Battle of Big Bethel: Crucial Clash in Early Civil War Virginia

By J. Michael Cobb, Edward B. Hicks and Wythe Holt

“A comprehensive study of the Civil War’s first major battle . . . well leavened with strategic and political context” (Robert E. L. Krick, author of Staff Officers in Gray).
 
Battle of Big Bethel is the first full-length treatment of the small but consequential June 1861 Virginia battle that reshaped perceptions about what lay in store for the divided nation.
 
The successful Confederate defense reinforced the belief most Southerners held that their martial invincibility and protection of home and hearth were divinely inspired. After initial disbelief and shame, the defeat hardened Northern resolution to preserve their sacred Union. The notion began to take hold that, contrary to popular belief, the war would be difficult and protracted—a belief that was cemented in reality the following month on the plains of Manassas.
 
Years in the making, Battle of Big Bethel relies upon letters, diaries, newspapers, reminiscences, official records, and period images—some used for the first time. The authors detail the events leading up to the encounter, survey the personalities as well as the contributions of the participants, set forth a nuanced description of the confusion-ridden field of battle, and elaborate upon its consequences. Here, finally, the story of Big Bethel is colorfully and compellingly brought to life through the words and deeds of a fascinating array of soldiers, civilians, contraband slaves, and politicians whose lives intersected on that fateful day in the early summer of 1861.
 
“The authors do a wonderful job of describing the motivations and mindsets of both the U.S. and Confederate soldiers at the outset of the conflict and handle slavery very effectively throughout.” —Edward L. Ayers, author of The Thin Light of

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781611211177

Book preview

Introduction

On the sultry morning of Monday, June 10, 1861, near Big Bethel Church on the marshy border between Elizabeth City and York counties in southeastern Virginia, the well-entrenched Confederate infantry and artillery of Col. John B. Magruder routed a much larger attacking force of Federals under Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler. Only six months prior, South Carolina decided it could preserve the harsh institution of slavery only by leaving the United States. Ten more slaveholding states followed in secession. Fort Sumter surrendered in April, but only inconclusive skirmishing took place thereafter. Bethel demonstrated bleakly but plainly that a bloody civil war had begun in earnest.

The historical interpretation of Big Bethel is overburdened with many assertions of Civil War ‘firsts.’ While a number of such statements are arguable, three important declarations of distinction stand: it was the war’s first land engagement planned by both sides in which the combatants faced each other; Pvt. Henry L. Wyatt was the first Confederate soldier killed in battle; and Lt. John T. Greble was the first graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, and the first regular army officer to fall in the terrible conflict. Since it occurred so early, Bethel was also full of more trivial claims, such as the first musket volley. Relying upon primary sources as much aspossible, this study offers a new and more intricate picture of the battle itself, plus a more contextualized social and political interpretation of its meaning. Bethel influenced the rebellion’s initial phases in complex and far-reaching ways, and contemporaneous accounts show clearly the significant impact the clash had on North and South alike.

From broad-spectrum surveys of the war to specialized campaign studies, scholarly attention has chiefly portrayed Magruder’s victory as a trifling skirmish that would have escaped notice had it unfolded later in the hostilities. Some accounts conclude that Bethel led to overconfidence in the South and anxiety in the North.¹ Further, some exceptional treatments of the Civil War neglect to mention the battle at all, while the encounters at Philippi and Ball’s Bluff, analogous to Bethel in time and magnitude, are granted more attention.²

Even at the time of Bethel, both sides anticipated that the primary focus of conflict would be to the north and west in the broad Virginia land corridor that separated the warring capitals of Richmond and Washington. Each government amassed a giant army in the vicinity of Manassas on Bull Run to defend its own center of governance and to threaten the other. About 5,500 troops faced each other across the marsh below Big Bethel Church, while important subsequent contests would involve tens of thousands of combatants. There were fewer than 100 total casualties at Bethel, and only 19 men died there (according to official reports). The vast carnage at First Manassas five weeks later dwarfed these numbers. In such a context, Bethel was indeed a skirmish.

