Exhibit Opens on Roanoke Island's Role in Civil War

Friday, March 02 2012 by Catherine Brand

An exhibit about Roanoke Island's role in the Civil War opens at the Outer Banks Visitor Center today. Curator Kaeli Schurr says capturing the island was an important part of the strategy for both the confederacy and the union.

Kaeli Schurr: After a long summer of both sides training troops and devising military strategy, both knew that whoever would be able to control the supply lines would control all of eastern North Carolina. And that led then to being able to disrupt the supply lines from Wilmington up to the Confederate capital in Richmond.

Schurr says after the Union victory in a two-day battle in 1862, Roanoke became home to as many as four thousand blacks who flocked to the area for protection. The exhibit is free to the public and runs through the end of the year.

NC Literary Lights: Charles Frazier:

Friday, September 30 2011 by Amber Nimocks and Isaac-Davy Aronson

"Nightwoods" by Charles Frazier

 In his new novel, "Nightwoods" (Random House/2011), acclaimed writer Charles Frazier returns to the familiar setting of North Carolina's Appalachian mountains. This time, the action takes place in the 20th century, instead of the 19th, but some familiar themes run through all of Frazier's works. As in "Cold Mountain" and "Thirteen Moons," characters are defined in part by their relationship to the land and their quest for peace in the face of violence. As part of our continuing series, North Carolina Literary Lights, guest host Isaac Davy-Aronson talks with Frazier about his latest book and his connection to the Tar Heel State.

Civil War Headstone for Black Soldier

Friday, August 19 2011 by Leoneda Inge

37th US Colored Troops re-enactors participated in Pvt. Frank Worthington's headstone ceremony. (Photo: Leoneda Inge)

Eric Hodge:  Summer-time is known for neighborhood get-togethers and family reunions.   That’s what the Worthington-Wellington family did this month in Wilson, North Carolina.  But a big cook-out was not the highlight.  This year, family gathered at Maplewood Cemetery to honor Private Frank Worthington – a member of the 14th Regiment North Carolina Colored Troops – Heavy Artillery.  After years of letter-writing and historical research – Private Worthington finally has a Civil War Memorial Headstone – a rarity for African Americans.

Leoneda Inge has this audio post-card from Maplewood Cemetery.

Fontella Worthington:  On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other grounds sink in sand.  Giving honor to God, distinguished guests, family and friends.   I’m Fontella Worthington, the great, great, great granddaughter of Frank Worthington, the great, great granddaughter of Frank Worthington Jr., the granddaughter of Lola Worthington and the daughter of Patsy Sumler.  And today, we as a family stand. Because our great grandfather stood as a slave, he stood as a soldier, but he died a free man.

Earl Ijames:  Good morning. My name is Earl Ijames and I am a curator with the North Carolina Museum of History, and I bring you greetings from the North Carolina Museum of History on this glorious day.  And many of us have seen the movie Glory, and illustrating the freedom struggle of the Massachusetts 54th and 55th with just a minute portion of the U-S Colored Troops. But what about down in the south, where the majority of people of color, African Americans lived. Here in North Carolina, Frank Worthington was one of 335,000 enslaved men, women and children, a solid one-third of our population in 1860.   And he escaped, he left his mother and his two brothers on Isaac Worthington’s Pitt County plantation and risked everything – slave catchers, the Confederate Army, to fight for his freedom...

Lois Wellington-Bush:  My eyes are a little clouded, because when I look out and see all of kin-folk here honoring my great grandfather, I am just filled with joy.

David Lee Wellington:  My name is David L. Wellington, I’m the great, grandson of Frank Worthington who we are honoring here today with a government furnished Civil War Memorial headstone.  And I’ve been working on this now, in terms of this particular event itself, for about a year and a half.  But in terms of the research and with him, almost over two year, I mean 22 years.

Leoneda Inge:  So it was something that your family was truly adamant about doing, because you knew, as family members, his status, his stature.

David Lee Wellington:  But you had to prove it!

