Murder in the Mountains

NY Times Disunion ^ | January 19, 2013 | RICK BEARD

[iowamark]

On Jan. 18, 1863, troops from the 64th North Carolina Infantry under the command of Lt. Col. James Keith lined up 13 men and boys, ranging in age from 13 to 60, made them kneel and shot them at point-blank range. Then the soldiers tossed the bodies into a shallow grave, from where they were later reclaimed by family members for burial.

This incident in Madison County, N.C., known to history as the Shelton Laurel massacre, was hardly the worst example of violence visited on civilian populations during the Civil War. On Aug. 21, 1863, scarcely a month after the murders in North Carolina first received national press coverage, the Confederate guerrilla leader William C. Quantrill led a raid on Lawrence, Kan., that killed 183 men and boys.

But Shelton Laurel provides an especially compelling look at the internecine war between Confederate authorities and pro-Union sympathizers in the mountains of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. Madison County sits on the border with Tennessee and in 1863 was incredibly isolated...

The county also featured one of the state’s sharpest political divides over the issue of secession... it stemmed from an amalgam of class resentment against the slave owners and tenant farmers who had supported secession; a deeply engrained rural suspicion of urban places; and a widespread feeling that the wealthy were threatening hard-working common people.

“The Unionism of Western North Carolina … was less a love for the Union than a personal hatred of those who went into the Rebellion. It was not so much an uprising for the government as against a certain ruling class.”

[BlueLancer]

"Sherman and Sheridan Blue Scum Bellies bragged for years that most the babies born in the South after the war were probably half Yankee (and not by choice)."

You wouldn't happen to have a cite for this, would you? I have read extensively on the Shenendoah Campaign, as well as Sherman's March, and have never read anything that indicated such statements.

[Happy Rain]

Not surprising since it is purely oral history and rape in the old South went unreported to the officials because of the social stigma attached.

Margaret Michell knew from such histories about the “Bummers” aka looters, murderers and rapists who followed the Union Armies and included one in her “Gone With The Wind.”

To admit to having been raped by a Yankee (one step below an orangutan) would have destroyed the social life of any respectable white Southern woman forever...the bragging of the rapists is but oral history as well since the liberal Yankee media spikes any information detrimental to their agenda--even to this day.

We who have ancestors who went through the war know what happened.

[BlueLancer]

Well, I'm not necessarily disputing your statement that it occurred.

"Sherman and Sheridan Blue Scum Bellies bragged for years that most the babies born in the South after the war were probably half Yankee (and not by choice)."

I'm wondering where you got the allegation that there was any bragging .. or anything else of the like .. on the part of soldiers or officials of the Union Army, as I have never seen the like of that in any of the documentation.

[BroJoeK]

Sherman Logan: "You forgot the invasion of Vermont. LOL"

Sorry, I ran out of time and didn't do a proper job of it.
Will try again, at some point.

Sherman Logan: "To be perfectly fair, the various CSA invasions of northern territory were generally better-behaved than those of the Union, particularly Sherman’s troops."

I don't agree, for the following reasons:

• Union troops were normally self-sufficient and did not "live off the land" as a matter of course.
  Cases where they did were relatively rare, and concentrated toward the war's end.

• By contrast, Confederate troops were almost never self-sufficient, and always needed to forage and "live off the land".
  This was true even in the South, where troops usually "paid" with near-worthless Confederate money.
  But once outside the Confederacy itself, such money was not "near-worthless", it was absolutely worthless, meaning Confederate armies were always pillaging, even if they claimed otherwise.

• The actual record of army murders and rapes of civilians -- Union or Confederate -- is small to non-existant.
  The biggest single event I could find was Confederate Quantrill's August 1863 Lawrence Massacre, which murdered about 200 Union men and boys in Kansas, and burned down the town.
  This was a full year before Sherman's March to the Sea, and before any record I can find of murders or city-burning by Union Forces.

• So I conclude that Confederate Quantrill's Lawrence Massacre killed more Union civilians than all Union forces killed in the Confederacy throughout the war.

Sherman Logan: "Ran across an interesting article about Sherman’s March and how destructive it was in reality vs. myth."

Thanks for the link, it makes the point very well.

Sherman Logan: "Contemporary accounts are unanimous that SC suffered much more than GA or (particularly) NC..."

Important to point out that not all the destruction -- whether real or fanciful -- was done by Sherman:

"With his supply lines fully severed, [Confederate General John Bell] Hood pulled his troops out of Atlanta the next day, September 1, [1864] destroying supply depots as he left to prevent them from falling into Union hands.
He also set fire to eighty-one loaded ammunition cars, which led to a conflagration watched by hundreds.[15]."

[BroJoeK]

Happy Rain: "We who have ancestors who went through the war know what happened."

In years after the Civil War, many personal histories were added to newspaper and other contemporary reports of the war.
All of these have been scoured by generations of historians looking to find evidence of mass murders & rapes, etc.

None have been found.
I conclude therefore that such claims are somewhat, ahem, exaggerated.

[Sherman Logan]

Got it.

The fact that few charges were laid against Union soldiers for rape constitutes definitive evidence that just about every white southern woman was raped.

Absence of evidence is the best proof.

[Sherman Logan]

We who have ancestors who went through the war know what happened.

Family legend is not always entirely historically accurate. See Miss Pocahontas Elizabeth Warren.

Will probably p*ss off an entirely new group by bringing it up, but family history used to cement group identities has a habit of developing hyperbolically.

Perhaps the classic example is the story of "No Irish Need Apply," for which there is an entire mythology of how it was universal in newspaper employment ads, on "Help Wanted" signs in windows, etc. throughout the country. So common that it was often just the acronym NINA. Shows how oppressed the Irish were in America.

So a professor decided to research just how common it was. After going through many thousands of newspaper pages throughout the century, hundreds of thousands of ads, he found less than 10 examples. Don't remember the exact number.

The legend continues to exist and creates hostility if its accuracy is challenged, despite almost zero evidence of its truth.

Same with the stories of mass rape of southern women. Bet you anything the family histories don't have their women being raped, just everybody else's.

BTW, wouldn't blaming the southern woman for her own rape by Union soldiers lean a bit in the Islamist honor-killing direction?

Margaret Michell knew from such histories about the “Bummers” aka looters, murderers and rapists who followed the Union Armies and included one in her “Gone With The Wind.”

Quite right. Deserters from both armies, southern criminals and others no doubt took advantage of helpless people and preyed on those in the wake of the armies. As despicable predators always have. My understanding is that when caught, both armies hanged them.

[Pilsner]

Although not a great film by any means, Ride with the Devil looks at the Civil War in Missouri, and how easy it is for groups to start committing atrocities, and how hard it is to stop. Atrocity begets counter-atrocity, which begets counter-counter-atrocity, and soon not even those involved, on either side, can explain what particular atrocity they attempting to avenge when they commit a new atrocity.

[Rebelbase]

“You contradict yourself”

Nope, read it again. The government/banks were the ones printing the money.

[rockrr]

To admit to having been raped by a Yankee (one step below an orangutan) would have destroyed the social life of any respectable white Southern woman forever...

That's a fairly dimwitted thing to say.

[Rebelbase]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to this thread after checking Bushwhackers for correlation.

The Shelton Laurel Massacre was done by the NC 64th regiment;
Thomas’ Cherokees were the NC 69th regiment and were not involved.