Rallying the Home Guard to fight the Yankees

BOONE, N.C.

     At the dawn of the Civil War, Boone was a prosperous little town with six stores, three sawmills, two hotels, and a saloon. But there was not yet a newspaper, telegraph, or railroad. Gossip was about the only media.
     The talk of the town 150 years ago today was the possibility of a Yankee attack. Residents worried about bands of "Home Yankees" who had become more aggressive as the Civil War tilted in the Union's favor. Nobody could imagine that Gen. George Stoneman and his 4,000 cavalrymen were headed their way, just beyond the western horizon.
     Seven weeks earlier, a band of 100 loyalists from Banner Elk under James Champion had captured and burned Camp Mast, the headquarters of the Watauga County Home Guard, where 60 of the 71 men voted to surrender without a fight. Another notorious Union man named Keith Blalock had been on the warpath since rebels murdered his step-father. Many were worried about another raid by James Hartley, a Union recruiter whose outfit had killed two home guards on the slopes of Beech Mountain in 1864.
     The Home Guard was a local militia responsible for hunting down Confederate draft-dodgers and deserters, as well as Union outlaws such as Champion, Blalock, and Hartley. With most of the men under 50 away in the Confederate army, the Home Guard was largely composed of older men and wounded veterans. 
     Their reputation was as tattered as their personnel. The Watauga guards had blood on their hands, too, and there were rumors that some of their officers had been complicit with the enemy in the Camp Mast debacle.
     Still, the Home Guard was the county's last vestige of law and order and the last line of defense against Union marauders. So Capt. Jordan Cook called a meeting for Tuesday morning, March 28, 1865, to reorganize a company of the Home Guard.
    Among those who were in town that Tuesday:

Sheriff A.J. McBride
(photo from Terry Harmon)

• Sheriff Andrew Jackson "A.J." McBride, 42, a part-time preacher who had been captured at Camp Mast but promptly escaped.
• Jacob Mast Councill, 35, nephew of "the father of Boone," Jordan Councill Jr. The Councill family owned over half the slaves in Boone. As the clerk of court and a mail contractor, Jacob was exempt from the Confederate draft. He had a hillside farm near where the Jones House now stands on King Street, and it was time for spring plowing. 
• Waightstill Gragg, 25, one of 18 children in his family, a Confederate soldier in the famed 1st N.C. Cavalry who was home on furlough from Robert E. Lee's army.
• Thomas Holder, 32, who lived on Howards Creek, several miles from Boone.

  

  Elijah Norris

• Sgt. Elijah Norris, 21, and his father Ephraim Norris, 45, from the Meat Camp community. Elijah had been shot five times as a Confederate soldier and came home after a nearly fatal hip wound in September 1864.
• Warren and Calvin Green, cousins once removed. Warren, 27, was a Confederate sergeant who was wounded in battles in 1862 and 1864. He was the father of three young children. The Greens were also related by marriage to McBride and the Norrises. 

     Before long, all these men would be related by Yankee lead.  

     At the meeting the next morning, Elijah Norris would be elected lieutenant of the Home Guard company under Capt. Jordan Cook. And when the first Yankees rode into Boone about 11 a.m. Tuesday, almost on cue, the battle-hardened Norris would be among the first to realize the awful truth. This wasn't Hartley's rag-tag outfit. And the Home Guard didn't have a chance.

NEXT➤ Stoneman's midnight ride takes a wrong turn

'A Yankee gentleman can steal butter'

