High Mountains Rising (11 page)

Mountain Unionists were active in other locations at this same time. In western Maryland, pro-Union candidates swept to victory in elections that ensured that their state would remain in the Union. A convention met in Greeneville, Tennessee, and sought a separation of East Tennessee from the remainder of the state; the Confederate state administration refused to agree to this request. East Tennessee Unionists did not temper their militancy, however, and took part in a sabotage campaign against the region's railway bridges in November 1861. When expected support from the Federal army did not materialize, many of the perpetrators were executed by Confederate authorities. Other Unionist leaders, such as newspaper editor William G. Brownlow of Knoxville, were arrested and imprisoned. A clash between Federal and Confederate forces in Mill Springs in eastern Kentucky in January 1862 that brought a crushing defeat to the Confederate army further increased tensions in East Tennessee.
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Confederate military initiatives in the spring of 1862 brought large armies to the mountain regions for the first time. The most spectacular of these was the campaign of General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Jackson, a native of the new state of West Virginia, successfully evaded several Union forces seeking to destroy him and won decisive victories at Winchester and Port Royal. In August in eastern Kentucky, the small Confederate army of Kirby Smith was part of a broad movement of Confederate armies into Kentucky. Smith won a decisive victory at Richmond, Kentucky, but he was forced to retreat after the wider Confederate offensive failed.
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Robert E. Lee led his veteran Army of Northern Virginia into the foothills of western Maryland in September 1862, and Stonewall Jackson captured the Federal garrison at Harper's Ferry with ease, but the Confederate advance was challenged at a skirmish at South Mountain, Maryland. The two main armies faced each other just across the Potomac at Sharpsburg, Maryland, where they fought to a tactical draw on September 17, 1862. Unable to sustain his offensive, Lee withdrew from the mountains back toward Richmond. Immediately after this battle, Abraham Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which changed the conflict into a crusade against slavery and for the continuation of the Union.
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In the late summer and fall of 1863, a Federal army advanced into East Tennessee and brought large armies into that part of Appalachia for the first time. In September an army under the command of General Ambrose Burnside marched unopposed into Knoxville and forced a small Confederate army to vacate its position at Cumberland Gap. A larger Federal army led by William Rosecrans maneuvered Braxton Bragg's Confederate army out of Chattanooga and into northern Georgia. Reinforced by regiments from Lee's army, Bragg's army counterattacked and badly defeated the Union forces, driving them back into Chattanooga.
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The Federal government sent generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman and 37,000 reinforcements to Chattanooga. Bragg ordered a small part of his army to Knoxville to try to regain control of that area. Burnside's forces easily withstood this attack. In late November, a heroic charge up Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga by Federal forces routed Bragg's weakened army and sent it back into northern Georgia. In May, Sherman started his army forward against the Confederate lines. Skillfully maneuvering his forces around the Confederates, Sherman reached the outskirts of Atlanta after suffering small loses at Resaca and New Hope Church.
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The final major campaign of the war in Appalachia took place in the Shenandoah Valley. In July, a small but very mobile Confederate army under the leadership of Jubal Early swept out of the valley and threatened Washington, D.C. The Union leadership was angered by this Confederate success and placed a large army under the command of Philip Sheridan in the valley. Sheridan attacked Early's army at Winchester in September and won a major victory. Sheridan pursued his adversary and won another significant battle at Fisher's Hill. In October Early counterattacked, but Sheridan led his men to a sweeping victory that destroyed Early's army.
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As the war came to a close, Federal forces began to make raids into parts of Appalachia that had seen no previous formal combat. In December 1864, a small army under General George Stoneman conducted a short campaign in southwestern Virginia. Then as the Confederacy collapsed in March and
April 1865, Stoneman's army swept quickly through southwestern Virginia and western North Carolina. There was little Confederate resistance as the southern armies and government disappeared. These campaigns by large and small armies were very destructive throughout the war. Both armies seized supplies from the surrounding civilian populations and wantonly destroyed buildings and crops as they marched. Civilians complained bitterly to the authorities about the excesses of both sides.
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As horrifying as marching armies were to the people directly affected, large sections of Appalachia that were out of the line of march of the large forces suffered similar depredation. The major reason for this development was that the Civil War in Appalachia was transferred to the community level. Throughout the region there were neighborhoods, families, and individuals who chose to support the government that their neighbors despised. In addition to this group of dissident mountain residents, the events of the war created a substantial group of mountaineers who became disillusioned by the demands made by the war and sought to limit their participation. A general weakening of the social and political loyalties of the region further eroded civil peace. The result was a growing level of violence and despair in the mountain areas by 1864 and the disintegration of the social order by 1865.
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Many Appalachian people recognized the potential for this disaster even before the fighting began; this was one reason why so many voters refused to back the Confederacy in 1861. One North Carolina woman caught the sense of foreboding well when she wrote, “How quietly we drift out into such an awful night into the darkness, the lowering clouds, the howling winds, and the ghostly light of our former glory going with us ‘to make the gloom visible' with its pale glare.” Despite this concern, many mountaineers flocked to the armies to defend the government they supported. In western Maryland, northwestern Virginia (West Virginia), eastern Kentucky, and East Tennessee, a large number enlisted in the Federal army. In southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina, northern Georgia, and northern Alabama, substantial numbers of men joined the new Confederate army.
