Please pray for earthquake survivors in Nepal

    We interrupt our coverage of Stoneman's Raid to ask you to pray for the people of Nepal, a mountainous nation on the crease between India and China that was devastated Saturday morning by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake.
    My heart goes out especially to those who are entombed alive right now in collapsed buildings and houses. We already know that thousands have died, and the toll will be far worse than that.
     Some geologists compare it to the 2008 Great Sichuan Earthquake in China, which registered 8.0 and took nearly 90,000 lives. The epicenters of the two quakes are about a thousand miles apart.
     I was in China as part of the Samaritan's Purse team that responded to that catastrophe, and I'll never forget the miles of devastation in places such as Hanwang, Shifang, and Dujiangyan. A disproportionate number of the victims in China were children killed in poorly built schools. 
     If you are moved with compassion and able to help, I recommend donations to Samaritan's Purse. The primary needs right now are medical care, shelter, and clean water. Those are our specialties.

—Tom Layton

'Destroy Charlotte!' 'Will Asheville do?'

ASHEVILLE, N.C.

     Stoneman's Raid was all but over and the cavalry was headed homeward from Asheville when stunning new orders arrived from Gen. Stoneman in Knoxville: 
 

          "Destroy Charlotte, and then push north ...
          and if possible destroy Greensborough."

 

     There's more to the message than that, obviously, but let's set the scene first.
     On April 25, about 1,700 mounted Yankees and hundreds of liberated slaves paraded northward out of Asheville, population 1,100. On both sides, it was good-bye and good riddance.
     One of the eyewitnesses was a young widow named Sarah Jane Bailey Cain. She wrote: 

An agreement was entered into to provide General Gillem's troops with three days' rations in case they went through peaceable and did not molest the inhabitants. The next day [Tuesday, April 25] they rode through, quite an imposing array of Officers, privates, flags waving, beautiful horses curvetting—all the showy paraphernalia of War. Besides these, many wearied negroes were following their new masters. The procession was a long time in passing, and I watched it from our front window, the house being situated on a high hill and some distance from the main street. Every house in Asheville was closed. They went through peaceably, no straying from the ranks and no insolence.

     "No insolence," she said. These Yankees had looted Lenoir, Morganton, Rutherfordton, and the Carson House in the past week, but right now all they wanted to do was head home. At midnight on Sunday, April 23, they had heard the news (prematurely, it turned out) that Confederate Gen. Joe Johnston had surrendered to Gen. William Sherman. The surrender covered all rebels in the Carolinas and most of Georgia and Florida.
     About 15 miles north of Asheville, as they neared the Tennessee line, they encountered a courier dispatched April 24 from Knoxville with orders from Gen. Stoneman for Gen. Alvan Gillem, who had led the raid since Stoneman left a week earlier.

I have just received a telegram from Gen. Thomas informing me that the terms of surrender of Johnston to Sherman have been disapproved by the President, and Sherman is ordered to push his military advantages. The cavalry under your command will do all in its power to bring Johnston to better terms. For this purpose, the most strenuous efforts will be made to destroy his communications and all sources of supplies. Charlotte should be destroyed if possible. 

I am directed by Gen. Thomas to give you [Gillem] a leave of absence to go to Nashville to attend the session of the Legislature. When you go, you will please turn over the command of the cavalry division to Col. Palmer.

     In a followup message to Gen. Thomas, Stoneman elaborated that he had ordered his cavalry "to destroy Charlotte, and then push north, destroying everything in the shape of supplies for Johnston's army, and if possible destroy Greensborough, to act with the utmost vigor, and to co-operate with General Sherman in bringing Johnston to better terms."
     In his haste, Gen. Stoneman lit a series of rhetorical powder-kegs:

• This was the first time Stoneman had authorized destruction of a town. Until this point, he had generally restrained his troops from burning houses or other non-military targets. Now he had given them a license to loot, terrorize, and scorch the earth.
• Stoneman created a leadership vacuum and a possible power struggle when he granted Gillem a leave to attend the legislature and put Col. William Palmer in command instead of Gen. Simeon Brown. Palmer was undoubtedly the best man for the job, but Brown had been ahead of him in the chain of command. Also, Palmer and the 1st Brigade were 60 miles away, so Brown would remain in command of the 2nd and 3rd brigades until all three brigades were concentrated May 3 near Anderson, S.C.
• Weary soldiers who had already ridden close to 800 miles in four weeks and had just celebrated the end of the war were now being ordered to turn their backs on home and put their lives on the line to achieve a political purpose. 

