Though few battles scarred North Carolina soil, the Tar Heel State’s participation in the Civil War has been of great interest to historians. Civil War literature ranges from general reading and campaign narratives to children’s books and scholarly texts. The following annotated list includes recent studies and classic readings.

POLITICS/COMING OF THE WAR/GENERAL

Ayres, Edward L. “The Story We Want and the Story We Need: Thinking about the Civil War.” In Moral Problems in American Life: New Perspectives on Cultural History, edited by Karen Halttunen and Lewis Perry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. Also published in ALHFAM: Proceedings of the 1997 Conference and Annual Meeting, Staunton, Virginia, June 15-19, 1997, edited by Debra A. Reid. North Bloomfield, Ohio: Association for Living History Farms and Agricultural Museums, 1998.

• Ayres evaluates Civil War historiography, comparing the contemporary work of James McPherson, Ken Burns, and others with the work of their more dovish and introspective predecessors.

• Barrett’s 1963 volume remains the only comprehensive account of military operations in North Carolina during the war.

• This pamphlet is an abridged version of Barrett’s earlier monograph.

• In the months following Lincoln’s election, upper-South unionists, including North Carolinians, looked to the president for a sign of conciliation while disdaining the actions of secessionists.

• This slender volume illustrates the private soldier at war, blockade running, life on the home front, freedmen, and North Carolina generals.

• How white Christian slaveholders used their religion to analyze their defeat.

• In this bold historiographic challenge, Gallagher chronicles Confederate loyalty and the will to win through the final years of the war, and refutes critics of Robert E. Lee’s military strategy.

• Harris succinctly describes events leading to North Carolina’s secession.

• This early volume traces North Carolina’s effort to mobilize for war and maintain troops in the field, and also covers military operations in the state for the first two years of the war.

• Mast skillfully blends images of North Carolina soldiers and text about their lives.

• Photographs of people and places tell North Carolina’s Civil War history.

• This Pulitzer Prize–winning interpretation of the war sees secession as a conservative counterrevolution to the increasing liberality and moral righteousness of Northern states.

• Reardon, in detailing how postwar writers and journalists from Virginia shaped the memory of the third day’s assault at Gettysburg, gives credence to North Carolina’s claims to primacy in the action.

• A comprehensive and easy-to-read history of North Carolina at war.

• Primary documents illustrate the lives of North Carolina’s civilians, administration, soldiers, sailors, and others and their efforts to survive the war.

 WOMEN

Andrews, Matthew Page, comp. The Women of the South in War Times. Baltimore: Norman, Remington Co., 1924.

• Essays, diary excerpts, and reminiscences, including two accounts of Sherman’s march through North Carolina, recall the suffering and courage of Southern women.

• Poor white and free black women inadvertently subvert the dominant social order to endure the hardships of war.

• Women experiencing wartime austerity choose their personal security over Southern independence.

• Rapid inflation, meager government relief to the poor, and the sudden loss of hundreds of men to battle created a vacuum in early 1863 in which women reacted violently to their desperate situation.

• Inscoe chronicles the struggle of Macon County resident Mary Bell, wife of a halfhearted Confederate officer, to manage her farm through wartime hardships.

• Elite Caldwell County women close ranks upon their small kinship networks to support their men in the army and to endure the bleak wartime economy.

• McKinney describes the disillusionment of Confederate women in western North Carolina and the subsequent decline in their support of the Southern cause.

HOME FRONT

Auman, William Thomas. “Neighbor against Neighbor: The Inner Civil War in the Randolph County Area.” North Carolina Historical Review 61 (January 1984): 59–92.

• Class antagonism, staunch Unionism, and cultural factors engender anti-Confederate sentiments and guerrilla warfare in Randolph County and its environs.

• A small group of North Carolinians forms a secret organization to overthrow Confederate authorities and restore the Union.

• The Civil War disrupted a tenuous antebellum political balance between conservative planters and yeoman farmers and permanently divided North Carolina politics along lines of class and region.

• In addition to the manufacture of textiles and military materials, North Carolinians attempted self-sufficiency in textbook publishing. Publishers used their products to help create a national identity for the Confederacy.

