Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/512

 606 Southern Historical Society Papers.

Address Delivered by Governor Z. B. Vance, of North Carolina, Before the Southern Historical Society, at White Sulphur Springs, West Vir- ginia, August i8th. 1875.

[This address of the distinguished War Governor of North Caro- lina should have been pubH^hed in the earlier issues of our Papers, but for our failure to secure the manuscript.

We give it now as the utterances of an able and patriotic actor in the great drama, without, of course, endorsing all of its statements and opinions.]

In consenting to accept the invitation of your Society to deliver an address to this meeting, I have thought I could not do better than to give you such information as I could gather in regard to North Caro- lina and the great struggle between constiiuiional principles and a physical Union. If in doing so, I shall appear somewhat in the character of a champion of my own State, I yet hope to be pardoned, both because such a position is not unbecoming a true son of the soil, and because it is almost the only theme with which I could deal yithout the consumption of more time and searching of records than my engagements would possibly permit. I am induced to attempt this theme also because that, owing to the reluctance with wnich North Carolina went into the secession movement, and because there was a considerable Union feeling still kft there, which made some manifestations of itself during the war, an impression has been sought to be made that she did not do altogether as much for the cause of the Confederacy as she might have done. And those who have as- sumed to write histories on the conflict, so far, have either designedly fed this unjust impression by a studied silence on the subject, or else they have been too much trammelled by the necessity ot local pane- gyric to give ample motive to the whole South. I desire to remove this impression, and to lay open the way for the truth of hisiory. Confessing frankly that the great leaders of the war were furnished by other States, whose glories are the common properly of the whole South, I desire to show what is true, that in the number of soldiers furnished, in the discipline, courage, and loyalty, and difficult service of those soldiers, in amount of material and supplies contributed, in the good faith and moral sujjport ot her people at large, arid in all the qualities which mark self sacrifice, patriotism, and devotion to duty, North Caroling is entitled to stand where her troops stood in battle, behind no State, but in the front rank of the Confederation, aligned and abreast with the best, the foremost and the bravest.