War, 150 years ago

To explore more stories commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, check this timeline.

One hundred fifty years ago Sunday, residents of Chapel Hill first heard about the start of the Civil War.

A different kind of campus met the onset of war. For example, among the all-male student body, religion was not a choice — attendance at prayers and chapel services was required. A state law forbade alcohol sales within 2 miles of campus, and students could be expelled for drunkenness.

After the war, some of these students would survive to see freedom for the University’s slaves, $90,000 in confederate war bond debt, and a temporary campus shutdown.

Ernest Dollar, director of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill, said America has glorified the events of the war, ignoring its harsh realities in favor of a more poetic picture of Southern life.

Confederate General Robert E. Lee shared his opinion.

“It is well that war is so terrible — lest we should grow too fond of it,” Lee said in December 1862.

Antebellum student life

An 1860 student guide stated $325 per year was sufficient to cover the expenses of attending. The curriculum was dominated by Greek, Latin and mathematics, and the principal teaching method made students recite texts from memory.

Prior to the emancipation of slaves, students were attended to.

The slaves hauled water to students’ rooms every day, cooked, cleaned students’ laundry and prepared each fireplace before dawn.

Dollar recounted a story of a group of drunk medical students who once exhumed a slave’s body and desecrated it for enjoyment.

“It’s awful to see the way that slaves were treated,” he said.

Union influence

During the final weeks of the war in April 1865, the forces of Union General William Sherman occupied many towns in central North Carolina, including Chapel Hill.

Many Union troops encountered bright leaf tobacco for the first time and spread demand, leading to the fortune that would fund Trinity College’s move to Durham to become Duke University.

“The rise of bright leaf tobacco transformed the state in ways we are still feeling today,” Dollar said.

At the end of the war, Chapel Hill was home to more than 400 slaves, many of whom left the area after being emancipated.

“There was a lot of dislocation and moving around,” said Susan Ballinger, University archives processing coordinator.

These departures left the University in disrepair, a state exacerbated by financial woes.

A University in crisis

By the war’s end, the University was $90,000 in debt and stuck with an endowment invested in now worthless Confederate bonds, said collecting and public programming archivist Biff Hollingsworth.

A new state constitution also called for a new board of trustees. When the board convened in July 1868, it removed then-President David Swain and the entire faculty.

Solomon Pool was named the new president, and a new Republican faculty was installed.

“Solomon Pool saw the University as a cradle of treason and wanted to ensure that it never gave a home to that kind of secessionist thought again,” Dollar said.

Enrollment dropped as traditional southern elite kept their sons from attending. In 1867, only 13 freshmen enrolled, and the Board of Trustees closed the University in 1871.

The University reopened 4 years later but continued to struggle financially.

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