     If you have ever had a lesson in economics, you are probably familiar with the phrase "guns vs. butter," used to illustrate how a nation balances military vs. civilian spending. 
     Two days from now when Stoneman's Raid arrives in Boone, guns will be blazing, so let's skip ahead to a butter episode that same day that should not be overlooked.
     Bear with me as we set the scene.
     Gen. George Stoneman often commandeered private residences to use as his nightly headquarters, and in Boone he chose the home of Sarah and Jordan Councill Jr. Before the town was named for Daniel Boone, the settlement was originally known as Councill's Store, and Jordan Councill Jr. is regarded as "the Father of Boone."
      Jordan Jr., 65, and his son James Councill, 38, were evidently not at home on March 28, 1865, when Stoneman raided Boone. James had been Watauga County's representative at North Carolina's secession convention in 1861, and he had also served in the Confederate army. The Councill family owned 17 of the 31 slaves in Boone in 1860. Prominent rebel families like the Councills often suffered the worst at the hands of Stoneman's troops.
     On the other hand, the general's personal host was usually safe. Though Sarah Councill was a staunch southerner, she was also known for acts of compassion toward Union prisoners in the Watauga County jail.
     In peaceful times, Sarah Councill and George Stoneman might have had a pleasant visit. But March 28, 1865, in Boone was anything but peaceful. A Saturday morning shootout between Stoneman's troops and the local home guard had left eight local men dead or wounded, including Mrs. Councill's nephew. (We'll have details Saturday.) Later that day, the raiders set the county jail afire. People who had heard what Sherman did in Georgia were terrified of what Stoneman might do to Boone. Gunfire was still ringing in their ears, and the crisp mountain air was choked by the dust and dung of four thousand horses. 
     All that is to set the stage for a story told by Sarah Councill's niece, Mrs. Betty Councill Folk. She was in Salisbury, N.C., when Stoneman raided there on April 12. One of his men assured her, "We are Yankee soldiers, but we are gentlemen. Don't be alarmed." When she heard they had been through her hometown, she asked him if they had done much destruction in Boone. "No, madam, General Stoneman's soldiers are above doing anything mean." 
     In that context, here's the story Mrs. Folk shared about her aunt and Gen. Stoneman, published 45 years later in the Farmer and Mechanic newspaper in Raleigh:

Mrs. Councill had been kind to some Yankee prisoners confined in the jail in Boone sometime during the war, and Stoneman hearing of it when he first came to the place seemed disposed to treat her humanely, although she was strongly Southern in her feelings. He made his headquarters at her house and she treated him as genteely as possible, preparing supper and breakfast for him, out of the scarcity his raiders had left her. He seemed particularly pleased with some fine mountain butter that was on the table and asked her if she had any more of it. She replied that a firkin of it was about the only thing his soldiers had left her and was congratulating herself that her butter was safe, for Gen. Stoneman would protect it. But what was her surprise and mortification to see, a short time after, her firkin of butter put in his provision wagon. According to the testimony of the officer before mentioned, Gen. Stoneman and his men are "gentlemen," but it seems a Yankee gentleman can steal butter. 

     The fact that a Yankee general would take such advantage of his hostess' Southern hospitality show you why so many people in towns like Boone still curse Stoneman's name.
     At the same time, it also illustrates how the Yankee cavalrymen sustained themselves throughout the raid. They didn't have to choose between guns and butter. They simply took whatever they needed, destroyed whatever else the Confederacy might use, and left thousands of families hungry and bitter. To the towns and farms they passed through, they were like a plague of locusts. With 4,000 men, Stoneman's cavalry was larger than any North Carolina town west of Raleigh.

     Stoneman had strictly ordered his men not to take private property, but many yielded to temptation or vengeance. His quartermasters were supposed to give vouchers for seized property, but the families being raided didn't know to ask for them. Years after the war, many families filed for compensation through the Southern Claims Commission, but Confederate sympathizers were rejected.
     Stoneman's army was tiny compared to Grant's 120,000, but Grant's soldiers were amply supported by trainloads of food, ammunition, and other provisions. Sherman's 60,000 men lived off the land during their march across Georgia and South Carolina, but by this time they were being resupplied and reinforced from the North Carolina coast.
     Meanwhile, Stoneman's cavalry spent six weeks without any supply lines. The first three days out of Knoxville, they got daily provision from railroads. On March 23 at Morristown, Tenn., each man received five days' rations and four horseshoes. Horse-drawn supply wagons kept up with them them for two more days, but as Gen. Alvan Gillem reported, "On the 26th the command moved, cutting loose from all incumberances in the way of trains. One wagon, ten ambulances, and four guns with their caissons, were the only carriages that accompanied the expedition."
     Beyond that point, starting 150 years ago today, Stoneman's troops were expected to feed themselves and their horses by foraging the countryside. They cleaned out "tithe depots," a part of the Confederate tax system where families were required to deposit one-tenth of their agricultural products. Raiders freely confiscated horses, potatoes, and grain, ultimately preventing many families from having much of a harvest in 1865.
     The economic repercussions of Stoneman's Raid would last for years. 
     If Sarah Councill's firkin of butter was not safe, nothing was. 