     Charlotte and Greensboro were fortunate that Stoneman's orders would change again before the cavalry could get there. Unfortunately, Asheville would pay the price of the soldiers' unbridled wrath. 

The so-called "Battle of Asheville" on April 6

paled in comparison to Stoneman's Raid April 26,

but the former was a Confederate victory, so

it was exalted on this N.C. historical marker on

Broadway. On the other hand, the Stoneman's

Raid marker out on Hendersonville Road says

only that his troops "occupied" Asheville.

     While Gen. Gillem headed to Nashville, Gen. Brown marched the 2nd and 3rd brigades back to Asheville.
     Three weeks earlier, Asheville had defended itself against 1,100 Union infantry in the so-called "Battle of Asheville." That was back when the rebels still had ample artillery and hope. But when Stoneman's cavalry returned at sunset on Wednesday, April 26, 2005, Asheville was defenseless, and the Union troops were ruthless. Soldiers outnumbered houses 6-to-1, so few families were spared. 
     All the rebel officers and soldiers in town were quickly rounded up. When Gen. James Martin was released later that night, he found Union raiders plundering his home. Cornelia Phillips Spencer wrote in her history The Last 90 Days of the Civil War in North Carolina:

     On arriving at his house, he found the ladies of his family, with lighted candles, going over the house at the bidding of the marauders, lighting them while they broke open doors, trunks, drawers, and boxes, and helped themselves to what they chose. And this was the experience of every house in the place that night. Many were entered by three or four different gangs at once. They swarmed in at every avenue of entrance, generally by the back-door, having taken counsel with the negroes first. Mrs. Martin recovered some of her stolen goods by the assistance of a guard who was detailed after the house had been plundered. Not even the town of Fayetteville suffered more severely from pillage.
     Mrs. James W. Patton and her sister were both sick in bed. Their house was entered from front and back at the same time. The ladies' rooms were entered, they were dragged from their beds, their persons and the rooms searched, and their valuables taken. This was supposed to have been done upon the information of a servant, who had told that there were four watches in the house. Of these four watches, three were afterward recovered, through the agency of a Captain [W.J.] Patterson, Assistant Adjutant-General to General Gillem, who had been quartered at Mrs. Patton's, and who proved to be one of the few gentlemen in that division of the United States Army.
     Judge Bailey's family suffered as severely as any others, everything portable of value being carried off, even to the boots from the Judge's feet. The wedding-rings of his wife and daughter were forced from their hands. Other ladies were stopped in the street and their jewelry forced from them. Those who applied to General Brown, who had the honor to command this extraordinary expedition, received no redress whatever. Dr. [Robert H.] Chapman, a well-known and widely respected minister of the Presbyterian Church, was so entirely robbed of all his goods and valuables, that he had not a change of clothes left beside what he wore.
     The Tenth and Eleventh Michigan regiments certainly won for themselves in Asheville that night a reputation that should damn them to everlasting fame.
     On Thursday [April 27], parties scoured the country in all directions, carrying on the work of plunder and destruction. On Friday [April 28], they left, having destroyed all the arms and ammunition they could find and burned the armory. On Friday afternoon, they sent off the officers they had captured under a guard. The town being left thus without arms or protectors, the citizens, remembering Kirk's threats, begged General Brown to leave a small force as guard; but he refused, saying, "They might take care of themselves."

