- Title
- North Carolina historical review [1966 : April]
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-
- Date
- April 1966
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-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
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North Carolina historical review [1966 : April]
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FOR THE WANT OF A SCRIBE
By Glenn Tucker*
Governor Zebulon Baird Vance regretted during the War Between
the States that no adequate record was being compiled which would
preserve for posterity the generous measure of the state’s participation
in the struggle for southern independence. Disturbed because North
Carolina newspapers did not enjoy the financial resources to support
correspondents at the front in Virginia, as did the leading Virginia
newspapers and some of other areas, he suggested to General Lee that
North Carolina be permitted to attach a state war correspondent to the
Army of Northern Virginia. Through this medium the home people
would be kept enlightened about the achievements of North Carolina
troops, regarding which they were usually meagerly informed, and,
of equal importance, the story of the state’s military performance
would be accumulated for historians of later ages.
A diligent student of ancient as well as English constitutional history
and the common law— -of Livy, Cicero, and Tacitus along with Hume,
Burke, Coke, Blackstone, and many others— Vance recognized that
the stability and progress of the present depend upon an esteem of
the past. He understood clearly what some administrators often have
forgotten, that history is not what transpires in the course of human
events, but what comes to be recorded about what transpires. Civili¬
zations have been lost— the ancient Mayan, the Incan, the Aztecan,
the primitive Germanic and Scandinavian cultures to large degree,
the pristine splendor of the North American Indians— not because
these peoples lacked intelligence or worthy aspirations, but because
they produced no scribes and in some instances no written language,
or else they failed to safeguard their records and traditions.
General Lee found a military man’s objection to having an official
state correspondent in the field, and the project was dropped. But
Vance appreciated that the historian, however conscientious, can work
with no more than the materials at hand. The truth is that in history,
* Mr. Tucker, of Flat Rock, is the biographer of Zebulon B. Vance and a writer of
note; he served as president of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association
in 1965.
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