———

EVEN WORSE? Cornelia Phillips Spencer's 1866 account dates the butter episode during Stoneman's return trip through Boone April 17, rather than on March 28. If that's the case, it is even more heartless, because by that time:

• Stoneman had left the raid and was well on his way back to the comforts of his headquarters in Knoxville.

• Mrs. Councill's home had been all but destroyed by the rogue troops of Union Col. George Kirk, who occupied Boone after Stoneman left.

NEXT➤ Rallying the Home Guard to fight the Yankees

To destroy and not to fight battles?

JONESBOROUGH, Tenn.

     What was George Stoneman fighting for?
     That ought to be as simple as reading his marching orders. Most historians give these two directives:

• To destroy and not to fight battles.

• Dismantle the countryside to obstruct Lee's retreat.

     But with Stoneman, nothing is simple. The first order was given by Gen. Ulysses Grant on January 31, 1865, seven weeks before Stoneman's Raid started. Back then, the plan was for him to invade South Carolina. After February 17, when Sherman left Columbia in ashes, Stoneman's mission changed completely, and presumably so did the orders. 
     The second is documented in several histories, but I could not find it expressed as an order or directive in the 112-volume Official Records of the War of the Rebellion (which you can search online at Ohio State or Cornell.) I did find that phrase in two post-raid reports, the first signed by Gen. Alvan Gillem, Stoneman's second-in-command; and the second by Stoneman's commander, Gen. George Thomas, who was probably quoting Gillem. 
     More specific orders were expressed March 18 in a message from Gen. Thomas to Gen. Ulysses Grant. 

I have directed Stoneman to pass out of Tennessee by the head of the New River Valley, then move down that valley to Christiansburg and destroy the railroad beyond Christiansburg, about 10 or 15 miles, where there are numerous trestles and small bridges, but not to destroy the bridge over New River west of Christiansburg. Should he ascertain that there is not a large force of the enemy in Southwest Virginia, and should he ascertain on reaching Christiansburg that Gen. Sheridan has captured Lynchburg, as is now reported in the papers, he will not destroy any of the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad, but to move in the direction of Danville and threaten that place, should it be garrisoned by a large force; but if it be weakly garrisoned, to attack it and destroy as much of the railroad as he can; then withdraw toward Tennessee and observe the movements of the enemy, reporting to me at once all his operations.

Gen. George Thomas,
 "the Rock of Chickamauga,"
was Stoneman's commander

     Gen. Thomas' description of how Stoneman should approach Danville seems to affirm Grant's original plan "to destroy but not to fight battles." Indeed, Stoneman went out of his way to avoid confrontations, including 150 years ago today when he skirted past Jonesborough, Tenn. 
     This looked cowardly to some Confederates who were unfamiliar with Stoneman's orders. At least three times (at Wytheville, the Yadkin River bridge north of Salisbury, and Swannanoa Gap) his forces backed off from well-defended targets and allowed the Confederates to claim pyrrhic victories.
     Gen. Thomas did not pre-approve (at least not in writing) the raid on Salisbury, which turned out to be Stoneman's greatest victory. He had also nixed Salisbury as a secondary target for Stoneman's 1864 raid into Virginia. Stoneman wanted to free the Union prisoners at Salisbury, but Thomas knew that was a potential blind spot for Stoneman, who had been captured the previous year while trying to liberate the Andersonville prison. Nor did Thomas authorize Stoneman to march via Wilkesboro, which delayed his arrival in Virginia by several days. 
     Grant was upset with Stoneman for taking so long to organize and equip his cavalry. However, in a Feb. 27 message, he gave Stoneman more latitude to destroy the railroads than Thomas did:

General Stoneman being so late in making his start in East Tennessee, and Sherman having passed out of the State of South Carolina, I think now his course had better be changed. It is not impossible that in the event of the enemy being driven from Richmond they may fall back to Lynchburg with a part of their force and attempt a raid into East Tennessee. It will be better, therefore, to keep Stoneman between our garrisons in East Tennessee and the enemy. Direct him to repeat his raid of last fall, destroying the railroad as far toward Lynchburg as he can. Sheridan starts to-day from Winchester for Lynchburg. This will vastly favor Stoneman. Every effort should be made to collect all the surplus forage and provisions of East Tennessee at Knoxville, and to get there a large amount of stores besides. It is not impossible that we may have to use a very considerable force in that section the coming spring. Preparations should at once be made to meet such contingency. If it had been possible to have got Stoneman off in time he would have made a diversion in favor of Sherman, and would have destroyed a large amount of railroad stock, cut off and left in Northwest South Carolina. It is too late now to do any good except to destroy the stock.

