At this point, I would like to tell you about my great-great grandfather, Bryant Carden, who joined the Confederacy. Bryant was known for writing wonderful letters in calligraphy, and the illustration below, of a bird in flight, is an example.
When he later wrote about the day he enlisted, he was living in Macon County, married with a two-year old son and had a small farm.
On that day, he said that he had gone to Franklin to buy supplies and encountered a crowd of people and a recruiter who was giving a speech asking for volunteers to join the Confederacy.
Bryant later noted that the recruiter did not mention slavery as an issue in the impending war but talked about “state rights that were in conflict with federal law.”
Later, he was told that the recruiter had been told to emphasize the impending conflict in this manner if we were talking to potential inductees in a region that had few slaves. In fact, Bryant said that several weeks later when he was marching through Virginia, he saw his first slaves.
Further, his recruiter indicated that it would probably be a brief conflict and that the Confederate soldiers would be home “by Christmas” with a Confederate uniform and a rifle.
At any rate, Bryant and a number of his friends enlisted. I have always felt that Bryant perceived the impending conflict as an adventure; Brant was trained in Raleigh and was immediately assigned to the 16th Infantry Regiment where he participated in a series skirmishes and battles, including Second Manassas.
Thousands of men died in these encounters, and Bryant participated in some of the most brutal fighting of the war. The excessive violence of these battles had a significant effect on Bryant — certainly by the time he lost his arm at Seven Pines and ended up in a hospital which was captured by Union troops where Bryant became a prisoner with dysentery until March 8, 1863, when he was exchanged for a Union prisoner and was officially discharged.
When Bryant returned home, he spent a harsh winter attempting to fix his plow so he could plow his fields in the spring. It was at this point in 1864 that he was visited by the Home Guard.
The purpose of the Home Guard was to collect food and supplies for the Confederate forces. In fact, a law had been passed that required the people living in Macon County to provide 10% of their food and animals to the Home Guard. Over the years, the Home Guard became more demanding of the farms in the region and had even resorted to violence, taking farm animals and frequently raiding smokehouses.
The Home Guard found Bryant in the field plowing and when he resisted their seizure of his mule, the leader promptly shot Bryant in the face.
He died immediately, and his body was dragged to his front yard and hanged.
Prior to riding away, they cut Bryant’s body down and threw it on the front porch of his home.
When Bryant’s wife realized what was happening, she ran into the woods, looking for help, and left an infant son on the porch. Help was about ten miles away and she didn’t return until the next day. The terrified child was found in the “chimney corner” in the house.
My great-grandmother told me that the child would become her husband, but she said that he was a man who rarely laughed. He became a photographer and she said that the trunk under her bed contained hundreds of photographs of the people living in Cowee. Then, she picked up the last letter that Bryant wrote and asked me to read the sentence near the end of the letter.
“It is beginning to rain and I must stop writing now.”
I noticed that the letter was covered with blurred spots where the raindrops had fallen.
“Don’t you find that letter wondrous strange?” she said.
I agreed that it was so. Then, she reached and pulled me to her and folded Bryant’s letter and placed it inside my shirt.
“I have been thinking about giving that letter to somebody, and I have decided to give it to you,” she said. “Don’t you forget what they did to Bryant.”
Now, finally, let me say something about that little gray soldier on the courthouse steps.
I would like to think that he honors Bryant Carden. I am a storyteller, and I am proud of Bryant. I have known ever since I read the Iliad and the Odyssey, that there are people who fought with courage on both sides of every major conflict. Perhaps he went to the induction center as he thought he thought it would be an adventure but, he served with honor and distinction. So did 160 other veterans. When he fell in that cornfield, he was an honored victim of that war.
Some of my best friends are “missionaries.” They are all often filled with an energy that prompts them to devote their time and hard work to activities that enrich our community. But when we have issues that deal with our past — and it is “our” past, it is not the past that you brought with you when you came here — please butt out.
(Born in 1935, Gary Carden is one of Southern Appalachia’s most revered literary figures, earning significant recognition for his books and plays over decades — including the Book of the Year Award from the Appalachian Writers Association in 2001, the Brown Hudson Award for Folklore in 2006 and the North Carolina Arts Council Award for Literature in 2012. Carden also holds an honorary doctorate from Western Carolina University for his work in storytelling and folklore. His 2024 book, “Stories I lived to tell,” is available at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, or online through uncpress.org.)