Zeb Vance: North Carolina's Civil War Governor and Gilded Age Political Leader (review)

Gordon McKinney, once a history professor at Western Carolina University and now director of the Appalachian Center at Berea College, was co-editor of the microfilm edition of the papers of Zebulon Vance and author of the guide to those papers, issued in 1987. In that capacity he came to know one of North Carolina's favorite sons. In the preface to Zeb Vance: North Carolina's Civil War Governor and Gilded Age Political Leader, McKinney establishes the place of his own work within the previous scholarship on Vance. Having the advantage of additional resources and innovative analytical tools, McKinney examines Vance's military and political careers more astutely than previous biographers. He scrutinized a variety of Vance's speeches and letters, placing them in the context of the contemporary social and political atmosphere, with exceptional effect.

Interested in politics at a young age, Zebulon Baird Vance in his time was known as a superior public speaker. While he read law and became a licensed attorney, Vance's skills and interest lay in the political arena. McKinney adeptly demonstrates Vance's attraction to politics and explicates his early political maneuvers. Vance first entered public service at the age of twenty-four, in 1854, serving a term in the lower house of the North Carolina General Assembly. He went to Washington in 1858 to fill the congressional seat vacated by Thomas L. Clingman and was reelected for the 1859–60 term. Although an outspoken Unionist prior to the firing on Fort Sumter, Vance subsequently led his company of "Rough and Ready Guards" into the Confederate Army.

In writing about Vance's military service, McKinney effectively depicts the relationship between Vance and his lieutenant colonel Henry K. Burgwyn Jr. while conveying a clear sense of Vance's military skills and deficiencies. Colonel Vance was as outspoken in uniform as he was on the political stump. McKinney gives Vance credit for remaining in uniform while campaigning for governor. Vance did resign his military commission when he was elected governor of North Carolina in 1862, a position he would hold until the demise of the Confederacy.

Vance's service as governor has been studied exhaustively by historians, but McKinney's approach of using speeches and correspondence to convey his political dexterity is refreshing, and the analysis is thought-provoking. Given that Vance was in his own time—as well as today—known for his flair for public speaking, the attention to this aspect of his career is merited. McKinney effectively uses statistical analysis of voting patterns in studying Vance's political endeavors, shedding light on the environment in which the politician was working.

Vance was again elected governor of North Carolina in 1876, but he served only two years before being elected to the United States Senate. He remained in the Senate until his death in 1894. McKinney gives ample attention to Vance's post–Civil War life and public service, again using speeches and firsthand accounts to his advantage. McKinney marks the gubernatorial success of 1876 as a turning point in Vance's career and in the public memory of him (323). The chapter "Monuments and the Man" (406–15) is a fitting conclusion to the biography of such a celebrated individual. McKinney draws on the Confederate memorial movement and conveys the lionization of the man whose likeness was selected to represent North Carolina in the statuary hall at the nation's Capitol.

Worth noting is the somewhat garbled Civil War story of a mountain man who goes home on leave only to return with his wife "Matilda," disguised as a man (84). Records indicate that Keith Blaylock and his wife Malinda enlisted on the same day. Even McKinney's book, The Heart of Confederate Appalachia (2000), co-authored with John Inscoe, properly identifies her as Malinda (189–90). The selection of illustrations is somewhat unimaginative, reproducing only the standard portraits and...