Leoneda Inge:  So tell me, maybe you can explain quickly the Wellington, Worthington, Wellington, Worthington…

David Lee Wellington:  Again, the information we got from the archives, from his pension, his name, the man that owned him was named Isaac Worthington. And he was 20 years old when he joined the Civil War, and he knew how to say that correctly but he could not read or write.  When he joined the Civil War, all we see is they have is his mark.  So when people spelled his name whatever it was, he took it, because he didn’t know if it was right of wrong.  And, of course that year in the military alone, they had him with three different names – Worthington, Weatherington and Wellington.  After the civil War, Wellington stuck.

Eric Hodge:  Leoneda Inge produced that audio post-card from Maplewood Cemetery in Wilson – where family members recently honored a member of the 14th Regiment North Carolina Colored Troops.   This month, Private Frank Worthington finally received a Civil War Memorial Headstone.

Biking the Underground Railroad

Tuesday, August 09 2011 by Anna Cassell and Frank Stasio

When Suepinda Keith and her husband Kevin Hicks moved to Chapel Hill, they were struck by how few young people they saw on bicycles. Avid riders themselves, they began a youth cycling program called Spoke ‘n Revolutions. When the group started riding last year, they had no idea how far it would take them – 1,800 miles, to be exact. That’s how far they biked this summer with a group of nine students from Chapel Hill High School. They were following the long path of the Underground Railroad all the way from Mobile, Alabama to Niagara Falls, biking roughly 60 miles a day for 33 days—something none of them had done before. Keith and Hicks, along with students Chris Dargan and Jeimy Salazar, join host Frank Stasio to talk about lessons in history, flat tires, and the kindness of strangers.

The "Good War"

Friday, June 24 2011 by Alex Granados and Frank Stasio

Many people think the American Civil War had to happen. It reunited a torn country and put an end to slavery. But was it a "good" war, and is there even such a thing? Host Frank Stasio talks about the morality of the Civil War with David Goldfield, the Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and author of “America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation” (Bloomsbury Press/2011); and Fitzhugh Brundage, the William Umstead Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This story is part of the North Carolina Voices series.

The Civil War And The Dukes

North Carolina Voices: The Civil War

Friday, June 24 2011 by Dave DeWitt

Washington Duke (Photo: Duke Homestead)

Eric Hodge: Before the Civil War, North Carolina was a poor, agrarian state. The people who lived here were renowned for their independence. It was a quality that would serve the state well after the war. In the final installment of our series, North Carolina Voices: The Civil War, Dave DeWitt takes a look at the state’s shattered economy after the Civil War, and one family that emerged from it to become one of the richest in the world.

Dave DeWitt: Washington Duke was a penniless, ambivalent Confederate soldier in the spring of 1865 when he was released from a Union prison in New Bern. Ahead of him was a 130 mile walk home to Durham - waiting for him there were 4 children, no wife, and a ransacked farm.

150 years later, the Duke name and legacy is everywhere. 

How the Dukes managed to build a fortune from nothing is part drive, part extraordinary business sense, and part good timing.

Before the war, Duke owned a moderate farm that included several slaves. He sold everything, including his slaves, before he went off to war. When he returned home, he and his two sons, Ben and James Buchanan “Buck” Duke, got the tobacco farm up and running. He was helped by a growing market, and his location.

David Carlton is an economic historian at Vanderbilt University. 

David Carlton: Durham of course, had the advantage of having rail connections and was able to tap into a much, much larger market. This is one of the major changes you start seeing after the Civil War.

Within a few years, Washington Duke gave up farming and opened one of the first cigarette factories in Durham - an opportunity that would likely have been impossible in the antebellum south of his youth.

One of the key decisions the Dukes made at the time was what to put in that factory. Buck Duke was emerging as the dominant force within both the family and the industry, and he convinced the others that the best choice was to make machine-rolled cigarettes.

Robert Durden is a retired history professor at Duke University and the author of several books on the Duke family. He appeared in a promotional video for the Duke Endowment and talked about the key decision to use cigarette machines.

Robert Durden: And of course that paid off very handsomely. Because within five years time, by 1890, Washington Duke and sons was the leading cigarette manufacturer in the nation.

