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978-0-89587-086-5
0-89587-086-X
$12.95 paperback
5 1/2" x 8 1/2"
385 pages
black-and-white photos, index
Also by William Trotter:
Bushwhackers:
The Civil War in North Carolina: The Mountains
Ironclads and Columbiads:
The Civil War in North Carolina: The Coast
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Silk Flags and Cold Steel
recalls the events that took place in the Piedmont region of North
Carolina between late 1860 and mid-1865. Though the skirmishes in the
Piedmont were more strategic than tactical, they were important to the
health of the Southern cause. As long as the railways of North Carolina
were operating freely and the state's farms were producing to capacity,
Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia could move, eat, fight, and
replenish itself.
North Carolina's relations
with the Confederate government of Jefferson Davis were complex, touchy,
and often antagonistic, for the state had been reluctant to secede and
there was strong Unionist sentiment throughout the state. President
Davis never particularly trusted North Carolina, a fact that blinded him
to the state's strategic value. Paradoxically, no state contributed more
to the Confederate cause in terms of manpower and resources than did
North Carolina.
From the time he took office
in 1862, Zebulon Vance proved a strong and popular wartime governor of
North Carolina. Silk Flags and Cold Steel deals with his tenuous
relationship with the Confederate government in Richmond. It also covers
Vance's management of the war in his own state in great detail.
Along with discussion of the
political climate, the book presents accounts of the Salisbury prison,
Sherman's march through the Carolinas, confrontations at Bentonville,
Raleigh, and Greensboro, and Joe Johnston's surrender at Bennett's Farm.
The war in the North Carolina
Piedmont caused profound disturbances in the old order of
things--changes that led to new attitudes. Those changes created a new
environment that eventually made North Carolina a leader in the
"New South" that arose from the ashes of the war.
about the author
William R. Trotter is a senior writer for Signal Research
Corporation and an editor of Game Players Magazine. His other
books include two additional volumes covering the Civil War in North
Carolina--Bushwhackers: The Mountains
and Ironclads and Columbiads:
The Coast. His other published works include Deadly Kin,
a book about the Newson/Klenner murders, and A Frozen Hell, a
history of the Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-40. He and his wife and
three children live in Greensboro, North Carolina. |
