one-seventh of the soldiers even though it had only about one-ninth of the population of the Confederacy. It sent into the war, 125,000 men, mostly volunteers, a number larger than the voting population of the state. These North Carolina troops were in the thick of the fighting and bore themselves bravely on every important battlefield of the war.
North Carolinians have liked to boast that its men were "First in Bethel, fartherest at Gettysburg and Chickamauga, and last at Appomattox," and that "North Carolina heroism hallowed and marked every important battlefield." More than forty thousand North Carolina soldiers lost their lives in this, the bloodiest war in American history.
Many battles, though most of them were small, were fought on North Carolina soil. Offical war records mention eleven battles and seventy-three skirmishes. However, the state's role in the grand stategy of the war was very important. From and through North Carolina, men and supplies went by railroad to Lee's army in Virginia. Near the end of the war his army depended largely on supplies from England.
The supplies from England were brought to the West Indies and then were run into Wilmington through the blockade. They were then shipped over the Wilminton and Weldon Railroad..."the lifeline of the Confederacy."
Union forces captured much of eastern NC early in the war. But the port at Wilmington remained open to Confederate supply ships until January, 1865. Nearing the end of the war, of the battles that took place in North Carolina, the bloodiest of these was faught at
Bentonville , on March 19, 1865. There, Union forces under General Sherman defeated the Confederate troops of
General Joseph E. Johnston . Johnston surrendered to Sherman at the
Bennett House , three miles west of Durham on April 26, 1865.
While these developments were taking place, General George Stoneman's army, marching eastward from Tennessee, was giving North Carolina its last taste of the war. It swept through western North Carolina, capturing
Salisbury and destroying millions of dollar's worth of railroad property, factories, bridges, military supplies and food.
On April 29, 1965, the war was over and Federal General John M. Schofield became military commander of the state. The best that North Carolina and the other Confederate States could do was not enough to win independence for the South.
After three long years, of dark days and a bitter political campaign, the people of North Carolina voted on a new Constitution. On
June 26, 1868, Congress approved the new Consitution and North Carolina once again rejoined the Union.