But the choice to use the machines also revealed something else about the Dukes.

Economic historian David Carlton… 

Carlton: I mean Duke was ruthless, he was sneaky, he was underhanded. You know, he cut a deal with the machine-maker to give him a kickback on all the cigarettes made by his competitors with their machines.

But Buck Duke’s ruthless business decisions also served to create jobs, especially among the poorest communities in the state. 

Carlton: Tobacco was actually fairly well-paying, particularly for Blacks. And thus you get both in Winston-Salem and Durham very strong black communities. It forms the foundation for the famous Durham Black middle class.

By the turn of the century, The American Tobacco Company was a massive monopoly, manipulating prices, absorbing competitors, expanding overseas, and making 90 percent of the cigarettes produced in the country.

It was also at this time that the family became more philanthropic. They gave money to Methodist churches, hospitals, and schools, especially a small college in Randolph County called Trinity College.

Again, Robert Durden… 

Durden: In 1896 I think it was, Washington Duke told the president of Trinity College that he would give Trinity a hundred thousand dollars, which was a lot of money then, if he would admit women on an equal footing with men.

Washington Duke died in 1920 1905; four nineteen years later*, Trinity College, which had moved to Durham, was named in his honor. Buck Duke died in 1925, a year after creating the Duke Endowment.

The legacy of the Dukes is complicated.

Duke Energy relies on coal-fired power plants… as Duke University’s world-renowned environmental school does groundbreaking work in global warming.
One of Washington Duke’s daughters gave 22 of the original 25 acres to create North Carolina Central University… but Duke University didn’t admit an undergraduate black student until 1963.

Tobacco, the product the Dukes helped popularize and made them rich, kills more than 5-million people a year worldwide… the hospitals the Dukes built have saved countless lives.

Historian John Hope Franklin came to Duke in 1983 as the James Buchanan Duke professor of history. Franklin died in 2009, but before he did, he spoke to the Duke Endowment about Buck Duke. 

John Hope Franklin: And when you see that he was looking to help children, to help the infirm, to help people seeking an education and people who wanted some solace in their religious life. That’s it. He comprehended the needs of the human being and he met those needs as best he could.

The Duke’s complicated and far-reaching legacy will continue for many years, but it began after a terrible war upended the southern economy - and allowed a driven, widowed father to create a better life for his family, after a long walk home.

*Note: This date was corrected after the story's original airing and posting.

This story is part of the North Carolina Voices: Civil War.

Starving the South

Thursday, June 23 2011 by Frank Stasio and Lindsay Thomas

During the Civil War, the Union Army had an increasing supply of something the Confederacy lacked: food. Canning operations in the North kept the Union’s bellies full while Southern soldiers faced starvation. In his new book, “Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War” (St. Martin’s Press/2011), author and culinary historian Andrew F. Smith explores the role of food in the outcome of the war. Smith joins host Frank Stasio to talk about his research and the connection between the Civil War and the industrialization of America’s food supply.

This story is part of the North Carolina Voices series.

Whose Side is God On?

Wednesday, June 22 2011 by Frank Stasio and Lindsay Thomas

America was a highly religious nation during the Civil War era and spiritual believers on both sides of the conflict turned to their faith to understand the causes and consequences of the war. The concept of divine providence - the idea that God’s will was being played out on the battleground - was a common theme in the messages of preachers and political leaders of the day. For African-Americans in South, the freedom to worship came slowly and black ministers found themselves facing the exciting challenge of emancipation in different ways. Host Frank Stasio explores the role of religion during the Civil War with Reginald Hildebrand, associate professor of Afro and African-American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of the book, “The Times were Strange and Stirring: Methodist Preachers and the Crisis of Emancipation” (Duke Press/1995); and historian George C. Rable, author of “God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War” (UNC Press/2010).

This story is part of the North Carolina Voices series.

