Zebulon Baird Vance

Zebulon Baird Vance was born in Buncombe county of North Carolina on May 13, 1830.  The son of David Vance and Mira Margaret Baird, Zebulon was born into a relatively wealthy family in an area that mostly consisted of poor farmers.  Vance was the third child and second son of his parents, the younger brother of Robert Brank Vance.  When he was thirteen Vance attended school at Washington College, Tennessee but left when his father died.  David Vance had left behind his widow and seven children, and soon after Mira Vance moved her family to Asheville in search of better educational opportunities.  Zebulon worked for a while as a clerk at a hotel on the French Broad River.  He read law briefly under John W. Woodfin in 1850 and in 1851 he spent one year at the University of North Carolina studying law.  He was admitted to the bar in 1852 and immediately returned to Asheville.

Vance then established himself as a practicing lawyer and was soon chosen as solicitor for Buncombe County.   Vance married Harriett Newell Espy in 1853; they eventually had four sons.  In 1854 he was elected to the Legislature of Buncombe County as a member of the Whig party, supporting Union principles.  When the party was dissolved in 1854 he became a member of the Know Nothing, or American party.  He also purchased half-interest in the leading Whig newspaper of North Carolina, the Asheville Spectator.  He ran for senate and the House of Representatives but was defeated, and ran again successfully in 1858.  Thomas Clingman had been elected to the Senate and Vance took his place in the Federal House of Representatives on December 7^th.

 In 1860 he campaigned for the Constitutional Union party presidential candidate, John Bell.  Although he was reelected to the Senate he was not able to take his place due to the succession of North Carolina.  He had opposed this move, but after Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for troops he began to urge North Carolinians to rally for southern independence.  During this he raised a company and was chosen as captain, soon to be colonel of the 26^th North Carolina Regiment.  By the time the succession was enacted he had already organized the Rough and Ready Guards.  This unit eventually became part of the Fourteenth Regiment of North Carolina and defended Norfolk, Virginia.  In August he left the company to command the 26^th Regiment in coastal N.C.  Vance commanded this regiment at the battle of New Bern in March 1862 and at Malvern Hill, Virginia.  This engagement climaxed his military career, which had not been superb as he lacked knowledge of tactics and proved impulsive.  His reputation as a war hero did help his later political career though.  Without campaigning he was elected governor in 1862, mostly by the soldier’s votes. 

He resigned from the military and assumed governorship in September.  He soon saw difficulties in obtaining supplies for the state and soldiers.  He sent agents abroad and purchased the steamship Clyde.  This ship successfully ran the blockade and supplied the troops with clothing and arms, and also transported large stores for the Confederate government, supplies for hospitals, and provisions for the populace of North Carolina.  Vance also had problems enforcing the conscription laws, many men not wishing to join the conflict.  When Judge Richmond M. Pearson, chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court, made judicial decisions that made enforcing the laws difficult Vance attempted to have the decisions overturned in court but enforced them in the meantime.  He urged President Davis in December 1863 to take any chance to negotiate with the Union government but continued his efforts to give men and materials to the Confederacy.  Vance also had disagreements with President Davis and other authorities over their actions within North Carolina.  When National troops occupied North Carolina Vance was arrested and imprisoned in Washington D.C. from May 1865 to July of the same year.  In 1867 he was pardoned by President Johnson.   In November 1870 he was elected to the senate but resigned in 1872 because he was not allowed to take his seat.  His political disabilities were removed soon after.  The same year he was a candidate for senator again but was defeated by the Republican candidate, Augustus Merrimon. 

He continued to practice law in Charlotte and did not act politically, but made efforts as a private citizen to overthrow the Reconstruction government in North Carolina.  In 1876 he was elected governor of the state by a large majority but resigned after being elected to the Senate and took his seat on March 4^th, 1879.  He soon rose in prominence in the Senate due to his speeches.  In 1884 he was reelected for the term ending on March 4^th 1891 and served on the Committee on Revolutionary Claims. 

In November 1878 Harriet, Vance’s wife, died, and two years later he married the widow Florence Steele Martin.  He died on April 14^th, 1894 in Washington D.C.