However, the clash was not trifling. Bethel showed that the South opened the war with better military leadership and that defensive entrenchments rather than open-field lines of musket fire were key to military success. The devastating Federal defeat resounded throughout the recently divided states, alerting many to the likelihood of a harshly contested, casualty-filled war rather than the bloodless denouement imagined by most people on both sides. It proved to Northerners and Southerners alike that their opponents were resolutely dedicated to their cause and would fight hard and well.

Bethel also assured Southerners that the contest would not be fought in vain. Similarly, the outcome supported all their boasting about martial preparedness and prowess over pale young men drawn from Northern shops and factories. Confederate warriors were invincible, and Providence surely favored their cause. Southern claims to sovereignty were legitimized. Bethel did result in some overconfidence, but mainly it confirmed that Southern soldiers were well-prepared for warfare. Conversely, the battle hardened public resolve above the Mason-Dixon Line to preserve the Union at whatever cost in lives and treasure, and it forced the recruitment of large numbers of troops. Bethel initiated and defined the war as it would be understood by most all the way through First Manassas.³

Acknowledgments

History is a collaborative process. Many people have generously given of their time and knowledge to aid us in telling the story of the battle of Big Bethel, its antecedents, and its consequences. Several are individually acknowledged below, but we have not been able to name everyone who encouraged, commented, ransacked their memories and their attics, and otherwise graciously assisted us in the various phases of the research and the writing of this book. We apologize for these omissions and for faultiness in our memory, but all contributions from the various intersecting communities relevant to Bethel’s history have been useful and important. Our thanks go out to you all. We emphasize that any errors in this volume are our responsibility, and should not be laid at the feet of anyone mentioned hereinafter.

Several persons have been indispensable. First and foremost we recognize our long-time friend Tim L. Smith, always willing to assist our efforts at the Hampton History Museum, whose knowledge of the Civil War and of the local people who participated in it or were affected by it is enormous. Tim has professionally prepared all of the images for publication, sometimes selecting a more useful item than the one we had suggested, and often worked overtime or on Saturdays to help us get the book finished. Tim also found an important document for us in his own Civil War collection. Graphic designer and Civil War mapmaker Hal Jespersen drew for us a set of superb maps, fully indulging our desires on several peculiar or difficult items, keeping our focus off picky details, and smoothing the process with his extensive knowledge and experience. Civil War battle histories are judged in part by the maps, and Hal is a master. Authors always need good editors to help them get everything straight, properly located in the text, and well said. We have been most fortunate. Lucas Cade (with the assistance of his wife Julie) has performed pleasantly, capably, and often beyond the call of duty throughout an extensive and thorough editorial process, one in which we have enjoyed collaborating with him.

The staff at the Hampton History Museum has been helpful and supportive, especially including Luci Cochran, the executive director, and Beth Austin, the registrar. We deeply appreciate the support of Jim Wilson, Director of Parks and Recreation for the City of Hampton.

Several local and regional library personnel offered invaluable assistance with our research and the puzzles we encountered, including Greg Grunow at the Virginiana Room of the Newport News Public Library and Liz Wilson at the Virginiana Room of the Hampton Public Library, while Brent Tarter and the staff at the Library of Virginia shared a vast amount of information garnered from period newspaper accounts in their collection.

The personnel at other repositories and archives have given superb aid. We wish to mention in particular Arthur Carlson of Special Collections at the J. Y. Joiner Library of East Carolina University; Monica Fleming, Historic Preservation Program Director at Edgecombe Community College in Tarboro, North Carolina; Richard J. Sommers and Richard L. Baker at the United States Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania; Joel Kovarsky of Alderman Library at the University of Virginia; and Mary Molineux and the staff at the Earl Gregg Swem Library of the College of William and Mary. The staffs at the Chicago History Museum Education Center, the University of North Carolina Libraries, and the Library of Congress have also gone the extra mile for us.

