North Carolina just ignored the neutrality option and joined the
North Carolina just ignored the neutrality option and joined the slaveholding rebellion.
"Wartime [North Carolina] governor Zebulon B. Vance later wrote that he "was pleading for the Union with hand upraised when news came of Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for troops. When my hand came down from that impassioned gesticulation, it fell slowly and sadly by the side of a secessionist."
"He went on to say: "If war must come I preferred to be with my own people. If we had to shed blood, I preferred to shed Northern rather than Southern blood. If we had to slay, I preferred to slay strangers than my own kindred and neighbors; and it was better, whether right or wrong, that communities and states should go together and face the horrors of war in a body – sharing a common fate, rather than endure the unspeakable calamities of internecine strife… The argument having ceased and the sword drawn, all classes in the South united as by magic, as only a common danger could unite them."