The Civil War was nearly over when John and Charlotte Stebbins of Three Rivers, Michigan, sent their oldest son Oliver to join the Union Army. He enlisted Feb. 17, 1865, in the 11th Michigan Cavalry, which was one of the eight brigades assigned to Stoneman's Raid. They rode out of Knoxville, Tennessee, on March 21, 1865—Oliver's 18th birthday. For the next four weeks, Stoneman's troops were beyond the reach of mail or telegraph, so we can assume that Stebbins' family heard nothing from him. They must have rejoiced to hear of the fall of Richmond April 2 and the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee April 9—certain signs that the war was ending and that their son would soon be coming home. Then came the following heartbreaking letters, the first two from a fellow Michigan soldier named John Schroder. [The crude spelling and wording is preserved from the original letters. I have inserted a few explanatory notes in brackets.]
Chattanooga, Tenn. April the 23 1865
Mrs. Stebbins,
I will let you know about your Oliver he is sick in the Hospital here. he was brought here with the Measles he has got over the Measles and has got Nuemonia in his side and the Bronchetis in the other side it is a hard case I have been here sick with the Measles and am just getting over them I am doing all that I can for your Dear Son he is very thirsty and wants watter every little while I watched him all last night and if he was in his right mind I assure you he will get well my bed is right beside his if he wants any thing he cals on me but I dont know whether he is in his right mind or not I see that he has something to eat every meal for I giv it to him myself I belong to the same regiment that he does. I will write you again in two or three days No more at present
John Schroder Co J 11th Michigan Inf Chattanooga, Tennessee
This is not the first time a new president has needed a history lesson on the Civil War. It also happened in May 1865, when the war was as fresh as cavalry dust and the Yankees were still chasing the fugitive Confederate president Jefferson Davis across Georgia. Here's a link to our original story in The Stoneman Gazette, where Union Gen. William Palmer wrote a passionate and eloquent letter intended for President Andrew Johnson. Palmer was alarmed to hear that the administration might delay the full emancipation of slaves, now that Lincoln was dead. Gen. Palmer wanted the new president to know what he was hearing from Southerners and why emancipation was non-negotiable. Our original story also includes links to the "Declaration of Causes," where several seceding states explained why they left the Union. If we're honest, we all have questions about the real reasons for secession and the Civil War (which are not necessarily the same), not to mention the complicated motives of individual generals and soldiers on both sides. However, the declarations of those who voted to secede are undeniable. For example, read what the delegates from Mississippi wrote:
The Confederate Constitution of March 11, 1861, explicitly protected slave ownership (though it did prohibit the international slave trade.) Article IV, Section 3, says: "In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States."
This marker was erected Jan. 19, 1988 by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. They probably didn't mean to celebrate a Yankee birthday, but the ceremony was held just one day after the 150th birthday of Major Abram B. Garner. I know Garner's birthday because it's the same as mine. —Tom Layton, editor
The Stoneman Gazette congratulates Joan Baez on her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her biggest hit, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, references Stoneman's Raid:
Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train,
till Stoneman’s cavalry came, and tore up the tracks again.
Songwriters Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm (who were inducted into the Hall of Fame with The Band in 1994) conjured up Caine to narrate historical events at the end of the Civil War. In the winter of '65, the Confederacy was just barely alive, and the purpose of Stoneman's Raid was to finish it off. After Stoneman's cavalry destroyed the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad, the rebels' final lifeline was the Piedmont Railroad between Danville and Greensboro. After Richmond fell, both of those towns served as temporary capitals of the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis presided April 3-10 in Danville, until he heard that Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered April 9 at Appomattox. Then he fled to North Carolina, where he hoped that Gen. Joseph Johnston's army would be able to continue the fight.
Davis was aboard one of the last trains that made it to Greensboro before the Reedy Fork trestle was destroyed April 11 in a daring raid ordered by Stoneman and led by Maj. Abram Garner. At the time, the Yankees were unaware of Lee's surrender or Davis's flight.
