State

'Rebel John7 Peacock Wants a Rebel Round Table High Point Confederate is forming' group for stnd.v of ngiecled facts in Dixie's war. By MANLY WADE WELLMAN Never ininil whal the middle initial of John R. Peacock of High Point used to be. Today it stands for Rebel, and that’s the way he signs it — John R(ebel) Peacock. It says that on his business letterhead, with his ad¬ dress. “Professional Building. High Point. N. C.” And. directly under¬ neath: “Unpardoned. Unrepentant. Unreconstructed." Rebel John’s vocation is insurance brokerage. His avocation is the Con¬ federacy and its war. As a North Caro¬ linian. he thinks that his state's contri¬ bution to the War Between the States was tremendous, under-appreciated and. today, comparatively under- documented. Rebel John is in process of organiz¬ ing a Tar Heel branch of the Ameri¬ can Civil War Round Table. Burke Davis, author of best-selling They Called Him Stonewall, is helping. They want to enlist scholars, historians, pro¬ fessors and other enthusiasts who will probe into undeveloped and undefined historical matter concerning the war. and have a good time several times a year at meetings to discuss what they’re finding and doing. Peacock's contributions to Civil War historical studies have been consid¬ erable and important. He has pre¬ sented numerous rare and valuable items to his alma mater. Duke, and to the Southern Historical Collection at the University. His own library is among the best private amassments of important source books on his favorite war. He and his opinions arc highly respected by those who know how to value such things. The late Dr. Doug¬ las Southall Freeman, who wrote prob¬ ably the last definitive word on Rob¬ ert E. Lee, was his friend. Bruce Canon, who won the Pulitzer Prize for A Still¬ ness at Appomattox, counts Peacock as a friend and councilor. So do Stan¬ ley Horn, historian of The Army of Tennessee; Robert Sclph Henry, biog¬ rapher of Bedford Forrest; and Bell Irvin Wiley, who wrote The Life of Johnny Reb and The Life of Hilly Yank. So do many others, great and small, in the field. He is big. bald and high-spirited. In business dealings he is genially prac¬ tical. On the trail of some obscure historical point he is as relentless as a 'possum hound. In conversation on the Confederacy — and conversation, with Rebel John, always gets around to that — he is deceptively glib and merry. He laughs most of the time, but between laughs he can tell anyone something new about Beauregard or Bragg. Stuart or Sherman. Gettysburg or Appomattox. His enthusiasm is mostly self-made. His father, the late erudite Dr. Drcd Peacock, once president of Greensboro College, had some books on the Con¬ federacy, and young John read these as soon as he could read any.hing. On his mother's side he is descended from Captain Obcd W. Carr of the battered 46th North Carolina, who fought bravely at Sharpsburg and in the defense of Charleston. And as a boy he came face to face with old General James Longstrcet. honey¬ mooning with a young second wife. But not until 1940 did he take up seriously his all-consuming study. Since then he has gathered some 2.000 books on the Confederacy — “good, bad and indifferent." he classi¬ fies them. Their value is perhaps $20,000. His holidays and vacations invari¬ ably take the form of battlefield tours. He is one of the nation’s best- informed students of the Chickamauga campaign, and he has narrowly sur¬ veyed the contested terrain of Virginia, the scene of the Vicksburg siege, and the path of Sherman's march. He has encouraged appreciative study of the neglected battle of Franklin in Ten¬ nessee. and of bloody Bentonvillc. in North Carolina. He has established the whereabouts of the unmarked, long- lost grave of North Carolina's pugna¬ cious General W. W. Kirkland, and has dug into the racy facts behind the assassination of General Earl Van Dorn. He speaks of the chiefs on both sides — Lee and Grant, Jackson and Sherman and a host of lesser-known generals — as though he knew them well. Of course, he docs know them well. His proposal for the North Carolina Confederate Round Table — name as yet tentative — sounds like a chance to start the war again. “We'll have fun.” he says. “We’ll hold supper meetings monthly, or bi¬ monthly, except during the summer, in various towns. There’ll be a speaker who knows his subject. He can dish it out, and then the membership will put him on the spot. We encourage argu¬ ment and disagreement. "We'll start off with a live member¬ ship. and we'll grow." He's ready with opinions of his own, with friends welcome to disagree. What docs he think is the chief lack in writ¬ ten history of the conflict? "A history of the Trans-Mississippi Department, the War in the far West. It’s sadly neglected. The Army of Northern Virginia was great, but it wasn’t the only army. Men died just as permanently at Pea Ridge or Helena as ever at Gettysburg or Cold Harbor.” Who was the greatest Civil War General? “I go along with the crowd on Rob¬ ert E. Lee. But I’ll defend James Longstrcet as the best corps comman¬ der — not excluding ‘Stonewall’ Jack- son. Nathan Bedford Forrest was a natural fighter who might have shone in high command. Ditto Jo Shelby. The good Union generals were, of course, Grant, Thomas and Sherman. I don't 12 THE STATE. DECEMBER 18. 1954