This trip took a full day.

Mars Hill

Excerpted from the marker- Baptist farm families here established Mars Hills College in 1856. The four-acre college campus had three structures by 1861: a two-story brick classroom building, a frame dormitory for boys, and a frame teachers’ residence. They stood about 75 yards in front of you. During the war, neighbors, families and even brothers here were divided in their loyalties to the Southern cause, but many joined the Confederate army during the first two years. Mars Hill was a strategic location, a crossroads for north-south and east-west travel. A hundred-man detachment from the 64th North Carolina Infantry – called “Keith’s Detail” – was posted here, the first of several Confederate units at Mars Hill during the war. The college was closed during the last two years of the conflict as conditions in mountain communities deteriorated and support for the Confederacy waned. Home Guard commander General John W. McElroy had his headquarters here after July 1863. He wrote to North Carolina Governor Zebulon B. Vance in April 1864, “I have 100 men at this place to guard against [Union Colonel George W. Kirk, of Laurel, and cannot reduce the force….In fact, it seems to me that there is a determination of the people in this country generally to do no more service in the cause.” Confederate troops left Mars Hill to forage in March 1865, just before General Robert E. Lee’s surrender in Virginia, Kirk led his 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry (U.S.) into the village and burned the college dormitory and teachers’ residence. Mars Hill College survived the war’s depredations, but it took forty years to replace what had been destroyed.

Hot Springs

Warm Springs Hotel- Excerpted from the marker- On October 17, 1863, Union General Ambrose E. Burnside reported from Knoxville, Tennessee, that “a regiment of North Carolina troops we are now organizing here yesterday captured Warm Springs, N.C., and now hold Paint Rock Gap.” This regiment, the 2nd North Carolina Mounted Infantry, included Confederate army deserters and more than 70 men recruited at Shelton Laurel, a community northeast of here. At Shelton Laurel the previous January, Confederate troops executed prisoners “suspected of Unionism” and of raiding the town of Marshall. The 2nd North Carolina was the first of two Union regiments raised nearby in the mountains of western North Carolina and East Tennessee. In capturing Warm Springs, the regiment overran a detachment of the 25th North Carolina Infantry (C.S.A.) on October 16 and then established its headquarters here on the grounds of the Warm Springs Hotel. Within a few days, part of Confederate Major John W. Woodfin’s Cavalry Battalion advanced down the road along the French Broad River from Marshall to attack the Federals. Woodfin was shot from his horse and killed just across the river from here, and cavalryman Jake Davis was wounded and later died. General Robert B. Vance, brother of Governor Zebulon B. Vance, led further attacks on the Union troops here in several engagements, October 20-26, 1863. Each side suffered casualties, and by November 1, the 2nd North Carolina Mounted Infantry was back in East Tennessee recruiting. The engagements at Warm Springs were unusual because local Southern Unionists and local Southern Confederates, both serving in regularly enlisted units, fought each other on their home soil, brother against brother.

Just outside Hot Springs at the North Carolina Tennessee border.

Shelton Laurel

Possible area of the Shelton Laurel Massacre shown below.

Marshall

Excerpted from the marker- On May 13, 1861, voters gathered here in Marshall, the Madison County seat, to elect a delegate for the Secession Convention to be held in Raleigh. The citizens were divided in their loyalties. Sheriff Ransom P. Merrill and others were later described as “husawing for Jeff Davis & the Confederacy,” while men of different opinions were shouting for “Washington and the Union.” One witness later noted that “a good Deel of Liquor had been drank that day.” When a dispute broke out between some Unionists and the sheriff, Merrill drew his pistol and shot and wounded Elisha Tweed. Neely Tweed, Elisha’s father and former clerk of the superior court, then shot Merrill with a double-barreled shotgun and killed him. The Tweeds later joined the 4th Tennessee Infantry (U.S.), Neely died of fever in 1862. The voters elected secessionist J.A. McDowell to the state convention. The local “war within a war” had escalated in the mountains by January 1863, when Unionists from the county’s Shelton Laurel community were deprived of salt. A band of 50 or 60 Union soldiers and civilians raided Marshall, taking salt and other provisions and wounding Confederate Captain John Peek. The raiders also ransacked the house in front of you, the home of Colonel Lawrence M. Allen, 64th North Carolina Infantry. Two of Allen’s children who were lying in the house desperately ill at the time, afterward died. Confederate troops marched on Shelton Laurel to “put down the insurrection” and recover property taken from Marshall. Meeting resistance, the Confederates summarily executed at least 13 prisoners, men and boys, in what became known as the “Shelton Laurel Massacre.”

Vance Birthplace- 911 Reems Creek Road, Weaverville