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I am intrigued by the question: what did the mothers (and fathers) say to their sons as they were thinking about joining the Confederate army? The title of my favourite Civil War Book, James M McPherson’s “Battle Cry of Freedom” in its title seems to offer the answer to this question but does not really offer much inside! The same author’s (small) book “What they fought for 18611865”
is more help. In this paper I will look at the cultural issues that propelled many soldiers into the War – concentrating on the Scots who made North and South Carolina home in the years before 1861.
North Carolina is a good place to start this discussion, as it supplied at least 125,000 troops to the
Confederacy – far more than any other State. Wilmington, NC was the last major port for the blockaderunners until it fell in the Spring of 1865. The Carolinas were pretty much in the thick of the start and finish of the War. As we know, Virginia, which, later, saw much of the fighting, delayed declaring for War.
South Carolina was the first to secede (20 December 1860) and North Carolina the second last – a few days after the action at Fort Sumter. Also, some of the last battles of the War were fought in North Carolina. Signs of Scottish migration are all over this part of the world – North Carolina today even has a County called “Scotland” ‐ on its border with South Carolina ‐ named in honour of the many Scots who settled there. It is said Lowland Scots settled nearer to Wilmington – while many of the Gaelic‐speakers from the Scottish Highlands settled in the Cape Fear River valley. The 2001 movie “Songcatcher” was about a music teacher collecting Celtic and other traditional music in the Appalachian Mountains – “preserved by the secluded mountain people”. Today about 35,000 people, in July each year, attend the “Highland Games at Grandfather Mountain” in backcountry North Carolina.
