She laid the baby’s hand on scrap of paper….

“For Americans during the Civil War, embracing loved ones on paper was a hardship they could only with difficulty overcome. Most of them, no doubt, would have rather not had to resort to it. For us, their efforts created a record of something we rarely get to see: glimmers of the emotional lives of ordinary people long gone.

“Martha [Hendley] Poteet of western North Carolina endured labor and delivery, for at least the ninth time, during her husband’s absence in 1864. When she wrote to Francis a month later, she cheerfully described the easiest postpartum recovery she ever had experienced. ‘I had the best time I ever had and I hav bin the stoutest ever sens I haint lay in bed in day time in two Weeks today.’ Of the baby, a girl she was waiting to name until Francis came home, Martha could report no weight — scales and doctors were rare things in the Blue Ridge.

“She had a better idea. She laid the baby’s hand on scrap of paper, traced a line around it, and carefully cut it out to tuck into the envelope. Some days later, in a long-besieged trench outside Petersburg, Virginia, Francis [Marion] Poteet opened that envelope and held his new daughter’s hand in his….”

— From “The Civil War Art of Using Words to Assuage Fear and Convey Love” by Chrisopher Hager at Zócalo Public Square (Jan. 15, 2018)

Thirty-six examples of the Poteets’ wartime correspondence can be found in the State Archives. The couple’s story is detailed here by Philip Gerard.

 

Slaveowners found Burnside’s actions belied his words

“In authorizing the assault on North Carolina, General-in-Chief George McClellan advised [Ambrose] Burnside to avoid linking the invasion to emancipation….In a February 1862 ‘Proclamation made to the People of North Carolina’ Burnside assured them that rumors that he intended to ‘liberate your slaves’ were ‘not only ridiculous, but utterly and willfully false.’

“His actions immediately after the invasion indicate the opposite. Shortly after the invasion of New Bern, Burnside wrote to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that…. he had adopted a policy to ‘allow all [slaves] who come to my lines to enter’ and ‘to give them employment as far as possible, and to exercise toward old and young a judicious charity.’ ”

— From Driven from Home: North Carolina’s Civil War Refugee Crisis” by David Silkenat (2016)

 

‘Fat as a pig’ were reassuring words from soldier’s wife

“Sarepta Revis was a 17-year-old newlywed when her husband left their [Henderson County] North Carolina home to fight in the Confederate States Army. Neither had much schooling, and writing did not come easily to them. Still, they exchanged letters with some regularity, telling each other how they were doing, expressing their love and longing. Once, after Daniel had been away for more than six months, Sarepta told him in a letter that she was ‘as fat as a pig.’ This may not seem like the way most young women would want to describe themselves, but Daniel was very happy to hear it.

“Civil War soldiers and their families had abundant causes for worry. The men were exposed to rampant disease as well as the perils of the battlefield. Women, running households without help, often faced overwork and hunger. Letters bore the burdens not just of keeping in touch and expressing affection but also of assuaging fear about loved ones’ well-being….”

— From “The Civil War Art of Using Words to Assuage Fear and Convey Love” by Chrisopher Hager at Zócalo Public Square (Jan. 15, 2018)

Thirty-one of the Revises’ letters can be found in the State Archives.

 

Sherman hauled off plenty, but he did leave this verb

“Writing her reminiscences, a North Carolina woman affectionately recalled her cousin Ann, who had lived through the war, then in her later years had become a garrulous terror to the unwary. Having once survived a visit by Yankee bummers, the old woman thereafter, to her dying day, was ‘never better entertained than when set to Shermanize a stranger.’ ”

— From “The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans” by Charles Royster (2011)

Not surprisingly the verb “Shermanize” seems to have originated in Atlanta, where a century or so later a Confederate-themed restaurant would prepare steaks “Shermanized (burned to a crisp), Lincolnized (warm, red heart), and Stonewalled (rare).”

 

‘He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right arm’

On this day in 1863: Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, the Confederacy’s master tactician, dies of pneumonia, eight days after being mistakenly shot by troops from the 18th N.C. regiment.

