Bushwhackers: The Civil War in North Carolina: The Mountains [Paperback]

William Trotter (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 338 pages
• Publisher: John F. Blair Publisher (March 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0895870878
• ISBN-13: 978-0895870872
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #232,762 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent history of the Civil War in the NC mountains., July 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Bushwhackers: The Civil War in North Carolina: The Mountains (Paperback)

In this thoroughly researched and well written history, Trotter relates the little known story of the Civil War in the western mountains of North Carolina. In this history (gleaned from official accounts, personal memoirs, and oral tradition), you will find no romantic stories of martial glory, but the bitter realities and confused allegiances of partisan warfare; this is quite literally the story of brother against brother and neighbor against neighbor. But still, there are heroes as well as villains, and people who struggle to maintain their morality despite the atrocities which surround them.

This book is especially interesting to readers of Charles Frazier's wonderful novel Cold Mountain. Trotter not only describes the overall setting in which the novel takes place, but Frasier seemes to have borrowed scenes directly from Trotter's book.

Two other books by Trotter (which I have not read) relate the Civil War history of the North Carolina piedmont and coast.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Highly readable popular history, May 25, 2004

By 

Edison McIntyre (Durham, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bushwhackers: The Civil War in North Carolina: The Mountains (Paperback)

The books of Trotter's trilogy, "The Civil War in North Carolina" (the other volumes are "Silk Flags and Cold Steel: The Piedmont" and "Ironclads and Columbiads: The Coast") were published as independent works and can be enjoyed that way. But one can't get a good understanding of the war in the Old North State by reading about a single region. I strongly suggest that serious students of the war, or of North Carolina, take time to read the entire trilogy.

Aside from John G. Barrett's "The Civil War in North Carolina," Trotter's trilogy is the only modern comprehensive account of the war in the Tar Heel state. (See also my review of Barrett's book at Amazon.com.) Unlike Barrett's rather academic, formal approach, Trotter is as concerned with telling some good stories as he is with documenting North Carolina's role in the war. He includes a fairly extensive bibliography in each volume, but apparently he relied mainly on published sources, and the footnotes are very sparse. This is not to say that his work is inaccurate or invalid, but it is hardly the ultimate account of the war in North Carolina.

His geographical division of the three volumes also presents some problems. Much information about the state's entry into the war and about its political aspects is found in the volume on the Piedmont, "Silk Flags and Cold Steel," but the most important battles in the first three years of the war -- which had an influence on these political events -- are covered in the "Ironclads and Columbiads" volume about the coastal war. These two volumes also contain many later events that "interact," for example, the closing battles in March and April of 1865. And some events in "Bushwhackers" - most notably, Stoneman's cavalry raid in the final weeks of the war - also lap over in to Piedmont. Again, a full understanding requires reading all three of these books. Trotter, while adopting a mildly pro-Confederate tone like Barrett's, doesn't do as good a job of tying events in North Carolina to those of the wider war.

"Bushwhackers" stands best on its own among the three volumes; here Trotter does a vastly superior job to Barrett in portraying both the nastiness of the mountain conflict and the difficulties the Confederates had in defending the western area of the state, especially in the latter part of the war. Much of "Bushwhackers" focuses on Thomas's North Carolina Highland Legion, a unit made up partly of Cherokee Indians, which fought throughout the war and gained a fearsome reputation in the Great Smokies area. Trotter also spends much space here on Confederate deserters and draft dodgers who flocked to the mountains to hide out (shades of "Cold Mountain!"). (In his other volumes, Trotter also devotes ample time to draft resisters and Unionist guerrillas in the Piedmont and Chowan River regions.) However, his account of the war in the mountains is more episodic and less cohesive than the accounts of the other two books, perhaps because the North Carolina mountain war was more diverse and source materials about it rather scarce and sometimes apocryphal.

One failing that Trotter shares with Barrett is the poor quality of his maps ("Bushwhackers" has no maps at all!) and the lack of description of battle sites, roads, and other places in modern terms. It took me a while to figure out that the town known in 1861 as "Warm Springs," on the French Broad River, is named "Hot Springs" on modern maps; and I never did figure out if "Quallatown" is the same place as the present-day Cherokee, North Carolina. (If not, it must be very close by.) A copy of DeLorme's "North Carolina Atlas and Gazetteer" is a vital supplement to these three books; modern place names and locations of battles and other events should have been located using modern landmarks, included as footnotes.

Trotter's trilogy is "popular" history, entertainingly related and highly readable. He doesn't hesitate to have occasional fun with purple prose- "The obsidian mountain night engulfed them like wraiths" -but the writing usually is lively and flows well. There may be more recent and more thorough books about various aspects of the Civil War in North Carolina, but Trotter's trilogy presents an introductory survey in a convenient package.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Guide Since Daniel Ellis, May 1, 2003

By 

Sharyn McCrumb (ROANOKE VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bushwhackers: The Civil War in North Carolina: The Mountains (Paperback)

Not much has been written on the Civil War in the Appalachians, where, as William Trotter so eloquently puts it: "The killers had names, the victims had kin, and everybody had a gun." Bushwhackers is the best-researched, most thorough account of the mountain war that I have found. When I was researching "Ghost Riders", my novel about the Civil War in the mountains, I found that Mr. Trotter's book was the most useful guide to the chronology of events and their significance. In addition to primary source material and histories, I consulted his book at every turn to make sure that my narrative on Zebulon Vance and Malinda Blalock agreed with the historical record. When other authors disagreed on some point of information, and I had to chose whom to believe, I always chose Trotter. This book is a distinguished piece of scholarship, and an invaluable resource to the Appalachian historian. Highly recommended!