Tweeting civilian side of the war

A North Carolina historian is telling the civilian story of the Civil War, 140 characters at a time. • Article

North Carolina Civil War atlas will use technology to help tell the story

The Union brass thought Fort Fisher well worth the blood shed in several assaults and the time and logistics necessary to launch one of the largest amphibious assaults in U.S. history.

And when the prize near Wilmington, N.C., fell in January 1865, the writing on the wall for the Confederacy became even clearer.

Gen. Robert E. Lee’s last major supply line was gone.

“Without that lifeline, he would have been done a lot sooner,” says Mark A. Moore a research historian and IT specialist with the state Department of Cultural Resources.

Moore, a whiz in GIS and other mapping technologies, produced a painstakingly accurate map of the Jan. 15, 1865, assault on the doomed fortifications.

The Fort Fisher map and others from North Carolina’s approximate 435 engagements will be the cornerstone of a coffee table book meant to provide a comprehensive view of the Tar Heel State and the Civil War.

The book also will feature articles, essays and illustrations.

Timed to be released during the Civil War sesquicentennial, the book, with a working title of “The North Carolina Civil War Atlas,” will break ground in many ways, said Moore and Josh Howard, a research historian with the state archives.

“The audience will be popular and scholarly,” Moore (right) told the Picket recently. “Serious research is going into these maps.”

The authors are particularly excited about county maps and charts that will provide data on a range of subjects: Population, 1860 election results, enlistment, casualties, deaths, desertions and more.

The atlas will look at a state that provided nearly 135,000 troops to the Confederacy and lost perhaps 34,000 citizens in combat. An extensive collection of unit rosters has assisted the researchers.

It will also tell the African-American story, including data on slave ownership by county and the service of men in the Federal army’s U.S. Colored Troops (USCT).

According to Howard, 25 percent of the state’s population had slaves -- perhaps only one or two -- at the outbreak of the war.

“We’re not talking about a huge plantation economy,” said Howard.

And it wasn’t as if the Unionists were progressive on racial attitudes, Moore added.

Letters from Confederate soldiers indicate fighting so that others could keep their slaves was not a priority.

The atlas will include data and text on the 5,000-6,000 African-Americans from North Carolina who fought with the USCT.

“For some [black North Carolinians], the first time their ancestor is in the records with a last name is with the UCT,” Howard told the Picket.

Howard and Moore are working with the UNC Press on the atlas, which will likely have an online companion. They expect it will be published between 2013 and 2015.

“We will have groundbreaking information and visuals,” said Moore. “I’ve studied this for years.”

Campaign roads and battles will be shown in new ways, he said, making a specific reference to Union Gen. William T. Sherman’s march through North Carolina and the battles of Goldsboro and Bentonville.

“We will have the context for North Carolina in the larger picture” of the war, Moore said.

North Carolina sent most of its sons to fight in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Although it will have a military bent, the atlas will delve into the homefront and features excerpts from noted diarist Catherine Edmonston.

North Carolina was a relative latecomer to secession, but it paid a heavy price.

“Once they were in, they were in,” said Moore.

Howard (right) insists the atlas and sesquicentennial will be a time for the state to provide its most accurate account to date of the war’s impact.

“It’s a commemoration, not a celebration,” he said.

Fort Fisher map excerpt is from the North Carolina Civil War Sesquicentennial website. USCT image is from the Florida State Archives Photographic Collection

Close to official: 34,000 from North Carolina died serving Confederacy

Slow to secede, North Carolina eventually sent nearly 135,000 men in gray to Civil War battlefields across the land.

For years, many in the state boasted that at 40,000, the Tar Heel state lost more men than any other Confederate state. (Click image at left)

Two recent studies -- one by the state, and the other by a camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans – have found that the 40,000 figure bandied about for generations is too high.

Josh Howard, a research historian for the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, told the Picket that the North Carolina Civil War Death Study is almost complete.

Howard and Purser estimate that 34,000 Rebel troops from the Tar Heel State perished.

“It’s still a horrible figure and it still ranks as the highest toll for any Southern state,” said Howard, placing Virginia (24,000-25,000) and South Carolina (about 18,000) in second and third places.

Charles Purser of the SCV camp in Garner, N.C., has led the chapter’s own research and came up with similar figures.

Driving Howard’s research is an upcoming Civil War atlas, a map-driven project that will look at all kinds of North Carolina demographics by county. He expects the book to be published by 2013 or 2014.

Howard's research includes newspaper accounts, cemetery searches and, primarily, a 17-volume set of rosters, based on National Archives records.

“North Carolina records are pretty complete for most of our regiments, mostly in Lee’s army,” said the military historian (right), who is the co-author of two books about the Revolutionary War.