     To put Grant's original orders in context, here is how he envisioned the raid back on Jan. 31:

As this expedition goes to destroy and not to fight battles, but to avoid them when practicable, particularly against anything like equal forces, or where a great object is to be gained, it should go as lightly as possible. Stoneman's experience in raiding will teach him in this manner better than he can be directed.

     As Stoneman rode past Jonesborough 150 years ago today, he knew that if he continued northeast up the Holston Valley into Virginia, he would probably have to fight his way through fierce Confederate resistance in the gap between Marion and Wytheville. Studying his maps, he decided it would be better to march east across the mountains to Boone, N.C. From there, it appeared it would be simple to follow the New River northeast to his target in Christiansburg, Va.
     But as we said previously: With Stoneman, nothing is simple.

➤NEXT: 'A Yankee gentleman can steal butter'

  

This 1863 map used by Stoneman shows Knoxville TN in the lower left, Boone NC between the ridges toward the lower center; and the primary target of Christiansburg VA at the top right. Stoneman veered off the direct route (yellow arrow) following the Holston River toward Marion VA and Wytheville VA, as well as the route recommended by Gen. Thomas (blue arrows) following the New River from Boone past Jefferson NC and Independence. Instead, he continued east across the Blue Ridge (green arrows) to Wilkesboro and Jonesville NC and then turned north across the Blue Ridge via Cranberry Plain (now Hillsville VA) and Jacksonville (now Floyd VA). Click on the map above to see a larger version, or click here to see the original map in the Library of Congress.

No news is good news

BULLS GAP, Tenn.

 On Friday, March 24, the main column of Stoneman's Raid passed through Bulls Gap in eastern Tennessee and Gen. Alvan Gillem wrote in his report, "Nothing of interest transpired on the 24th."
 No news was good news, especially for Gillem, who had fought rebels on this very road twice in the past seven months. The previous September, he had led a successful manhunt to kill the notorious Confederate raider, Gen. John Hunt Morgan in nearby Greeneville. In November, Confederate Gen. John Breckinridge had routed Gillem's forces after a four-day battle in Bulls Gap.

Gen. Alvan Gillem, a 'Home Yankee'

    The 34-year-old Gillem was a native of Gainesboro, Tenn. (on the Cumberland River east of Nashville), a West Point graduate like Gen. George Stoneman, and an elected member of Tennessee's legislature. During Stoneman's Raid, he was the commanding officer for all three brigades.
 Gillem reported to Stoneman, who had broader responsibilities as the commander of the Department of Tennessee. Stoneman exercised total command over the raid during the 28 days he was there, and he reprimanded Gillem at least twice for excessive destruction. After Stoneman returned to Tennessee April 17, Gillem commanded the mop-up actions that continued in Stoneman's name. Discipline broke down after Stoneman left, culminating in the looting of Asheville on April 26 and Anderson May 1.
 At Bulls Gap, Stoneman divided his forces and sent his all-Tennessee 3rd Brigade northeast toward Bristol to raise havoc and force the rebels to defend an area that the Yankees actually had no plans to invade. This was the first of many feints and diversions Stoneman used to confuse and diffuse the enemy. 
 Meanwhile, Stoneman and Gillem led the 1st and 2nd Brigades (units from Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania) eastward past Greeneville and Jonesborough into the mountains. At the Doe River Cove (modern-day Hampton) they reunited with the 3rd Brigade and followed the Watauga River into North Carolina on a winding road that was the forerunner to U.S. 321.  
 Every peaceful morning, Gen. Gillem awoke on the lookout for trouble. He had 4,000 troops itching for a fight. But almost all the able-bodied men in the South were away on the front lines, leaving the home front undefended. Except for a few random bushwhackers, the Confederate resistance in eastern Tennessee evaporated like the dew.
 At least Gen. Gillem didn't have to worry about his old Bulls Gap nemesis, Gen. Breckinridge, who was now Jefferson Davis' secretary of war. Their next confrontation, so to speak, would be one of the more amusing episodes of Stoneman's Raid. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, April 21.

