ft*; i\ANCY \V. SCIIII.TZ
. . . people hid their horn*, iil»ec ond gun» under Ihc woodland mo»», ond the» hid their doughict
where»er the» could . . I Kenneth WhilMlt illuitrotion
Scourge of
the Blue Ridge
To Confederates in Iho inoiinf ain
country (i(>orp<‘ W . Kirk was a rein¬
carnation of the lievil.
The raiders crept over Bellevue
Mountain, across the
Гое
River and
down the mountain again over Winding
Stair in the stillness of a summer night
in 1864. George Kirk’s men were ac¬
tually Union regulars, but the Con¬
federates claimed his ranks were filled
with deserters, Negroes, Indians and
Union sympathizers. Kirk's cavalry
raids in the Blue Ridge Mountains dur¬
ing the last year of the Civil War earned
him the label of both guerilla expen
and bushwackcr. Union leaders praised
his efforts to aid Stoneman’s sweep into
North Carolina; the Confederates
thought of him as a reincarnation of the
devil.
Kirk's most spectacular raid took
place in June of 1864. After leaving
Morristown, Tennessee, with approxi¬
mately one hundred men, Kirk
marched to Camp Vance which was
only six miles from Morganton. He sur¬
prised the sleeping Confederates who
were mostly sixteen to nineteen year
old conscripts. The Union raiders de¬
stroyed a locomotive, three rail ears.
1.2(H) guns, ammunition and 3,000
bushels of grain. They took 277 prison¬
ers and left eleven Confederate dead.
One of Kirk’s men was killed, and six
were slightly wounded. The destruction
of these provisions and ammunition
came at a lime when the Confederacy
was desperate for supplies. The armies
in Virginia were without proper food,
clothing or arms.
Colonel Kirk himself was slightly
wounded in the raid. It was the only
blood he lost in the war. The square
shouldered, stocky Kirk was said to
have asked one of the Confederate
prisoners how many men they had de¬
fending the camp. The Confederate,
hoping to discourage Kirk, replied that
there were five hundred Rebels left.
Kirk thundered back. "Why in the devil
are five hundred defending against
three thousand?"
Kirk's men had only limited ammu¬
nition and would have been forced to
give up the light if the Confederates
could have held out a little longer. The
Confederates sent a messenger to Salis¬
bury for aid. hut no help came.
Pillaging and Looting
Both sides accused their opponents
of pillaging and looting in the moun¬
tain warfare during the last year of the
war. George Kirk believed in destroy¬
ing the enemy's ability to wage war by
burning his homes, fields, factories,
bridges and shops. The fate of the J. D.
Council home in Boone is a good ex¬
ample of Kirk’s ferocious manner.
When General Stoncman passed
through Boone, he used the Coun¬
cil residence as his headquarters.
Stoncman treated the family well and
disturbed little on the farm, but Kirk
kept Mrs. Council a virtual prisoner
and left the residence in shambles. I hc
lawn was filled with decaying meat and
hides; fences were ton» down; crops
were trampled, and the livestock was
stolen.
It is difficult to decide which is the
wiser path decency to the victims
of a war torn area at the risk of them
supplying the enemy with food or
horses, or total destruction to shorten
the conflict. People hid their hams, sil¬
ver and guns from Kirk under the
woodland moss, and they hid their
daughters wherever they could.
Kirk once marched three miles off
his line of retreat in order to burn the
home of a Confederate Colonel Palmer
because Palmer had burned Kirk's
mother's home in Tennessee in the
early months of the war.
Strong Union Sentiment
George Kirk was born in Tennessee,
but he is often associated with North
Carolina in Civil War accounts because
he organized the Second and Third
North Carolina Union Cavalry regi¬
ments in Burnsville. North Carolina, in
April of 1864. Kirk was made com¬
mander of these regiments, in which
virtually all of the North Carolina
mountain counties were represented.
Yancey County furnished 79 men to
the Third North Carolina Mounted;
Wilkes County sent 38 men to the
Third Mounted; and Henderson
( Continued on
раце
37 )
THE STATE. PEBRUARV 1975
19