“We won’t know everyone who died,” Purser said, including he has looked at unit records from more than 70 regiments and is down to three.

Howard explains in detail on the state’s Civil War sesquicentennial website why he is completing the project. Mostly, it’s about the integrity of the record.

“North Carolina is stepping and looking at our figures and are making sure we have done as good as we can,” he tells the Picket.

Howard estimates perhaps 2,000 to 3,000 North Carolinians who served in the Union died, but he is still researching the number. Purser’s estimate is lower, at perhaps a few hundred.

Researchers are still finding North Carolina troops who died in the Civil War.

“I hope it opens the eyes of people of the sacrifices,” Purser says of the death counts. “It [the war] affected every family.”

The retiree has used grave records, ancestor.com, rosters and other sources to count the Tar Heel dead.

“My and his [Howard’s] thinking were kind of on the same line,” Purser said. “He wants to do the statistics. We want the names.”

The SCV honors those who served and died across the South.

Purser estimates 2,400 North Carolinians died in the Gettysburg campaign and about 6,000 succumbed as POWs or “under Union control.”

The SCV Garner Camp a few years ago researched 1,400 Confederate dead in Raleigh’s Oakwood Cemetery.

They found the graves of two Union soldiers wrongly identified as Confederate.

Upon finding the second grave, Purser contacted friend Bob Farrell of the John A. Logan Camp #4 of the Sons of Union Veterans in Raleigh.

“’You’re never going to guess what I found,’” Farrell says Purser told him. “’I found another Yankee on the hill.’ ”

Separate ceremonies were held for the pair of Union soldiers and their graves received appropriate new headstones.

Like Purser, Farrell said the SUV has an important mission.

“The purpose is to honor and respect your descendants.”

Farrell, a New York transplant, said seven North Carolina regiments, three of them African-American, served the Union.

“You had a huge portion that was against secession and was pro-Union,” he says of the state’s wartime population.

Estimates of men serving in blue range from 5,000 to 7,000.

Farrell, who founded a Civil War roundtable in Raleigh, said about 80 percent of its 160 members have Confederate ancestors.

“There is no harsh conversation on North vs. South,” Farrell said. “The same rain falls on friend and foe.”

Rich finds at Alamance battleground

During a visit to Durham, N.C., the Picket stopped by a nearby battleground some say witnessed the beginning of the American Revolution.

But there's a lot of Civil War history, too.

The Regulators fought back against tryanny under Britain. They were upset with excessive taxes and dishonesty. Gov. Tryon rounded up the North Carolina militia and marched on the Regulators in early 1771.

Militia members were neighbors of the rebellious farmers, and at first balked at firing on May 16, 1771. Eventually, the militia carried the day, but discontent in the Tarheel state remained until the Revolution officially began just four years later.

Recently, an archaeological dig found items that proved the battle occurred as history states.

Researchers also found a Revolutionary War button (U.S., right) that belonged to someone in a Delaware unit. Capt. Robert Kirkwood led the Delaware Light Infantry on a raid against British General Charles Cornwallis’ forces at the site on March 5, 1781, just 10 days before the Battle of Guilford Courthouse west of Alamance County.

During the Civil War, area Quakers and Moravians, like in generations past, assisted those wounded in conflict.

Confederate units under Gen. William Hardee camped at the battleground, making it home to three different "wars." This button from a 3rd North Carolina Junior Reserve (older men and young boys) unit commanded by Col. John Hinsdale during the Civil War was also found at the site.

Alamance Battleground Site Manager Bryan Dalton provided an excellent overview of these tumultuous times. About 150 items were found in recent digs.

• More about the Alamance research

N.C. planning events, May symposium

The N.C. Department of Cultural Resources is planning the commemoration of the sesquicentennial of the war. • Article

N. Carolina trying again on death count

The Tarheel State has long claimed 40,000 of its citizens died during the Civil War, more than any other state of the Confederacy. A state official is doing extensive research and expects to find a smaller number. Still, he expects North Carolina to retain its sanguinary status as No. 1 in deaths. • Article

Hospital house closed for repairs

The house that served as field hospital for the Union army at the Battle of Bentonville (N.C.) is being closed temporarily for plaster repairs. During the three-day Battle of Bentonville in 1865, nearly 600 Union and Confederate soldiers were treated in the home. The 11 members of the Harper family were forced to live upstairs while the downstairs was used as a hospital. • Article

Did N.C. overestimate number of dead?

North Carolina's claim that it lost the most men during the Civil War is getting a recount from a state historian who doubts the accuracy of the accepted, 144-year-old estimate. If North Carolina's numbers are wrong, then the numbers for other states are wrong as well because they all come from the same faulty sources, said Josh Howard, a research historian with the Office of Archives and History in Raleigh. • Article