NEXT➤ To destroy and not to fight battles?

Stabbing the Confederacy in the back

MORRISTOWN, Tenn.

 To understand where we are headed, start with the last line of Stoneman's Last Raid, written in 1961 by Ina Van Noppen, a professor of history at Appalachian State Teachers College. She described Stoneman's Raid as:

A knife thrust into the virtually undefended back of the Confederacy.

 That description works on multiple levels. The Confederacy was already in desperate straits, with its armies flailing against Grant and Sherman on the eastern fronts and totally unprepared for an attack from the west. That's why Gen. Grant pushed so hard to accelerate Stoneman's Raid. He knew that a swift stab in the back could finish off the Confederacy and end four awful years of civil war. 
 Back-stabbing also describes what was happening on an individual level in the mountains, where families and communities were deeply conflicted over the Civil War. 
 In February of 1861, for example, men in Watauga County, N.C., voted 536-72 against secession*. This was a strongly pro-Union county. Yet over the next four years, 950 Watauga men (plus one disguised woman!) enlisted in the Confederate army, compared to only 36 on the Union side. (*Thanks to Michael C. Hardy and his books on Watauga County history for these statistics and other benchmarks.)
 What happened? Mountaineers don't usually change their mind that fast. 
 Some of that can be attributed to a groundswell of Southern nationalism once the fighting broke out. More can be explained by the Confederate draft, which began in April of 1862 and required almost all white males ages 18-35 to serve. By 1864, the age limit was 17-50. Lukewarm Confederates and Union sympathizers had no choice. The county's "home guard" had the authority to hunt down deserters or draft dodgers.

Many Confederate 'volunteers' answered appeals
like this one in Floyd County, Va., just to avoid
being drafted. On April 4, 1865, Capt. Stigleman
surrendered to Gen. Stoneman without a fight.

 Of the 950 rebel soldiers from Watauga, only one-fourth of them volunteered before the draft. So we can assume they were reluctant to join the Confederate army.
 As the war dragged on, hardships increased, and defeat loomed, Confederate supporters became more cynical. Dozens of Watauga men (such as Mose Triplett) originally enlisted with the Confederacy but defected to the Union. Others moved or hid out just across the state line in eastern Tennessee, where pro-Union sentiment prevailed.
 Seven weeks before Stoneman's Raid, a band of Union sympathizers from the Banner Elk area captured the local Confederate outpost, Camp Mast. (If you visit the Doc Watson Museum in the old Cove Creek High School west of Boone, look for the Camp Mast historical marker.)
 Even among the blue-clad cavalry Gen. Stoneman led across the mountains into Boone, there were plenty of Southerners, whom the rebels derisively called "Home Yankees." His 4,000 troops included about 880 from Kentucky and 600 from Tennessee. Two of Stoneman's top four officers were from Tennessee: Brig. Gen. Alvan Gillem from Nashville and Col. John Miller from Elizabethton.
 The principal Union forces in the mountains were the 2nd and 3rd N.C. Mounted Infantry, also known as Kirk's Raiders for their colonel, George Kirk. They were under Gen. Stoneman's command and occupied Boone and Asheville, the mountain towns that Stoneman raided. These "Yankees" included 361 men from Buncombe County, 249 from Yancey, 120 from Henderson, 111 from Madison, 90 from Wilkes, 42 from Rutherford, and 26 from Watauga. This regiment also included over 200 men from Tennessee and 41 from South Carolina, 22 of them from Spartanburg. Of the five Union soldiers who died in Boone, four were from North Carolina and one from Kentucky.
 At the end of the war when they finally had overwhelming firepower, manpower, and horsepower, many of these Home Yankees saw Stoneman's Raid as opportunity to settle grudges with Confederates who had threatened them or harassed their families. 
 Here's how Prof. Van Noppen described it:

When Stoneman's raiders came through, these enmities and resentments, having been repressed for four years, burst into sudden flame; and now that they had the upper hand those who had opposed or been lukewarm to the South had their revenge. Pillaging, burning, robbery, and every form of internecine warfare resulted, and the southern adherents reaped the whirlwind which they had sowed. For by far the worst depredations and crimes were committed by neighbor against neighbor and by the North Carolina and Tennessee soldiers in Stoneman's Army.

