Shelton Laurel Wars

SHELTON LAUREL WARS

Top
Part 1
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V

Fore word on Shelton Laurel Wars

This is a series of columns that appeared in our local newspaper written by Stephen Black a regular weekly columnist. I knew that Richard was interested in the subject and I asked Mr. Black for copies for both of us which he sent. Since the copies are of the newspaper they were a bit difficult to read so I have volunteered to type them so that interested parties can download them. And I will be happy to send copies (paper) to those who would rather have them delivered to their home addresses.

All copies have been re-typed by me verbatim as Mr. Black wrote and was published. I have tried to be exact and left in some errors as it was not my place to correct him! So please keep this in mind. (lol)
I have lived near this area for 47 years and I still did not know that this part of “ The War Between the States” existed. I had heard stories of how Shelton Laurel was to be avoided!

It had quite a history of violence but no-one I knew had any idea when it began. It had a terrible reputation. Madison county girls were warned not to date Shelton Laurel boys.

We drove through there one Sunday afternoon on a lark but saw no-one. My husband and his brother (both born and raised in Madison) were very nervous about this little jaunt. It was very eerie. We saw no-one but had the feeling that eyes were watching us. And this is all I knew about it until I spotted the third column in the paper!
I notified Richard and he said he would definitely be interested in reading the whole story.
So here it is.
Faye Ray

Shelton Laurel Wars
Part I

With all the Confederate flags that flap and flutter from pick-up trucks in Western North Carolina, one would think that everyone on our area was a tried and true secessionist.
No. Many thousands of Western North Carolina residents were for Lincoln and the Union. Official records show that from twenty-one mountain counties, a total of 5,790
Men escaped to Union lines and three quarters of these joined the Federal army.
Is this surprising? It is to many newcomers to our area. To understand this, one must keep in mind that with the exception of Buncombe County, our mountain counties were qui9te rural, agrarian and self-sustaining. They for the most part were isolated and apart from contemporary politics and events. Very few mountain counties had slaves or cared about slavery issues.
Along with the official 5,790 men to seek out refuge in Union lines, there were literally untold thousands who supported Lincoln and the Union but were simply not strong enough to fight against the majority which were supporters of breaking the Union.
Who can blame them for their fear?
They were physically abused and intimidated by pro-secessionists, no, live and let live back then. When the local vote for secession was taken right here in Hendersonville County, ballot boxes were guarded by armed men. The clerk of court stood by taking the names of all who voted for “the Lincoln candidate”. Threats were made against those Union men who wanted no part of this “rich man’s war and poor man’s fight.” Many Union voters were frightened off from voting at all. The threats were so real that the number of votes in the region was down 46,000 from the previous tallies.
Madison County was divided between “secesh “ and Unionists. Wilkes County, however, was practically all Union.
Other counties varied in degree.
When you have a region so divided and torn between heartfelt loyalties, you’re going to have trouble. Western Carolina witnessed a Civil War amidst a greater Civil War.
No area or event better exemplifies this struggle than the “Shelton Laurel Massacre” of January 18, 1863, in Madison County. Thirteen Unionists whose ages ran from sixty to thirteen were taken from their homes. While begging for their lives, they were brutally murdered in cold blood by soldiers from the 64th N.C. Regiment. The man at the scene who ordered the execution was Lt. Col. James A. Keith. In the end thirteen men and children died and the perpetrators were never brought to justice.
In my future columns I will tell you exactly what they did, why they did it and how it mirrored My Lai more than a century later.

