Historical Overview

   Inhabitants of Alamance County, North Carolina responded to national events during the Civil War era in ways that confounded regional stereotypes.  The county boasted one of the most active manufacturing sectors in the Confederacy, for example, fueled both by a nascent textile industry and by the railroad facilities at Company Shops.  It was also home to some of the most impassioned white dissenters from the Confederate war effort.  Not only did most men from the county wait until the Confederate draft compelled their service to fight, but some even organized themselves into a secret society known as the “Red Strings” to hamper the Confederate war effort.  Perhaps more poignantly, blacks and whites in Alamance County gave biracial democracy a chance in the turbulent years of Reconstruction.  At the center of this effort to build a more just society was Wyatt Outlaw.  Born into slavery but of biracial parentage, Outlaw served in the Union Army and returned to Alamance County eager to protect equality under the law.  Biracial democracy bloomed more fully in Alamance than it did in many other parts of the South, though it faded quickly after Wyatt Outlaw’s 1870 lynching at the hands of county whites. 

   Surprisingly industrial, far from “solid” in their support for the Confederacy, and willing to experiment with biracial democracy, there are ways in which Alamance County clearly embodied “Other Souths.”  The materials in this digital archive invite users to probe the limits of these differences and to explore the fascinating career of Alamance County for themselves.

• Timeline of the Civil War and Reconstruction – Black and white residents of Alamance County participated in –and sometimes shaped—events in the state and nation during the Civil War and Reconstruction.  This highly selective timeline identifies some of the intersections between local stories and wider events.



• Alamance County in Comparative Perspective – Statistics from the decennial census reveal some of the characteristics which Alamance County shared with other Southern counties—and some of the ways in which it differed.



• Bibliography – A bibliography of works consulted in the preparation of this overview.