Gen. Simeon Brown

     Gen. Martin later said, "I have heard of no worse plundering anywhere than was permitted in and near Asheville by Gen. Brown. I believe no one escaped entirely."
     Judge Bailey (mentioned above) was the father of Mrs. Sarah Jane Bailey Cain (1828-1927). Here is additional detail from her letter, describing what happened at her father's house:

     Then night came and supper was dispatched. The servants made a bright fire in the room of their mistress, lighted the lamps and everything seemed quiet, comfortable, and apparently safe. We sat by the glowing fire, my father, mother, my eldest brother and myself, and were congratulating ourselves on the peaceful solution of difficulties and expressing our indebtedness to General Martin.
     Suddenly, there was the most dreadful noise, something like the trampling of a number of horses, the breaking of timber and the crushing of glass. I must explain that the house—a most charming one built for a summer home—had a wing used as a dining room with large glass doors opening upon a pretty piazza. I exclaimed, "Oh what is it? What can it be?" My brother replied, "It is the Yankees" They have returned."
     They were riding up on the piazza. Soon the glass doors were broken and they made their way through across the hall to the room where we were sitting. They had taken off their coats and each one had a flaming torch in his hand. This, together with the gleaming expression of the eye in that light, made them look like demons. There was unfortunately a gun in the room and my father, a very brave man, said, "Come another step and I will fire."
     The scene that ensued is impossible to describe. They were evidently practiced thieves, as they immediately commenced rifling the trunks and boxes, searching among the wood for gold, which they found. (On my brother's first exclamation, my father hurriedly gave me some gold he had, and this with my mother's and my wedding rings, I threw into the wood.) They gave my father a violent blow on the head, and my brother seeing the deadly peril he was in, sprang forward and said, "I'll surrender, I am a Confederate Officer. Take me a prisoner." Several of them left, taking my brother with them. When they crossed the stile, quite a distance from the house, they said, "Let us go back and kill that old man, for he threatened us." My brother implored them not to do anything so rash, saying, "Have I not acted honorably towards you? I have surrendered. I am your prisoner, Let my father alone." His arguments prevailed with some of them, but one or two came back and fired through the front door.
     My father had taken the precaution to put out the lights, and to that circumstance he probably owed his life. When they fired he said perfectly calmly, "They have come to kill me." At these dreadful words, my mother and I, who had been given unnatural composure and courage, felt in despair, but he managed to go over to Dr. James Hardy's, the adjoining place, where he was fortunate enough to secure a guard. Two soon came over, and under other circumstances I could have laughed at the celerity with which the thieves vanished. They had doubtless played the role so often that they were perfect in the part. They had taken our jewelry, my unusually beautiful wedding present from my husband, wedding rings, all valuable silver.
     As you may imagine we did not sleep at all that night, and the next morning all the servants that we were so fond of having deserted us, we prepared a very meager breakfast from a handful of flour and an infinitesimal piece of meat, which they had overlooked in the pantry.
     Several villainous-looking men came after breakfast and took all the bacon which my father had had packed away for his servants. I thought remonstrance was useless, but my mother reproached the leader of the party, and he left one shoulder of bacon.
     The next day we returned home to a desolate looking home, no fires, no welcoming servants, dust everywhere and a general air of discomfort in the extreme. Kind and more fortunate friends sent us flour and hams to commence housekeeping again. My father went to see the Federal General Brown, who expressed great indignation at the conduct of his troops, and said they would be severely punished, but he was so intoxicated that he entirely forgot his promises.

NEXT➤ 'Those Yankees can eat the dust off my feet and call it pepper'

 

Fort Mill, SC: Jeff Davis slept here 150 years ago tonight.
Stoneman's cavalry would soon be on his trail.

Build Confederate capital near Asheville?

Asheville in the 1850s (drawing by C.H.G.F. Loehr)

ASHEVILLE, N.C.

     Decades before George Vanderbilt laid his eyes on Asheville, other visionaries had Biltmoresque dreams for the Land of the Sky. 
     They thought the Asheville area would be an ideal location for the permanent capital of the Confederate States of America.
     Richmond, barely 100 miles from Washington, D.C., was too vulnerable to remain the seat of Confederate government. The need to defend Richmond kept Robert E. Lee tied down.
     In 1864, the former Confederate secretary of the treasury, Christopher Memminger, urged President Jefferson Davis to move the capital to Henderson County, N.C.; according to historians John C. Inscoe and Gordon B. McKinney in their book The Heart of Confederate Appalachia. It seems likely that Memminger envisioned a new planned city (similar to Washington) in the picturesque French Broad River valley between Asheville and Hendersonsville.