 It seems to me that several of the men who were shot in Boone during Stoneman's Raid on March 28, 1865 were hunted down by people they knew. Two were killed as they tried to surrender, and others were shot in the back.

Professor Ina Van Noppen, who taught at Appalachian State from 1929 through 1967, wrote the first history of Stoneman's Raid in 1961. This marker was installed on the 75th anniversary of the raid in 1940 and now stands next to the Watauga County courthouse. (Photo from University Archives)

N.C. voted against secession

 On February 28, 1861—after the election of Lincoln, and just six weeks before the rebellion exploded at Fort Sumter—North Carolina held a two-part referendum to determine whether the state would secede. Voters across the state narrowly rejected the call for a constitutional convention, 47,333 to 46,672. On the same ballot they were asked to choose local representatives just in case there was a convention, and 83 of the 120 delegates were pro-Union.
 The election was decided by northwestern counties that voted pro-Union by more than 10-to-1 margins. Wilkes County rejected the convention 1,890-51, Yadkin 1,490-34, Guilford 2,771-113, and Watauga 536-72.
 But things changed quickly, as described by historian William T. Auman in his book, Civil War in the North Carolina Quaker Belt:

     North Carolina's Unionism proved to be no match for the centrifugal forces then pulling the United States apart along sectional seams. With the secession of the Deep South, the failure of one sectional compromise effort after another, the secession of Virginia, the firing on Fort Sumter, and the call by Lincoln on each state for troops to force the seceded states back into the Union, most Tar Heel Unionists—including those in the Quaker Belt—felt compelled to choose between what they viewed as the lesser of two evils and take their stand with their native section.

 With all those aggravating factors, the North Carolina convention voted 120-0 on April 20, 1861 to secede from the Union.

Where Stoneman's troops came from

 Many of the eyewitnesses exaggerated the numbers of Stoneman's cavalry division. As Emma Rankin wrote of the raid at Carson House near Marion, N.C., "There seemed to us that there were about a million of them, but I suppose there were only a few hundred in the yard."

 Historian Chris Hartley researched the numbers for his book Stoneman's Raid, 1865 and estimated the division at 4,000 mounted soldiers.

First Brigade (1,589-2,162)

Commanded by Gen. Alvan Gillem of Tennessee until April 26, 1865

 Commanded by Gen. William Palmer of Pennsylvania after April 26, 1865

15th Pennsylvania Cavalry 506-914

12th Ohio Cavalry 683-798

10th Michigan Cavalry 400-450

Second Brigade (1,510) 

Commanded by Gen. Simeon Brown of Michigan

11th Kentucky Cavalry 450

12th Kentucky Cavalry 430

11th Michigan Cavalry 630

Third Brigade (450)

Commanded by Col. John Miller of Tennessee

13th Tennessee Cavalry 400

Battery E, First Tennessee Light Artillery (commanded by Lt. James Regan)

(The 8th and 9th Tennessee Cavalry are listed in some accounts of the raid, but as far as I can tell they were not involved. The 8th Tennessee spent the final months of the war under Sherman in the Carolinas, and was at the Bennett House for the surrender of Gen. Joseph Johnston.)

'Separated only by an imaginary line'

 One-fourth of the soldiers in Stoneman's Tennessee regiments were actually from North Carolina. Samuel Scott and Samuel Angel included this tribute in their regimental history for the Thirteenth Tennessee:

     We cannot in justice close this history without paying our respects to the large number of men who joined our Regiment from Western North Carolina. There were probably not less than 150 whose homes were in Ashe, Mitchell, Watauga, and adjoining counties of that state. They breathed the same mountain air and were filled with the same spirit of devotion to the Union cause. Their ancestors, like ours, had fought at Kings Mountain, at New Orleans, and on the Plains of Mexico, and made the name of the "North State" glorious, nor did those who fought with the "Thirteenth" tarnish her escutcheons.