Daughters of Confederate Soldiers Speak

North Carolina Voices: The Civil War

Wednesday, June 22 2011 by Jessica Jones

Eric Hodge: Many families here in North Carolina have passed down stories about the experiences of their ancestors during the Civil War. For most people, those tales are a link to a distant past that spans generations. But for one small group of elderly women who are actually the daughters of Confederate soldiers, that history is very much a part of their own life story.  Jessica Jones reports for our series North Carolina Voices: The Civil War.

Jessica Jones: Effie Phipps Whittle is a woman who's led a happy life. Every day without fail, the spry eighty-eight year old pushes her walker swiftly through the halls of the sprawling rest home where she lives in Greensboro to check up on her friends.

Effie Whittle: Nosey. I like to be nosey.
Whittle likes to share the story of her father, the Civil War veteran Robert Sanders Phipps, who died in 1924. She remembers playing hide-and-seek with the old fashioned watch her father moved from one waistcoat pocket to the next.

Whittle: So that watch might be up here, and it might be down here. Hey you know me I wanted to find which one it was to see if I could find it real quick.
Whittle was five when her father died at the age of 78. She had a hard time explaining her dad's history to the other kids at school.

Whittle: First of all they looked at me like I was screwed up real bad. And then when I'd start to say, a daughter of a real Confederate soldier. You're what? And this goes on and on and on. You mean grand, not daughter, and I just heard that till I was sick and tired of hearing it.
But there's one group of people who've always believed Whittle's story- the United Daughters of the Confederacy. In its heyday in the early 1900s, it was the preeminent social organization for white women in the South. It's dedicated to preserving the honor of male ancestors who fought in the war. The group recognizes Whittle as one of 23 officially titled "Real Daughters" of the Confederacy.

Whittle: I just always thought it was real special. Just weren't that many around first of all.
These days, the UDC keeps close track of the Real Daughters who're left. That's Gail Crosby's job with the national organization. Real Daughters must prove who they are by presenting detailed geneaological records. But Crosby says for years, many of the Daughters were reluctant to be recognized.

Gail Crosby: We had one in Florida a number of years ago, and she was most embarrassed. She did not want anyone to know that her father was a Confederate veteran, because he was quite elderly when she was born. Usually the mothers of these ladies would be a second or third wife, much younger than the veteran. So the father would be up way up in years when this child or her siblings were born.
Crosby says the Real Daughters deserve to be supported emotionally and financially. UDC members across the country send the Daughters gifts, cards and checks on their birthdays. And a century-old relief fund for the families of Confederate soldiers is there to help Real Daughters on very limited incomes. But for many of the women, just knowing their fathers are recognized for their Civil War service is the greatest reward. Mattie Clyburn Rice is eighty-eight years old.

Mattie Rice and Jessica Jones: This is a picture of my father right here. He's playing the fiddle. Yeah, he was a violin player. And he's dressed up, wearing a formal suit with a vest and he has a medal on his jacket.

Rice is African-American. She was the youngest and favorite child of her father, Wary Clyburn. He was born into slavery. When Rice was little, her father told her he ran away with his master's son to serve in the war. Wary Clyburn died when his little girl was just ten. As an adult, Rice went from one archive to the next trying to prove her father's story.

Rice: People are just beginning to believe me. Nobody believed me, nobody, not even the children, they are just beginning to believe me, cause now they see it in print- nobody believed me. The first time I went to the archives in Washington I had to be fingerprinted.
But eventually Rice was able to find her father's pension record. Enslaved blacks were conscripted for all kinds of heavy labor for the Confederate Army, even though African-Americans weren't formally enlisted until the very tail end of the war. Rice was invited to join the United Daughters of the Confederacy a few years ago- she says she wishes her father could see her now.

Rice: Things has changed so much down through the years. I think if he was living, he would be proud, and he could believe it.
Rice is still working to find out more about her father and where his parents came from. But she says now at least everyone knows who her father was and believes his story.

Jessica Jones, North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC.

This story is part of the North Carolina Voices: Civil War.