     The mountains surrounding Asheville would make it much easier to defend than Richmond. Despite its isolation, Asheville was centrally located, with five Confederate states within 100 miles.

     Once the railroad reached Asheville in 1880 and Vanderbilt broke ground for the Biltmore House in 1889, Asheville became a destination. Today, Asheville likes to call itself Beer City USA, Ash-Vegas, the San Francisco of the East, or even the Paris of the South. As cosmopolitan as Asheville has become, though, back in the 1860s it was a long way from looking like a national capital.
       One reason the Confederacy had moved its capital from Montgomery, Ala., to Richmond in 1861 was to be located in a significant city. At the time, Richmond's population was 37,000, compared to Montgomery's 9,000.
     Asheville's population in 1860 was just 1,100 (though there were over 23,000 people locally if you counted all of Buncombe and Henderson counties). Stoneman's men in Asheville numbered 1,700, so when they camped there 150 years tonight, they more than doubled the population of the town.

C.G. Memminger

     Culturally and economically, Buncombe and Henderson counties had more in common with the Old South plantations than anywhere else in the mountains. There were 1,913 slaves in Buncombe County in 1860, most of them owned by Lowcountry aristocrats who had summer homes in the mountains. (Watauga County, by contrast, had a population of 4,957 in 1860 but just 104 slaves, the fewest of any county in North Carolina.) Memminger, a prominent lawyer in Charleston, had six slaves at his summer home in Flat Rock. 
     Needless to say, by 1864, planning a new national capital was not a priority for the embattled Confederacy, and I doubt that Memminger's invitation was ever seriously considered.

     North Carolina historian Michael C. Hardy recently published a book entitled The Capitals of the Confederacy. In addition to Montgomery and Richmond, he also counts Danville, Greensboro, and Charlotte. Jefferson Davis presided for a few days at each location near the end of the Civil War. 
     You could also make a case for Abbeville, S.C., where Davis held his last Council of War meeting as Stoneman's cavalry closed in on him. The Stoneman Gazette will have a report from Abbeville May 2.
     One other capital candidate emerged during Stoneman's Raid, when the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry camped April 14-15 in Statesville, N.C. This was where Stoneman's Raid heard the news of Robert E. Lee's surrender on April 9. 
     "Statesville is a very pretty town," Capt. Henry Weand wrote in his journal. "It was said that it had been picked out as the future capital of the Southern Confederacy, but from present appearances, the latter won’t need a capital."

C.G. Memminger (1803-1888, secretary of the treasury under Jefferson Davis) built "Rock Hill" as a summer home in 1836 and used it as a refuge during the last year of the Civil War. Carl Sandburg (1878-1967, biographer of Abraham Lincoln) bought the house in 1945. Sandburg's home is now a National Historic Site, open daily for tours. In the interim, the home was a resort for industrialist Ellison Adger Smyth (1847-1942), who fought against Stoneman's Raiders in the "Battle of Anderson." Smyth bestowed the name Connemara in honor of his family's roots in Ireland. 

NEXT➤ Destroy Charlotte! Will Asheville do?

Peace down east? War out west? It flip-flops

ASHEVILLE, N.C.

 Don't let anyone tell you that the Civil War ended when Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.
 Appomattox was monumental, but it was only the first in a series of surrenders, and Lee's army in Virginia wasn't even the Confederacy's largest.
 The largest surrender of troops was by Gen. Joe Johnston at the Bennett Place near Durham, N.C., on April 26. Out in the Oklahoma territory, Gen. Standhope Watie's regiment of Cherokee Indians held out until June 23.
 The last Confederate surrender was in Liverpool, England, of all places. That's where the C.S.S. Shenandoah finally docked Nov. 6, 1865, after sinking or capturing dozens of Union merchant ships, many of them whalers off the coast of Alaska. (Read how the rebels saved the whales.)
 From the standpoint of Stoneman's Raid, the war wasn't over until May 13, when the cavalry learned that Michigan troops had captured the fugitive Confederate President Jefferson Davis May 10 in Irwinville, Ga.
 Uncertainty and misunderstandings about the end of the war would have awful consequences in Asheville, N.C., and Anderson, S.C. 
 Communications in the South were so painfully slow that one lady in Asheville said the first time she heard of Lee's surrender was from Yankees on April 26—17 days after the fact. The White House and Union generals were getting telegraph reports in real time, but the telegraph and railroad lines in the Carolinas, Virginia, and Georgia had been destroyed by Stoneman, Sheridan, and Sherman.