A wealth of images has graced our efforts, and we owe a great deal of thanks to those who have kindly provided them. In particular we would like to mention Carol Banks, House Manager, the Blount-Bridgers House; Claire S. Samuelson and Dave Johnson, Casemate Museum of Fort Monroe; Nancy Meadows, Chapter President, Chatham Virginia Chapter, United Daughters of the Confederacy; James W. Gerencser, College Archivist, Dickinson College; John Heiser, Librarian, Gettysburg National Military Park; Ann Drury Wellford, Manager of Photographic Services, The Museum of the Confederacy; Michael Aikey, Director, New York State Military Museum; Thomas Lisanti, Manager of Rights & Permission, New York Public Library; William H. Brown, Registrar, State Archives of North Carolina; Sarah E. Koonts, State Archivist, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources; Eric N. Blevins, Photographer, North Carolina Museum of History; Mike Milner, Public Communications Specialist, North Carolina Digital Library & Archives; Claudia A. Jew, Director of Photographic Services, The Mariners’ Museum; Edward Fitzgerald, Executive Director, Quincy Historical Society; Sharon White Gruber, Director, Smith-McDowell House Museum; Autumn Reinhardt-Simpson, Research Assistant, Valentine Richmond History Center; Jamison Davis, Visual Resources Manager, Virginia Historical Society; Mary Laura Kludy, Archives and Records Management Assistant, Virginia Military Institute; Gary Hood, Curator of Art, West Point Museum; the Bradford Historical Society, Bradford, VT; the Dorothy Rouse Bottom Estate; the Estate of Frank Carmines; Walt Brown Jr.; Betty Miles; Robert Mclanahan Smith III; Jean von Schilling; and Christian H. Witzke III.

Other historians and interested individuals who have contributed greatly include Jack Authelet, Town Historian of Foxboro, Massachusetts, who gave us background on the Fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and its Captain David Shepard; Edward L. Ayers, historian and President of the University of Richmond, who served as a reader; Brenda Hahn Barbian, for her historical research on Bethel; Norma Bethea, who introduced us to the important old African-American cemetery in the grove behind her home; local author and historian Fred Wills Boelt, who shared with us the letters and reminiscences of the Wade family of York County; Kathy Dermanis of the Buckroe Beach Historical Society, who provided ownership information for a farm in Buckroe; Robert Emerson, who provided details on the Bethel area and York County sites including Tompkins Bridge; Paul Emigholz, a local mapping expert with encyclopedic knowledge, who helped us search for the site of the Union’s pre-battle friendly-fire incident near Newmarket Bridge; Mary Gainer at the National Aeronautics and Space Agency, who allowed us to use the reminiscence of Sue Winder Segar; Christine Gergely and Sherry Gershamer of the Bethel Chapter, United Daughters of the Confederacy, for their knowledge, perceptive comments, and support material; Robert K. Krick, who supported our project with a wealth of research sources, while his son Robert E. L. Krick offered good advice and served as a reader; Stauffer Miller, for allowing us to use letters of Major Charles Chipman before their publication; Gloria Piland Rogers, who has conducted exhaustive research on the affair at Bethel and is the authority on Southern heroine Hannah Tunnel; Colonel James Tormey, who made available the account Jane Barron Hope Marr and Annie Whiting Hope recorded of their experiences at the time of Bethel; and Ken Wood, who furnished us with the R. D. Wood letter.

We have worked well with our publisher, Savas Beatie. Ted Savas from the beginning has given sage and timely guidance helping us to navigate our way through the publication process, assisted us with direction, and has given us great encouragement in pursuing our project. Sarah Keeney, our go-to contact, has been very patient with us, maintaining a constant and pleasant professional communication and generously and consistently helping us to deal with the process and to assimilate all the material required to get our book into print, especially with regard to the images. Ian Hughes has contributed one of the most striking cover designs we have seen. And Lee Merideth excellently performed double duty as our indexer and as layout formatter. As with everyone mentioned here, we could not have done it without such capable professional help, making our book the best it could be. We are most grateful to you all.

J. Michael Cobb

Edward B. Hicks

Wythe Holt

Hampton, Virginia, July 2013

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1 Wiley Sword, Southern Invincibility:A History of the Confederate Heart (New York, NY, 1999), 89, 152.

