Erika Lindemann
On the eve of the
Civil
War, the
University of North Carolina was among the most
flourishing institutions in the country. Only three
American
colleges boasted more students.
Harvard had close to 900 students; the
University of Virginia, nearly 650;
Yale, approximately 500; the
University of North Carolina, 456 students (
Knight
3:425, 5:279). Between 1850 and 1860 enrollments had almost doubled, and the
faculty had grown to nine professors and five tutors.
1 The
University had trained a significant number of
lawyers, judges, and politicians who held office in state and national
government. Clergymen, physicians, and teachers also had graduated from the
school, as well as engineers, journalists, bankers, merchants, planters, and
farmers.
Supporters of the
University helped it survive the
Civil
War, taking pride in the fact that classes continued throughout the
conflict. But the tremendous social and economic upheaval attending the
war and
the harsh realities of
Reconstruction forced the institution to suspend classes in late Summer
1868. By the time classes resumed in March
1869 under a new, unpopular administration, the University had lost the financial backing of parents, the public support of many
influential
North
Carolina citizens, and the leadership of an experienced faculty. It
struggled for a few years, then closed for four years in February 1871. When it reopened on September 15, 1875, it was a significantly different institution, with a new faculty,
a new curriculum, and a student body preparing for roles in a new post-war
culture. What follows charts the beginning of the end for the antebellum
University. It is the story of what happens to young
men when war comes.
The 1860 census established the population of the
United
States at thirty-one million people, among them four million slaves. The
population of
North
Carolina was slightly less than one million, including approximately
300,000 slaves and 30,000 free blacks. Fewer than thirty percent of
North
Carolinians owned slaves, who were concentrated primarily on large
plantations in the eastern part of the state, where their labor supported the
production of cotton, rice, tobacco, and lumber. Though
Gov. John W.
Ellis
was able to report in 1860 that 900 men and 1,500 women in
North
Carolina were attending colleges in the state, "almost 70,000
whites over the age of twenty in a [white] population of nearly 630,000 still
could not read and write" (
Powell,
North Carolina through Four Centuries
320, 317).
North
Carolinians generally were aware of the serious national debate over
states' rights and the extension of slavery, but they were fairly evenly
divided on the question of secession.
University faculty members were predominantly
Whigs
who supported the preservation of the Union, and when students wrote about
these issues, they argued against secession. The east-west sectionalism that
shaped political life in
North
Carolina framed discussions about slavery and secession as well. In 1860
the major controversy in the state was ad valorem
taxation, which would have required the slave-owning plantation aristocracy to
share a more equitable tax burden by paying taxes based on the value of their
slaves. As things stood, slaves were taxed at only eighty cents each regardless
of their value. Though they were worth more than the land they worked, they
were taxed at a much lower rate. The
Whig
party supported ad valorem taxation of slaves;
the
Democrats opposed it. While
North
Carolinians were preoccupied with this internal controversy, the country
was drawing closer to war.
Student life in 1860 remained much as it was in the 1850s. Young men
attended their daily recitations and from time to time devised pranks to
irritate the faculty. The commencement of 1860 saw over eighty students
graduate and gave some indication that religious intolerance was softening. The
senior class invited
Roman
Catholic
Archbishop John Joseph Hughes to deliver the baccalaureate
sermon.
2
Sensitive to the largely
Protestant audience he was addressing, the
archbishop chose his words carefully and appeared to win
the admiration of all but a few persistent critics. Morning and evening prayers
during the week continued to be held in the chapel, and faculty members still
heard recitations on the
Bible
every Sunday afternoon. In December 1860, however, students finally gained the
right to attend the church of their choice on Sundays. Prodded by a resolution
of the
North
Carolina
Protestant Episcopal Church, meeting in convention, the
trustees permitted students to worship in local
churches on Sundays, or to gain an exemption altogether if the student or his
parent or guardian sought a dispensation from
Gov.
Swain
. This latter provision was intended to excuse
Roman
Catholic and
Jewish
students from being required to attend
Protestant services.
The growing threat of war took its toll on
University enrollments almost immediately. In Fall
1860 only 376 students enrolled, a decrease of 80 students from the preceding
year. By the end of September 1861 only ninety-one students remained on campus,
the rest having volunteered for the army. By the end of the
war only
a dozen students would be enrolled. Yet despite the declining enrollments,
Gov.