     They came, many of them, to us in the dark days of the Carter County rebellion and gave us their aid and sympathy. There were no people who deserve greater praise for their loyalty than the people of Western North Carolina because there were none whose participation was costlier than theirs. Their old men and brave women went through the same experience of hardship and dangers that we have described as falling to the lot of the men and women of Carter and Johnson counties. These people are endeared to us because they shared with us the march and battle, and the same suffering and dangers. They occupied the same hospitals of pain, they fell upon the same battle fields and were martyrs to the same cause as our own East Tennesseeans. Ours is virtually the same climate, the same habits of life, the same love of liberty, and we worship the same God. We are separated only by an imaginary line, we might say. It seems to us that it would have been most fitting if the great John Sevier could have realized his dreams and formed the State of Franklin, embracing the mountain counties of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia. It would have been a grand state. Grand in its patriotism, grand in its hospitality, and grand in its freedom and nobility of character. There would be no happier people that would have been found among its mountains.

     Besides many fine organizations of Federal soldiers from North Carolina, like East Tennessee, her sons were fighting under the colors of regiments of nearly every Northern and Western state during the civil war.

     We believe that as long as there is a member of the old "13th" alive, there will be a warm place in his heart for the gallant "Tarheels" who battled side by side with him under the colors of our grand old Regiment for the redemption of our homes and firesides.

     We would be glad if we had a separate list of the names of the North Carolinians who served in the Thirteenth. We remember the Aldridges, Buchanans, the Dowells, the Calaways [Calloways], the Youngs, the Greens, the Byrds, the Butlers, the Cornuts [Cornetts], the Parkers, the Eastridges, the Fords, the Garlands, the Gosses, the Hughes, the Johnsons, the Mulicans [Mulligans?], the Nelsons, the Lewises, the Prices, the Philips, the Poors, the Pittmans, the Reeses, the Smiths, the Snyders, the Wilsons, the Coxes, Holmans, and many other names that represented loyal North Carolina families. 

NEXT➤ No news is good news

Meet George Stoneman

Gen. George Stoneman (right) at Fair Oaks, Virginia, during the Peninsula Campaign of 1862.
To see this picture in 3D, click here.

 
STRAWBERRY PLAINS, Tenn.

 When California Democrats nominated George Stoneman for governor in 1882, he made a revealing comment in his acceptance speech: "I have met defeat often. I hope I can say I have met with victory, and oftener."
 Was he being modest? Or painfully insecure?
 On the brink of his crowning achievement, was he worried about the prospect of defeat? 
 Did similar doubts haunt Gen. Stoneman on Wednesday, March 22, 1865, as he rode through East Tennessee on the second day of what would be his last cavalry raid?
 After all, what could go wrong?
 Well, in the past two years Stoneman had been scapegoated at Chancellorsville, captured in Georgia, and politically ambushed in the White House. If that wasn't ominous enough, his right-hand man, Gen. Alvan Gillem, had been outgunned on this very same road just six months earlier.
 In hindsight, we know that Stoneman would not face much of a fight as his 4,000 raiders marched through western North Carolina and Virginia, cut off Robert E. Lee's only avenue of escape, ruined hundreds of miles of railroad, and inflicted the miseries of war on tens of thousands of Southern civilians.
 But Stoneman didn't know then what we know now.
 He saw the last weeks of the Civil War as a do-or-die opportunity to redeem his military reputation and settle a personal grudge against the Confederacy.  

Stoneman strikes a Napoleonic pose.

 We can curse or admire his tactics. We can debate his restraint or his results. But behind that faraway stare, there's a lot we don't know.
 Here's what we do know about George Stoneman in 1865. He was a career military officer, 19 years out of West Point, who commanded respect, pioneered cavalry tactics, trusted his own instincts, and rarely confided in others. He confounded his own commanders almost as much as he did the enemy. 
 The New York Herald Tribune described him in 1863 as a "lithe, severe, gristly, sanguine person whose eyes flashed even in repose."
 We misjudge him, though, if we see him just through the memories of Carolina families who knew him as the grim reaper. 
 General Stoneman Jr. had family, too. He was the oldest of eight children of George Stoneman Sr. (1799-1877) and Catherine Cheney Stoneman (1800-1874) and was raised in the village of Busti, Chautauqua County, New York.

