Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:06:13 EDT
From: Ed Williams
Subject: Civil War and Revolution in Chatham
Robert Waldrop takes me to task (#3201-16) for saying that (expanded a bit) that a man who enlists in the military and then deserts brings shame on himself and his family. I realize that in “backwoods NC” there were many who opposed NC seceding from the Union, just as, in the same area, there were many Loyalists who opposed the US seceding from Great Britain. The US won that war and were thus “proven to be right”; whereas NC and the Confederacy lost the War of Southern Secession, and were thus “proven wrong”.
In 1775-83, there were many Scottish immigrants up and down the Cape Fear and its source rivers, who had taken the Tory Oath after “The ’45” (Battle of Culloden) in which the English defeated the Scots, many of whom fled to America and NC, and who remained loyal to their oath, even though they had been forced to take it. During the war years, many bands of thugs and freebooters raided and looted all over NC under the guise of Loyalists.
One notorious criminal, David Fanning and his gang, raided Pittsborough one day while the court was in session and kidnapped everybody in the courthouse. (I’ll bet they went the wrong way around the circle, too.) Then, later, they captured some Patriots at the House in the Horseshoe, on the Deep River in Moore County. There were some deserters in this gang. Don’t enlist and then desert! I’m glad that Waldrop’s ancestor redeemed himself by his activities after the War.
Ed Williams
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