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Although most of the recruits were quite enthusiastic, much planning went into the decision to enlist. Generally speaking, unmarried men from households containing other male laborers were most likely to join the army. Conscious decisions appear to have been made to ensure that neighborhoods and families retained sufficient male labor to survive as economic units. In keeping with this type of planning, neighborhoods took care to ensure that a sufficient number of skilled artisans were left behind. No community could long survive without its blacksmiths, coopers, tanners, millers, and wheelwrights.
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This compromise of national and local needs lasted through the winter of 1861–62. The Confederate government faced a severe shortage of troops in the spring of 1862 and resorted to the first national conscription in American history in April 1862. Recognizing that the South needed to keep its economy functioning, this act provided a series of occupational exemptions. The most notorious of these provisions was the decision to exempt one potential soldier for every twenty slaves owned by a family. This policy angered many yeoman farmers and tenant farmers in the mountains who argued that the war had become “a rich man's war, and a poor man's fight.”
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Conscription also upset the delicate balance between community needs and the needs of the Confederacy. In heavily Unionist East Tennessee, the Confederate draft encouraged the rapid escape of men to Kentucky to join the Union army. In Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama artisans who were crucial to the smooth working of the local economy were removed from neighborhoods. When the Federal government instituted a draft in 1863, Appalachian communities in Maryland, West Virginia, and Kentucky suffered much the same fate.
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The drafting of important skilled workers placed even greater strain on the transportation system in the mountains. In most places, the old system of roads and turnpikes proved to be inadequate to the crisis. These highways and bridges had been maintained by the labor of neighborhood men working under local government supervision. With many of the men now in the military, the roads and bridges in the mountains fell into disrepair. Vital goods could no longer reach their destinations. For some of the more remote areas in Appalachia, this transportation failure brought hardship and intense suffering.
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The most prized commodity was salt. The center of production in Appalachia was Saltville, Virginia. Because these deposits were located near railroad lines, the distribution of this necessity to many county seats and larger towns was easy. The people who lived elsewhere were in the greatest peril. A series of incidents in Madison County, North Carolina, illustrated the strains placed on people. In January 1863, a shipment of salt arrived in Marshall, the county seat. Because there was little of the precious substance available, the townspeople decided that none would be sent to the pro-Union population in the Shelton Laurel district of the county. A raiding party from the Laurel area attacked Marshall, seized the salt, and harassed the civilian population, causing two children to die. The male relatives of the Marshall people were in the Confederate Army in East Tennessee. These men returned to Madison County and captured fifteen men in Shelton Laurel. After two escaped, the soldiers executed thirteen unarmed civilians.
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These same families faced another relentless foe: inflation. This was particularly true in areas where Confederate currency circulated. For essential goods, prices increased rapidly, placing them beyond the reach of many families. Much of this distress fell on the members of the family remaining at home, usually women and children. State governments sought to alleviate some of the suffering in the mountain counties by providing money and supplies to needy families. This distribution of necessities was often partisan and drove some to desperate measures. For example, about fifty Yancey County, North Carolina, women broke into a Confederate warehouse in Burnsville in April 1864 and carried off sixty bushels of government-owned wheat.
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For others the only viable option was flight. This solution often brought disastrous results. Some of the escaping families in north Georgia were confronted by Confederate sympathizers and massacred. The same fate awaited another group from North Carolina, who sought to reach the relative safety of East Tennessee. Confederate supporters in Johnson County, Tennessee, were driven away by pro-Union neighbors, who then occupied their former neighbors' farms. In West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, Confederate sympathizers organized local defense groups. Under these circumstances, efforts by women and families to find safer places were a natural and understandable reaction.
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Despite the disruption caused by the war, the part of the population most likely to seek escape—slaves—did not do so very often. As far as can be determined, the institution of slavery underwent little change during the war. In Maryland, voters approved a new constitution in September 1864, ending slavery in that state, and as already noted, West Virginia amended its proposed constitution in 1863 to provide for gradual emancipation of slaves. Elsewhere, governments provided continuing support for the institution. Eastern Kentucky, western Maryland, and West Virginia were exempted from Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1,1863. The Confederate, state, and local governments continued to enforce slave codes in southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina, northern Georgia, northern Alabama, and East Tennessee as long as they maintained control. In fact, slavery expanded in western North Carolina during the war. Only in locations where the Union army marched did substantial numbers of slaves leave their masters.
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Despite the seeming social stability in Appalachia evidenced by the institution of slavery, most other social structures suffered during the conflict. Although some states and localities offered draft exemptions to Christian ministers and schoolteachers, many of these people served in the two armies. In many locations, churches and schools simply closed. In western
North Carolina, only twenty-one out of more than four hundred churches had ministers late in the war. Many schools were forced to close, and, for the first time, women were employed extensively as teachers. When the disappearance of these institutions was combined with the economic hardship found in the mountains, serious social dislocation resulted.
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The most frightening manifestation of this fraying of mountain society was the appearance of guerrilla warfare throughout the mountains. In western Maryland, West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and, after 1863, East Tennessee, the irregular troops often claimed affiliation with the Confederacy. In southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina, northern Georgia, northern Alabama, and East Tennessee through September 1863, the partisans often claimed to be associated with the Federal war effort. Many other groups claimed no affiliation at all or changed their allegiance to meet the circumstances. Some of those involved in this activity were simply trying to protect their communities and families. But there were others whose violent tendencies were unleashed by the violence inherent in war. Perhaps the most notorious of the latter type was Champ Ferguson of East Tennessee, who was believed to have slain more than fifty people before being killed himself toward the end of the war.
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