 Not only were southerners woefully uninformed, but Union troops operating in the South had to deal with outdated intelligence and rampant rumors. 

 On April 27, newspaper readers in Anderson, S.C., were fed these rumors, which insinuated back-to-back coups by Andrew Johnston and Gen. Ulysses Grant:

 April 1865 was one of the biggest month for breaking news in U.S. history. Here's a timeline:

April 9: Gen. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia; ceasefire in Virginia.

April 14-15: Lincoln assassinated; Andrew Johnston sworn in as President.

April 18: Gen. Joe Johnston agrees to surrender Confederate forces in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida.

April 22: Secretary of War Stanton rejects political terms of Johnston's surrender.

April 24: Sherman orders Stoneman's cavalry to resume raids "to bring Johnston to better terms."

April 26: Johnston surrenders a second time without political concessions.

 In the meantime, crucial military decisions in the mountains were being made based on outdated information. 
 Union Gen. Sherman and Confederate Gen. Joe Johnston agreed to a truce April 18, but the word did not reach Gen. Alvan Gillem, commander of Stoneman's Raid, until Sunday, April 23, as he was about to attack Asheville. For five days, there was peace down east but still war in the west.  
 The same day Gillem found out about the truce (thanks to an epic 110-mile ride by a messenger), Grant told Sherman that the terms of surrender had been rejected in Washington. Now there was peace in the mountains but a renewed state of war between Johnston and Sherman.
 There would be two more flip-flops in the days to come. 
 So Confederate Gen. James Martin and Union Gen. Alvan Gillem had a lot to sort out on Monday, April 24, 1865, when they negotiated the surrender of Asheville. Martin, 46, and Gillem, 34, were both West Point graduates, and their meetings were evidently quite cordial.
 The wily Martin, a lawyer by trade, tried to take advantage of the fast-changing situation. As they negotiated, he asked Gillem to return a four-cannon battery that the Yankees had captured the day before, because technically it had been captured during a cease-fire. Gillem wisely refused, though he may have been amused by Martin's audacity.

 Gillem had an unusual request, too: "I announced to him my decision to march to Greeneville (Tenn.), and at the same time suggested to him that it would be a great relief to the people if he could supply me with three days' rations, and thus avoid the necessity of stripping the citizens of their scanty supplies."
 Eager to get the Yankees out of Asheville, Martin agreed.
 Before they got to the Tennessee line, though, the situation flip-flopped again, and Stoneman (now in Knoxville) ordered Gillem's cavalry to resume raiding and force the Confederates "to bring Johnston to better terms."
 At sunset April 26, Stoneman's Raid returned to Asheville with a vengeance. That same day, Joe Johnston surrendered unconditionally to Sherman. Now the telegraphs in Washington and points north were clattering with news of peace in the Carolinas, but the mountains were once again at war.

NEXT➤ Could Asheville have become Confederate capital?

Historical markers: They report, we deride

 Stoneman's Raid has so many historical markers that I'm not going to be able to fit them all into The Stoneman Gazette before we wind down our daily coverage May 13. 
 Today's blog is dedicated to random historical markers that:
 ► Did not make the cut on their special days, or
 ► Deserve further scrutiny, or
 ► Try to revise history, or 
 ► Amuse me.
 Without further ado …

Fort Mill, SC: Wishful thinking

 Two days ago, we told the Union version of the burning of the Catawba River railroad bridge, when the rebels fell for a far-fetched Yankee prank.
 In the interest of equal time, here's York County's version of the story: "Burning by Federals April 19, 1865, touched off sharp battle with Southern forces which resulted in Union retreat." Well, yes, after the Yankees burned the trestle, they took 325 prisoners back to their base in Lincolnton, if you want to call that a retreat. According to the Yankees' account, they expected a sharp battle after they burned the bridge, but the rebels asked for a truce instead. 
 Regarding the discrepancy in dates: The Union raid began on the night of April 19 in Lincolnton, but both sides record the bridge burning as April 21. The Confederate secretary of war claimed his own forces burned the bridge to keep it out of Union hands, which would make no sense in the context of a Union retreat.
 To me, the strongest evidence in favor of the Union version is that it was published in 1871, just six years after the fact.  The York County marker was erected 109 years later in 1980. 
 There was a retreat here at Nation Ford, but it was by Jefferson Davis, "enroute west to reorganize the Confederacy." 

