North Carolinians in the Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction (review)

North Carolinians in the Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction collects essays from established historians and promising new scholars that illuminate North Carolina's experience in the conflict and inform broader questions at the center of modern historiographical debates.

David Brown shows that local conditions and family loyalty were strong factors shaping Confederate loyalty in North Carolina's Piedmont. He characterizes committed unionists and Confederates as extremists—most Piedmont residents occupied an ambiguous middle ground between them. North Carolina's decision not to submit its secession ordinance to popular approval, the region's ambivalence toward slavery, and the Confederacy's inability to stabilize the home front caused many Piedmont yeomen to focus on protecting their families. Brown rightly notes that such a focus did not necessarily mean a rejection of the Confederacy.

In an especially insightful essay, Steven E. Nash considers the postwar manipulation of Governor Zebulon Vance's Civil War image. While North Carolina embraced the Lost Cause interpretation of the war that arose in the 1870s, residents also strove to show that the state was at the forefront of Confederate patriotism. Vance's stormy relationship with Confederate president Jefferson Davis allowed defensive North Carolinians to cast their state as a true defender of states' rights against encroachments from all comers, including the Confederacy itself.

As it had across the South, race emerged as a critical factor in North Carolina's wartime experience. Judkin Browning draws attention to the agency African Americans possessed as they strove to achieve their vision of freedom in Union-occupied areas of North Carolina. Browning notes that Union occupation offered African Americans numerous opportunities to assert their freedom, but their wartime gains quickly diminished after the Federal government withdrew its support in the 1870s. Barton A. Meyers writes that Union general Edward A. Wild's use of African American troops contributed to the decision of war-weary residents to negotiate a neutral stance in northeastern North Carolina.

Chandra Manning convincingly demonstrates that race played a critical role in the stunning turnaround of Governor Vance's wartime political fortunes. By 1864, many weary North Carolina soldiers were ready to cast their lot with peace candidate William Holden in that year's gubernatorial contest. Vance countered this wave of discontent by appealing to racial fears. In a February campaign speech, Vance suggested that any peace settlement would bring abolition and racial equality. The Confederate victory over a contingent of black troops at the battle of Plymouth in April 1864 boosted Confederate morale and confirmed the fears Vance's message raised. Vance handily defeated Holden that fall.

Paul Yandle uses political debates in North Carolina during Reconstruction to provide a valuable context for Booker T. Washington's famous 1895 "Atlanta Compromise" speech. While historians have long debated Washington's use of the concept of mutuality and its meaning, Yandle shows that North Carolina politicians had been using phrases like "mutual progress" throughout Reconstruction. He suggests that some of the key characteristics of the New South movement were derived from local and regional political debates before they became associated with more prominent figures like Washington and Henry Grady.

Other essays in the collection highlight the important role gender played in the period. While John Inscoe gives Cornelia Phillips Spencer her due as a pioneer caretaker of Confederate memory, he further notes her the complicated motivations for writing—she wrote to rehabilitate North Carolina's image as the weak sister of the Confederacy and to defend state political leaders Zebulon Vance and David L. Swain.

Laura Edwards stresses the persistence of traditional patterns in her investigation of North Carolina's legal culture before and during Reconstruction. She notes that although many historians have interpreted women's involvement in the legal system after the Civil War as evidence of new opportunities, black and white women had long participated in a localized legal system that gave them agency as...