North Carolina in the American Civil War
| State of North Carolina | |||||
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| Nickname(s): "Tar Heel State" | |||||
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| Capital | Raleigh | ||||
| Largest City | Wilmington | ||||
| Admission to confederacy | May 21, 1861 (8th) | ||||
| Population |
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| Forces supplied |
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| Governor |
Henry Clark (1861–1862) Zebulon Vance (1862–1865) |
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| Lieutenant Governor | None | ||||
| Senators |
George Davis (1862–1864) Edwin Reade (1864) William Graham (1864–1865) William Dortch (1862–1865) |
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| Representatives | List | ||||
| Restored to the Union | July 4, 1868 | ||||
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The state of North Carolina provided an important source of soldiers, supplies, and war to the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. The city of Wilmington was one of the leading ports of the Confederacy, providing a vital lifeline of trade with the United Kingdom and other countries, especially after the Union blockade choked off most other Confederate ports. Large supplies of weapons, ammunition, accoutrements, and military supplies flowed from Wilmington throughout the South.
Troops from North Carolina played a major role in dozens of major battles, including the Battle of Gettysburg, where Tar Heels were prominent in Pickett's Charge. One of the last remaining major Confederate armies, that of Joseph E. Johnston, surrendered near Bennett Place in North Carolina after the Carolinas Campaign.
North Carolina was a picture of contrasts. In the Coastal Plain, it was a plantation state with a long history of slavery. However, there were no plantations and few slaves in the mountainous western part of the state. These differing perspectives show in the fraught election of 1860 and its aftermath. North Carolina's electoral votes went to Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, an adamant supporter of slavery who hoped to extend the "peculiar institution" to the United States' western territories, rather than to the Constitutional Union candidate, John Bell, who carried much of the upper South. Yet North Carolina (in marked contrast to most of the states that Breckinridge carried) was reluctant to secede from the Union when it became clear that Republican Abraham Lincoln had won the presidential election. In fact, North Carolina did not secede until May 20, 1861, after the fall of Fort Sumter and the secession of the Upper South's bellwether, Virginia.
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