Town erected this marker to replace one decommissioned by the state

Newton, NC: Was Stoneman here?

 According to a 2010 interview with the coordinator of the North Carolina Highways historical markers program, the Stoneman's Raid marker in Newton never should have been installed in the first place. "We got it wrong," he said. "It's no longer there; he missed Newton by 40 miles."
 Huh? Stoneman didn't personally go through Newton (he was 25 miles away in Statesville, 20 in Taylorsville, and 30 in Lenoir). But the marker was correctly worded to say that his cavalry (specifically, the Tenth Michigan regiment) was here, as the descendants and admirers of Confederate Lt. Charles Connor can attest.
 The 1940 marker in Newton was decommissioned in 1989, about the same time it was "accidentally" knocked down by a snowplow. (Sound familiar, Blowing Rock?) The United Daughters of the Confederacy dedicated a new marker June 3, 2009 on the courthouse square in Newton. The inscription says: "On a Civil War raid through Western North Carolina by General George Stoneman, US Cavalry troops commanded by Col. William J. Palmer passed through Newton on April 17, 1865, burned the Confederate Commissary depot and the county jail, and shot and killed Confederate Capt. Charles F. Connor."
 Lt. Connor, 25, came from a prominent family. His father Henry Connor served 20 years in Congress and his grandfather William Hawkins was governor of North Carolina. He may have been at Appomattox when Robert E. Lee surrendered, and he was back home in Catawba County when the Tenth Michigan Cavalry occupied Newton for nearly a week. There are two stories of how he was killed. According to one account, Connor was chasing raiders out of the Catawba courthouse when one of them turned and shot him. Another version said Connor fled from town to avoid capture and was killed by a long-range shot.
 Lt. Connor's daughter married Rev. William Lander Sherrill (1860-1953), who wrote a history of Lincoln County and was one of the last surviving eyewitness to Stoneman's Raid.

Morganton, NC: Last artillery shot of the war

 The same day the Ohio cavalry invaded Newton and a Pennsylvania regiment took Lincolnton, the main body of Stoneman's troops (from Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee) ran into a skirmish at Rocky Ford, just outside Morganton, N.C., where U.S. 64 now crosses the Catawba River. 
 The Burke County home guard had one piece of artillery and perhaps 200 entrenched infantry, but they were no match for two brigades of Yankee cavalry and four cannons. The second shell fired by Union Lieut. James Atkinson knocked out the Confederate cannon. According to the regimental history of the 13th Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, "we feel safe in saying [this] was the last hostile shot fired by artillery in the Civil War."
 The last gunshot of the rebellion is harder to pin down. (Some zealots would even suggest that it hasn't been fired yet.) One possibility is a skirmish in Greenville, S.C., four weeks after the surrender of Confederate forces in the Carolinas. We'll cover that incident in a sequel May 22.

Rutherfordton, NC: Pity the poor enemy

 Poor Rutherfordton had to put up with Stoneman's traffic coming and going for more than a week. The date on this marker on Washington Street refers to Gen. Alvan Gillem's ill-tempered brigades on their way to Howard's Gap after being defeated April 20 at Swannanoa Gap. Palmer's brigade came through April 25 and 28, the first time when he was a colonel and the second time after he had been breveted to general. In the intervening days, Rutherfordton would have been prey to the same desperadoes who accompanied the raid at the Carson House.
 On April 25, Pennsylvania Capt. Henry Weand described Rutherfordton: "It is a very ordinary town, and the two days’ stay of the Tennesseans did it no good. [Gen. Gillem's 3rd Brigade was composed of "Home Yankees" from Tennessee.] They stole everything they could carry off, put pistols to the heads of the citizens, persuaded them to give up their pocketbooks, and even took the rings off ladies’ fingers. The sympathy we used to feel for the loyal Tennesseans is being rapidly transferred to their enemy."
 The Tennesseeans were not totally to blame for Rutherfordton's woes. Weand wrote on the 28th that the 1st Brigade (representing Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan) "took up our quarters again in Rutherfordton, where the citizens furnished us horses and corn. They did not do so willingly. They supposed we had left them for good, and at once began bringing both into town from the places they had been concealed, and we got back just in time for them."

