David Silkenat. Driven from Home

At a time when Americans debate the fate of refugees fleeing military conflict around the world, it is well to remember that during the Civil War, many civilians in the Confederacy sought refuge elsewhere in response to military operations. In his careful study Driven from Home, David Silkenat explores the many layers of refugee activity in North Carolina, where rich and poor, white and black, Confederate and Unionist, scrambled across the state in search of protection from danger or to seek opportunity and freedom. Appearing at a time when scholars make much of the relationship between battlefront and home front, this volume reminds us of just how chaotic and fluid the home front could be, as a war waged to preserve a particular social and economic order did much to disrupt it—yet another of the Civil War’s unintended consequences. As Silkenat reminds us, people began moving about even before the war commenced at Fort Sumter, which was followed by North Carolina’s decision to join the Confederacy. In 1862 Union military operations along the coast sparked massive population shifts within North Carolina. Slaveholders sought to remove their slaves westward toward the Piedmont, while many blacks flocked eastward to welcome the Yankee invaders as liberators. Refugees poured into the state from Virginia and South Carolina. The movement of slaves into areas occupied by southern Unionists and few slaves created more fissures among white southerners, while it proved difficult to house and feed the newcomers. Meanwhile, those blacks who ran to freedom often encountered reluctant liberators who were unprepared to provide for the needs and wants of the freedpeople. Nevertheless, blacks formed communities, complete with churches and schools: later in the conflict, black men enlisted in Union regiments to fight to preserve their freedom. White southern Unionists sought protection provided by bluecoat bayonets, and feared the consequences when those bayonets were withdrawn; most proved reluctant emancipationists. Finally, Silkenat reminds us that there was a substantial population of young white women whose parents sent them away to boarding schools for the duration of the conflict in the hope that they would be spared the impact of the conflict.

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