Race, War, and Remembrance in the Appalachian South

by John C. Inscoe

  In traveling through the Georgia mountains, John Azor Kellogg of Wisconsin was surprised to see “three or four men at work digging sweet potatoes—each man with a musket strapped to his back.” He went on to compare the situation with that of the early pioneers, who “were compelled to defend themselves against the North American savages in a war prosecuted without regard to the laws governing civilized nations.” “But this,” he continued, “was in the interior of Georgia, one of the older States, in the noon-tide of the nineteenth century. These men were not warring with savages, but with their fellow men of the same race, with their neighbors, their former friends and acquaintances.”16

  Most fugitives quickly recognized and acknowledged the distinctions between the truer Unionists and the disaffected “outliers” who had deserted from the Confederate army or were hiding in the hills to elude conscription officers. Although usually sympathetic to the position forced by Confederate authorities upon these more localized refugees, they demonstrated less compassion for them than for the more “noble” and consistent Unionist stalwarts. Some softened their judgments of individual deserters and other outliers by stressing instead what wavering loyalties or even cowardice indicated about the Confederate cause and its power to sustain the type of devotion the Union inspired.

  After encountering a group of young men “lying out” along the North Carolina–Virginia border, Richardson noted that they included both deserters from the Army of Northern Virginia and individuals evading conscription. At least one of their number admitted to having “foolishly acquiesced in the Revolution because at first it seemed certain to succeed, and he wished to save his property . . . now he heartily repented.” Such men, Richardson concluded, were an index of the change that recently (as of December 1863) had come over Confederate sympathizers in that area, and suggested only a superficial commitment to either cause.17

  On a number of occasions, the Union escapees found themselves dependent upon these deserters, sharing their mountain hideouts and their limited resources, benefiting from their wilderness survival skills and their guidance through the troublesome terrain. In such cases, their gratitude overshadowed any contempt the authors might have felt for the less than ideologically pure motives that brought them together. Madison Drake noted the irony in such circumstances: “Here we were, four Yankee officers, in the heart of the enemy’s country, in a mountain fastness, surrounded by some of the men whom we had encountered in battle’s stern array at Bull Run, Roanoke, Newbern, Fredericksburg, and on other ensanguined fields, who now were keeping watch and ward over our lives, which they regarded as precious in their sight—willing to shed their blood in our defense.”18

  Among the more striking aspects of these mountain-based narratives is the extent to which fugitives encountered slaves throughout the region. While such contacts with blacks were frequent and to be expected among escaped prisoners moving through other parts of the South, the fact that such contacts were equally prevalent in highland areas seems unusual, given the much smaller slave population in the highland South. Yet blacks seemed to be everywhere. Only one of these twenty-five descriptions of Appalachian escape routes notes a scarcity of slaves. In moving into the mountains of northeastern Georgia, a New York lieutenant bemoaned the fact that “the people in that section were generally very poor, and owned no negroes. We missed the assistance of the slaves very much.”19 Almost all other narratives relate incidents in which black residents aided their efforts in the mountains.

  There are a number of explanations for what at least was perceived as little difference in racial demographics between lowland and highland escape routes. One is simply that these fugitives were intent on finding slaves and sought them out wherever possible. Another is that the black populace of Confederate Appalachia swelled greatly as lowland slaveholders in areas vulnerable to Union interference sent their human property—under various arrangements of hire, sale, or temporary guardianship—to the seemingly safer environment of the remote highlands.20

  Slaves often guided fugitives through the rugged and treacherous mountains as they moved through the Carolinas or north Georgia toward Knoxville. Many opened their homes to these men, sometimes hiding them for days at a time and feeding them generously. Others provided passersby with clothing, foodstuffs, or other supplies (more often than not, their masters’ property) or offered medical care if needed. To a number of fugitives, slaves’ information on the political persuasions of residents of their area was the most valuable service they offered. Slaves usually were well aware of which white residents were Unionists and therefore useful to those making inquiries, and which were not. Upon encountering a lone white Unionist, to whose mountain cabin he had been directed by helpful slaves west of Greenville, South Carolina, a Rhode Island fugitive was exasperated with “this most ignorant man I had ever met, black or white.” While the hermit expressed his willingness to help, the soldier wrote that he was too ignorant to do so and that “we could do better with the negroes” in terms of information and advice.21

  John Kellogg found that what he called the slave “telegraph line” in Georgia’s northeastern highlands was equally useful in reporting on military activity within the region. From slaves near Carnesville, his party learned at what points Sherman’s occupation forces still held strong between Atlanta and Chattanooga, and used that information to plan the route to take in maneuvering through the northern part of the state. “We also obtained from them accurate knowledge of Sherman’s troops only five days previous; and this, too, a hundred and fifty miles from the scene of action.” So impressed was Kellogg with the informational services they provided that he wrote that, in his opinion, “they were, as a class, better informed of passing events and had a better idea of questions involved in the struggle between North and South, than the majority of that class known as the ‘poor white’ of the South.”22

