Introduction

As new President Abraham Lincoln was giving his inauguration speech on March 4, 1861, a storm cloud hovered over the nation he was preparing to lead. For at least a decade before that day, the country had been split in half, North against South, quarreling over a way of living that some called a necessity and others called atrocious. In North Carolina, the storm had already erupted-politician fought against citizen; conservatives fought with liberals. From the beginning of 1856 and the Republican Party, North Carolina fought its own civil war. This is the story of how the division of a nation and the disunity of a state caused a period of complete demoralization and collapse in North Carolina.

Sources:
Harris, William C. North Carolina and the Coming of the Civil War. Raleigh: NC Dept of Cultural Resources, 1988.>

Bradley, Mark L. This Astounding Close: The Road to Bennett Place. Chapel Hill: The U of North Carolina P, 2000.