Red Strings

The Red Strings (also Heroes of America) were a group in the Southern United States during the American Civil War. They favored peace, an end to the Confederacy, and a return to the Union. They began early in the war as a group of Unionists and Quakers in the Piedmont regions of North Carolina and Virginia where slavery was largely nonexistent and the causes favoring secession were weakest.

With the war weariness increasing in civilian parts of the Confederacy during 1863, pro-Union activities began to become organized as resistance. The Loyal Order of the Heroes of America were started by several men from North Carolina, including Henderson Adams, North Carolina's State Auditor during this time. The actual leader was John Pool, later a Republican Senator from North Carolina, who spent some time in a jail in Richmond, and who traveled through western Virginia in 1864.

Their name comes from their insignia of red strings worn on their lapels or hung outside of their windows to distinguish themselves from the rebels. This symbol comes from the Biblical story of the harlot Rahab, who had helped two spies of Israel escape from Jericho with a red cord, and was advised by them to hang a red thread on her window as a recognition symbol and to show her faith. Joshua, Chapter 2, Verses 18, 21, and Chapter 6, verse 23: “..thou shalt bind this line of scarlet in the window which thou didst let us down by... ...and she bound the scarlet line in the window... ...And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father’s household, and all that she had. And she dwellest in Israel even unto this day; because she hid the messengers that Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.”

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