Skedaddle
Incidents at Shelton-Laurel, N.C.
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Skedaddle
Incidents at Shelton-Laurel, N.C. |
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February 2, 1863, Mars Hill
College, Madison County, N.C.,
HDQRS. FIRST BRIGADE, NORTH CAROLINA HOME GUARDS, Governor Z. B. VANCE: A dispatch reached me last night that a band of tories, said to be headed by Montreval Ray, numbering about seventy-five men, came into Burnsville, Yancey County, on Sunday night last, the 10th instant, surprised the guard, broke open the magazine, and took all the arms and ammunition; broke open Brayly's store and carried off the contents; attacked Captain Lyons, the local enrolling officer, in his room, shot him in the arm slightly, but accidentally he made his escape. They carried off all the guns they could carry; the balance they broke. They took, I suppose, about 100 State guns. To one else wounded. They also took off the bacon brought in by my commissary--about 500 pounds. On the day before about fifty women assembled together, of said county, and marched in a body to a store-house near David Proffitt's and pressed about sixty bushels of Government wheat and carried it off. I very much regret the loss of the arms. On Monday previous to the robbery I wrote to one of the captains in that county and to the ordnance officer to either remove the guns and ammunition or see that a sufficient guard was placed there to protect them. It seems that neither was done. I also urged on the citizens to lay to a helping hand in this hour of danger, but all done no good. The county is gone up. It has got to be impossible to get any man out there unless he is dragged out, with but very few exceptions. There was but a small guard there, and the citizens all ran on the first approach of the tories. I have 100 men at this place to guard against Kirk, of Laurel, and cannot reduce the force, and to call out any more home guards at this time is only certain destruction to the country eventually. In fact, it seems to me that there is a determination of the people in the country generally to do no more service in the cause. Swarms of men liable to conscription are gone to the tories or to the Yankees--some men that you would have no idea of--while many others are fleeing east of the Blue Ridge for refuge. John S. McElroy and all the cavalry, J. W. Anderson and many others, are gone to Burke for refuge. This discourages those who are left behind, and on the back of that conscription [is] now going on, and a very tyrannical course pursued by the officers charged with the business, and men conscribed and cleaned out as raked with a fine-toothed comb, and if any are left if they are called upon to do a little home-guard service, they at once apply for a writ of habeas corpus and get off. Some three or four cases [have] been tried by Judge Read the last two weeks and the men released. What are we to do? There are no Confederate troops scarcely in the western district of North Carolina. Longstreet is said to have left Tennessee. This emboldens the tories, and they are now largely recruited by conscript renegades and very soon it is possible our country may be full of Yankees. Give me your advice and orders. I have been doing as I thought the best I could under all circumstances. How far you may consider me culpable for the loss of the Yancey guns, &c., I cannot say. I am sorry I did not act more promptly in their removal, but I thought when the citizens were warned of their danger, as I had warned them and told them it was impossible for me to send them any force, that they would at once rally to their own defense and use the guns against their foes, but alas, I was sadly mistaken; if I had not believed that I would have brought the arms and ammunition to these headquarters. If something is not done immediately for this country we will all be ruined, for the home guards now will not do to depend on. I have written you several times on subjects of importance to me, and received no answer. I know your time is valuable to you and that you are pressed to death with business, but some instructions from you would be of great benefit to me and some encouragement to our citizens. Do let me hear from you at once. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, J. W. McELROY,
Brigadier-General, Commanding First Brigade,
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