| When the crisis of 1860-1861 arrived, it affected a people whose
material circumstances were quite different form those in the Deep South.
Of North Carolina's population of 992,622 people, 631,100 were white. There
were 331,059 slaves in the Tarheel State, and 30,463 free black americans.
Overwhelmingly rural, North Carolina had few towns or cities of any size,
Wilmington was the largest with only 10,000 residents. For decades economic
growth had been comparatively slow, and as a result the state had attracted
few immigrants. Less than 1 percent of the population was foreign born,
and most of these individuals came from the British Isles. Mixed farming
was the rule and plantation districts were rare. The influence of the market
economy remained weak, although tobacco flourished in a line of counties
along the Virginia border, some eastern counties grew substantial amounts
of cotton, and rice plantations existed near Wilmington. Seventy two percent
of the white families in the state owned no slaves and most farms were
small self sufficient operations encompassing no more than fifty or one
hundred acres.
On February 28, 1861, voters cast ballots on the question of calling a convention to consider secession. Although Governor John W. Ellis favored and was working for secession, the voters did not vote to hold a convention. The drift of events toward war, however, steadily affected North Carolinians. As one man wrote, "I am a Union man but when they send men South it will change my notions!" With war a reality, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a bill for a convention, and on May 20th this body voted to leave the Union and join into the Confederate States of America.
Immediately, Tarheel citizens began to make unusually large contributions and sacrifices for the confederate cause. In fact, the First North Carolina Regiment boarded trains for Virginia on May 11, nine days before the state formally left the Union. The initial excitement and romance of military service faded quickly before the grim tragedies of war, but North Carolina continued, through volunteering and conscription, to furnish a disproportionate number of soldiers to the Confederacy. Before the war was over the state provided thirty-six generals to the armies, including Theophilus H. Holmes, D.H. Hill, William Dorsey Pender, and Dodson Ramseur. Among the state's naval officers were Capt. James W. Cooke of the ram Albemarle and Capt. James Waddell of Shenandoah, which destroyed more Union commerce than any ship save Alabama. But the greatest contributions were made by the common soldiers and their immediate superiors, who fought and died in substantial numbers in every theater east of the Mississippi. The heaviest fighting for the state's troops took place on the battlefields of Virginia. George E. Pickett's famous charge on the third day at Gettysburg is identified with his gallant Virginia troops, but four brigades under Gen. J. Johnston Pettigrew also answered the call to advance "for the honor of the good Old North State." They too fell in large numbers before the withering Union fire. Only three of Pettigrews's field officers returned from that charge, and of the 15,301 Confederates killed or wounded at Gettysburg, 4,033 were North Carolinians. Many other battles in the Old Dominion exacted heavy Tarheel casualties. Although North Carolina contained only about one ninth of the Confederacy's white population, it supplied nearly one sixth of the Southern nation's fighting men. Nearly one fourth of all Southern conscripts, 21,348 men, came from North Carolina. The normal military population of the state has been estimated at approximately 116,000, yet 120,000 North Carolinians served in the Confederate armies before the war was over. Of these, 40,275 died, falling roughly equal numbers to battle and disease. These statistics represented one quarter of all Confederate battle deaths and the largest death toll of any Southern state. North Carolina also made unusual efforts to supply and support its
Confederate troops. In the first year of the war, as state officials struggled
to clothe volunteers, they ordered the entire output of the state's thirty
nine cotton mills and nine woolen mills for manufacture into uniforms.
This became a continuing practice, and as time went on the state undertook
to clothe all its troops and , after buying up all cloth produced in the
state, sent purchasing agents into other Southern states. In the final
years of the war, Governor Vance, who was first elected in 1862, used state
charted blockade runners to exchange cotton for blankets, shoes and uniforms.
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