Green River, NC: Unlucky horseshoes

 Several of the markers along the path of Stoneman's Raid (like this one at Green River Plantation, on Coxe Road southwest of Rutherfordton) are Civil War Trails displays rather than old-fashioned state historical markers. You can read more about them at the North Carolina Civil War Tourism Council or Civil War Traveler.
 Gen. Alvan Gillem's 2nd and 3rd Brigades camped near here April 21-22, 1865, and Col. William Palmer's 1st Brigade followed on April 26. Some of these troops stabled their horses in the parlor, leaving the imprints of horseshoes on the floorboards.
 Green River Plantation was built around 1805 by John McDowell Carson. His brother lived at Carson House near Marion, which was also raided by Gillem's troops and was the site of our "Emma's War" serial. Green River Plantation is open for tours by appointment and is often rented as a wedding venue.

If I had noticed the rainbow, I would have framed this photo differently.

Howard's Gap, NC: Beware of rumors

 It was 150 years ago yesterday when Gen. Gillem successfully crossed the Blue Ridge at Howard's Gap after being defeated two days earlier at Swannanoa Gap. (Howard's Gap is now the route of I-26 between Tryon and Hendersonville, and this marker is at the foot of the mountain on N.C. 108 in the Lynn community between Tryon and Columbus.)
 About the same time Gillem reached Howard's Gap, the Confederates began hearing rumors that Gen. Joe Johnston had surrendered all rebel forces in the Carolinas on April 18. Contrary to what this marker suggests, most of the rebels refused to fight any further.
 It was the evening of Sunday, April 23, 1865, before Gillem received official notice of the surrender. By then, politicians in Washington had already rejected the terms that Union Gen. Sherman offered Johnston. The fighting was not quite over after all. If the Confederates had ignored the rumored surrender and stood in the gap against Gillem, Stoneman's Raid might have ended quite differently.

NEXT➤ Peace down east? War out west? It flip-flops

Emma's War: 'You will not dare touch me'

Last in a series of 5 episodes
(To read "Emma's War" from the start, click here.)

This photo from 1900-1912 shows the Carson House 
looking very much like it does today.

For four days April 19-22, 1865, residents of the Carson House near Marion, N.C., were terrorized by Union raiders and desperadoes who used the raid as a license to loot. Miss Emma Rankin told their story in The Charlotte Observer in 1895. 

Saturday, April 22, 1865

Miss Emma Rankin

     Sometime after midnight, we heard a halt. In breathless terror, we listened to the sound of spur and sabre and heavy tramp up the walk, through the passage, down the long porch where was our room, and straight to our door, where the sound stopped, with a heavy kick on the door. Not a word could we utter.

     A rough voice cried "Open the door. We want a light to go to the barn." No answer.

     "Open the door, or we'll break it down" was howled, with an oath, from the outside.

     Mrs. Carson then spoke, "I have but one piece of candle" (she had found this in one of the rooms) "and I cannot give it to you."

     "Give us a piece of it," they cried.

     "I have no knife to cut it," said she.

     "Open the door, and we'll give you one."

     She hesitated. After a moment she said, "If you'll promise not to come in, I'll open the door wide enough to get the knife, and give you a piece of candle." They promised. I did not trust to "honor among thieves" and expected them to push in. But she opened a crack in the door, got the knife, gave them the candle, and off they went.

     Just after daylight, the same rough voice was heard at the door. "Open this door, I tell you, or I'll break it open," and heavy kicks followed under which the door threatened to give way every moment.