Four days before the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, North Carolina held a statewide referendum to decide whether to secede from the Union. You might have thought that was a foregone conclusion. Seven southern states had already exited. Yet at the end of February 1861, voters across North Carolina rejected secession and chose to remain in the Union. The vote was close, and it wasn't binding for long, but it remains a refreshing history lesson for our generation as we deal with another polarizing presidency and an increasingly fractious society.
North Carolina Standard, March 20, 1861
This referendum was news to me when I began researching Stoneman's Raid and learned about it from the books of North Carolina historian Michael C. Hardy. I looked it up in old newspapers and found this county-by-county table in the North Carolina Standard published March 20, 1861 in Raleigh. The referendum was held February 28 (156 years ago today), but back then it took a couple of weeks to compile all the votes. North Carolina voters faced two questions:
Should the state hold a constitutional convention to consider secession?
If the convention is approved, who would you vote for as your delegate?
In effect, a vote against the convention was a vote for the Union. North Carolina rejected the convention by a margin of just 661 votes, 47,333 against and 46,672 for. That made the second question moot, but if the delegates had convened, they would have been 83-37 in favor of the Union. Many of the counties that would be raided by Stoneman in 1865 were overwhelmingly loyal to the Union: Watauga voted against a convention 536-72, Caldwell 651-186, Wilkes 1,890-51, Yadkin 1,490-34, Forsyth 1,409-286, and Guilford 2,771-113. Among counties ready to secede were Rowan 1,150-882, Catawba 918-158, Lincoln 708-86, Mecklenburg 1,448-252, McDowell 638-217, and Buncombe 1,219-389. Most of the support for secession was in eastern North Carolina, where slavery was more widespread.
While North Carolina was still counting votes, Lincoln gave his inaugural address on March 4 and made one last eloquent plea to save the Union:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
So if North Carolinians were loyal to the Union, how did we wind up in the Confederacy?
Stoneman's 1st Brigade probably visited the Scruggs homeplace on the Cowpens Battlefield
COWPENS, S.C.
Americans are notoriously bad at history, but here's one question you can't get wrong: Cowpens figured in (a) the Revolutionary War, (b) the Civil War, (c) World War II, or (d) the Iraq war? The answer is ... all of the above. Tuesday, January 17, marks the 236th anniversary of the Battle of Cowpens, a brief but fierce fight in 1781 that went a long way toward ensuring American independence. Cowpens became the namesake for two Navy warships: an aircraft carrier nicknamed "the Mighty Moo" that was the first U.S. ship to enter Tokyo Bay in 1945, and a 1991 cruiser that fired Tomahawk missiles atan Iraqi nuclear facility in 1993. (That attack came on the 212th anniversary of the original Battle of Cowpens, which I will assume is only a coincidence.) As for the Civil War connection, we turn to Stoneman's 1st Brigade, which crossed the Cowpens battlefield April 29, 1865, in hot pursuit of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. In his official report, Gen. William J. Palmer of the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry wrote, "I had reached the vicinity of Cowpens battlefield, S.C., on April 29, when I received the order to endeavor to intercept Jefferson Davis, his Cabinet, and the Confederate specie." The orders came from Gen. George Stoneman, by now back in Knoxville, who believed that Davis absconded with up to $6 million in gold and silver specie when he abandoned his capital in Richmond April 2.
Red lines on this 1906 map show how Gen.
Palmer's 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry headed
from Rutherfordton toward Kings Mountain
before doubling back and crossing the Broad
River at Island Ford. "Nashville" on this map
is actually Asheville. "Cowpens" marks the
location of the town rather than the
battlefield, which is 10 miles north of the
town and just south of the North Carolina
line. I added the blue arrow to show an
April 29-30 expedition by the 12th Ohio
in pursuit of Jefferson Davis.
Gen. Palmer actually began the manhunt the day before, starting at Hickory Nut Gap southeast of Asheville (labeled Nashville on this map). He marched through Rutherfordton, N.C., headed toward another Revolutionary War battlefield at Kings Mountain. Then he had to backtrack 20 miles to find a way across the Broad River.
