- Joined
- Dec 3, 2011
- Location
- Laurinburg NC
I've always liked Zeb Vance's sudden conversion.Here is a blip from a biography of Walter Lenior, The Making of a Confederate by William L Barney. Walter was a NC Whig and Unionist pre War. This is how the 75K Lincoln’s call up, turned him into a Confederate. Same thing happened in VA, AR and TN.
View attachment 391986
"I was addressing a large and excited crowd, large numbers of whom were armed, and literally had my arm extended upward in pleading for peace and the Union of our fathers when the telegraphic news was announced of the firing on Sumter and the President’s call for 75,000 volunteers. When my hand came down from that impassioned gesticulation, it fell slowly and sadly by the side of a Secessionist.”
“if war must come I preferred to be with my own people. If we had to shed blood, I preferred to shed Northern blood rather than Southern blood. If we had to slay, I had rather slay strangers than my own kindred and neighbors; and it was better, 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 being drawn, all classes in the South united as by magic, as only a common danger could unite them.”
Zebulon B. Vance