     We now concluded to open the door. A man rather old, with the most frightful countenance I think I ever saw, pushed in. I think I should know that face after all these years. He came pretty near where I was standing, and immediately spied an insignificant breastpin which I wore habitually, and had not thought of concealing.

     "Give me that pin," he insolently demanded.

     "No, you cannot have it," I said.

     "If you don't take it off, I'll take it off for you," he replied.

     "No, you will not dare touch me," I said. I moved back toward the fireplace, where there was a large iron shovel, keeping my eye fixed steadily upon him as he slowly moved after me. I determined if he attempted to touch me to seize the shovel, and do the best I could with it. I never took my eye off him, but did not allow him to shorten the distance between us, as he moved toward me I moved back till we had gone half way around the room. I persistently refused to let him have the pin, and to all his horrid threats told him he dared not touch me.

     "Dare not," he said, "I fear not God or man."

     "I fear God," said I, "and you cannot harm me."

     After many minutes, as it seemed to me, he moved off, leaving me weak-kneed and ready enough to drop into the nearest seat. A few days before a lady near by my home in Lenoir had been knocked down and robbed of her watch by one of this same gang of marauders, and I know of no earthly reason why this wretch should have desisted, but just at this hour, as I afterwards learned, my dear father was on his knees, imploring the protection of God upon his absent child, amid the dangers by which she was surrounded.

     The day passed in comparative quiet, only a few stragglers, and they employing themselves in digging around for hurried valuables, but not one thing did they get. It was found that they had dug within six inches of the box of hams, and still failed to find it. The horses had been found on the second day, and the children's pony was paraded up and down at the front door before their tearful eyes, before they carried them off.
     Toward evening, quiet settled upon us. No raider had passed for hours, and we were beginning to breathe freely, as we sat in the soft April sunlight, which seemed to be the only thing that vile man could not mar. Down the road from Morganton at last rode two men. They might be friends, but for fear they might be foes, we retired to the back of the house, and shut the door. In a little while, we heard a knock at the front entrance.
     "O, Mrs. Carson," I cried, "That's no Yankees! They come in with a kick, and never with a knock." I flew to the door, and there stood a major in the lovely Confederate uniform. It seemed to me months since I had seen a friend, and I thought he was the handsomest man I had ever seen.
     He introduced himself as Major Herndon* from Asheville (I learned later a brother-in-law of Governor Vance), and I seized the hand which he offered with both of mine, and came near kissing him. Mrs. Carson now came forward, recognized him, and begged him to stay all night. He said he wanted to stop, but his servant at the gate was in charge of two fine horses which he was anxious to get home without encountering any Yankees. We told him none had passed since noon, and we thought the horses could be sent to a place of safety.
     We walked to the gate with him, and while we were consulting about the best disposition to make of the horses, one of the negroes came running round the corner crying, "Run, Massa, run, for God's sake, run! They's a coming from the still house, just as drunk as they can be!" One leap to his horse's back, and with "Good bye, ladies, I am sorry to leave you," he was gone.
     Back we ran to Mrs. Carson's room, and shut the door, but from the window we could see and hear the drunken crowd whooping and cursing. In a moment they rushed in, and were standing before us with pistols presented, crying "Meat, give us meat, or we will shoot you."
     Mrs. Carson told them they might have all they could find, but there was none there. Finding we were not to be intimidated by pistols and oaths, they left us, and after a fruitless search in the smoke house, they rode off. If I remember aright, I these were the last of the raiders that we saw, but it was days before we felt secure.
     Time and space fail me to relate the result of the inventory taken soon after, but I will only say that old Aunt Lucindy's shroud was one of the things that this noble army took away with them. She was an old African—a "King's daughter," of course, in her native land. She was said to be over a hundred years old, and had her shroud laid up in her ''chist'' for many years. A rapacious blue-coat dragged it out, put it on, danced around in it, to the infinite horror of the negroes, and, in spite of their entreaties, carried it away.

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* Major Edmund W. Herndon (1839-1883) married Hanna Moore Vance (1842-1921), the younger sister of Gov. Zebulon Baird Vance (1830-1894). Vance served two terms as North Carolina's governor (1862-1865 and 1877-1879) and also is well-known for defending Tom Dula in the murder trial that inspired the ballad, Tom Dooley.

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