2 James M. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction (New York, NY, 1982); David Donald and J. G. Randall, The Civil War and Reconstruction, 2nd rev. ed. (Boston, MA, 1969).

3 Charles P. Poland, Jr., The Glories of War: Small Battles and Early Heroes of 1861 (Bloomington, IN, 2006), 233 (The real impact of Big Bethel was the short-term influence upon Northern and Southern morale.); George C. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC, 2010), 74-75 (How else could such a victory against an overwhelming force be explained? Confederates could affirm that the Lord had been with them in the day of battle.); Brent Nosworthy, The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War (New York, NY, 2003), 168 (The affair at Big Bethel was a tiny action…. At the time, however, it gained attention out of all proportion to its strategic significance.). A journalist went through the camps near Fort Monroe the day after the battle, finding our men are in the best of spirits, and eager to wipe out the unpleasant narrative of the affair at Great Bethel…. They have had a taste of conflict, they have gained confidence in themselves, and only wish to be properly placed in the field. New York Daily Tribune, June 16, 1861.

Prelude—Chapultepec

Major John Bankhead Magruder galloped up in a flurry of dust. As he dismounted, his horse was shot from under him. With the assistance of several nearby gunners, an undaunted Magruder recovered a disabled howitzer and placed it back into position, doubling the firepower of Lt. Thomas J. Jackson’s beleaguered crew. The youthful Jackson had just disobeyed a direct order from Maj. Gen. William J. Worth to retire, arguing it was more dangerous in the rear. Magruder’s timely intervention allowed the shelling to continue effectively.

The day was September 13, 1847, and the United States had been at war with Mexico for two years. Major General Winfield Scott’s army was assaulting a hilltop castle called Chapultepec. Causeways behind the citadel threaded east through swampy terrain into the capital of Mexico City. Only the fortress, an artillery battery in front of it, and the defenders—including many boys praised by their countrymen today as the Boy Heroes—stood in the way of access to the city and certain defeat for Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.

The bastion was certainly doomed if Scott gained control of the junction of the three causeways just beyond it. With two infantry regiments and Jackson’s section of six-pounders, Col. William Trousdale advanced to seize the intersection. The Mexican stronghold and battery kept up a withering fire that killed or wounded the 12 horses pulling Jackson’s limbers and disabled several of his men, knocking one of the howitzers out of commission.

American troops storming Chapultepec.

Library of Congress

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After helping his infantry gain access to the castle’s expansive grounds, Magruder provided the difference for Jackson. The Virginia artillerist returned fire briskly, and soon the Mexicans began to withdraw. Securing two other cannon, they and their squad joined a unit of about 60 men under lieutenants Daniel H. Hill and Barnard E. Bee. In spirited pursuit, they suddenly found themselves ahead of the entire United States army. Far outnumbering the North Americans, enemy cavalry wheeled and charged with lances leveled. In dramatic confrontation on the narrow causeway, Hill and Bee repelled three advances while the cannon under Magruder and Jackson blew gaps in the Mexican lines. Artillerists in training at West Point were drilled relentlessly to stay at their guns and keep firing, whatever action might be swirling round them. Finally, more of Worth’s troops arrived, surging past the weary men. After some desultory action, United States soldiers moved into the Mexican capital. Winfield Scott took formal possession of the city on September 14.

Magruder and Jackson were given high accolades for gallantry as they had shown no fear or hesitation. Magruder, slightly wounded, was brevetted lieutenant colonel, while Jackson, whose jacket sleeve was pierced by a bullet, was brevetted major. Somewhat contradictorily, Jackson later said he refused the order to retire because he had been ordered to seize the causeway intersection, and there was nothing to be done but obey orders. He also said, probably more revealingly, It would have been no disgrace to have died there, but to have failed to gain my point it would. Jackson’s determination earned him the sobriquet Stonewall during the American Civil War.