The Legend of Henry Berry Lowry

Tuesday, June 21 2011 by Frank Stasio and Jeremy Loeb

A commonly used image of Lowry (www.ncmuseumofhistory.org)

Henry Berry Lowry was a Lumbee Indian sometimes described as the “Robin Hood” of Robeson County, North Carolina. But Lowry’s story is much more nuanced than that. He’s a hero to some, a murderer to others. All told, Lowry and his gang of outlaws were responsible for some two dozen killings as the Civil War ended and during Reconstruction. Host Frank Stasio talks about Lowry and his legacy with Robeson County native Malinda Maynor Lowery, an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and novelist Josephine Humphreys, author of a historical novel about Henry Berry Lowry called “Nowhere Else on Earth” (Penguin/2001).

This story is part of the North Carolina Voices series.

Dave Alvin's Civil War Ballad

North Carolina Voices: The Civil War

Tuesday, June 21 2011 by Eric Hodge

Historians estimate that more than 56,000 Americans died in prison camps during the Civil War. That's a casualty figure that is far greater than any single battle. The South's most famous prison was at Andersonville in Georgia. Conditions there were horrible; the food was scarce and often rancid. Nearly 29 percent of all prisoners detained at Andersonville died before the end of the war. Singer Dave Alvin wrote a song about it after he discovered that one of his relatives died there. WUNC's Eric Hodge spoke with Alvin for our series North Carolina Voices: The Civil War.

This story is part of the North Carolina Voices: Civil War.

Meet the Civil War Battlefield

Monday, June 20 2011 by Alex Granados and Frank Stasio

Bennett Place (http://www.nchistoricsites.org/bennett/)

The Civil War was one of the bloodiest wars fought in American history. Although the North won, led bravely by President Abraham Lincoln, Union victory was never a foregone conclusion. Historian Joseph Glatthaar says Lincoln may have been a great political leader, but he didn’t know much about military strategy. The president’s missteps made the Civil War longer and almost caused the resignation of one of the Union’s great generals. Host Frank Stasio talks about the battles and narratives of the Civil War with Glatthaar, the Stephenson Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and with John Guss, site manager for the Bennett Place State Historic Site in Durham, NC.

African American Legacy in New Bern

North Carolina Voices: The Civil War

Monday, June 20 2011 by Leoneda Inge

A historic marker celebrates the life of James Walker Hood at Broad and George Streets in New Bern

Eric Hodge:  Some historians refer to the Civil War as the “war between the states" – a white man’s war.  But to many people of color – it was the “war for freedom.” And during this mighty war, no other place in North Carolina had more “free” slaves than New Bern.
When the Union Army seized the city, word spread fast. Slaves travelled from across the state and outside its borders to get to New Bern.
In the next installment of our series – North Carolina Voices: The Civil War – Leoneda Inge reports New Bern was a mecca for freedom, and today, that history is woven into the community.

Leoneda Inge:  Soon after the start of the Civil War missionaries began to pour into the state. Historians say Methodists were the first to come down and some were missionaries from all-black denominations of the African Methodist Episcopal church and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church.
The choir is rehearsing at St. Peter’s A-M-E Zion church.  It was established under James Walker Hood in 1864 – a missionary sent from Connecticut. John Murrel is a long-time steward at St. Peter’s – and he sings in the choir.

John Murrel:  I was born in New Bern and I’ve been a member all my life here.  This church is unique b/c of the great history that lasts here within this church.

The church helped freed slaves get settled in their new lives.  Hood went on to establish more than 350 churches along the coast of North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. They were based on the premise that Christian faithfulness and racial justice are inseparable.
Laurie Maffly-Kipp is chairman of the Religious Studies Department at U-N-C Chapel Hill. She says religious communities were an obvious way to form associations and for freed slaves, to find like-minded people.

Laurie Maffly Kipp:  But they were also important because they were a place where other things could happen. Education could happen there - burials and marriages and other basic things that we consider to be basic human practices that slaves hadn’t been allowed because they hadn’t been free.

Members of St. Peter’s AME Zion church and others built their own schools, started a newspaper and founded North Carolina’s first black-owned bank – the Mutual Aid Bank. Joseph George heads the city of New Bern’s Housing Authority. He pastored St. Peter’s for nine years.

