May is Confederate History and Heritage Month

(Editor’s note: Bill Ward is a well-known expert in North Carolina history. He begins today sharing his knowledge with KinstonPress.com readers. We hope you enjoy his work as much as we do.)

“Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels — men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1890-1969

On April 3, 2006, the Lenoir County Commission proclaimed May as Confederate History and Heritage Month based on the written proclamation presented by the C.S.S. Ram Neuse Camp 1427, Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Several Southern states recognize April as Confederate History and Heritage Month, because April is identified as the month the War Between the States — erroneously called a civil war — began in 1861. The war is popularly thought to have ended with Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865. But in North Carolina, we celebrate Confederate History Month in May, because it holds particular significance in the history of our state.

On May 20, 1861, instead of voting to secede as other states did, N.C. left the Union by voting to “undo” the act that had brought it into the United States, becoming the eleventh state to join the Confederacy. Many of the states, when they ratified the original U.S. Constitution, included a stipulation that allowed them to withdraw from the Union, should they become dissatisfied with that form of government. An interesting historical note is that North Carolina initially voted against ratifying the Constitution, becoming the twelfth state to do so on November 21, 1789.

The last major Confederate offensive of the war, and the bloodiest battle fought in this state, was the Battle of Bentonville, March 19 to 21, 1865. This resulted in a Union victory with a large number of Confederate troops surrendering on April 26 at Bennett Place near Durham. May 6, 1865, saw the surrender of the last North Carolina Confederate troops.

Whether you call it the War Between the States, the Civil War or another of the long list of names that war has been referred to, it was a terrible, bloody, bitter struggle that pitted family members and friends against each other. It was a war that saw a departure from traditional, older styles of European warfare to rapidly changing battlefield tactics. Trench warfare came into being as weapons began a transformation from colonial-style flintlock muskets to more efficient, deadlier repeating rifles.

The history of North Carolina during the War Between the States is as much a paradox as the war itself was an event of contrasts and contradictions. It was a war in which some northern men fought for the Confederacy and some southern men fought for the Union.

Each of the upper tier of northern states had men whose sympathies lay with the Confederacy. Many of them came down to fight in the Southern armies. More men came down from New York State to fight for the South than from any other three northern states combined.

On the other hand, more North Carolina men enlisted in the Union Army than from any other state of the Confederacy. But as fate would have it, the Tar Heel State also bore an unequal amount of grief during the war years, suffering the heaviest death toll — about 40,000 — of any Southern state. It’s the memories of those men and all other Southerners who fought with honor for their independence that will live during Confederate History and Heritage Month. END

Bill Ward is a historian, writer, and member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans living in Salisbury. Contact him at wardwriters@bellsouth.net.