Victims: A True Story of the Civil War

by Philip Shaw Paludan

Book Overview

"Phillip Paludan has combined the findings of the social sciences with an exercise in la petite histoire to create an intriguing study. From his base point, the massacre of thirteen Unionist mountaineers at Shelton Laurel, North Carolina, the author expands the investigation to embrace larger issues, such as the impact of the Civil War on small communities, the causation and characteristics of guerrilla warfare, and the focus underlying human perversity."--Civil...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870493167
• ISBN13: 9780870493164
• Release Date: November 1981
• Publisher: Univ Tennessee Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Very insightful

This book brings to the reader an aspect not commonly studied in the Civil War. It shows the reality of the guerrilla war and the people who suffered from it. A must read for anyone interested in how people and society are affected by war.

Great book about the Civil War

The book Victims: A True Story of the Civil War by Phillip Shaw Paludan is about the Shelton Laurel killings. Shelton Laurel is a remote Appalachian town in North Carolina. Despite its location in the Confederacy, there remained a strong tie to the Union and because of this it became a target for both Confederate and Union armies. The people of Shelton Laurel and the Appalachian mountains were simple people. The area was home to related families and most people were very poor farmers. As in many small areas, what family you belong to and their actions affect everything. Paludan explained it best when he said, "juries in county seats could and did ignore the law and evidence to acquit or convict people they liked or disliked, people whose values or whose kin they did or did not respect," (Paludan, 24). The mountain people had a habit of using politics to satisfy personal vengeance. When the Civil War started, "the Unionism of Western North Carolina of which we heard so much during the war...was less a love for the Union than a personal hatred of those who went into the Rebellion. It was not so much an uprising for the government as against a certain ruling class," (Paludan, 62). The Civil War was an opportunity for people to use their new found power to gain personal revenge. People who were pro-confederate tended to be either rich farmers with slaves or "poor whites, profoundly hostile to blacks and most vulnerable to any change in the social and economic structure," (Paludan, 63). Pro-Unionists tended to be people who were poor farmers with no slaves or people who thought succession was treason. The people of the mountains used the "opportunity that the war brought to revenge old debts and to loot, plunder, and terrorize," (Paludan, 77). The people's terrorism generally took the form of guerrilla warfare; it was like a mini civil war in the mountains of the Appalachians. The Confederates tried to maintain control of the area and recruit soldiers for their side, but at the same time the Unionists tried to persuade mountain Unionists to attack the Confederacy. The tensions were made worse when on April 16, 1862 the Confederate Congress passed a conscription that forced all men 18 to 35 to join the army. This was a huge problem for mountain farmers. Men were needed to plant and harvest crops, without them many families would go hungry or starve. The "mutual killing, the burning of barns, houses, and fields, the slaughter of livestock all crippled the productivity of the region's farm," (Paludan, 80). If this wasn't already enough there was a salt shortage. The shortage was significant because without salt meat could not be properly stored. These problems soon became too much to bare and in January of 1863 a group of fifty mean raided the nearby town of Marshall. Marshall was the county seat of Madison County and contained Salt storages. These fifty men, mostly deserters from Confederate armies, and some from Shelton Laurel r

Excellent recollection of the Shelton Laurel Massacre

"Victims: A True Story of the Civil War," by Phillip Shaw Paludan, is an excellent book about the time period surrounding the Civil War. This book mainly focuses on the events leading up to the Shelton Laurel Massacre. Paludan gives a vivid description of what went on during this time and he gives the reader accurate details describing the massacre. The Shelton Laurel Massacre was a brutal killing of men and boys from the ages of 13-59 by the Confederate soldiers in Shelton Laurel, North Carolina. In this book, Laurel gives the reader a vivid picture of how it happened and what really went on.