Absenteeism Among North Carolina Soldiers

            After discussing the idea of deserters leaving to help with the farm and then coming back to their regiments to serve and then seeing Scott King-Owen's article over the same subject, I felt that this would be the perfect article to cover for this blog post. The article begins with a short story of a soldier named Andrew Wyatt who is sentenced to death for desertion and right before he's to be executed by a gun line, he receives a pardon. His commander believed that because he had left to see his family and was planning to come back he didn't deserve to die. In the end it, didn't seem to work out for Wyatt as he later would die at Gettysburg.

            What I find interesting that according to this article, soldiers in North Caroline were deserting in large quantities, with one account putting the number at 24,122 or nearly 23% of North Carolina's total soldier contribution. I've always imagined that desertion was a major factor in the war. In a time when many people made their living through farming and agriculture, it had to have been terrible for the families of soldiers who were either gone for years or in other cases were killed. After reading this article I feel that this idea has been given support. According to the article, most men who deserted were in fact tradesmen or farmers and were often in their mid twenties to thirties.

            The article also focuses on the idea that many southerners soured towards the war the longer it went. The feeling that it was a rich man’s war fought by the poor grew stronger and weakened southern alliances to the Confederacy. I feel that Owen’s article does a great job explaining the feelings held by soldiers and dives deeply into their reasons for deserting their regiments when needed.

King-Owen, Scott. "Absenteeism among Western North Carolina Soldiers, 1861–1865." Civil War History 57, no. 4 (2011): 349-379.