  Of course it was not only in the highland South that slaves proved to be such valuable collaborators. They engaged in such subversive activity wherever opportunity arose throughout the Confederate South. Most escaped prisoners already had benefited from collusion with friendly blacks long before they moved into mountain regions, and those experiences had taught them to seek out black allies once there. A group of six escaped prisoners, in flight to West Virginia from a Danville, Virginia, prison, were forced to abandon one of their number in a “crippled and almost helpless condition” during the harsh winter of 1864, leaving him alone “in a bleak mountain country” of the Virginia Blue Ridge. In speculating upon his chances for successful escape, one of his former companions remarked that his only “difficulty . . . will be in avoiding Rebel citizens and finding a true Union friend to care for him for a few days.” To this another in the company replied, “He must have nothing to do with any body but a negro, or he’s a goner.”23

  Charles Mattocks of Maine and a fellow fugitive found themselves lost in the Carolina highlands in late 1864 and noted in his journal, “We must find some friendly negro tomorrow or live on raw corn until we do.” In an entry two days later, he stated, “There are plenty of farm houses in sight in the valleys here, but no signs of the wealthy planters as in South Carolina. No darkies in sight.” When they finally did encounter slaves working in a cornfield in the French Broad River valley, they approached them with confidence, drawing on a lesson obviously learned from earlier experiences in plantation country. “We have seldom ventured to ask food from house servants as they are not generally so Yankee-ized as the field hands,” Mattocks explained. “Being generally well-fed, well clothed and perhaps petted by their masters, many of them come to look up[on] slavery as an advantage to them, while their less fortunate brethren and sisters who labor in the fields from daylight till dark do not become quite so favorably impressed with the institution.”24

  Albert Richardson practically gushed over the African Americans he encountered in western North Carolina. “By this time,” he wrote, “we had learned that every black face was a friendly face. So far
as fidelity was concerned, we felt just as safe among the negroes as if in our Northern homes. Male or female, old or young, intelligent or simple, we were fully assured they would never betray us.” It was not simply kindness toward strangers that motivated the hospitality and aid bestowed by highland blacks, slave or free. Recipients of those kindnesses were convinced that it was the cause for which they had fought that determined the extent of black assistance. As Richardson saw it, “They were always ready to help anybody opposed to the Rebels. Union refugees, Confederate deserters, escaped prisoners—all received from them the same prompt and invariable kindness. But let a Rebel soldier . . . apply to them, and he would find but cold kindness.”25 Junius Browne was more eloquent in describing black partisanship as he witnessed it: “The magic word ‘Yankee’ opened all our hearts, and elicited the loftiest virtues. They were ignorant, oppressed, enslaved; but they always cherished a simple and beautiful faith in the cause of the Union and its ultimate triumph.”26

  In some cases, the slaves encountered by escaped prisoners were on the run themselves, a factor that made not only for sympathy but also for empathy on the part of some fugitive-authors. On more than one occasion, soldiers who had found shelter in slave cabins shared those tight quarters with escaped slaves, or “travelers,” as blacks called runaways.27 In some cases, slaves begged to accompany the fugitives as they moved toward Union lines and freedom. Such requests elicited mixed reactions from whites who suddenly found themselves asked to help those from whom they had received such vital assistance.

  William Burson met five slave men in Wilkes County, North Carolina, who asked if they could accompany him to East Tennessee. After hiding out for several days under the care and protection of these slaves, Burson and his party were joined by local Confederate deserters. He asked their advice about taking the black men with him. One of the deserters assured him that “they were all good fellows and belonged to rebel masters whom they would be glad to see robbed of their slaves” but warned him about the added risks in his own escape if he were accompanied by runaway slaves. Their presence probably would assure that all would be hanged if captured. This frightened Burson’s companions, who urged him to abandon the idea, but Burson reiterated his own resolve to contribute in this small way to the emancipation process, maintaining that “to anybody who had treated me as well as the negroes had, I would do all in my power to assist them out of bondage.” His commitment remained firm, but upon receiving a warning of impending arrest by the Home Guards and hence needing to make a quicker retreat from the area than he had anticipated, Burson “informed the darkies of our danger. ‘Well, well,’ they said, ‘nebber mind us, massa, we’ll come arter awhile.’ ” They never appear again in Burson’s aptly titled narrative, A Race for Liberty.28

  Michael Egan found it more difficult to shake off unwanted black company. In moving into the Carolina highlands, Egan, a Union captain from West Virginia, met two young slave men who had decided to make a “joint effort to escape into the Union lines” and asked Egan if they could join him. Egan resisted their pleadings, stating that, even though he “fully appreciate[d] the sad predicament of the unfortunate negros . . . I could not allow my sympathies to jeopardize my own safety.” “Whatever chance of life they might have owing to their commercial value,” he reasoned, “I could expect none” as a presumed smuggler of slave property, “an unpardonable offense in the South.” Egan bid the two black youths good-bye and “spurted ahead,” only to find “to my surprise and annoyance they still follow close on my heels, making prodigious efforts to keep me in sight.” He finally resigned himself to accepting the company of these “persistent darkies” but stuck with them only until they heard “the sickening sounds of the barbarous Siberian hounds” of their master, at which point he abandoned them to their fates.29

