Wearing the Mask of Nationality Lightly
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WEARING THE MASK OF NATIONALITY LIGHTLY: THE EFFECTS OF UNION OCCUPATION DURING THE CIVIL WAR by JUDKIN BROWNING (Under the Direction of John C. Inscoe) ABSTRACT This is the story of two communities, Carteret and Craven County, at the southern tip of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, and how the experience of Union military occupation shaped the inhabitants and the soldiers who occupied the region. Occupied in March 1862, both communities remained under Union occupation for the remainder of the war. The white residents had a strong streak of pre-war Unionism, and appeared to welcome the Union soldiers when they first arrived. However, by 1865, these residents would alter their allegiance and develop a strong sense of southern nationalism as a result of what they perceived as a harsh, oppressive, and racially radical occupation. African Americans in the region utilized Union soldiers to empower themselves and gain independence and autonomy in the face of white hostility, while prolonged occupation duty caused many negative reactions from the Union soldiers who had to act as administrators and policemen in the region. There was a symbiotic relationship between military and civilian forces during and after the war. The individual and collective actions that local white residents, slaves, and soldiers took affected the economic, social, political, and cultural dynamics of the region. After the war, whites furiously sought to re-establish racial control, and held inhabitants accountable for their wartime actions, presaging why Reconstruction would be so difficult in the region and the South. This work traces the development of white Confederate and Unionist loyalties in both regions, shedding light on the nature of Unionism and southern identity formation. Writ large, this work utilizes the experience of two adjacent communities to offer new directions in which to view the construction of personal and national identities as well as the nature of military occupation in the Civil War and beyond. INDEX WORDS: Civil War, Unionism, Occupation, Reconstruction, Racism, Loyalty, Emancipation, New Bern, Beaufort, Ambrose Burnside, Edward Stanly, Guerrilla warfare WEARING THE MASK OF NATIONALITY LIGHTLY: THE EFFECTS OF UNION MILITARY OCCUPATION DURING THE CIVIL WAR by JUDKIN BROWNING B.A., Florida State University, 1996 M.A., North Carolina State University, 1999 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2006 © 2006 Judkin Browning All Rights Reserved WEARING THE MASK OF NATIONALITY LIGHTLY: THE EFFECTS OF UNION MILITARY OCCUPATION DURING THE CIVIL WAR by JUDKIN BROWNING Major Professor: John C. Inscoe Committee: James C. Cobb Kathleen Clark Peter Charles Hoffer Thomas Dyer Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May, 2006 DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, who always believed that I would “go all the way.” Jason Browning (1945-1994) Joann Browning (1946-1992) iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank many people for their efforts and aid while I researched and wrote this work. I’d like to thank Dr. John Inscoe for reading every chapter minutely (including three reconstructed versions of the first chapter), and always offering sound advice and criticism. In addition, the members of my committee, Drs. James C. Cobb, Kathleen Clark, Peter Charles Hoffer, and Tom Dyer, each offered direction and suggestions that improved the final product. This could not have been written without much financial aid to fund research trips. I’d particularly like to thank the University of Georgia for a Presidential Fellowship, and a Dean’s Award in Humanities, The North Caroliniana Society for an Archie K. Davis scholarship, the Southern Historical Collection for their J. Carlyle Sitterson Research Grant, the Colonial Dames for their American History Scholarship, the United States Center for Military History for their very generous Dissertation Fellowship, and the UGA History department for a Warner-Fite Scholarship, and particularly Dr. Robert Pratt, who as Department Chair, granted me several individual travel funds to aid me in my research. The research for this trip required me to go many places up and down the eastern seaboard, and I have been fortunate to be helped by many friendly and knowledgeable archivists along the way. I’d like to thank the staffs at the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Beverly Historical Society, the Worcester Historical Museum, the Baker Library at Harvard Business School, the National Archives (both in downtown D.C., and at College