A War Between Neighbors

"When the war come, I felt awful southern"

Mountain Soldier

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Although people in the mountains of western North Carolina held few slaves and generally did not support secession from the Union, many loyally answered the state's call for troops at the outbreak of the Civil War.

Increasingly, however, support for the Confederate cause waned in the mountains. Governmental taxes and conscription laws added to the distress caused by the absence of males from mountain farms.

After east Tennessee fell to troops in the fall of 1863, the mountains became a haven for Confederate deserters and a way station for escaped Union prisoners. Men from the Blue Ridge who had remained loyal to the Union crossed the border into Tennessee to enlist.

There were two lingering effects from the Civil War in the mountains. Because loyalty had been divided in the Blue Ridge, neighbors within small communities developed smoldering animosities that sometimes broke out into open violence. Vigilante groups often used patriotism as an excuse for harassing or robbing those with opposing allegiance. Such events took decades to be forgotten. Secondly, when former Confederate leaders regained political power after the Reconstruction, they remembered that the Blue Ridge had not been wholly loyal to the South. This meant the tax money for schools and roads was often withheld, making modernization difficult for the mountain generation that followed the war.