  The courage and generosity exhibited by some slaves led their white beneficiaries to reassess their own racist assumptions. Alonzo Cooper, a New York cavalryman captured in 1864 by local Home Guards and imprisoned in Asheville’s flimsy jail, was ashamed of the way his companions treated a fellow black prisoner. A local slave who shared a cell with several Union captives paid a heavy price for his attempt to aid them. In accord with a preconceived plan of escape, this “large, powerful negro” seized the guard and held him, while his white cellmates took his keys and made their exit. Intimidated by the threats of another guard, the “cowards” retreated back to their cell. Assuming that the slave alone had instigated the attack that allowed the white prisoners to escape, the guard ordered that he be given a hundred lashes.30

  In his postbellum account of the incident, Cooper expressed genuine revulsion at the slave’s punishment. He claimed to be “astonished to find such brutality among those who professed civilization,” calling it “the most sickening transaction I ever witnessed.” He was particularly offended by the complacency with which the southern jailers carried out this “exhibition of fiendish cruelty.” Only after witnessing it, Cooper claimed, was he “ready to believe that the system of human slavery was capable of developing total depravity into the hearts of slave holders.” He was almost as harsh in passing judgment on his own companions’ role in the incident. “The poor ignorant black man’s only fault,” he wrote, “had been his confidence in the courage of his white associates. . . . If anyone should be punished it should be those whose lack of sense had got this poor fellow into a scrape and then like cowards basely deserted him.”31

  More positive encounters with African Americans inspired similar abolitionist sentiments. Richardson was taken in by “a peculiarly intelligent mulatto woman” he encountered near Wilkesboro, North Carolina. After an hour’s conversation with this slave wife (who also was forced to be the mistress of her master), he concluded: “Using language with rare propriety, she impressed me as one who would willingly give up life for her unfortunate race. With culture and opportunity, she would have been an intellectual and social power in any circle.” Inspired by this and other contacts with highland blacks, Richardson extolled the race as a whole and expressed his optimism for their prospects, once emancipated: “Some one has said that it needs three generations to make a gentleman. Heaven only knows how many generations are required to make a freeman! But we have been accustomed to consider this perfect trustworthiness, this complete loyalty of friends, a distinctively Saxon trait. The very rare degree to which the negroes have manifested it, is an augury of brightest hope and promise for their future. It is a faint indication of what they may one day become, with Justice, Time, and Opportunity.”32

  John Kellogg prided himself on the liberalization of his attitude toward blacks, declaring of those who had aided his escape efforts: “Those men and women who succored us in our great peril are my friends, and will be met and treated as such, wherever found, though their skins be darker, and their hair curl tighter than my own.” After extolling their generosity toward him, he avowed, “May my right hand wither and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, when I forget to be grateful to that people, or fail to advocate their cause, when their cause is just!”33

  Massachusetts Lieutenant James Gilmore’s manuscript account of his escape from Richmond’s Libby Prison and his subsequent flight through the mountains of Virginia was so filled with stories extolling the character and courage of the blacks who aided him that abolitionist Edmund Kirke acquired it and published it in 1866. “It gave me,” Kirke proclaimed in an introduction to the volume, “my first vivid idea of the present disposition and feelings of the Southern negroes.” He informed Gilmore’s brother, who had delivered the manuscript to him, that it should be published, “for it tells what the North does not as yet fully realize—the fact that in the very heart of the South are four millions of people—of strong, able-bodied, true-hearted people—whose loyalty led them, while the heel of the ‘chivalry’ was on their necks, and a halter dangling before their eyes, to give their last crust, and their only suit of Sunday homespun, to the fleeing fugitive, simply because he wore the livery a
nd fought the battles of the Union.”34

  In her recent study of the impact of the Civil War on Victorian Americans, Anne Rose notes that few of those who wrote of their wartime experiences mentioned blacks, free or slave. Even those who became involved in legislative or social efforts to aid freedmen after the war had little to say about their own encounters with them during the war.35 If that was indeed the case, the fugitive narratives are even more distinctive in their forthright and detailed descriptions of their interactions with highland slaves. In aiding, guiding, and confiding in the Union refugees who moved into their midst, these mountain blacks contributed more to their own cause and ultimately were more indebted to the fugitives they helped than they ever could have suspected at the time. They had no way of knowing that their good deeds would be commemorated in print, or that such testimony on their behalf might serve to win northern sympathies and respect, as the nation wrestled with the issue of black status and benefits after the war.36

  Of all of the mountain residents observed by these fugitives, however, their most profuse adulation was reserved for the white women they encountered. Wives and mothers were often left at home alone, as the men of their households were engaged in military service, had become casualties of such service, or were avoiding it, often by hiding in caves and forests near their homes. Fugitives seem to have approached women with less trepidation than they did men, especially when the loyalties of those with whom they were forced into contact were in doubt. Michael Fellman has written of women caught up in the guerrilla warfare that characterized the Civil War in Missouri: “Disintegration, demoralization, and perverse adaptation engulfed women’s behavior and self-conceptions as it assaulted the family and undermined male-female and female-female . . . relationships.” Women, as both victims and actors, “were compelled to participate, which they did with varying degrees of enthusiasm, fear, and rage.”37