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  • Shifting Loyalties: The Union Occupation of Eastern North Carolina by Judkin Browning
  • David Silkenat
Shifting Loyalties: The Union Occupation of Eastern North Carolina. Judkin Browning. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. ISBN 978-8078-3468-8, 264 pp., cloth, $37.50.

In Shifting Loyalties, Judkin Browning explores the complex and flexible nature of southern loyalty through an examination of Union-occupied eastern North Carolina. Browning argues that white North Carolinians could hold multiple and conflicting loyalties simultaneously and that these nuanced affinities evolved, depending on changing circumstances. Few white North Carolinians in Union-occupied territory held or expressed unequivocally unionist or Confederate sentiments. Rather, they held multiple and conflicting views, the outward expression of which vacillated depending on their circumstances. While whites in Union-occupied eastern North Carolina presented different public masks over the course of the war, Browning argues that black North Carolinians, who fled to Union-held territory in eastern North Carolina by the thousands, held unambiguous pro-Union sentiments. Although Browning incorporates areas throughout Union occupied eastern North Carolina, he focuses most heavily on Carteret and Craven counties, home to the towns of Beaufort and New Bern.

The book's first half is organized chronologically, starting with a survey of the antebellum development of eastern North Carolina. Its second half is organized thematically, examining in turn the African American experience, the role of northern benevolent societies, the experience of northern soldiers, and the complex and myriad ways white North Carolinians responded to Union occupation. This final section is arguably the book's strongest. Browning reveals that even professed white unionists in New Bern and Beaufort resented the presence of Federal soldiers. They buckled at trade restrictions, loyalty oaths, and especially at the perceived superior treatment of African Americans. Ultimately, Browning concludes, white North Carolinians' commitment to white supremacy trumped their professed unionist sentiments. Browning's analysis of how Union soldiers responded to white and black civilians is also insightful and original. He argues that their exposure to occupation duty tested their views on civilians, race, and the Union war effort.

Two weaknesses detract from this otherwise excellent book. First, while Browning is very thorough in his analysis of the first year of Union occupation, he examines later periods in the war less thoroughly. The final months of the war are almost completely [End Page 394] absent. One wonders how civilians and soldiers in New Bern and Beaufort responded to the Union victory, the approach of Sherman's army, and the final Confederate surrender. Second, Browning does not pay particular attention to the gendered dynamic of Union occupation. As the essays in Leeann Whites and Alecia Long's edited collection Occupied Women have recently demonstrated, tensions between Union soldiers and women permeated the southern home front. Especially after African American men were allowed to enlist in the Union army and after the formation of white unionist regiments, the civilian population of Craven and Carteret counties would have been overwhelmingly female; Browning could have made more of this dynamic.

Those caveats aside, this is an insightful look into an understudied aspect of the Civil War. Browning's text indicates a close reading of the primary source record and a clear narrative voice. Paired with Barton Myers's Executing Daniel Bright, Judkin Browning's Shifting Loyalties will provoke scholars to more deeply explore the complex and nuanced experiences of white and black North Carolinians during Union occupation.

David Silkenat
North Dakota State University
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