His cavalry made the crossing at Island Ford (near the current U.S. 221 bridge north of Chesnee, S.C.) and headed toward Spartanburg on a road that took them across the Cowpens battlefield. As the Yankees scouted for information about Davis, it seems likely that they inquired at the cabin of Robert Scruggs, whose farm encompassed part of the old battlefield. (Sixteen years earlier, in 1849, historian Benson John Lossing had interviewed Scruggs to document details of the Battle of Cowpens for his Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution. Lossing later wrote the Pictorial History of the Civil War, including a clever bridge-burning episode from Stoneman's Raid that he called "one of the most gallant little exploits of the war.")
Civil War veterans clad in gray and blue meet across a rock wall on Cemetery Ridge during the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. The fellow on the left is giving the "rebel yell."
December 7, 2016, marks the 75th anniversary of the Japanese air raid at Pearl Harbor that drew the United States into World War II.
At The Stoneman Gazette, we are all about anniversaries and memorials. This newspaper was created to coverthe double-diamond 150th anniversary (or sesquicentennial, if you prefer) of Stoneman's Raid. So, Pearl Harbor Day seems like a good time to look back at how our forefatherscommemorated the 75th anniversaries of Stoneman's Raid and the end of the Civil War—just 19 months before "the date that will live in infamy." Nationally, the biggest ceremony was in 1938—the 75th anniversary of the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg. Some 2,500 Yanks and Rebs, all in their nineties, gathered on that blood-consecrated field for one last reunion. (Watch remarkable footage from Ken Burns' 1990 epic, The Civil War). Those veterans included at least one associated with Stoneman's Raid, Mose Triplett, who died just two weeks afterwards. (His daughter is the last person receiving a Civil War pension.)
Burlington Daily Times-News, April 16, 1940
By 1940, the 75th anniversary of the end of the Civil War was overshadowed by the beginnings of World War II in Europe. Across North Carolina, the United Daughters of the Confederacy held local ceremonies on Confederate Memorial Day, May 10 (the date of Stonewall Jackson's death in 1863 and Jefferson Davis's capture in 1865), to remember fallen heroes and salute the last few surviving veterans. Prominent politicians made speeches under a battle flag at Hillsborough's Alexander Dickson House, known as "the last headquarters of the Confederacy."
(The Dickson house now serves as the Hillsborough County Visitor's Center. This history by a Dickson descendant is fascinating, though some of the details are contradicted by what we know about Stoneman's timeline.) As for Stoneman's Raid, you might have expected North Carolina to sweep the whole painful episode under the rug of history. Instead, the state marked the 75th anniversary of the raid by bestowing Gen. George Stoneman with roadside fame and making him a something of a household name in the mountains and foothills.
These markers in Salisbury are among 18 erected by North Carolina 75 years after Stoneman's Raid.
In 1940, the state's official historian, C.C. Crittenden*, commissioned 18 cast-iron historical markers to trace the path of Stoneman's Raid along highways from Boone to Mount Airy and from Salisbury to Asheville. As the grandson of two Confederate soldiers, Crittenden must have known how provocative this would be. Some North Carolinians were outraged that their state would spend their taxes to honor the notorious Yankee general and a campaign that was scorched into their family memories. "When the first North Carolina historical markers commemorating the raid were installed over seventy years afterward, citizens tore them down and threw them in a river," historian Chris Hartley wrote in the cover notes for his book, Stoneman's Raid, 1865. In 1969, historian Glenn Tucker (the award-winning biographer of Gov. Zebulon Vance) had a similar reaction. Writing about the Civil War for the centennial edition of the Asheville Citizen-Times, he scoffed:
Stoneman's raid, though still prominently advertised, did not hasten the end of the Confederacy by an hour. Anyone is entitled to wonder why, since it passed through Asheville after Lee and Johnston's men had laid down their arms, it is commemorated so extravagantly by historical markers in Asheville, Hendersonville, Lynn, and places in the Piedmont. Little if any heroism appears to have been involved. Incidents occurred which had better be forgotten. ... A salutory event would be for the historical commission in Raleigh to apply the Stoneman touch and trip down those signs, then substitute more worthy markers.
