Glenn Tucker - Front Rank

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Text originally published in 1962 under the same title.

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FRONT RANK

Written for THE NORTH CAROLINA CONFEDERATE CENTENNIAL COMMISSION

by

GLENN TUCKER

With illustrations by Bill Ballard

In the number of soldiers furnished, in the discipline, courage and loyalty and difficult service of those soldiers, in amount of material and supplies contributed, in the good faith and moral support of her people at large, and in all the qualities which mark self sacrifice, patriotism and devotion to duty, North Carolina is entitled to stand where her troops stood iii battle, behind no State, but in the front rank of the Confederation, aligned and abreast with the best, the foremost and the bravest. Governor Zebulon Vance

Contents

ZEBULON B. VANCE, the rugged, dynamic, stormy war Governor of North Carolina and one of the dominant civilian figures of the Confederacy, told the story of Thomas Calton of Burke County, relating it among his many post-war recollections at the gathering place of the old Southern soldiers at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

Caltons sons entered the Confederate service one by one, and one by one they fell to Northern bullets. At length the fifth son, Benjamin, youngest and fairest, bright-haired, blue eyed, the remaining treasure of the old mans heart, put on the gray uniform and went away.

When the news arrived that he, too, had been killed in battle, all in the community dreaded to carry such a story of desolation to the enfeebled father. A close friend and neighbor finally was prevailed upon to deliver the heavy message.

But Thomas Calton of Burke was the type of man who, in Vances words, ennobles our humanity. The winds of misfortune might bend him but he would not break. Undismayed that his male issue had been extinguished in the sacred name of freedom, he uttered only a single note of despair, then called to his delicate, sickly son-in-law, whom the army already had rejected. Trembling with emotion, he issued his command sternly:

Get your knapsack, William. The ranks must be filled!

Vance used the incident to portray the old mans fidelity. But by it he illustrated much more than the steadfastness of an individual or family. It was a story characteristic of a State through four years of one of the most desperately fought wars of human history; a war which North Carolina did not foment or seek, which she entered late in the secession movement more from a sense of loyalty and devotion to her sister Southern commonwealths than from anger against the Federal Union; but which she pursued with a burning fervor and un-abating energy until the final bugle blew the sad notes of recall at Appomattox until tens of thousands of her young men filled nameless graves, her wealth was dissipated, her industry wrecked, her agriculture devastated, her entire economy laid prostrate, and most of her surviving citizens rendered altogether destitute.

Such a war many have wanted forgotten. It was followed by the unhappy Reconstruction years which resulted more from the excesses of an immoderate Congress than from the vengeance of a victorious Northern people, during which the South was administered in what has been termed, after the provincial rule of Oriental despots, military satrapies. The post-war years gave cause for resentment in many hearts deeper than any which abided from defeat on the field of battle.

Such sectional rancor led even in Vances day to an outcry that the war and its depressing aftermath should be buried deep in the public consciousness and obliterated from functions and ceremonies, so that all memory of it would eventually pass away. Some seemed to discern that even in the honors being paid the war dead there was a purpose to keep alive the fires of sectional bitterness, and feed a spirit of ill-faith toward our present duties.

But the dauntless leader who had been the wartime governor challenged this attitude and called to the attention of the people the duty they owed their posterity to record and nourish and freshen the truth about the States heroic efforts :

The light which our conflict will afford them in grappling with many difficulties of the future, will be a lamp to their feet.... Surely there is in our story food to satisfy the reflective and to fire the hearts of the brave, for many generations.

Though this relentless, internecine struggle pitted neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother, father against son; though it involved carnage and brutality and episodes which the fair-minded would like expunged from the record; there was about it a vast treasure of triumph, tragedy, noble example, humor, pathos, sacrifice and at times saintliness that should be remembered and preserved as splendid and vital parts of the American tradition.

The unyielding resolution, faithfulness to duty and dedication to cause which characterized the young soldiers sent far afield from North Carolina homes from mountain cabins and white columned plantation mansions alike, most of them youths who had no part in the agitation and discord and many who knew little of what brought on the conflict is a heritage that will inspire Americans as long as the Nation and the State endure. None can marvel at what they sacrificed without experiencing a solemn period of honest thoughtfulness and something of a personal and spiritual rededication.

North Carolinas main part in this agonizing ordeal of combat was in heeding the admonition of citizen Thomas Calton and keeping the ranks filled. Though only third in population among the seceding states and possessing only one-ninth of the total population of the Confederacy, North Carolina supplied one-sixth of the soldiers and sustained the heaviest loss in casualties among the Southern states. Having a white population of 629,942 in 1860 the Negro population being ineligible for army service and 115,000 voters, the State sent 133,905 soldiers, by the old roster count, into the ranks. The rosters are being rechecked and the number may in fact aggregate about 185,000, as many omissions have been discovered. More volunteers than voters could be the cry of several states, but emphatically of North Carolina.

Her contributions along many lines were immense in supplying manpower; in producing food and provisioning the armies, especially General Lees forces in Virginia; in manufacturing textiles and other critical materials; in maintaining at Wilmington virtually an open port for blockade-running and thereby providing a lifeline for medicines and a host of essential items for which the South had been long dependent on foreign countries and the North; in offering up her financial resources in taxes and bonds; and, not least among many others, in the inspirational leadership and clogged determination of Zebulon Vance and his North Carolina associates, who, while often declared to be a thorn in the side of the Richmond government, were always intent on victory and were, in fact, one of the main obstacles to the triumphant march of the large Northern armies. They had burning faith in their cause.