Swain
was determined to keep the
University open.
The election of
Abraham
Lincoln in late 1860 alarmed most southerners.
Lincoln, the
Republican lawyer from
Illinois,
won the office with only forty percent of the popular vote. He was not even on
the ballot in ten southern states, including
North
Carolina. After
South
Carolina seceded from the
Union
on December 20, 1860, most people thought that war was inevitable, but a
majority of
North
Carolinians, including the ardent secessionist
Democratic
Gov.
Ellis
, maintained a wait-and-see attitude. As state after state withdrew
from the
Union,
students returned home to join local militia.
North
Carolinians, however, resisted calling for a secession convention.
North
Carolina was not among the seven states forming the
Confederate States of America on February 4, 1861,
though representatives were sent both to
Montgomery, AL, and to the
Peace
Conference in
Washington,
DC, to determine if differences between the
North and
South
could be resolved.
What most
North
Carolinians seemed to be waiting for was a clearer indication of how
President
Lincoln intended to hold the
Union
together. That question was answered in April 1861, when he sent
Federal
troops to reinforce
Fort
Sumter in
Charleston and called on the governors of the states still
remaining in the
Union
to furnish 75,000 militiamen to help restore it.
Gov.
Ellis
replied, "You can get no troops from
North
Carolina." The prospect of invasion by
Federal
forces shocked even the most ardent
Unionists and threw the remaining southern states
into the
Confederacy. On May 20, 1861,
North
Carolina became one of the last states officially to secede from the
Union.
By late April, students began leaving
Chapel
Hill at the rate of eight to ten a day to volunteer for the
Confederate army. Many of those who remained
borrowed muskets from villagers and began military drills as members of four
student companies (
Henderson 181). The students from
Louisiana, which had seceded in January 1861, wrote to
their governor volunteering to fight for their state if he should request their
services. Representatives of the student body petitioned the
board of trustees"to have the
College duties suspended until next Session"
because the excitement of impending war was distracting. The students believed
that their time would be better spent getting into fighting shape. The
petition, which the
board rejected, indicates how eagerly students
sought fame and adventure by going off to war. They responded with fervent
patriotism to watching the community gather to raise a new
Confederate flag and witnessing gallant young men
take leave of their families and go off to fight, perhaps to die. Students
whose families wanted them to remain in school pleaded to be allowed to enlist.
Most students, like their parents, thought that the war would not last long.
North Carolina's first troops were enlisted for only six months.
"Recruiting officers predicted that they would be able to wipe up with a
silk pocket handkerchief all the blood that would be shed" (Powell,
North Carolina through Four Centuries
350).
Gov.
Swain
quickly reassured parents that classes at the
University would remain in session. He issued
circulars in May, July, and November 1861 asserting that the
University intended to continue serving its
students:
Whilst the Faculty of this
Institution have no disposition to quench patriotic
ardour, or to withhold from the public service, at the proper time, any one
capable of performing the duties of a soldier, they beg leave to intimate to
parents and guardians the propriety of restraining the anxiety so natural to
the young and inexperienced to rush prematurely into military service. [. . .]
The Faculty are at their posts, endeavoring to discharge their duty faithfully
to the young men committed to their charge. There will be no suspension of
duties, and no reasonable pains will be spared to render the approaching
Commencement attractive. (
May 1, 1861, circular, University Papers,
UA)
Notwithstanding its billing as an "attractive" commencement,
the graduation ceremonies in June 1861 were gloomy. Only thirty of eighty-seven
seniors were present to receive their diplomas. The rest earned their degrees
without taking their final examinations because they were in the army. The
salutatorian
Charles Stedman
was with his regiment at
Yorktown. Other students were preparing to follow him into
war. The following fall the last of the five tutors would enlist in the
Confederate army, and
Professor William J. Martin
, who had been the students'
drill master, would apply for a leave of absence to join the army as well.
Gov.
Swain
himself had volunteered for service but had been discharged on
account of ill health. Remarkably, the students' commencement speeches did not
allude to the conflict. Instead, they addressed such topics as "The Golden
Mean," "Agriculture," "The Study of Man," and
"The Study of Geology" (
Battle 1:722).
Though most students entered the
Confederate army, a few may have joined
Federal
regiments. Primary sources understandably do not name students who may
have been traitorous
Union
sympathizers, and secondary accounts also show a bias favoring the
Confederacy. Nevertheless, 8,000
North
Carolinians became
Union
soldiers. Though many of them were blacks from the eastern part of the state,
the odds are that some
University students also fought for the
Union.
