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I
t was still early on the morning of April 12, 1861, but North CarolinaGovernor John W. Ellis was undoubtedly having yet another sleeplessnight. Just hours earlier, several regiments of South Carolina militia hadopened fire on the federal garrison stationed at Fort Sumter in CharlestonHarbor. All over the state, telegraph wires crackled with news of the firstshots of the Civil War, yet North Carolina was more than a month away from officially seceding from the Union. For most North Carolinians,Lincoln’s attempt to resupply the fort was a disaster of an unprecedentedscale – a betrayal of promises that the fort would be evacuated and peacepreserved, which they believed had come from President Lincoln himself.For others, Fort Sumter fit the definition of the “coercion” policy perfectly:Lincoln was forcing a state to remain in the Union at gunpoint, and it was just the sort of action they had been waiting for. As North CarolinaSenator John A. Gilmer had noted a month earlier, “the seceders in theborder states and throughout the South ardently desire some collision of arms… [they would] give a kingdom for a fight.”
1
The reaction among North Carolina’s “seceders” was immediate andelectrifying. “We received to-day news of the attack on Sumter,” a young William Calder of Wilmington wrote in his diary. “The excitement wasgreat,” he noted. “All knew that civil war was upon us, and all felt that the
1
John A. Gilmer to William Seward, March 7, 1861, in Daniel W. Crofts,
Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis
(Chapel Hill, NC:University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 258. In this paper, quotations appear with the spelling and punctuation of the original; when emphasis has been addedit is noted in a footnote.
Uniting a Dismembered State: SecessionistInsurgency in North Carolina, November1860-May 1861
B
ARNES
H
AUPTFUHRER
time had come to act, ay, in the fullest sense of the word,
to act.
”
2
Barely able to control the popular outcry in eastern North Carolina, GovernorEllis gave orders to militia leaders in Wilmington to control secessionistmobs threatening to destroy an unmanned federal fort in the city: “You will proceed with such troops under your command as you may deemrequisite for the purpose, to Fort Caswell and take possession of the samein the name of the State of North Carolina.”
3
Before most North Carolinians could fully comprehend the attack onFort Sumter, however, they were hit by news even more shocking anddevastating to any remaining hope of preserving the Union – Lincoln hadissued a proclamation calling for 75,000 troops to put down the rebellionin the Southern States. Throughout North Carolina, church bells tolledand local militias paraded in the streets. The popular uprising was so greatthat on April 17 Governor Ellis sent a telegram to Confederate President Jefferson Davis with the news: “WE ARE READY TO JOIN YOU TO A MAN. STRIKE THE BLOW QUICKLY AND WASHINGTON WILL BE OURS. ANSWER.”
4
But the responses of secessionists across North Carolina in mid-April were only the loudest cracks of lightning in a popular storm that had beenbrewing for months. At some times, in certain places, the agitation forsecession had dominated public opinion without a single objection. Othertimes, the storm’s intensity had petered and threatened to disappear underthe weight of Unionist dissent. On February 28, 1861, North Carolina voters had refused to call a state convention to even consider secession.Had the convention call been approved, Unionist candidates would haveoutnumbered Secessionists by almost three to one.
5
By the beginning of March secession fervor seemed to be coming to a standstill. The attack onFort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for troops, including two regiments fromNorth Carolina, however, gave the movement new life and enough forceto carry North Carolina out of the Union for good. Soon letters from
2
William Calder, journal entry, April 13, 1861, William Calder Papers, RareBook, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham,North Carolina.
3
John W. Ellis to John L. Cantwell, April 15, 1861,
The Papers of John Willis Ellis
vol. 2, ed. Noble J. Tolbert (Raleigh, NC: State Department of Archives andHistory, 1964), 609.
4
John W. Ellis, “Telegram to Jefferson Davis, 17 April 1861,”
Ellis
Papers
, ed. Tolbert, 623.
5
Crofts,
Reluctant Confederates
, 373.
30
COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY
all over the state offering military service flooded the governor’s office.“I tender you with my services,” wrote one Halifax County native, “if the State has to be forced by Lincolnites I am willing on my part to be where the balls may come first and heaviest.”
6
The state had exploded with outrage.Several scholars have studied the leaders both for and against secessionin North Carolina, examining in great detail the political debates among the prominent and elected men of the state. Despite careful accounts of the secession movement in Virginia and Tennessee, Civil War scholarshiphas largely ignored popular secession opinion in North Carolina. Thoughpoliticians such as John Ellis, John Gilmer, and William Holden certainly had a significant influence on their fellow citizens, secession would havenever been possible in North Carolina without widespread popularsupport. On the local level, popular groups and mobs worked to keepthe secession movement alive during the secession winter of 1860 and1861 and fought desperately at times to preserve the emotional intensity that had initially erupted at the election of Abraham Lincoln and theRepublican Party to the Presidency. Men formed militias, held meetings,listened to speeches, wrote to newspapers, and drilled their local regimentsin town squares. Women organized parades, prepared musical programsand food for demonstrations of Southern pride, volunteered medicalservices, and even threatened to take up arms if the men of their county refused to stand their ground in defense of ‘Southern Honor.’ At the sametime, in some parts of the state, groups of concerned citizens struggled with difficulty to preserve peace and the Union they so dearly cherished,ardently proclaiming that South Carolina should be “pushed into theocean” for precipitating such a national crisis.
7
They fended off insultsof “Black Republican,” “Submissionist,” and “Abolitionist,” and did theirbest to keep their state in the Union safely. This paper examines the popular insurgency of common peopleacross North Carolina, both for and against secession, during the secession winter from the election of Abraham Lincoln in early November 1860 tothe official secession of North Carolina on May 20, 1861. Though oftenoverlooked, the work of determined local groups on both sides and their
6
R. H. Walker to John W. Ellis, April 19, 1861,
Ellis
Papers
, ed. Tolbert, 637.
7
Conway D. Whittle to Lewis N. Whittle, May 10, 1861, Crofts,
Reluctant Confederates
, 335.
31
UNITING A DISMEMBERED STATE
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