Deserter Declarations: Letters from North Carolinians Who Abandoned Their Confederate Units (New Perspectives on the Civil War Era)

Deserter Declarations explores nearly two hundred letters from Confederate deserters to Governor Zebulon B. Vance from 1861 to 1865. It shares the voices of deserters or friends and family petitioning on their behalf. Browning helps us understand who deserters were and lets us tease out some of the factors that motivated soldiers to leave their posts. These letters add vivid specificity to the often-contentious debates over deserters in the Confederacy and shed light on the changing attitudes of deserters over the course of the war. North Carolina is an excellent case study for desertion, as the state had the highest number of deserters. The Old North State also represents a microcosm of the entire South’s geography and demography.

JUDKIN BROWNING is a professor of military history at Appalachian State University and the author or coauthor of five books on the Civil War, including An Environmental History of the Civil War, which he coauthored with Timothy Silver. In addition to being awarded major research grants and winning several teaching and research awards, Browning also maintains the digital humanities website, www.TarheelTroops.org, which provides several databases, letters, and blog posts about North Carolina soldiers during the Civil War. He lives and writes in North Carolina.