Week 9 Blog Post Part 2

Week 9 Blog Post Part 2

NC Legislature Protests the Confederate Draft and Martial Law, May 1864 (cont.): In Paul Escott’s essay “Confederate Policymaking Produces Innovation and Controversy,” he stated that Jefferson Davis took the conscription law to the state Supreme Courts. I noticed that North Carolina was not in the list of states that Escott said upheld conscription on the part of the central government. I wonder if the North Carolina Supreme Court heard such a case. (P & T, 281-282)

The NC legislature was also protesting Confederate powers late in the war, May 1864. Habeus corpus had previously been suspended in 1862 for a year. North Carolina’s protest fell during the second suspension which according to Escott was from February 15 to July 31, 1864. (P & T, 278)

Catherine Edmonston of North Carolina Discusses Matters Public and Domestic, Jan. 1865: Edmonston was vehemently opposed to the Confederacy emancipating the slaves so they can fight in the army. She called the Richmond Enquirer newspaper an abolitionist because it endorsed the idea! She didn’t want the “degraded race” of the Negro to be put on par with the whites by allowing them to be soldiers. We can tell from Edmonston’s comments that she was well informed about current politics. She spoke of “the Constitution [being] daily trampled underfoot by Impressment Laws & Government Schedules.” (P & T, 252) She also commented that the slave emancipation was a political act to appease England and France whose governments had already banned slavery. Her diary entry contained a lot of venting about politics and government which was carefully thought out. She mentioned thinking about it for the “past fortnight” which meant two weeks.

As an introduction to her family’s activities, she commented that their Negroes were the only ones who got a holiday at Christmas. She and her husband were busy working slaughtering and preserving meat! She poked fun at the parts of the hog that her slaves ate and said that the only presents that a Negro child needed were a hog bladder and hog tail. (P & T, 253)

Cornelia Peake McDonald Comments on Class and Conscription, March 1865: I assume this is a diary entry; the editor does not say. McDonald made clear that she was against deserters but understood why they wanted to run away. One reason she gave was that they needed to keep their families from starving which was a consequence of their being low born and poor. Although she admitted that “the plainer people” who had died on the battlefield must have “had true soldierly hearts and bore themselves bravely in the shock of battle.” (P & T, 254) She thought that there wouldn’t have been any desertion from the army “if the brave, the well born and the chivalrous could have done all the fighting.” (P & T, 254) Clearly, McDonald was not thinking of any upper class man who had paid for a substitute. I wonder what she thought of those plantation owners or managers who got exemptions.

Regarding the government, McDonald considered conscription to be tyranny even though it “was made necessary by the exigency of the times.” (P & T, 254) She also vented about the lawlessness when people both upper class (like herself) and poor (butcher’s wife) were robbed of their food and property. (P & T, 253-255)

Elizabeth Patterson of Virginia Tries to Reconcile Her Loyalty and Her “Misfortune,” March 1865: Amy Murrell Taylor mentions Patterson’s petition in her essay, “Southern Families and Their Appeals for Protection” where she provides the reader with more details of the family than given in the document. (P & T, 255, 273-274) Patterson expressed her patriotism and sacrifice having lost her husband and three sons in the war. It seems like a reasonable request to want a discharge for her “only living adult son” from the army as a bonded agriculturist. Patterson further attested that her son’s health was feeble. (P & T, 255-256) Taylor stated that “the Confederate Congress passed a new series of laws in 1864 and 1865” in response to letters like Patterson’s. (P & T, 274) She did not say whether Patterson’s request was granted. “Only 7 percent of the special exemption requests in [her] sample were granted.” (P & T, 270)

Written by Molly Kettler