Park, Maryland), the Library of Congress, the North Carolina State Archives, the Southern Historical Collection, and the North Carolina Collection at the v University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Duke University Special Collections, and the Emory University Special Collections. I’d also like to thank the Connecticut Historical Society and Simsbury Historical Society in Simsbury, CT, for their assistance. I am indebted to my many close friends who made my research trips much more enjoyable: Jason Tomberlin, of Chapel Hill, N.C.; Lindy Aldrich, of Boston, Mass.; and Jessica Anders, of Washington, D.C. Michael Thomas Smith, one of my closest friends from NCSU, deserves special mention for meeting me on research trips and for being an intellectual companion to sound ideas off of both grand and ridiculous. Michael and Rachel Noto have graciously allowed me to stay with them on many, many trips to the Raleigh area for research, and have pretended that they never get sick of seeing me. Chris Hoch and his wife Laurie probably have the distinction of having me sleep under their roof in Washington, D.C. the greatest number of days over the last 6 years. They have been very generous, and Chris has been a close friend and supporter since we first met in Mrs. Hicks’ 5th grade classroom in 1984. I enjoy every conversation, tennis match, softball game, and baseball road trip he and I engage in. My experience as a graduate student at UGA has been a very rewarding one, largely due to the unequaled comraderie of the History graduate students. Among my many friends here, I would like to single out Drew McCallister, Solomon Smith, and Robby Luckett for special mention as esteemed friends, who have shared my intellectual and athletic experiences at UGA. Finally, I must thank my wife Greta not only for putting up with my constant absences for research trips, and my continual complaining while I wrote this dissertation, and not only for being the breadwinner in the family for the last 6 years while I have contributed mainly just graduate student stipends, but also for her constant love and support. Regardless of how my academic career turns out, asking her to marry me was easily the best decision I have ever made. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.............................................................................................................v INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1 FROM SETTLEMENT TO SECESSION: DEVELOPMENT & DIVERGENCE IN CARTERET AND CRAVEN COUNTIES, 1696-1860....................................12 2 “GREAT EXCITEMENT PREVAILS IN OUR MIDST”: CONFEDERATE MOBILIZATION IN THE FIRST YEAR OF WAR..............................................47 3 “THE GREATER NUMBER ARE UNION MEN NOW”: THE RETURN OF UNIONISM AND EMERGENCE OF DISSENT ..................................................91 4 “VISIONS OF FREEDOM AND CIVILIZATION OPENING BEFORE THEM”: AFRICAN AMERICANS SEARCH FOR AUTONOMY DURING OCCUPATION ...............................................................................................137 5 “I AM NOT SO PATRIOTIC AS I WAS ONCE”: THE EFFECTS OF OCCUPATION ON THE OCCUPYING UNION SOLDIERS ...........................180 6 “WEARING THE MASK OF NATIONALITY LIGHTLY”: WHITE REACTIONS TO PROLONGED UNION OCCUPATION........................................................229 EPILOGUE..................................................................................................................................270 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................282 vii INTRODUCTION As Sidney Andrews made his way through the coastal towns of Beaufort and New Bern, North Carolina, in the summer of 1865, during his tour of the southern states immediately after the cessation of hostilities, he was struck by the janus-faced loyalty of local whites, many of whom had lived seemingly rather docilely, at least from his northern journalist’s point of view, under the past three years of Union occupation. He described a puzzling irony in the region: “the North Carolinian calls himself a Unionist, but he makes no special pretence of love for the Union.” Andrews already detected a streak of southern nationalism developing in the Beaufort- New Bern region only weeks after the southern nation had been laid to rest. Andrews sensed that white professions of Unionism were thinly-veiled at best. The journalist employed an apt metaphor to describe the waning strength of national allegiance in the region and state, proclaiming that the North Carolinian “wears his mask of nationality so lightly there is no difficulty in removing it.”1 Indeed, many North Carolinians, but especially