Joseph George:  And I went to that church to restore it because the church had provided for me some very important mentoring and leadership in my formative years growing up here. I was a boy scout and the troop that I was a member of was sponsored by that church. Troop 121, I can remember it to this day.

The George family can trace their family back to the beginning of New Bern.

Bernard George:  I am a native New Bernian. My family has lived here in this area for approximately 300 years. I’m born and raised right here, I’m part of the soil.

Bernard George – Joseph George’s brother – is an administrator in the New Bern planning department. Their great, great, grandfather fought in the union army during the Civil War. Bernard George is a well-known Colored Troops Civil War re-enactor. He left town for college but is proud to say he’s part of the African American tradition that stayed south.

Bernard George:  We continued to fight discrimination, we continued to work hard to raise families. We continued to create community here, in the south, in a very hostile environment so those who fled this very dire situation, could one day, as they’re doing today, move back south and enjoy all the fruits and the labors of their brothers and sisters who stayed south and stayed the course.

African Americans make up about 38-percent of the New Bern population. But there is an un-incorporated area near the Trent River that is almost 100-percent African American – it’s called James City. Long-time residents were recorded and are part of an oral history exhibit at the new North Carolina History Center at Tryon Palace.

Ernestine Clemmons:  The federal government give James City to the black people, the black soldiers, because they fought with the federal.

Ernestine Clemmons was born in James City in 1916 – her father lived there his entire life.

Clemmons:  People that could make it from the other parts of the state and other places, they would come to James City. When they came to James City they were supposed to be free.

James City was originally called the Trent River Settlement.  It was later re-named in honor of Union Army Chaplain Horace James who was instrumental in setting up camps and schools for the refugee slaves.  But reconstruction un-settled this settlement. Whites demanded the land back. James City was moved and many African Americans headed north for a better life. Today James City has about 600 residents. Several houses are empty. There are five churches and a monument that recognizes more than 500 post-Civil War unmarked graves.  The James City Community Center sits right next to Reform Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church. Three nights a week you can hardly get a parking space. Dozens of neighbors from James City, and from across the bridge in New Bern, meet for line dancing classes. Connie Davis and her sister Mae Henderson head up the dancing – slash – exercise class.

Inge:  What do you like about your community?

Connie Davis:  I love it because it’s peaceful and quiet and everybody love each other, they are like family, they are bound together, and watch out for each other.

Inge:  What about you?

Mae Henderson:  Yeah same. Everybody pull together, you know. So we’re doing pretty good now. James City was low key at one time, look at us now! (laugh)

Last year New Bern celebrated its 300th anniversary – only the town of Bath is older in North Carolina. They celebrated with fireworks, a parade and a special symphony performance. Even visitors from Switzerland travelled to New Bern to celebrate – they were the first settlers. But the celebration also included a trip to Ghana, West Africa – a connection African American residents of New Bern know well.  Leoneda Inge – NC Public Radio – WUNC.

This story is part of the North Carolina Voices: Civil War.

The Winton Triangle

Friday, June 17 2011 by Frank Stasio and Susan Davis

www.chowandiscovery.org

More Americans marked at least two boxes for “race” on the 2010 Census than ever before. The country may not be increasingly multiracial but it certainly is increasingly conscious of its multiracial identity. In Northeastern North Carolina there is a community that is historically mixed race. Landowning free people of color have lived together in The Winton Triangle for 260 years. Their ancestors include people who moved from the Chesapeake Bay area as well as Chowanoke, Meherrin, and Tuscarora Indians, Africans and East Indians. As part of WUNC’s series “North Carolina Voices: The Civil War,” Winton Triangle historian Marvin Jones, a photographer and the Executive Director of the Chowan Discovery Group, joins host Frank Stasio with the story of this unique North Carolina communnity.

This story is part of the North Carolina Voices series.

Civil War Reenactors Pay Homage to Ancestors

North Carolina Voices: The Civil War

Friday, June 17 2011 by Jessica Jones

Eric Hodge: The 26th North Carolina Regiment is one of the largest Civil war reenactor groups in the country. Nearly every month the regiment travels from one historical site to the next to reenact battles and perform living history exhibits. The group is modeled after a Confederate regiment of the same name. In the next installment of our series, North Carolina Voices: The Civil War, Jessica Jones reports many of the participants are descendants of Confederate soldiers.

Jessica Jones: North Carolina marked its one hundred fiftieth anniversary of secession just a few weeks ago. It was an important day for the reenactors of the 26th.  Members of a traditional fife and drum band wearing Civil War uniforms serenaded curious onlookers on the lawn of the old historic Capitol building in Raleigh. Thirty-five year old David Rotan leads the group.

David Rotan:  I’m a field musician, I pay the fife in the regimental field music, which is a little different than a brass band. That was more for show and ceremonies and special occasions.
Rotan says every Confederate regiment had about twenty musicians who woke soldiers, called them to meals, and played as they headed into battle. He says most of the tunes the band performs would have been played by members of the old 26th regiment.

Rotan: There are moments when you’re just on a field recreating a battle when you really are transported back in time and you can walk in the footsteps of your ancestors just like my great-great-grandfather who I heard so many tales about around my grandmother’s rocking chair.
Rotan grew up in Morganton listening to his grandmother’s stories about his Civil War ancestors. He joined a reenactors’ group when he was just 14 because he felt it would help him connect with that history. That’s true for Diane Smith, who’s sitting under the shade of a towering oak tree. She’s wearing a corset and a hoop skirt beneath her printed cotton dress.

Diane Smith: By doing this too is to also kind of learn by first hand account. You can’t explain to somebody what wearing a corset is like until you wear one. Or a steel petticoat. You can’t explain it unless you actually do it.
Smith was a reenactor for years before getting her current job as an interpreter at Bennett Place in Durham, where surrender papers were signed that ended the war. The group’s current leader, Colonel Skip Smith, had 14 family members who fought in the 26th. Today he’s dressed in a very warm looking double-breasted frock coat with rows of golden buttons. And he’s carrying quite a weapon on his belt.

Skip Smith: It is an 1850 U.S. foot officer’s sword, just a reproduction that was handed down to our first commander of the 26th in 1988 we gave it to him and he carried it until 2000 when I took over
The 26th has about 200 members, give or take. Smith- who’s wearing antique round eyeglasses- says reenactors care deeply about wearing the right kind of uniforms to look as authentic as possible.

Smith: You continually push to get better. There’s more research to be done. When I first started in 1983 there were not that many vendors making uniforms. Nowdays you can find just about anything you want. Someone can make it historically accurate. We have an authenticity committee, and we might have our inspections and they know that they could be called out if it’s not right.
Smith says though members are unified by their love of Civil War history, the ranks are filled with people from all professions and political persuasions. The 26th will not reenact battle scenes at sites the original Civil War regiment did not visit. The group also occasionally plays the part of a Union regiment from Michigan when other reenactors ask them to.

Chris Roberts: Shoulder arms, secure arms!
It’s mid-afternoon and members of the 26th are performing an official-looking rifle drill for a big crowd. Chris Roberts is standing close to the group to explain the roles the men are playing.

Roberts: At this point in the war they’re bringing in all these raw recruits, they’re going to be going through every different manual of arms, teaching them one step at a time. You take nothing for granted the same way you do in the modern military.
Maria Locicero: I like that the reenactors are so real.
Maria Locicero and her daughter Melinda Walker have stopped to watch.

Locicero and Melinda Walker: They’re so focused even in correcting them and making sure they’re holding their rifles in a certain position it just fascinates me really. Nobody’s laughing nobody thinks it’s silly.
Locicero and Walker say none of their ancestors fought in the Civil War. But Walker says she’s seen how much this history means to people.

Locicero and Walker: You realize how closely connected people still is to the war between the states. And how devastated- the families still recall the devastation their great greats went through. I think it’s just a connection to who we are.
Jessica Jones, North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC.

This story is part of the North Carolina Voices: Civil War.

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