Tucker raised a legitimate question, since Stoneman's Raid has nearly twice as many markers as Sherman's march through eastern North Carolina—a much more significant campaign that effectively ended the Civil War. Undeniably, some of the raiders were guilty of rape, pillage, and other dishonorable deeds during the week they spent in the mountains. However, I must respectfully disagree with some of Tucker's conclusions about the timing, conduct, and consequences of the raid. And I have corroborating witnesses. Gen. Ulysses Grant shared Tucker's disdain for Stoneman, yet Grant did acknowledge that the raid helped finish off the Confederacy. An Ohio captain who later became a historian and a diplomat described Stoneman's Raid as "brilliant but inadequately appreciated."
Are the markers appropriate? I think so, and the scholars in Raleigh seem to agree: In the 76 years since the signs were erected and the 47 years since Tucker objected, only one of the 18 has been decommissioned by the state. It was in Newton, and it was replaced by the city in 2009 after it was knocked down by a snowplow in 1989.
Eleven of the original 1940 markers still stand. You can find six of them near the courthouses in Boone, Wilkesboro, Dobson, Danbury, Salisbury, and Rutherfordton. Two more are on the outskirts of Salisbury, the most significant battlefield of Stoneman's Raid. Others remain in Statesville, Lenoir, and Lynn. Six of the originals have been replaced with newer plaques in Hendersonville, Asheville, Morganton, Shallow Ford, Mount Airy, and Blowing Rock. Two more monuments to Stoneman's Raid were added at Deep Gap in 1959 and Swannanoa Gap in 1960. So there were 20 state markers before the disappearance of the one in Newton. Contrary to Tucker's generalizations, these markers are not one-sided in favor of the Yankees. The ones at the Yadkin River near Salisbury and the Swannanoa Gap east of Asheville commemorate heroic rebel stands that resulted in the last Confederate victories of the war.
Civil War Trails displays along Stoneman's route include this one at Andrews Geyser near Old Fort, commemorating the last Confederate victory.
In addition to the state and city markers, Stoneman's Raid is also documented by 24 Civil War Trails displays. These illustrated and informative plaques are part of an effort to promote Civil War tourism. Near Greensboro, there are also two monuments related to Stoneman's Raid erected by the Col. John Sloan Camp of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans.
Altogether, I've found 46 historical markers documenting the 28 days and 500 miles that Stoneman's raiders criss-crossed 24 counties in western North Carolina.
* C.C. CRITTENDEN (1902-1969) should not be confused with S.S. CRITTENDEN (1829-1911), a Confederate veteran who wrote the 1903 centennial history of Greenville, S.C. As far as I can tell, they were not related, and they would have disagreed on how we should remember Stoneman's Raid. In his brief chapter on "Greenville During the War," S.S. Crittenden did not mention the two occasions that Stoneman's cavalry invaded Greenville (May 1-2 and May 22-24, 1865). Certainly he knew of these incidents, and it would not be surprising if he was personally involved in the local resistance. His mother was from Salisbury, N.C., which famously denied its history with Stoneman.
The first 11 markers for Stoneman's Raid were announced May 7, 1940—75 years after the raid and 19 months before Pearl Harbor. This clipping is from The Robesonian in Lumberton, N.C.
One cold winter night in 1947, Anderson Moore was on his way to bed when he stumbled and fell. For the next five weeks he tolerated a painful crick in his neck, until he finally sought care at the Oteen Veterans Hospital near Asheville, N.C.