John Bankhead Magruder

Yearbook of the American Clan Gregor Society, 1914

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The crucible of battle forges character, especially courage and decisiveness. Whatever their personal foibles, their Mexican-American War collaboration meant Magruder and Hill understood each other’s behavior under duress. Undoubtedly, Chapultepec gave an edge to their command 14 years later at the battle of Big Bethel, when fate drew them back together and where they again faced a roaring artillery barrage and fierce charges by a numerically superior adversary.⁴

An intense young Thomas J. Jackson poses for the camera.

Virginia Military Institute Archives

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4 Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson, Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1982), 37-38; James I. Robertson, Jr., Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (New York, NY, 1997), 66-69; Thomas M. Settles, John Bankhead Magruder: A Military Reappraisal (Baton Rouge, LA, 2009), 73-78.

Chapter 1

Weather-Beaten Place of Worship

Sanctuaries of peace, plain meeting houses scattered throughout the backcountry of the South, became hallowed landmarks on the battlefields of the Civil War. Big Bethel was the first of these sacred places whose name became synonymous with bloodletting, though with each succeeding campaign the numbers engaged and the ferocity of conflict intensified greatly. The church names of Shiloh, Dunker, and the Wilderness connote slaughter and torn land wrought by immense armies.¹

Big Bethel Church stood in southernmost York County, Virginia, on a ridge of land facing the well-worn road from Hampton to Yorktown. It was nestled in the midst of great hardwoods and pine trees, with a carpet of wildflowers in yellow and blue dappling the forest floor and fields. On June 10, 1861, Bethel became the site of the first pitched land battle of the Civil War when Col. John Bankhead Magruder’s North Carolinians and Virginians thrashed Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler’s New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont regulars and volunteers.

Fifth New York Zouave William McIlvaine, Jr., rendered this tranquil view of Bethel Church in 1862.

Philadelphia Civil War Museum

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The rise upon which Bethel’s spare, unpainted two-tier frame rested dropped off quickly on two sides into an extensive morass of mud, rushes, sassafras bushes, and cypress and juniper trees. Meandering through the marsh was Wythe Creek,² a portion of the northern branch of Back River which formed the boundary between the counties of Elizabeth City and York. The creek was named for the family of George Wythe, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and an important Virginia jurist, teacher, and politician. His impressive mansion, Chesterville, was situated nearby at the head of navigability. County Bridge, a wooden span of near 40 feet, crossed the shallow, sluggish watercourse approximately 100 yards southeast of the church. South of the crossing, there was an extensive plateau containing several farmhouses and barns amid cultivated fields, fences, and orchards.³

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The marsh⁴ was almost impassable, so the bridge marked a strategic location for the control of north-south movement on the eastern side of the long narrow flat strip of land between the York and James rivers known colloquially as the Peninsula. Fort Monroe and the town of Hampton were located at the lower end of the Peninsula, while the hamlet of Yorktown lay to the west, with the town of Williamsburg farther along.

The Confederate seat of government at Richmond was approximately 90 land miles west of Hampton and its capture was the primary Union objective throughout the war. Of the four routes between Hampton and Richmond, some of them involving rail or water travel, the overland passage via the Hampton-Yorktown Road was the shortest. Since the Peninsula is generally low and swampy, this thoroughfare, sometimes known as the great road, followed a winding ridge, a foot higher than the land on either side of it. Lieutenant Colonel Gouverneur K. Warren of the 5th New York Infantry had reconnoitered the area and was impressed. He found it and other local roads excellent and well drained. The great road was so smooth and solid, an observer noticed, that a rail-track could be laid upon it with little trouble.

