Zebulon Baird Vance (May 13, 1830 – April 14, 1894) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 37th and 43rd governor of North Carolina, a U.S. senator from North Carolina, and a Confederate officer during the American Civil War.
A prolific writer and noted public speaker, Vance became one of the most influential Southern leaders of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era periods. As a leader of the New South, Vance favored the rapid modernization of the Southern economy, railroad expansion, school construction, and reconciliation with the North.Leonard C. Schlup, and James Gilbert Ryan, eds. Historical Dictionary of the Gilded Age (2003) p. 511. A Philosemite, he frequently spoke out against antisemitism. A progressive at his time, Vance was also a slave owner and is now regarded as a racist by some modern historians and biographers.
Early life
Vance was born in a log cabin in the settlement of Reems Creek in Buncombe County, North Carolina, near present-day Weaverville, and was baptized at the Presbyterian church on Reems Creek.Vance Birthplace, official website . North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources. Retrieved on April 3, 2012. He was the third of eight children of David Vance Jr., a farmer and innkeeper, and his wife, Mira Margaret (née Baird). His paternal grandfather, David Vance, was a member of the North Carolina House of Commons and a colonel in the American Revolutionary War, serving under George Washington at Valley Forge. His maternal grandfather was Zebulon Baird, a state senator from Buncombe County, North Carolina. His uncle was Congressman Robert Brank Vance, namesake of his elder brother, Congressman Robert B. Vance. He was reared by Venus, a house slave.
Around 1833, the Vance family moved to Lapland, now Marshall, North Carolina.McKinney, Gordon B. "Zeb Vance and the Construction of the Western North Carolina Railroad." Appalachian Journal 29, no. 1/2 (2001): 58–67. . There, David Vance operated a stand, providing drovers with provisions as they moved hogs and other animals along the Buncombe Turnpike to markets to the south and east. Although frequently short of cash, the family kept as many as eighteen slaves. Vance's family had an unusually large library for its era and location, left to them by an uncle.
At the age of six, Vance attended schools operated by M. Woodson, Esq., first at Flat Creek and, later, on the French Broad River.Fowler, R. H. (1998). Mouth of the South. Civil War Times Illustrated, 37(3), 46. via EBSCO. Accessed April 10, 2022. Both were far enough from home that he had to board with others. He also was a student at a school in Lapland run by Jane Hughey.
While a youth, Vance broke his thigh when he fell from a tree. This was treated by confining Vance in a box, as was common medical care at the time. As a result of this injury, his right leg was shorter, requiring him to wear a taller heel on the right shoe. Even so, it was said that Vance had "a peculiar and slightly ambling gait".
When he was thirteen years old in fall 1843, Vance went to the Washington College in Tennessee. In January 1844, his father died from a construction accident, forcing Vance to withdraw before the school year was over. Mira Vance sold much of the family's property to pay her husband's many debts and to support her seven children. As one writer noted, the family was "embarrassed with debt". She moved her family to nearby Asheville, bringing along enslaved women and children as household workers. However, the family still lacked the money to send Vance back to school in Tennessee. Instead, Vance and his brother Robert attended Newton Academy in Asheville.
To help support his family, Vance worked for John H. Patton as a hotel clerk in Warm Springs, now Hot Springs, North Carolina. In Asheville, Vance studied law under attorney John W. Woodfin. When he was 21 years old, Vance wrote to a family friend, David L. Swain, asking for a loan to study law in college. Swain was a former North Carolina governor and then president of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Swain was also an elementary schoolmate of Vance's mother. Swain arranged for a $300 loan for Vance from the university.
Vance attended University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill starting in July 1851 and had a "brilliant academic year". One of his classmates, Major James W. Wilson, recalled Vance's arrival in Chapel Hill with "homemade shoes and clothes, about three inches of between pants and shoes, showing his sturdy ankles...." Another classmate, Kemp P. Battle, wrote Vance "had a brain large and active; a memory tenacious, a nature overflowing with joyous love of fun, and to a surprising degree accurate information of many subjects and many authors." While at the university, Vance was a member of the Dialectic Society, which helped improve his oratory skills, as well as his ability to speak extemporarily. He also joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. Vance received an LL.D in 1852 and repaid the loan from the university with interest.
Vance then went to Raleigh, where he studied law with Judge William Horn Battle of the North Carolina Supreme Court and Samuel F. Phillips, former Solicitor General of the United States.
Pre-Civil War career Attorney
On January 1, 1852, Vance was admitted to the North Carolina Bar and received his county court license in Raleigh. He returned to Asheville, where he practiced law. Vance said, "I went out to Court horseback, and carried a pair of saddle bags with a change of shirts and the North Carolina Form book...." Almost immediately, the Buncombe County magistrates elected Vance as Solicitor of the Court of Pleas. He was admitted to the state's superior courts in 1853. In 1858, he became partners with attorney William Caleb Brown.
Although he did not always prepare fully for cases, Vance was skilled at reading the jury and remembering every detail of testimony. However, his success in court "was usually the result of wit, humor, boisterous eloquence, and clever retorts, not knowledge of the law."