Top
Shelton Laurel Wars
Part II

Secessionists and Unionists. All living in the same area. That spelled trouble, and trouble was what visited the hapless area of Madison County.
Many folks today think the Mason-Dixon Line was where loyalty to the North and South began and ended. Not so.
There were many areas that had deep Unionist feeling amidst Southern states and vice versa.
Missouri had regiments that fought for the Union and also for the South. Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee (this state sent more volunteers for the Union than Minnesota) and North Carolina all had strong Union sentiments amidst a state that had seceded.
In order to see and understand the whole, sometimes it is better to observe a small aspect of the problem.
We will study what happened to one small part of Western North Carolina.
Today one can get to Shelton Laurel Valley in Madison County from Hendersonville in a morning trip, thanks to modern roads.
During the Civil War, Shelton Laurel was in the back of beyond.
Three generations had been nurtured in the narrow valley. It was a peaceful place for the settlers before the war. The mountain people hunted, fished and farmed their small plots of land. Young people fill in love, married, had babies and raised families on land given to them by their fathers. People in the valley got along and they also got along with their neighbors in the surrounding area.
For legal matters and such, a trip to Marshall, the county seat, would be a treat for everyone. The women could buy buttons, cloth and needles. Candy for the children, and for the men, they got to talk about crops with other farmers.
Shelton Laurel Valley and Madison County had not always been peaceful. The early white settlers fought the Cherokee in a series of bloody fights. Eventually the Indians were overwhelmed and lost their land.
Shelton Laurel was stained with the blood of many men. Since that murderous time, however, peace slowly came to the land. And then came rumblings from the land far south of the valley. The politics of South Carolina’s low country slave plantations would soon evolve into secession. A splitting of the Union, the very Union that Shelton Laurel held dear.
And yet, surrounding Shelton Laurel Valley were neighbors in Marshall and Asheville who for whatever reason had decided to throw their lot in with the rising new government.
The Confederate States of America had decided they could run their lives better under a new government rather than the old.
Where did this leave the valley and its people?
Their old friends and neighbors suddenly were now their enemies. People in Marshall and Asheville, people they had swapped tobacco and yarns with, people who once sold candy to their children, buttons and cloth to their wives now eyed the valley people with suspicion.
For the valley people of Shelton Laurel were Unionists.
Shelton Laurel was not an anomaly. Other areas as well were struggling with whom to follow. Many areas in the South were bitterly divided. And it was more than ideological, more than a theory of union or disunion. It was a line between the rich and the poor. Upper classes in general supported secession. They were organized to make sure the votes went to the secessionists’ side.
The people of Shelton Laurel were self-sustaining in their valley. What did they need with the quarrel of the low country rich man? What were slaves to them? What importance was a tariff that it made men fight against the very government that their grandfather’s had fought, defended and died for only three generations back?
In my next column we will learn what it was like for the people of Shelton Laurel to live surrounded by their new enemies.

Top Shelton Laurel Wars
Part III

In last week’s column: I asked what it was like for the Union area of Shelton Laurel Valley in Madison County? They were surrounded by what was once their friends and neighbors but now were secessionist enemies.
The answer in one word is: Depredation. Let it be understood that life was one wicked deed after another and just for the record it was depredation on both Union and Secesh.
Barn burnings and cattle rustling was the name of the game in Madison County.
Secessionists would murder, pillage and burn in Shelton Laurel. To even the score Unionists would visit an eye for an eye upon secessionists outside the valley.
To make matters worse on April 16, 1862, the Confederate Congress passed its first conscription act. All able-bodied men between eighteen and thirty-five were now to be drafted into the Rebel Army.
Ironically the new draft actually backfired in the mountains. Secessionists in Western Carolina counties were outraged and many deserted.
Volunteering to fight for the new Southern government was one thing. To be forced to do it stuck deep in their throats.
Within the Confederacy, North Carolina led all the states in desertion. More than 24,000 men took “French leave” of the Rebel army. More than 1,200 deserters hid in the Western mountains. Confederate forces searched the land by day but at night the mountains belonged to the fugitives.
And one of the first places deserters fled to was the Shelton Laurel Valley. They knew they would find help there. The Unionists would hide and clothe the fugitives and at night guide them toward Union lines.
At this period Unionists began meeting a final fate. Secessionists hanged men suspected of Union sympathies. Their bodies were left swinging as an object lesson to those who would be against the confederacy. It became a game of cat and mouse as long as the army and home guard were around.
The men of Shelton Laurel would hide back in the mountains. When the coast was clear the men would return to their farms and plant, cultivate and harvest when the crops became ready.
Finally, the patience of the Unionists wore thin and they began to commit raids upon secessionists and ratcheting up the violence and brutality.
Soon the reasons for fighting grew dim and all that was left was one of revenge.
The area and guerilla activity grew so alarming Confederate forces guided and aided by local secesh men began a period of what would be known now as “counter-terrorism”.
Of all the different kinds of combat, nothing is more difficult or brutalizing that guerrilla warfare. Like a ghost, a guerrilla will strike and then disappear. Larger forces will pursue and be stung again and again until nothing but hatred and anger fills the blood of those being attacked.
Secesh forces led by local men such as James A. Keith and Lawrence Allen took great punishment from the Union guerrillas. Whenever the guerrillas were caught, they received no mercy but an immediate hanging and in many cases a session of torture before that.
These elements of quick strikes and brutal murder would be revived during the Vietnam War. As the Asian war led to the My Lai slaughter, so too did the guerrilla war in Western Carolina lead to the Shelton Laurel Massacre of January 13, 1863.

Top
Shelton Laurel Wars
Part IV

Just when one would think the situation between secessionists and Unionists in Madison County couldn’t get any worse, it did.
We have seen where both sides committed depredation and atrocities. Barn burnings, cattle rustling, torture and murder. And next would be the Unionists raid on Marshall, the county seat.
What caused the raid? A simple little thing indeed. But an oh so important one. Salt. The little white crystals we take for granted to add flavor to our food.
Back before refrigeration, however, salt was worth its weight in gold. For with salt you could cure and preserve meat. Without it all the meat a farmer slaughtered would rot and go to waste.
By late 1862, salt had become scarce and the price had risen beyond the range of average farmers. And for the farmers of the Shelton Laurel even if they had the money, they, as Unionists, weren’t allowed to buy.
Salt had become so scarce that North Carolina’s Gov. Vance officially stopped the exportation of salt out of the state. A shipment had made it to Marshall. It was heavily guarded and a plan was set up. Secessionists knew the Unionists of the area knew about the salt. They would use it as a fisherman uses a lure to catch a fish.
The plan worked. Only it worked better that they had planned. A group of 50-plus raiders Rode into Marshall. Ironically many of the raiders were deserters from the locally recruited 64th N.C. Regiment. Only five raiders came from Shelton Laurel Valley. (Keep that number in mind.)
The raiders took the opportunity to break into houses and stores and looted and destroyed.
One of the houses belonged to Lawrance Allen, captain of a local group of 125 Secesh men. The raiders terrorized Mrs. Allen and two of Allen’s children were at that time already dying of scarlet fever. The raid hastened their deaths.
When Lawrance Allen learned about the raid and the death of his two children, he led a column of the 64th N.C. Regiment toward Shelton Laurel Valley.
Another man, James A. Keith, led other men of the 64th into the Valley from an opposite direction. Keith and Allen had only one thing in mind. Revenge. And they would get it. Eight men, however had nothing to do with the Marshall raid. The 64th N.C. Regiment had a short, inglorious history. Its members’ devotion to the regiment and the Confederacy was not strong.
The officers were loyal and held the unit together. What service they had seen had been the frustration effort of chasing Unionists guerillas in and out of the valleys and mountain ridges. They had seen their men ambushed and were helpless in fighting back against the ghost-like guerillas.
Their patience level was nil. It was a perfect setup for a massacre and the devil got what he wanted.
In a previous column in this series, I have stated that the Shelton Laurel massacre and Vietnam’s My Lai massacre are almost twin of each other.
The Americal Division, perpetrators of My Lai, had had the same frustrating history of fighting against booby traps, mines, punji traps and Viet Cong guerilla raids. The soldiers were maddened in their frustration. The Village of My Lai took the horrible brunt of their anger.
So too, a century earlier saw a massacre, a nightmare that time still has not washed away.
The hunt for the Marshall raiders was on. Men were strung up until they told Allen and Keith where the “guilty” men were.
Even an 85 year-old woman, Mrs. Unus Biddle, was shipped and hanged temporarily.
This was followed by the torture of several elderly women from the Valley.
At last Keith and Allen took fifteen prisoners, all from the Shelton Laurel Valley.
Had any actually taken part in the Marshall raid? Perhaps five. No matter. When a man’s hatred has eaten away his heart and morality, anybody will do.
The prisoners were kept in the valley overnight. Two prisoners escaped during the night. Finally the men were marched out on the Knoxville Road. While they thought they would be jailed, Allen and Keith had a different plan.
Soon the men were halted and five men were told to kneel down. The men begged for their lives. When they realized they were going to die, they begged to be allowed to pray first. It was a futile gesture. Keith and Allen had murder in their hearts.
And that is exactly what they did.
Some of the soldiers in the firing squad refused to kill unarmed prisoners, especially because they all knew most were innocent.
Keith threatened them with execution as well.
The soldiers fired. All dead. Five more knelt down. Muskets flamed and five more died.
Among this group was young David Shelton, age 13. He pleaded with the soldiers, telling them that they had killed his brothers and his father. He died anyway. Three more knelt and were murdered like the others.
The murderers threw a layer of dirt on the bodies but it wasn’t enough. In the night wild hogs had themselves a grisly feast.

* * * * * * *
Shelton Laurel Valley, home of Unionists mountaineers, had been punished. Thirteen men, ages thirteen to sixty, had been killed and thrown in a ditch.
After the soldiers lift, the families took their men and children and buried them on a hillside some two miles away.
The murders backfired on Keith and Allen. Instead of being hailed as heroes, Gov. Vance and other authorities were revolted by their soldiers’ heinous behavior.
“Barbarous conduct,” cried the governor.
Although many words were bandied about and a long search for Keith and Allen was made, neither man paid for his crime.
They eventually left Madison County for Arkansas. Both were surprised at the enmity shown them, for they thought they had done well in the service of the Confederacy.
In my next and last column in the series, I will visit the area and visit the scene of the crime and the graves.

Top
Shelton Laurel Wars
Part V

Life in that hard rock time was hell on earth.
The Civil War in Western Carolina was legalized murder on both sides.
Eighty-year-old women were tortured. Boys and old men were shot as they begged in vain for their lives.
All done in the name of God and whatever one subscribed to.
My buddy, Dr. Mike Beckerman of Kenmure (Hendersonville), has done a wonderful job of sleuthing and has discovered where the massacre took place and where the bodies were buried.
One day in April we made our way into Madison County. First stop--Marshall, the county seat.
Marshall was where the salt was stored and the Union raiders came and got it!
From Marshall we headed up into Northern Madison County. The road winds in and out of some of the most beautiful mountain country I have ever seen. Even if you aren't interested in history, you cannot help but love this trip. Lots of rivers along the way. The French Broad, Laurel River, Laurel Creek. It is all so lovely.
At N.C. 208, we turned right and then shortly after turned right again on N.C. 212. Wild flowers bloomed all around. Color running riot, a sky full of sunshine and brooding bruised clouds made us glad to be alive and part of this strange, magnificent little planet.
We followed N.C. 212 for some miles. Laurel Creek kept us company on our right. Laurel Valley can only be described as one of Western Carolina's gems. Laurel Creek on one side, cleared land and small farms.
Age, History. Memory. And murder. We pulled into the driveway that led to the site of the killing. A clay bank. Some woods.
After the massacre the killers gave a hasty burial to the victims. The next day family members of the victims hauled bodies away over the snow on a sled and buried them on a hillside some two miles away. We drove to the gravesite. They were now memorialized by two large tombstones erected by descendents of the murdered men.
Family means a great deal to the people of Shelton Laurel. In the beginning was family and in the end was family. It is still that way in the valley.
Thirteen men and boys were taken from their families. Shelton Laurel was never the same after that.
Everyone suffered the most mortal of wounds: heartbreak. The ache still remains.
In the North, the Civil War is merely past history. Mostly forgotten. In the South, the war was in our back yard. Our towns, our cities. Brother truly fought brother. Father against sons. Neighbor against neighbor.
Your cannot enter Laurel Valley withour feeling the heartache.
It is as if the very trees cry out in witness to the nightmare of that dark time.
Laurel Creek still runs swiftly by the now-paved road. The birds still sing. The clouds still float by. And as I stood on that pathetic hill-side graveyard, I sensed the souls here who had lost their future.
I sensed the lives below me. I knew, as only a Southener can know, of their loss and their tragedy.
I wanted to say something to them. A prayer? I didn't know. In the end I said silently, "I'm sorry this war happened to my blessed country. I'm sorry war has to happen at all."
And the real tragedy of the Civil War is that it indeed had to happen. It happened because our nation's unity and future demanded it. It had to happen to keep us one nation, under God, indivisible. Before leaving I said one more silent, "I'm sorry."
* * * * * * * * *
Dr. Mike and I drove away and headed back home with our own thoughts. Maybe one day we will be able to share them with each other. The South is never as simple as it first appears.
* * * * * *
Stephen M. Black
Hendersonville Times-News

Top
Posted July 2004