The Hampton-Yorktown Road was also better maintained and more commonly traveled than a second road from Newport News Point to Williamsburg, lying much closer to and paralleling the James River. Major General George B. McClellan found no difficulty in using the route for an entire Federal division during his 1862 campaign. However, in 1861, both Magruder and Butler focused on the Hampton-Yorktown Road.⁵

The crossing close by the weather-beaten place of worship had been a battleground before. During the American Revolution, colonials erected earthworks there. On March 8, 1781, British regulars on a foraging expedition captured American Col. Francis Mallory and a company of Virginia militia near the site of the future church. Since Mallory had violated a parole previously given, he was executed with several shots, and his corpse was sadistically bayoneted then trampled by horses till it was nearly unrecognizable.⁶

At a time when many churches had outlying preaching stations, the Bethel Meeting House was founded in western Elizabeth City County about 1817 as an outpost of Hampton Baptist Church. Owing to its comfortable appointments, it was soon adopted as a second meeting hall of that congregation. It became a separate Baptist entity in 1840 when it acquired its own pastor and 13 members withdrew to it from the Hampton church. Sometime between the years 1843 and 1851, Bethel’s site was moved a short distance to the well-situated Wythe Creek crossing and a new building was constructed in York County on land generously provided by church members James and Ida Taylor. In 1855 another Bethel Church (Little Bethel) broke away from it and was established in Elizabeth City County about three miles south along the same road. This situation gave rise to the descriptive Big being attached thereafter to the first meeting house’s name indicating that it was the mother church.⁷

Famed for its golden-sounding bell whose tolling created a trilling effect, the clapboard building of Big Bethel had doorways on its front façade, on the side, and in the rear. The congregation sat in front of the pulpit on benches of wood resting on well-trodden, wide-planked floors, and there was probably an elevated gallery for enslaved men, women, and children. Bethel’s flock grew rapidly in size. In 1855, Pastor J. L. Trueman counted 203 members of whom 85 were African in origin. By 1859, the number had increased to 306, 135 being held in bondage. More females than males were members.⁸

After each Sunday service, people gathered to socialize in the clearing in front. In the spring of 1861, nervous and excited talk of the war probably predominated. Southerners had foreseen the likelihood of conflict, and in the late 1850s fireside conversation [had been] confined to the great issue of the day—‘Will there be civil war?’ Southern states began to secede in late December 1860. Indeed, John Brown’s bold raid on the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859—designed to incite a slave insurrection–and Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860 brought sectional tensions to a boiling point.

Fort Sumter, the Federal bastion in Charleston Harbor, capitulated in mid-April 1861, leading to Virginia’s Ordinance of Secession on April 17. The momentous events developing to the south resulted in the concentration of a substantial number of soldiers, Yankee and Rebel, on the lower Peninsula in April, May, and June. Bethel’s congregation abandoned their meeting house, probably in late May, and met for worship elsewhere. During the war, the members worshiped in homes, but sometimes even in a brush arbor.

There would have been even more animated conversation among the congregation after services on Sunday, June 9. Barely a week earlier, the Yankees had raided Fairfax Court House in northern Virginia on June 1 and killed Confederate Lt. Col. John Q. Marr. Two days thereafter, another early encounter went against the Confederates. Toward the end of May, George McClellan crossed the Ohio River with about 3,000 men to protect the many Unionists in mountainous western Virginia and secure the Baltimore and Ohio rail lines. He easily took the key towns of Fairmont and Grafton, the latter a railroad junction. His only opposition, Confederate Col. George A. Porterfield and his poorly-armed contingent of 600, retreated 24 miles to Philippi where a key bridge was located.

In the early hours of June 3, McClellan’s deputies, Brig. Gen. Thomas A. Morris and Col. Benjamin F. Kelley, executed a two-pronged surprise attack against Porterfield. Caught asleep and without pickets, a few Rebels were captured, but most straggled hastily out of Philippi, some of them ignominiously still in their bedclothes. There were no fatalities during the rout; however, Morris and Kelley were both wounded.

The action at Philippi had significant consequences. Unionists meeting in Wheeling, Virginia, were partially inspired by the outcome to nullify Virginia’s Ordinance of Secession and to name Francis H. Pierpont governor. Further, the triumph thrust McClellan into national prominence. Northerners had something to crow about, elevating the affair into an American Austerlitz. The embarrassed Southerners, meanwhile, muttered under their breath and dismissed it as a mere skirmish.⁹

George Stacy captured this image of the Fifth New York Zouaves at Hampton Creek, with Hampton in the distance. Cary’s Academy is on the right.