3 The
mountains of western
North
Carolina became a refuge for men who hoped to evade military service for
either side, for "outliers" as they were called. Some
Quakers,
for example, and other conscientious objectors escaped to the mountains,
4 as did
deserters and conscripts who refused to fight later in the
war. At
least one
University student, a would-be
Confederate lieutenant from
Charleston, committed suicide by taking an overdose
of laudanum rather than join his regiment (February 14, 1861, letter,
John
Wesley Halliburton Papers, SHC).
In
North
Carolina the
Civil War
was over almost as soon as it began. By August 29, 1861,
Fort
Hatteras on the
North
Carolina coast had surrendered to
Federal
forces, and from this beachhead,
Gen.
Ambrose Burnside was able to establish a base of operations from which
to control most of eastern
North
Carolina by late Spring 1862. Some towns changed hands several times,
forcing many residents to flee inland to places such as
Chapel
Hill,
Hillsborough, and
Pittsboro to escape the fighting.
North
Carolina's soldiers, in the meantime, were seeing action primarily in
Virginia.
Many blamed the
Confederate government for deploying
North
Carolina's troops to defend other states and for providing an inadequate
force to drive
Federal
troops out of eastern
North
Carolina.
At
Chapel
Hill, classes continued, though they were smaller than before. The
commencement of 1862 was held as usual, but there was no commencement ball. Few
people attended, and only twenty-four students received diplomas. The following
year, the Class of 1863 numbered only eight graduates, who had begun their
studies four years earlier in the company of seventy-two classmates.
As the
war
dragged on, the blockade of southern ports cut off medical supplies and
manufactured goods that had once been imported from the
North and
from
Europe.
Inflation began to drive the prices of many commodities beyond the reach of
most people. The
University began to feel the effects of the wartime
economy approximately a year after the
war
began. Because too few students now came to
Chapel
Hill to make boarding houses profitable, they became increasingly
expensive to operate. Only two or three boarding houses remained open. Student
Henry
Armand London
, who kept a diary during this period, saw the price of
his board jump from $25 to $200 per month between Fall 1862 and
Fall 1864. A
twenty-five-cent haircut in 1862 cost a dollar
two years later.
That
London
kept a diary at all is remarkable, considering that
an ordinary lead pencil in
1864 cost two dollars! The evidence of
London's
diary is borne out by
Battle
, who maintains that a pound of bacon, coffee, and
sugar in Fall 1862 cost thirty-three cents, $2.50, and seventy-five
cents respectively; by 1864, the same groceries were priced at $5.50,
$15.00, and $12.00 respectively (
1:732). Tuition, which stood at
$60 per year in 1859, rose to $100 in 1863 (
Battle 1:732, 773).
Families who might once have afforded a college education for their sons could
not do so now. As the
war
progressed, their economic worries were exacerbated by the declining value of
Confederate and
North
Carolina currency.
Faculty too felt the economic effects of depreciated currency. They
took a voluntary cut in salaries in 1862 amounting to approximately $500
per faculty member. A bonus of $500 was voted each faculty member in
1863 and again in 1864, but by that time, such bonuses had little buying power.
Because the monies were paid in
Confederate currency, the real value of a
$2,000 salary in 1863 was only $133, slightly more than it cost
to buy one barrel of flour or four bushels of corn (
Battle 1:732). To relieve
the extreme poverty in which the
war had
cast them, faculty members received permission in 1864 to cut firewood from
University lands. In December 1864 each faculty
member received a $100 gold bond, payable two years after the
war
ended, delayed compensation that nevertheless was worth considerably more than
paper currency. During most of the
war,
faculty members, like
Chapel
Hillians generally, resorted to the barter system to keep their
households together.
If inflation kept many students from attending the
University, the
Confederate conscription laws of 1862 carried off
those who somehow found the means to enroll. Early in the
war, the
Confederate army was made up of volunteers, but as
the fighting grew more costly in human lives, the
Confederate government resorted to drafting
soldiers. Students over the age of eighteen could avoid military service if
they were physically disabled or if they paid a substitute to fight in their
place. Several students were known to have hired substitutes, but most people
thought the practice unpatriotic and could not afford it in any event. In
October 1863
Gov.