• Controversial interpretation examines class conflict in Washington County as poor and elite North Carolinians struggled violently over land and power.

• Escott and Crow assess the potential for violent class upheaval during the Revolution and the Civil War.

• State and Confederate authorities acted too late and with too few resources to prevent widespread destitution on the home front.

• Chapter 4 traces the wartime experiences of Orange County citizens, including those at the front and on the home front.

• Rowan County citizens went to war in waves, first the young and independent, then the older, established farmers.

• Classic monograph on the Confederacy’s internal problems.

• Thomas traces the fortunes of sharply divided Bertie County, source of hundreds of Union army recruits.

• North Carolina Supreme Court justices bordered on obstructionism as they tenaciously clung to strict legal precedent in protection of personal liberties and judicial review.

SOLDIER LIFE

Bardolph, Richard. “Inconstant Rebels: Desertion of North Carolina Troops in the Civil War.” North Carolina Historical Review 41 (April 1964): 163–189.

• Bardolph’s account of deserters was the first to focus on this problem in North Carolina.

———. “Confederate Dilemma: North Carolina Troops and the Deserter Problem, Part II.” North Carolina Historical Review 67 (April 1989): 179–210.

• Bardolph looks at motives for desertion and efforts to stop the problem.

• Faust finds in the revivals of 1863–1864 symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder as well as unconscious efforts of farm-bred independent Southerners to conform to the mechanical rigors of military life and combat.

• This study examines the daily experiences and motivations of the soldiers who terrorized North Carolina in the final month of the war.

• Hartley describes North Carolina cavalrymen and their charismatic leader in the Army of Northern Virginia.

• Early war ideals of courage and manhood shrank in the face of unexpectedly fierce combat. Disillusionment and the effort to stay alive, rather than patriotism and courage, inspired soldiers in the final years of the war.

• This classic work is the only monograph on desertion.

• Mitchell, who sees the differences between Confederate and Federal soldiers as culturally based and spurred by popular imagery, makes insightful observations about the Confederate soldier’s loss of morale.

• McPherson points to patriotism as a motivator for soldiers fighting in the final years of the war.

• Well-researched narrative tracing the daily lives and continued confidence of Confederate soldiers, including many North Carolinians, in the final year of the Army of Northern Virginia. 

• Reid analyses desertion among Tar Heel regiments and finds that North Carolina’s desertion rate was no more extreme than that of other states.

• This classic volume set the standard for soldier life studies; though dated, it holds many insightful observations.

CAMPAIGNS AND BATTLES

Barrett, John Gilchrist. Sherman’s March through the Carolinas. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956.

• Barrett narrates Sherman’s destructive march through the Old North State, including actions at Fayetteville, the Battle of Bentonville, foragers, and Bennett Place.

• Detailed narrative of the climactic battle of the Carolinas campaign.

• Capsule histories of North Carolina regiments and military actions.

• Davis narrates the last month of the Confederacy as its cabinet flees south through North Carolina.

• First comprehensive study of the fall of Fort Fisher and the Wilmington campaign.

• Another good retelling of the Battle of Bentonville.

• This detailed account of the Plymouth massacre and its aftermath reveals a small number of Confederate atrocities and much confusion and controversy in the aftermath.

• Jordan illuminates two obscure and relatively insignificant skirmishes in Eastern North Carolina.

• Mallison chronicles the transformation of Outer Banks society by the war.

• Archivist Sauers examines Union general Ambrose E. Burnside’s early 1862 push into eastern North Carolina, beginning with his success at Roanoke Island and ending with the capitulation of New Bern.

• In the closing months of the Civil War, George Stoneman’s Federal cavalry swept undisputed through western North Carolina.

• Spencer’s rambling, and sometimes faulty, recounting of the advance of Sherman and the flight of the North Carolina government in May and April 1865 is a Tar Heel classic.

BIOGRAPHY

Barefoot, Daniel W. General Robert F. Hoke: Lee’s Modest Warrior. Winston-Salem: John F. Blair, Publisher, 1996.

• Deemed a rising star, this North Carolinian was the youngest major general to serve under Lee.