"The house in which Hon. Zebulon Baird Vance, the great War Governor and statesman of the Old North State lived for many years is on Reems Creek in Buncombe county.  It consistedof a single large room below and a garret or loft above, reached by rude stairs, almost a ladder, running up in one corner near the chimney.  There was also a shed room attached to the read of this house." (1914. Arthur, John. Western North Carolina,... p.259.)

"A life-size portrait of the subject of this sketch in the hall of the House of Representatives of the State Capitol, and his bronze statue of heroic size in the Capitol square...indicate that he was...the greatest and best beloved of all the able and good men North Carolina has produced. When about 12 years old, his father sent him across the mountains on horseback, to enter as a pupil in a high school, known as Washington College in East Tennessee; but he was soon called home by the illness of his father, whose bedside he reached only in time to see him die.  All the school education he than had or acquired afterward...was obtained in little schools in the neighborhood of his native home.  That home, where he was born May 13, 1830 was about ten miles northwest of Asheville in the county of Buncombe, and not far from the French Broad River. (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina...,Vol. VI, pp. 477, 488.)

"...young Vance, in the Summer of 1851, applied to ex-Gov. Swain, President of the University, for a loan to enable him to enter the Law School and take some of the studies of the Senior Class in that State institution. President Swain was so struck by the manly tone of the application, that with his proverbial partiality for the mountain boys, and knowing young Vance's people, he at once acceded to the request; and a friendship was then cemented between them that ended only with the life of the patron in 1868....But he availed himself with avidity of the opportunities of improvement afforded him, and President Swain and others of the Faculty and student body saw beneath all this solid ability, earnest purpose, and a power to influence others, which made them predict for him leadership in the future....(1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina..., Vol. VI, p.478.)

"At Raleigh in December 1851, young Vance obtained his County Court license, and at the Morganton term in August, 1853, his license to practise [sic] in the Superior Courts.  Having completed the course at Chapel Hill he had prescribed for himself, in May 1852, he returned home, opened an office in Asheville and threw himself into life's battle in earnest. (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina..., Vol. VI, p.479.)

"The popularity of young Vance and his natural bent soon took him into politics, and he became a candidate of the Whig Party for a seat in the House of Commons of the State Legislature in the summer of 1854, when he was 24 years of age....The Democratic majority in the district was considerable, but that was only a stimulus to Vance's zeal and activity; and though defeated on election day...his opponent went in with a diminished majority and the laurels of the contest were fairly divided between them. (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina..., Vol. VI, pp. 479, 480.)

"In 1858 Thomas Clingman, long the member of Congress from the large mountain district of 15 counties, having been appointed by Gov. Bragg to a vacancy in the U. S. Senate, resigned his seat, and W. W. Avery of Burke, to whom he had transferred his mantle, and David Coleman, both Democrats, were candidates for the succession.  Young Vance leaped into the arena....In one way or another, by election day Vance had..."set the mountains on fire," and he confounded the Democratic leaders by carrying the district by 2049 majority. (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina..., Vol. VI, p. 480.)

"He was then but twenty-eight years of age and the youngest member of Congress, and he always knew when to speak and when to keep silent. (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina..., Vol. VI, p.481.)

"In 1861, he had refused to be a candidate for the Confederate Congress, and he did not seek the office of governor; but being assured by both former Whigs and Democrats that he could best serve the Confederate cause as governor...he was elected by a large majority. His popularity in the army was attested by the fact that he received every vote in his regiment, while the rank and file of other commands voted the same way.  Indeed he was generally regarded as the 'soldier candidate'; and he so executed his great office that he became known as the 'war governor of the south."...For nearly three years, from Sept. 8, 1862 to the evening he left Raleigh, April 12, 1865, to avoid capture by Sherman, he did all that vigilance, zeal, and energy could do to have and keep every man to whom Lee, Johnston, and others were entitled as soldiers at the front....In the winter of 1863-64, in view of the disasters of Gettysburg and Vicksburg the summer before, desertion was depleting Lee's ranks and despondency was settling like a pall over the army and over the country.  Gov. Vance saw that the good name of his State and its soldiers was imperiled, and he was moved to leave his office at Raleigh, visit the army and make to brigades and divisions in which there were North Carolina troops those wonderful speeches whereby hope was substituted for despondency, and our battered regiments from other States as well as this were nerved again with the courage and resolve to do or to die.  It is reported that Gen. Lee said that this visit and these speeches were worth as much to him as 50,000 recruits; and that after hearing some of those speeches, Gen. J.E.B. Stewart...asserted that if oratory was measured by its effects, Gov. Vance was the greatest that ever lived. [Vance] foresaw the desolation of the State if the cause of the South should fail, and he imagined unexampled horrors as the result of the sudden emancipation of four million slaves.  The wish of his heart was that the honor of North Carolina should be maintained to the utmost. (1907. Ashe, Samuel.  Biographical History of North Carolina..., Vol. VI, pp. 484, 485.)