Anderson Moore (1847-1949)
Doctors diagnosed a fractured vertebra and admitted Moore into a ward with a dozen young veterans of World War II. That must have made for some interesting war stories—because Moore was 100 years old and fought for the Union in the Civil War. Hospital administrators tipped The Asheville Citizen, which published Moore's story and asked him the obvious question: Why would a Southerner enlist with the Yankees? "To keep out of the rebel army," he declared. By the middle of the 20th century, it was easy for the public to forget that not all southerners were rebels. In fact, back in 1861 following the election of Abraham Lincoln, the majority of North Caroliniansvoted against secession. Pro-Union sentiment was strongest in the mountains, where few families owned slaves and most saw no reason to fight against the country that their fathers and grandfathers had fought for. Yet as soon as they turned 17, young men like Moore were required to join the Confederate army. If they dodged the draft, the local Home Guard would hunt them down. "I didn't have any better sense than to fight," Moore said. Actually, he had no choice but to fight. His only choice was: Which side would he fight for? When Moore turned 17 in 1864, he walked 50 miles to Strawberry Plains, Tenn., to enlist with the Union Army in the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry. Unfortunately, there were not enough horses for all the soldiers. "We weren't mounted," he joked. "We were webfeet." He said he fought in a number of skirmishes and minor battles, including Stoneman's Raid. The 3rd N.C. Mounted Infantry was part of Stoneman's rear guard and occupied Boone and Asheville in the closing weeks of the war. Moore was born Jan. 10, 1847, in Flag Pond, Tenn., a mountain community just across Sams Gap from North Carolina. His longevity was no surprise, since his father lived to be 108. After the war, Moore became a farmer, was married twice, and had five children, five step-children, and 35 grandchildren. Some of them shared his pro-Union sympathies, because one of his grandsons was named Meade, after the Union general who defeated Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg. Moore lived two more years and was 102 when he died June 3, 1949, at home in Madison County, N.C. As far as I have found, he was the next-to-last surviving veteran from Stoneman's Raid.
The nurse quoted in this clipping, Mercina "Jimmie" Pananes McSwain (1922-2013), was the daughter of Greek immigrants and a graduate of Johns Hopkins who met her husband Ray McSwain during the year she worked at the Oteen Veterans Hospital. She became known as the godmother of tennis in the Swannanoa Valley, and the town courts in Black Mountain are named for her.
Della Barnes was a heartbreaker. One man gave her an expensive engagement ring, but she chose to marry another. The jilted man was so enraged that he cut off Della's ring finger, and she bled to death. Or so the legend goes. The true story of Della's demise, as reported in the Paducah Daily Sun, is just as haunting. One summer night in 1897, Della told a friend that she didn't feel well and was going to take a dose of calomel, a mercury compound that is now known to be toxic but back then was used to treat various ailments. By accident, she swallowed morphine instead. Della went to bed and never woke up. The heartbroken man in this real-life tragedy was her father, Major George Barnes. A Tennessee native who remained loyal to the Union throughout the Civil War, he rode with the 12th Kentucky Cavalry in Stoneman's Raid and was mentioned in the New York Times for his leadership in the invasion of Boone, N.C. He was also entrusted with the destruction of the Confederate armory at Salisbury. After the war, Maj. Barnes married 17-year-old Anna Robinson and became a successful coal merchant and city councilman in Paducah, a city on the lower Ohio River across from Illinois.
Della's original monument
Della was born in 1874, when her father was 38. He had three other daughters (two grew up to marry and one died at age five), but Della was his darling, and after she died on June 27, 1897, he never got over it. To mark her grave, he commissioned an Italian sculptor to carve a life-sized statue of Della holding a rose over her heart. Over the next year, he was engulfed by grief, his business failed, and his debts mounted. On November 3, 1898, Barnes bought 30 grains of morphine—the same drug that had killed Della. That's enough to kill 10 men. To get so much, he had to go to two apothecaries, and he told one of them he needed it for a sick horse. Instead, he swallowed it all with a bottle of whiskey. Hours later when his family found him, they called the same doctor who had tried to revive Della, but it was too late. Barnes, 62, left a note written on paper that had wrapped the morphine, explaining that he had no domestic
trouble, but that he took his life because of financial embarrassment and his grief over Della's death. He asked God to have mercy on his soul and take care of his little grandson. According to his obituary:
The deceased was a good, conscientious man, and highly esteemed by all who knew him. His friends were numbered by the hundred, and among them are not only his old comrades at arms in the Union army, but the men who fought on the other side as well, and for whom he always showed the highest regard and friendship.
Major Barnes was buried in an unmarked grave next to Della in Paducah's Oak Grove cemetery. Today, Della's grave is barely recognizable. Her monument has disappeared, piece by piece. After vandals broke off her ring finger, people swore they saw the statue bleeding or crying. Then her head and torso disappeared. Now, all that remains is the marble foundation, decorated by flowers. But some people say ... if you dare to visit the cemetery at night on the anniversary of her death, you just might see Della's pale ghost walking the darkened paths through the old oak grove, clutching a blood-red rose over her heart.