• Known as a difficult officer to command, Hill remained a competent but controversial leader until the end of the war.

• The upstanding son of an elite Tar Heel family, Burgwyn rapidly advanced through the ranks of his North Carolina regiment before his death at Gettysburg.

• Ramseur, who commanded North Carolina regiments in all major fights of the Army of Northern Virginia, was a fast-rising general when he fell at Cedar Creek.

• Thomas, adopted son of the Cherokee, government agent, and entrepreneur, raised a battalion made up of Cherokee Indians and whites.

• The candidacy of newspaperman-turned-politician Holden in 1864 posed a serious threat to the Vance administration, and his postwar allegiance to congressional reconstruction vexed North Carolina.

• Mobley offers a refreshing reevaluation of Vance as a staunch Confederate doing his best to support the war effort while ensuring the loyalty of his fellow North Carolinians.

• Samito examines Pender’s personal relationships within the Army of Northern Virginia and his critical role in the successes of that command.

• Pettigrew gained fame for leading the climactic third day’s assault at Gettysburg. Wilson reviews the general’s thoughts on, and efforts to preserve, Southern culture.

MEDICINE

Cunningham, H. H. Doctors in Gray: The Confederate Medical Service. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1958.

• Comprehensive review of Confederate medical operations.

• Chronicles the efforts of North Carolina medical officials to provide care to the state’s sick and wounded soldiers.

• The Civil War through the eyes of its doctors and nurses.

NAVY

Donnelly, Ralph W. “Charlotte, North Carolina, Navy Yard, C.S.N.” Civil War History 5 (March 1959): 72–79.

• After abandoning Norfolk Navy Yard to Federal forces, Confederate authorities moved remaining equipment and supplies to the inland safety of Charlotte.

• Detailed history of the Albemarle and biography of its builder. The Confederate ram successfully staved off Federal naval encroachment of the Roanoke River in 1864.

• Named for the North Carolina river, the Neuse served merely to deter Federal riverine advances.

• Wise recounts North Carolina’s blockade-running enterprises as well as the use of the Tar Heel coast as an entrepôt for blockade runners.

FIRST-PERSON ACCOUNTS

Taylor, Michael W., ed. The Cry is War, War, War: The Civil War Correspondence of Lts. Burwell Thomas Cotton and George Job Huntley, Thirty-fourth Regiment North Carolina Troops, Pender-Scales Brigade of the Light Division, Stonewall Jackson’s and A. P. Hill’s Corps, Army of Northern Virginia. Dayton, Ohio: Morningside House, 1994.

• Junior officers in the Thirty-fourth North Carolina describe army life and the effects of war on soldiers.

• The stoic colonel described army life to his wife, frequently invoking a strong sense of duty to the Confederacy.

• Colonel Speer of Yadkin County served in eastern North Carolina and northern Virginia and in 1862 was a prisoner of war.

• Diaries and correspondence of five cousins in the Forty-third Regiment North Carolina Troops served as primary sources for this lively narrative.

REFERENCE

Current, Richard N., ed. Encyclopedia of the Confederacy. 4 Vols. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.

• Thorough and thoughtful entries on all aspects of the Confederate experience.

• This handy one-volume reference contains hundreds of entries, from military campaigns to political policies.

• Rosters of nearly every North Carolina regiment, with brief biographical and service information for the state’s soldiers.

SLAVERY/EMANCIPATION

Barrow, Charles Kelly, ed. Forgotten Confederates. Atlanta: Southern Heritage Press, 1995.

• An anthology about black Southerners.

• Crow examines the colonial origins of slavery, African American life and labor before 1800, nineteenth-century slavery, the Civil War, emancipation, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement.

• Quakers confront slavery and its aftermath in North Carolina.

• Twenty-seven oral histories of former slaves.

• An account of Jacobs’s life in slavery and her victorious struggle for freedom for herself and her children.

• Federal officials raised three regiments of freed slaves on the coast of North Carolina in the government’s first efforts to enlist African Americans in the army.

• North Carolinians figure prominently in this volume of documents and reminiscences of emancipated slaves at the close of the war.