Between July and September 1863 about one hundred “peace meetings” were held in North Carolina, most of them in the central Piedmont region of the state. Some of the speakers at the rallies called for negotiations with the North resulting in Confederate independence, while others advocated reunion on terms that would preserve slavery. William H. Holden, the editor of the Raleigh North Carolina Standard and an opponent of secession in 1861, became the leader of the “Peace Party.” His support for an “honorable peace” caused a breach with his political ally, Governor Zebulon B. Vance, a critic of the Davis administration who supported continued prosecution of the war. A successful lawyer from the Piedmont region who had opposed secession, Jonathan Worth was elected state treasurer in 1862. He wrote about the peace movement to Jesse G. Henshaw, a farmer and mill owner in Randolph County. The peace meetings ended in early September after Confederate soldiers ransacked Holden’s newspaper offices and Governor Vance issued a proclamation denouncing the movement. Nevertheless, candidates who advocated seeking an “honorable peace” would win six out of ten seats when the state voted in the fall for representatives to the Second Confederate Congress.
RALEIGH Aug. 24, 1863.
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I hardly know whether I am in favor of the peace meetings or not. On the one hand, it is very certain that the President and his advisers will not make peace, if not forced into it by the masses and the privates in the army. Their cry echoed by almost every press is: “Independence, or the last man and the last dollar.” The North will not make peace on the basis of Independence. The real question which nobody—not even Holden—will squarely present is, shall we fight on with certain desolation and impoverishment and probable ultimate defeat; or make peace on the basis of reconstruction? Nearly every public man—every journal, political and religious, and every politician, in the fervor of their patriotism, has vociferously declared in favor of “the last man and the last dollar” cry. These classes cannot be consistent unless they still cry war. Many believe the masses in their saner hours, never approved the war and would rather compromise on the basis of the Constitution of the U. S. with such additional securities against any future rupture as could be agreed on. If there be any sense in peace meetings they mean reconstruction. They may rather do mischief if they are not so imposing as to force the administration to reconstruction. They will be impotent and mischievous if the army is still for war to the last man and the last dollar. I do not know the sentiments of the rank and file of the army.
I am for peace on almost any terms and fear we shall never have it until the Yankees dictate it. Upon the whole I would not go into a peace meeting now or advise others to go into one, particularly in Randolph—but I have no repugnance to them in other places and see no other chance to get to an early end of this wicked war, but by the action of the masses who have the fighting to do. If an open rupture occur between Gov. V. and Mr. Holden, it will be ruinous to us. There ought to be none and I trust there will be none. There is no difference between them that justifies a breach. The Governor concedes the right of the people to hold meetings and express their wishes, but he deems such meetings inexpedient and tending to dissatisfaction and disorganization in the army and that no honorable peace can be made, after we cease to present a strong military front. The Gov. acts consistently and in the eminent difficult position he occupied, I doubt whether any pilot could manage the crippled ship in such a storm with more skill. Repress all expressions of dissatisfaction against him. He values the extravagant eulogiums of the fire-eaters at their worth. They are playing an adroit game. They would get up dissention between the Gov. and Holden and then break up the Conservative party and seize the helm of Government.
NEW SALEM.