Loyal to the Core from the First to the Last: Remembering the Inner Civil War of Forsyth County, North Carolina, 1862-1876

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Domby, Adam H.
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History

Abstract

During the American Civil War a separate conflict was fought along the home front. Waged by Confederate authorities against deserters, conscripts, and other dissenters, this inner war was accompanied by occurrences of arson, torture, and even murder, that left a bitter legacy. This thesis traces and examines how desertion, dissent, and the violence of civil war were remembered in Forsyth County, North Carolina. After the war, individuals and organizations wrestled to control and reshape how this traumatic violence--inflicted by southerners upon southerners--was remembered. The divisions that had been laid bare during the war continued to play out during Reconstruction in the courts, political campaigns, newspapers, and the streets of North Carolina. Though a memory of dissent held political power during Reconstruction, eventually an amnesia of dissent facilitated the disappearance of a Unionist identity, as the Confederacy's Lost Cause narrative achieved near hegemony in the minds of white southerners.

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