Fear In North Carolina: The Civil War Journals
The Cornelia Henry diaries, spanning 1860-1868, are a fascinating window on daily life in western North Carolina during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Cornelia and her husband William were prosperous entrepreneurs owning farmland, orchards, a mill, distillery and hotel at Sulphur Springs, a resort frequented by Low Country planters. A person of local prominence, William was a magistrate. The Henrys were zealous Confederates. William served as a Home Guard officer in bloody confrontations with Unionists partisans and Confederate deserters characteristic of the bushwhacker war in the North Carolina and Tennessee mountains. He also participated in conventional fighting such as the April 3, 1863, battle of Asheville. Blood feuds and partisan revenge prevented William from being able to safely return home for months following the formal end of hostilities. His home was repeatedly plundered and his livestock stolen. By war’s end the once prosperous family was impoverished, struggling to hide one horse from Unionist partisans for spring planting. Surprising is the relative normalcy of everyday life amidst the monumental events of the catastrophic conflict. Cornelia recorded her cooking, childcare, ministration to sick family, slaves and neighbors, sewing, weaving and church attendance. Yet the war was always present. Family and friends enlisted or were drafted; word was received of deaths at the front from sickness or battlefield casualty. Misinformation and rumors were rampant in both soldier gossip and press reports. Sherman’s army was believed to be devastated; Washington was thought to be plundered. Some commodities, particularly coffee, become prohibitively expensive and ultimately unobtainable. Rationing and crop impressments were fixtures of daily survival. Cornelia wrote in a heartfelt, concise, modern style, without any distracting literary flourishes or affectations. She demonstrated her undying patriotism for the Confederate cause, denouncing the “reign of terror” imposed by Northern aggressors and their local “Tory” sympathizers. She maintained hopes that France would support Maximilian and make war on and defeat the Federals, to give the Yankees a feeling for war’s total devastation. Her attitudes toward slaves and freedmen reflected typical deplorable racial prejudices of the era. Cornelia asserted that slaves were not sufficiently appreciative of their masters’paternal benevolence. Postwar she bemoaned that blacks must be paid cash as a motivation to work. Yet she could evoke sympathy for the freedmen, stating, “poor negroes, they sicken and die and no one cares.” Both the academic and general reader interested in the fratricidal war in Appalachian North Carolina, Asheville history and the operation of a 19th-century resort will find Fear in North Carolina invaluable. The editors provide informative, but unobtrusive, supplemental pictures and documents seamlessly integrated into the text. Comprehensive Henry and slave genealogies are useful reader aids. Reviewer: Kemp Burpeau Kemp Burpeau has a Ph.D. in American history. He has served on the North Carolina Historical Commission, is a local government attorney and teaches at Mount Olive College. He is the author of God’s Showman, a study of American missionary John Graham Lake.
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