Swain
requested of
Confederate
President
Jefferson Davis an exemption for students who were then eligible for
conscription so that they could be allowed to finish their studies. Despite
devastating losses at
Gettysburg and
Vicksburg during Summer 1863,
President
Davis granted the exemption. To secure the future of the
Confederacy, he thought it best "not to grind
up the seed corn." The following year, however, when
Gov.
Swain
renewed the request,
Confederate
Secretary
of War James A. Seddon denied it: "Youths under eighteen will be
allowed to continue their studies; those over, capable of military service,
will best discharge their duty, and find their highest training in defending
their country in the field" (
Battle 1:734). Conscription agents enforced
the law by coming to the
University to take students off to
Raleigh
by force.
The commencement of 1864 reveals how much the
University was decimated by the
war. The
Class of 1864 originally had numbered sixty-eight students. By the sophomore
year, thirty-eight remained. Only nine of the thirty-eight completed the junior
year, and two more died in
Chapel
Hill during the senior year. Seven students graduated in 1864. All seven
were enlisted in the
Confederate army, and two of them could not attend
commencement because they were with their regiments in
Georgia.
The junior class in 1864 had originally numbered thirty students; twenty-four
remained, but fifteen of them were eligible for conscription. Of the
twenty-four members of the sophomore class, sixteen were liable to
conscription. Only the first-year class, twenty-seven students, was largely
unaffected by the
war, at
least for the time being, because twenty-four were under the age of
eighteen.
When hopes for a southern victory vanished by late 1864,
Chapel
Hillians confronted the grave problem of how to protect their property,
including the
University.
Gen.
William T. Sherman had reached
Savannah by
Christmas
1864 and was expected to head north, driving retreating
Confederate troops ahead of him, to assist
Gen.
Ulysses S. Grant at
Richmond. In addition to worrying about the safety of
relatives fighting or living in the path of
Sherman's army, local citizens had to determine how to
secure their valuables from both
Confederate and
Union soldiers, especially the "bummers"
who followed
Sherman's army but were not under his command. Silver,
watches, and important papers were stashed in wells or hidden in walls and
under floorboards. A bank cashier concealed $20,000 in one of the stone
walls surrounding the campus.
Professor
James Phillips
put his watches in
Joseph
Caldwell's
old telescope.
Charles P. Mallett
removed the hams from his smokehouse,
buried them in a field, and plowed the surface for planting to disguise their
location.
Judge
William Battle
buried his valuables in the woods (and later forgot where
he had put them). The
University's library was removed from
Smith Hall to
Old East
for safekeeping, and many important papers were taken to
Gov.
Swain's
home.
By March 8, 1865,
Gen. Judson Kilpatrick's
Federal
cavalry had crossed the
Lumber
River into
North
Carolina and was moving fast toward
Fayetteville in pursuit of
Gen. Wade
Hampton's
Confederate troops. Meanwhile,
Confederate
Gen.
Joseph E. Johnston gathered the remainder of his
army near the small town of
Bentonville, NC, to wait for
Sherman. The
Battle of Bentonville, fought on March 19th and 20th, was
the last major fighting of the
Civil War
and the bloodiest battle ever fought on
North
Carolina soil. Between 85,000 and 90,000 troops were involved, and over
4,000 troops were killed, wounded, or missing (
Powell,
North Carolina through Four Centuries
375). On the
third day of the battle, the
Confederate troops withdrew toward
Raleigh.
Though
Sherman had hoped to join
Grant in
Virginia
to finish off
Gen. Robert
E. Lee,
Grant ordered him to proceed to
Raleigh. In anticipation of
Sherman's arrival and aware that the city could not be
defended,
Gov. Zebulon
B. Vance
had the state records put on a train to
Greensboro and was preparing to meet
Confederate
President
Davis there. To save
Raleigh
and the
University from the fate that had befallen
Atlanta,
Columbia, and other cities in
Sherman's path,
ex-Gov. William A. Graham
and
Gov.
Swain
requested
Vance
's approval to act as peace commissioners and to meet
with
Sherman. Though
Vance
was at first unenthusiastic about the idea, he gave his permission on April
9th. On the same day,
Lee
surrendered his troops at
Appomattox, news that reached
Sherman on April 11th. By April 13th,
Swain
and
Graham
had met with
Sherman, delivered the keys of the
Capitol to him, and received his assurances that the
destruction of property would cease as soon as peace terms were signed.