He was shot at nightfall while scouting ahead of the line near Chancellorsville, Va. His men mistook him for the enemy. As he lay wounded, doctors amputated his maimed arm. “He has lost his left arm,” says Robert E. Lee, “but I have lost my right arm.”

.

The ‘God-forsaken’ key to eastern North Carolina

On this day in 1862: Pvt. D.L. Day, Co. B, 25th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, writing in his diary at Hatteras Inlet:

“Witnessing boat collisions and wrecks is getting old and the boys are amusing themselves by writing letters, making up their diaries, playing cards, reading old magazines and newspapers which they have read half a dozen times before; and some of them are actually reading their Bibles.

“Of all the lonely, God-forsaken looking places I ever saw, this Hatteras island takes the premium. It is simply a sandbar rising a little above the water…. I don’t think there is a bird or any kind of animal, unless it is a dog, on the island, not even a grasshopper, as one would have to prospect the whole island to find a blade of grass, and in the event of his finding one would sing himself to death…. It is the key, or gate-way, to nearly all of eastern North Carolina.”

 

Zeb Vance to Jefferson Davis: Negotiate!

 On this day in 1863: In a letter to Jefferson Davis, Gov. Zeb Vance argues that antiwar sentiment in the state can be appeased “only by making some effort at negotiation with the enemy.” Davis’s response: Lincoln has refused to negotiate and demanded unreasonable peace terms.

Confederate military defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg have spawned some 100 public meetings in 40 N.C. counties. Although the state will sacrifice more than its share of men in battle, enthusiasm for the war has been from the beginning far from universal, and Vance is continually at odds with Davis over states’ rights.

 

Believe it: He’s grandson of Civil War veteran

“Ringgold, Ga., has a mayor who’s one generation removed from the Civil War.

“Joe Barger’s grandfather — that’s right, his grandfather — Jacob A. Barger served as a private for the South in North Carolina’s infantry. Mayor Barger grew up in Salisbury, N.C., about 35 miles north of Charlotte.

” ‘He was born in 1833,’ Barger said. ‘So it’s 96 years’ difference between when he was born, and I was born.’

“The births were spaced that way because both Barger’s grandfather and father married younger women after their first wives died.

“Being the grandson of a Civil War soldier is so unusual, the 84-year-old mayor said, that when he tells people about it, ‘I don’t think they believe me.’ ”

— From “Civil War scion: Ringgold mayor is living history….” by Tim Omarzu in the Chattanooga Times Free Press (June 28)

 

Civil War pension checks still arriving in Wilkesboro

“WILKESBORO, N.C.—Each month, Irene Triplett collects $73.13 from the Department of Veterans Affairs, a pension payment for her father’s military service — in the Civil War.

“More than 3 million men fought and 530,000 men died in the conflict between North and South. Pvt. Mose Triplett joined the rebels, deserted on the road to Gettysburg, defected to the Union and married so late in life to a woman so young that their daughter Irene is today 84 years old — and the last child of any Civil War veteran still on the VA benefits rolls….”

— From “Still Paying for the Civil War” by Michael M. Phillips in the Wall Street Journal (May 9)

‘Never mind — if it was bad, Sherman did it!’

“According to William Surface of the Museum of the Cape Fear in Fayetteville, North Carolina, ‘It became a badge of honor for some Southerners to have an ancestor whose house was burned by Sherman’s troops.’

“Betty McCain, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, exemplified this mindset while testifying [in 1994] before the North Carolina Historical Commission in opposition to a proposed memorial to Sherman’s troops at Bentonville Battleground.

“She declared that her foremother fought off Sherman’s men with a broom three different times, when they tried to burn down her house near Wilmington. With no McCain ancestors to stop them, Sherman’s men did burn the warehouses in Wilmington, McCain claimed, as part of their swath of destruction across the state.

“Apparently McCain did not know that Confederates set the Wilmington warehouses ablaze before pulling out of the town, to deny materiel to the Union. Nor did she know that Sherman’s men never came within a hundred miles of Wilmington! Never mind — if it happened in North Carolina and was bad, Sherman did it !”

— From “Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong” by James W. Loewen (2007)