Customer Reviews

Bushwhackers: The Civil War in North Carolina: The Mountains

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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.

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.

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!

Bushwhackers; The Civil War in North Carolina The Mountains written by William R. Trotter is an epic backrop for the great military war that occured behind the scenes in the Mountainous regions of the western North Carolina Appalachian's. The book attempts to document much of the voilence that did take place such as Fratricidal Raiding and Bushwhacking skirmishes that took place amid small bands of men whom operated under no regular military command. There was no Official Reports filed on most of this fighting. Major connections to East Tennessee, as well, this book is a pleasure and more a treasure for anyone interested in history and genealogical findings on their ancestors that traveled thru the southern states to freedom.

Bushwackers is a reader friendly account of the civil war in the mountains of North Carolina. Besides the historical accounts, Trotter includes stories that have been passed down and are rich fodder for storytellers. Trotter has a creative non-fiction style that brings this time and place alive. :)Mary Z. Cox

A very good book---makes you feel as if you in the mountainsduring those times. I would recommend this book to anyone thats lovesgood mountain air END

Being born, raised, and still living in the area covered by this text, I could not put it down once started. This work pulls together all the nasty and sometimes horrifying conflicts that took place during the war, including murders between family members. I highly recommend reading Bushwhackers. The author flavors the actual history with a buttery-smooth writing style.

William "Bo" Cash, Morganton NC

"Bushwhackers!" by William Trotter is a very interesting account of the Civil War in Western North Carolina. The Civil War in Western North Carolina was a history of raids and guerilla warfare instead of standup battles that were fought in other parts of North Carolina and other Southern states.

My interest in the book stemmed from three main reasons:

1. A lifelong interest in the American Civil War.
2. As a native North Carolinian, I have a natural interest in what happened in our great state during the Civil War.
3. Past sales jobs have allowed me to frequently travel in the western part of North Carolina. When reading the book, I visualized myself driving through the towns and counties mentioned in Trotter's book.

As mentioned earlier, the book centers around the guerilla warfare and raids that dominated events in the area during the Civil War. Some of the topics and chapters that stood out include:

1. Union General George Stoneman's raid of 1865.
2. The "battle" (more like a skirmish) of Asheville NC that took place very close to the campus of modern-day UNC-Asheville.
3. The Shelton Laurel massacre.
4. Colonel William Thomas and his Cherokee Indian troops known as "Thomas' Legion".
5. Capture of "Fort" Hamby.
6. The strong Unionist sentiment in Western North Carolina.
7. Various personalities, North and South.

The narrative flows freely and is an easy read. While I am much more interested in studying pitched battles (Gettsyburg, Antietam, Chickamauga, etc.) instead of guerilla warfare, I recommend the book for anyone interested in a different aspect of the American Civil War.

Read, enjoy, and be prepared to learn some things you may not have known about our Civil War.

Its amazing that even after years of reading Civil War historiography you can find a story that you knew next to little about the stories in this account would be at home in any account of the Vietnam War or the warfare in the Balkans . The author here has done a fantastic job these accounts are so vivid that they read like they could be written yesterday. Anyone who does a little digging can find out the truth about the bloody bushwhacker war in parts of Missouri but North Carolina? I had no idea. Books like this always make me wonder if the casualty figures you see from the Civil War the 600,000 are a widely conservative estimate.

I've seen the historical marker beside the road in Blowing Rock about Stoneman's Raid. I never knew what that really meant--until I read this book. It is a great book about how the Civil War affected Western NC. ----Something I was not taught in school. Thank you William R. Trotter.