A Rebel with a Cause: Exploring Confederate desertion and related factors in Forsyth County, NC (2012)

Undergraduate: Maia Call

Faculty Advisor: John Florin
Department: Geography

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Although much research, both historical and within the social sciences, has been done on the Civil War, little of this research has focused on the interaction between the spatial proximity of individuals during the antebellum period and their behavior during the Civil War. This study works to fill this gap in the social history of the Civil War through an exploratory spatial analysis of Forsyth County, North Carolina at the district level. Forsyth County is known neither for its excessive number of deserters from the Confederate Army nor its blind patriotism to the Confederate government. As a rural county with no strong bias for or against the Confederacy it is an ideal microcosm for an examination of how space affects the way in which soldiers act during the Civil War. This study was conducted by combining a traditional database built using the 1860 Federal Slave Schedule for Forsyth County, the 1860 Federal Census for Forsyth County, and the Confederate Service Records for a sample of 500 Forsyth County men who served in the Confederate Army with a spatial database constructed using ArcGIS and historic maps of Forsyth County from this period. The variables considered in this study include desertion, illiteracy, wealth, age of enlistment, slave ownership, fatherhood, and marital status. An examination of these data shows that the spatial effects of these variables differ in strength but that desertion from the Confederate Army does appear to be affected by space.