Gov.
Swain
hurried back to
Chapel
Hill, arriving on April 15th. While he had been in
Raleigh, a portion of the retreating
Confederate cavalry under the command of
Gen. Joe
Wheeler had entered the village. According to
Cornelia Phillips Spencer,
daughter of
Professor
James Phillips
and an eyewitness to the event, "Our whole town
turned out to feed them. The streets were lined with girls, offering smiles,
food, and flowers. It gives me a cheering sensation to see so many gallant
fellows—eager to fight and hopeful" (
Old Days 84). One of the
"gallant fellows" happened to be
James
Park Coffin
,
5 a
University graduate of the Class of 1859.
Coffin
received permission to post a guard to protect the
campus from the notorious "bummers" following
Wheeler's forces and from
Wheeler's own "loosely disciplined men" (
Vickers
71). According to bookstore owner
Charles Mallett
,
Wheeler
was looking for routes to link up with
Lee's
army in
Virginia,
not certain that
Lee
had surrendered. Evidently
Wheeler
contemplated making a stand near
Chapel
Hill but thought better of it and withdrew his troops two days later, on
Easter Sunday, April 16th [see
this primary document].
That afternoon a
Union
cavalry unit under the command of
Gen.
Smith Dykins Atkins
entered
Chapel
Hill with approximately 450 soldiers. Assuring
Gov.
Swain
and others that citizens would be treated with courtesy,
Atkins
posted guards from the
Ninth Michigan Regiment at all houses requesting
such protection.
Union
Gen.
Francis Blair
, also a
University alumnus, set the
Federal
guard over the
University (
Vickers 71). Some of the officers were
quartered in
University dormitories, and cavalry horses were
stabled in
University buildings and grazed under the oaks on
campus. According to
Spencer
,
Sherman commended his officer's mounts for being among the
best educated horses in the
Union
army because they spent so much time in the
University's library (
Henderson 184). Sherman also
presented a horse to
Gov.
Swain
, a gift that earned him local resentment because people assumed
that it had been stolen from some southern family on
Sherman's route to
North
Carolina.
The occupation of
Chapel
Hill by
Union
troops lasted for seventeen days, from April 17th until May 3rd. During
that period the army and the town learned of
Gen.
Lee's surrender,
President
Lincoln's assassination, and
Gen.
Johnston's surrender to
Sherman at the Bennett farmhouse a few miles northwest of
Chapel
Hill, near
Durham's Station. Classes were discontinued because
most students had left campus before the cavalry arrived. The
Dialectic Society did not meet between April 9th and
May 22nd; the
Philanthropic Society, between April 8th and May
22nd. Weekly meetings of the faculty also appear to have been cancelled as
there are no minutes from April 7 until April 28, when the faculty ordered
recitations to resume. Once the soldiers and townspeople understood that the
hostilities were over, they mingled freely, if somewhat uncomfortably, and
became less anxious as time passed. Many
blacks, now free, attached themselves to the
Federal
army or left town.
Spencer
, like most citizens, appreciated the role of
the military in protecting life and property. They were "a decent set of
men [. . .] who behaved with civility and propriety" (
Ninety Days 172).
Mallett
also was grateful for the protection offered by
his house guard, but he disapproved of the socializing that took place between
the soldiers and the young ladies on the
Hill. Doubtless he was shocked to learn that a courtship
was developing between
Gen.
Atkins
and
Gov.
Swain's
daughter
Eleanor, known as Ellie.
Atkins
was mustered out of the
Union
army on June 21st, and on August 23rd he married
Ellie
Swain in
Chapel
Hill. The wedding understandably caused a sensation. Many invited guests
boycotted the festivities, and students tolled the college bell for three
hours, then hung
Gov.
Swain
and
Gen.
Atkins
in effigy (
Henderson 186).
When the
Federal
cavalry left
Chapel
Hill for
Lexington,
NC, on May 3, 1865, a guard of thirty-five soldiers from the
Tenth Ohio Regiment stayed behind to protect
University property. Some of the soldiers attended
the commencement exercises, which saw only four students receive diplomas. The
ceremonies were shortened to two days because so few students, perhaps only a
dozen or so, were present.
Gov.
Swain
himself was absent, having gone to
Washington,
DC, to advise
President
Andrew Johnson on his plans for
Reconstruction.