'Mollie' Stoneman

 He was 39 when he married Mary Hardisty, a 23-year-old belle of Baltimore society, on November 22, 1861. They called each other Stony and Mollie. The first of their four children, Cornelius, was born in 1862 and celebrated his second birthday while his father was a Confederate prisoner. 
 His wife's family was sympathetic to the South. He does not seem to have been motivated by the emancipation of slaves or the welfare of blacks, though he could be obsessive about liberating prisoners of war—having been one.
 Politically, Stoneman was a conservative Democrat, which put him in opposition to Lincoln, Grant, and the radical Republicans who led Reconstruction. He won his 1882 election as governor of California, but political clumsiness kept him from being nominated for a second term. As a governor as well as a general, he struggled to enforce chain of command. He didn't communicate very well, personally, professionally, or politically. 

 He had a great sense of geography and adventure. His first military assignment was escorting the odd "Mormon Battallion" on a 2,000-mile trek from Iowa to California. He also served at Army outposts in Utah and on the Mexican border of Texas. 

Signature of George Stoneman

 I've found very little about Stoneman's religious beliefs. We know he could be sarcastic about "the worship of the most high God." A Presbyterian officiated at his wedding and a Unitarian at his funeral. His sister Anna (who cared for him in his final days) was a prominent Christian Scientist.
 He may have been influenced by the Mormons, since he was raised in western New York at the same time Joseph Smith's movement began there, and he spent a year with the Mormon Battalion. His brother Richard Stoneman (1825-1850) was a gold prospector who died at age 25 in a California settlement called Mormon Gulch. 
 Or he might have been shaped by Second Great Awakening, which was so intense in western New York that Charles Finney called it "the Burnt-Over District" because it had been over-evangelized. 
 Most of his adult life, his health was miserable because of hemorrhoids, which he attributed to a quarter-century of cavalry service. He was often temperamental, and in later years he became bitter toward the government (which contested his pension and his rank) and estranged from his family. An 1885 fire left him bankrupt and destroyed all his personal papers. This story suggests his wife left him after he failed to insure their home. Neither his wife nor his children attended his funeral in 1894.
 Unlike Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Lee, or Jackson, Stoneman left us no quotable pearls of wisdom. On his tombstone in his hometown of Busti, N.Y., there is no mention of his raids nor his rank.

 A friendly editor during his 1882 election campaign wrote, "He was not a keen, sharp man, but he was a man of noble purposes, true as steel, and steadfast in his determination to do the right thing according to his lights. His weaknesses were those of a loyal and unsuspicious nature."

Saddled with blame for Chancellorsville?

This 1862 portrait of Stoneman was in 

Harper's Weekly, which regarded him

 as a hero at Chancellorsville, even
though Gen. Joseph Hooker tried to 

blame him for the Union defeat. 

 The Battle of Chancellorsville, Va., in May of 1863 was a devastating setback for the Union. 

 In the aftermath, Union commander Gen. Joseph Hooker blamed Gen. Stoneman for failing to carry out an attack on Lee's rear. In an 1864 congressional hearing, Hooker said, "No officer ever made a greater mistake in construing his orders, and no one accomplished less in doing so. Had Stoneman thrown his cavalry in the enemy's rear and on his communications, the effect could readily be estimated. But instead, that important arm of the army became crippled to an extent that seriously embarrassed me in subsequent operations."

 While Hooker condemned Stoneman, the media spun it differently. In the aftermath of Chancellorsville, the popular magazine Harper's Weekly put Stoneman on its cover, using the heroic horseback engraving I've posted on the sidebar of this blog. Harper's concluded, "He has just performed a feat which casts all the famous raids of the rebel Stuart into the shade. He has ridden round Lee's army, destroying their communications with Richmond, and some of his men have actually been within two miles of the rebel capital. The importance of this achievement will be discovered hereafter. Meanwhile it has raised Stoneman so high in public estimation that he has been mentioned for the supreme command of the Army of the Potomac."

 Stonewall Jackson might have vouched for Stoneman, his old West Point roommate, in the disagreement with Gen. Hooker. Unfortunately, Jackson was mortally wounded by friendly fire at Chancellorsville, after seeing the battle turn in his favor. In the ambulance, he told an aide that Hooker's decision to send Stoneman behind Lee "enabled me to turn him (Hooker), without his being aware of it, and to take him by his rear. Had he kept his cavalry with him, his plan would have been a very good one."

NEXT➤ Stabbing the Confederacy in the back