"But more than for these material benefits provided for the people of North Carolina their great debt to him was the maintenance of the civil authority and the supremacy of law amid the clash of arms and his protection of the humblest citizen against illegal arrest. Alone of all the States of the United States, of the Confederate States...in North Carolina during those four long dark years of war, the writ of habeas corpus was never suspended. (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina..., Vol. VI. p. 487.)

"...He was soon afterward arrested by the order of the Secretary of War, carried to Washington and consigned to the "Old Capitol Prison."  By the Secretary's orders, the governor's letter-book had been sent to the War Office, and upon examination it was found that Vance had remonstrated during the war with the authorities at Richmond upon learning that Federal prisoners at Salisbury were insufficiently fed and clothed.  This mercy to Federal soldiers when in a prison in Vance's State aroused Stanton's sense of justice and he said, "Let the man be paroled and allowed to go home to his family." (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina..., Vol. VI, p.490.)

"While a paroled prisoner of the United States, Gov. Vance did not think it proper to take an active part in politics, but his advice was often sought and freely given to the leaders in the State.  He advised his fellow- citizens to accept the situation as cheerfully as possible and to proceed to mend their broken fortunes.(1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina..., Vol. VI, p. 491.)

"...In 1876 the conservative Democratic people looked for somebody to lead them to victory.  The eyes of the masses turned toward Vance as their leader in the struggle.  Some thought it hardly prudent to nominate him because of his strenuous war record; but he was almost unanimously nominated as the candidate for governor, his Republican competitor being Hon. Thomas Settle, their ablest speaker and a very accomplished politician...The enthusiasm of the ex-Confederates and their sons was raised to the highest pitch by Vance's appeals to them to redeem the State, and he was elected by a majority of over 13,000 votes. (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina..., Vol. VI, pp. 491, 492.)

"Taking his seat for a third time as chief magistrate of the State in January 1877, he proceeded to do all that a patriot and statesman could do for its upbuilding....Increased facilities for the education of the people, normal schools for training of teachers of both colors, the employment of women as well as men in the public schools, and improvement in different ways in our charitable institutions, so as to enlarge their capacity for good, were urged generally and in detail. His recommendations were heeded by the General Assembly, and the State was fortunate in that his wise successor, Gov. Jarvis, concurred in and brought the plans [Vance] outlined to fruition. (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina..., Vol. VI, pp. 492, 493.)

"Elected to the United States Senate about the last of Nov. 1878, and re-elected Jan. 1885 and Jan. 1891, he served his State and country in that great field of labor from the day he was sworn in, March 1879, until...a short time before his death in April 1894....by incessant toil day and night, which caused...the loss of an eye and then shortened his days, he mastered the great questions of the tariff and finance and became the recognized leader of his party on those questions;...how by kindly, if bluff, courtesy and merry jest, in lobby and cloak room, he overcame the prejudice of Northern senators, and made personal friends of political opponents;...how his arguments were so interesting that the seats were better filled when he spoke than when others had the floor, and how crowded galleries hung upon his words;...how his solemn words, as he spoke for the  last time, Sept. 1, 1893, from his place in the Senate chamber, warning the people...against the encroachments of the money power and its allies, sounded through the land like the tones of a fire bell at night, are all part of the history of the times." (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina... Vol. VI,, p. 493.)

"While at Washington he occupied his private residence, and in vacation he lived in a home prepared in the mountains near his birthplace, which he called "Gombroon."  His leisure was devoted to study and reflection.... Gov. Vance was twice married." [From Aug. 1853 to Nov. 1878 to Harriet Espy; from 1880 until he died to Mrs. Florence Steele Martin from Kentucky.] (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina..., Vol. VI, p. 494.)

Bibliography

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