Library of Congress

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With Federal regiments increasing in number near Fort Monroe, the Bethel church members that morning of June 9 would have nervously discussed evacuation. Intermixed with speculation about other military actions, they would also have been quite angry at reports of the desecration of their place of worship by the interlopers. Yankee detachments had been reconnoitering through Elizabeth City County. About June 1, 200 Zouaves of the 5th New York ventured across Wythe Creek to Bethel Church. They described it as being in a rather dilapidated condition with corncobs littering the floor, apparently indicating that Confederate cavalry recently used the meeting house as a stable. Moreover, felled trees near County Bridge alerted the Federals to possible enemy intentions of fortifying this strategic position.

The Northerners marked the inside walls of the church with slogans such as Death to Traitors and Down with Rebels, then having the boldness to sign their names and to identify themselves as soldiers from New York and Massachusetts. At the rear of the pulpit, they drew a gibbet with a Rebel soldier hanging in the horrors of strangulation, with a caption that read The Doom of Traitors. This deliberate insult to the Southern cause added to the injuries of invaded territory and pillaged homes. Moreover, the miscreants had arrogantly defiled a holy place. The Confederate soldiers who dug earthworks there were just as outraged as the church members.¹⁰

Vulgar slogans and hand-drawn stick figures on wooden walls can be dismissed as youthful mischief. However, the images and words they used reflected the fervor of the political and social issues underlying the war, which drew the adversarial hosts to Bethel. Patriotic passions were strong on both sides, but the primary motivations were different. The Southerners proclaimed the independence of a neophyte nation and its peculiar institution, while the Northerners wished to accomplish what President Andrew Jackson had memorably stated during the previous secession crisis of the 1830s: our Federal union, it must be preserved.

Egbert Ross of the Charlotte Grays, Company C, First North Carolina Infantry.

Histories of Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina in the Great War 1861-’65

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Magruder’s men rallied to the flag because they perceived that Yankees had invaded their land. In letters written home by some who would be at Bethel, Capt. Egbert A. Ross of the Charlotte Grays, a company of the 1st North Carolina Infantry regiment, wanted fiercely to throw out the ruthless invader. Private Lewis Warlick found his native soil filled with thieves and lawless persons, a situation in which he knew each man must do everything he could to protect his much loved country. Captain Benjamin Huske found something grand sublime in the fight for homes and firesides.¹¹ Indeed, strong and deep attachment to the protection of home, loved ones, property, and privileged leisure heightened the strategic advantage the Rebels would have at Bethel.

An unspoken but obvious, even more fundamental issue for white Southerners was the defense of slavery. The property Warlick and his fellow soldiers knew that those thieves and lawless persons from the North wanted to seize was slaves–owned human beings with no choice but to build the houses and barns, farm the plantations, behave subserviently to their masters, and hew and carry the wood for many of those pleasant hearthside fires. While a majority in the ranks did not own slaves, the soldiers nevertheless fought to preserve a prosperous way of life built upon the backs, sweat, and forced labor of the unfree. The foremost state’s right they laid their lives on the line for was the ability to hold humans in thralldom and servitude. The terrible invader theme, with its distinct undertone of protecting their slavery-based manner of living, permeates Southern letters and newspaper articles concerning Big Bethel and the early stages of the Civil War.

Many whites in the Confederacy considered themselves aristocrats, no doubt consistent with an economy based upon the labor of persons treated as peons. They imagined that invading armies were filled with overworked and abused factory wage-earners–multitudes of them ignorant, recent immigrants–dragooned into military service by their bosses, and fleshed out with laid-off or unemployed idlers. Federal soldiers were disdained as lacking courage, education, and an intelligent perception of the critical issues, and thus devoid of any will or reason to fight. They were almost as unworthy of full human respect as the enslaved people. The rebellion was to such whites a class war, with the working class forces of Northern capitalists invading the land of Southern agrarian gentry. The scribblings on the walls of Bethel Church reflected and reinforced such views.

Diarist