North Carolina Senate After canvassing for Whig presidential candidate Winfield Scott in 1852, Vance became interested in his entry into politics. In 1853, he was a delegate representing Buncombe County at a railroad convention in Cumberland Gap, Tennessee. The goal of the convention was to convince the Charleston and Cincinnati Railroad to build a route through the mountains in Western North Carolina.
Next, Vance ran as a Whig candidate for the North Carolina Senate, winning with a term starting in December 1854. Vance was a Whig in the mode of Henry Clay. He wrote, "I was raised in the Whig faith, and taught to revere the names of Clay, Webster, and other great leaders of that party." Whig policies were more beneficial to Western North Carolina and its smaller farms where Vance was from, while the Democratic Party of that era tended to advocate for the owners of large slave plantations found in Eastern North Carolina.
While in the legislature, Vance worked on issues related to transportation in Western North Carolina, including introducing a bill for a public road in Yancey County and another bill to authorize subscriptions to fund the French Broad and Greenville Railroad. He also supported extending the Western North Carolina Railroad into the state's mountain counties, favoring a route that would take the tracks to Knoxville, Tennessee by way of Asheville, North Carolina.
When the Whig Party collapsed over the issue of slavery in 1854, Vance refused to join the primarily Southern Democratic Party or the anti-slavery Republicans, ultimately settling on the American Party, also known as the Know-Nothings. However, Vance lost his campaign for reelection to the North Carolina Senate in 1856 to David Coleman.
Journalism In March 1855, John D. Hyman of the Asheville Spectator convinced Vance to join the newspaper as an editorial assistant. He predicted that Vance would have "a brilliant career in the editorial line". This weekly newspaper was published from 1853 to 1858 and was the leading Whig paper in the region.Representative Men of the South. Philadelphia: C. Robson & Company, 1880. p. 293 via Google Books, April 11, 2022. One of the stories Vance wrote was about the search for Dr. Elisha Mitchell who disappeared in June 1857, having fallen to his death while trying to prove which peak was the highest in North Carolina. Mitchell taught Vance geology at the University of North Carolina, and Vance immediately volunteered for the search party. His account of the search, published in the Spectator in July 1857, is considered the most complete record of the tragic event.
Vance stopped working as joint editor of the Spectator after a year, but became half-owner of the newspaper. However, Hyman's steadfast support of Vance in the Spectator was a huge help to Vance's political career. The opposition paper, the Asheville News wrote, "Mr. Vance is the Spectator's specialty, and at every mention of his name it sputters and snaps and snarls like a cat with its tail in a steel trap. To question the correctness of his views on a public issue, the Spectator seems to regard as little short of treason."
U.S. Congress
In 1858, Vance ran for a seat in the U.S. Congress opened by the resignation of Thomas Lanier Clingman. For this campaign, he went on a fifteen-county speaking tour that "set the mountains on fire".Yates, Richard E. "Zebulon B. Vance: as War Governor of North Carolina, 1862–1865", Journal of Southern History (1937) vol. 3, no.1, pp 43–75. Vance was elected for a term starting in December 1858. At 28 years old, he was the youngest member of Congress at the time. He was reelected in 1859 over his former political opponent David Coleman.
Salaries and deficits When Congress proposed giving a $10,000 or 25% increase in fringe benefits to each representative in the next session, Vance spoke out. He said, "I do not think he [my successor] is entitled to $10,000 more for miscellaneous items than I am myself...the whole bill reminds me very much of the bills I have seen of fast young men at fashionable hotels: For two days board, $5, sundries, $50. It is like a comet, a very small body with an exceedingly great tail."
Similarly, he showed a dislike for the recurring Treasury deficit. Ignoring the figures and charts presented by his colleagues, Vance said, "As we are in debt, and spending more than our income, and our income is derived principally from the tariff, we have to do one of three things; either raise that income, lower our expenses, or walk into the insolvent court and file our schedule. I do not think there is, or ever was, a political economist on earth who could deny these propositions."
Slavery and secession While serving in Congress Vance was pro-slavery, saying in March 1860:
Plainly and unequivocally, common sense says keep the slave where he is now—in servitude. The interest of the slave himself imperatively demands it. The interest of the master, of the United States, of the world, nay of humanity itself, says, keep the slave in his bondage; treat him humanely, teach him Christianity, care for him in sickness and old age, and make his bondage light as may be; but above all, keep him a slave and in strict subordination; for that is his normal condition; the one in which alone he can promote the interest of himself or his fellows.Calder, Thomas (June 16, 2020). "Asheville Archives: Zebulon Vance argues in favor of slavery, 1860". Mountain Xpress. Retrieved February 21, 2022.
Despite his support for the institution of slavery, Vance was openly against North Carolina's secession from the union,Adler, Selig. " Zebulon B. Vance and the 'Scattered Nation]'" Journal of Southern History (1941) 7#3 pp. 357–377. preferring a strategy where both slavery and the union could be preserved. In writing to a friend, he advised caution about secession: