Course Description
To understand the long march of events in North Carolina from secession to surrender is to understand the entire Civil War, a personal war waged by Confederates and Unionists, free blacks and the enslaved, farmwomen and plantation belles, Cherokees and mountaineers, conscripts and volunteers, gentleman officers and poor privates. In the state’s complex loyalties, its sprawling and diverse geography, and its dual role as a home front and a battlefield, North Carolina embodied the essence of the whole epic struggle in all its terrible glory.
For four years during the Civil War Sesquicentennial, Philip Gerard chronicled the war in North Carolina in monthly narratives for