Felix Sluder… a North Carolina Unionist

A few days ago, Michael Hardy (North Carolina and the Civil War) posted this brief story about Felix Sluder. The story is particularly rich because of Sluder’s pension application.

Hardy wrote…

Sluder lived in the North Fork District of Ashe County in 1860. He was a thirty-six year old farmer. Also in the house hold were his wife and two children. According to Sluder, on April 3, 1862, he was conscripted to serve in the Confederate army. It could be that he was in error about the date, since the first Conscription law enacted in early 1862 set the age limit at 35, and Felix Sluder would have been thirty-eightish. A revision to the law in September 1862 capped the age at 45. Regardless, Sluder was able to evade conscription officers for several months.

According to Sluder “on or about the last days of August 1863 I was captured on Roans Creek Johnston Co. Tenn by the Rebel home guard, while on my way through the lines to join the 4th Tenn. Infantry United States Army. as I had previously enlisted under one Joel Eastridge who were a recruiting officer of said Regt.” Sluder was taken to Camp Vance, and then on to Raleigh, before being sent to the 58th North Carolina. The 58th NCT was stationed near Missionary Ridge at the time. Sluder continued to refuse to join the Confederate army; “they then tried to force me to Enlist in the Confederate army.” Sluder wrote after the war; “and I willfully refused to do so. They then threatened to starve me until I did enlist in their service and I yet willfully refused. They then kept me under arrest until about the 26th day of Nov, 1863 and then about the same day they placed me in the breastworks at Mission Ridge and in the front of battle, where I were captured by the Yankees refusing all the while to enlist under any service for the Confederate authorities. and after bearing all the afore said punishment I still refused to enlist or render any service that ever for the confederates, and that I did not enlist in the Confederate army in no shape nor form.”

Sluder believed that he was placed on the front lines, in the breastworks, to be executed by the advancing Federals as the Confederates retreated. He wrote as much: “I [was] that day forced into the Breastworks so as to have me killed for refusing to enlist in the Confederate service” While this might be true, it smacks a little of the David/Bathsheba/Uriah story in the Old Testament. I find it hard to believe that the Confederates would have just left Sluder, knowing that he would desert. If the members of the 58th NCT understood anything, it was desertion.

As with almost all Confederate prisoners, Sluder was sent to Nashville, Tennessee. He was then transferred to Louisville, Kentucky, where he arrived on December 7, 1863. He transferred to Rock Island, Illinois, where he arrived on December 9, 1863. About six weeks later, Sluder was given the chance to join the Federals, which he did. He enlisted in the United States Navy on or about January 25, 1864, serving on board the USS Ticonderoga. In April 1865, Sluder was given a 10-day furlough. He felt that his health was so bad that he could no longer serve at sea. Towards the middle of April, he joined Company G, 57th Pennsylvania Infantry, and was mustered in as a private. He enlisted under the alias “John Malron, because he was sure that if he was captured by the Confederates, he would be executed for being a deserter. At the end of June 1865, he was honorably discharged from the United States army. Sluder returned to Ashe County where he died October 31, 1907. I assume he is buried in Ashe County, but I am not sure where.

I found most of this remarkable story in Sluder’s pension application. Sluder was not discharged from the US Navy at the end of the war, and was listed as a deserter. This “slight” on his record was later corrected in the 1890s and Sluder received his pension until he passed over.

I find his service in the U.S. Navy (after unwillingly serving with the 58th N.C. Inf., CSA) quite interesting. The USS Ticonderoga experienced active service in 1864, and into 1865 when the ship was involved in the capture of Ft. Fisher, near Wilmington, N.C.

The Story of Stephen S. Shook

In late October 2007, I received an e-mail announcing the illegal removal of a Union veteran’s headstone (in Madison County, N.C.) by a direct descendant (but even more surprisingly, he is also a deputy of Gaston County, N.C.). Apparently the Union veteran had prior service with the Confederate army. Like some of the people with whom I have been acquainted in the past, this descendant must have felt that, despite service in the Union army to the end of the war, his ancestor was more sympathetic to the Confederacy [after all, doesn’t the descendant always know better?]. Other direct descendants did not agree with the removal of the headstone, and therefore the incident became news-worthy. The body of the article can be read in the Gaston [N.C.] Gazette.

There were indeed quite a number of Confederates to “galvanize” and join the ranks of the Union army, most especially under the hard conditions of life while POWs. The POW camp at Pt. Lookout, Maryland was well-known for the large numbers of former Confederates that enlisted in two of six infantry regiments (the 1st United States Volunteer Infantry, being one of the two) that was raised from Confederate POWs and deserters. Most of these regiments ended up on the frontier, defending western forts from native Americans (as further reading about “galvanized Yankees,” I recommend Galvanized Yankees on the Upper Missouri: The Face of Loyalty by Michelle Tucker Butts and The Galvanized Yankees by Dee Brown).

However, in this instance, I felt that something was amiss and I just had to take a closer look at the details behind the matter. Technically, according to pension standards set for Union veterans, if one bore arms voluntarily against the U.S., they were not entitled to a pension as a former Union soldier [such as in the case, of, I think, most “galvanized Yankees”]. In evaluating loyalties in the case of former Union soldiers, I think these pension records set a good standard for the questions that we should ask. For example, what evidence, after the war, is there about the soldier’s loyalty? Is there a pension application showing some sort of testimonial as to sentiment? Did the veteran participate in U.C.V. or G.A.R. activities (or neither)? Did he try to apply for a Confederate pension? Did he apply for a Southern Loyalist claim? Is there some trail of paper showing a consistent trend toward desertion (or was he captured with an otherwise flawless record)? There is a lot to consider, but if a headstone is to be ordered [or replaced], it should reflect the true sentiments of the veteran.

Just as an example, I know of several Confederate headstones from the Veterans Administration that were placed in the twentieth century [in the Shenandoah Valley] and should have never been placed (based on the reluctance of the men to serve – especially when they were conscripted. One soldier of whom I am aware was a member of the Stonewall Brigade for a grand total of 35 days! At the end of this “lengthy” term of service, he was exempted from service because he was a shoemaker. To prevent being taken in by conscription hunters again, the man headed north into Ohio and spent the rest of the war there before returning to Virginia. Yet, a visitor to his grave today, upon seeing the famous distinctive pointed headstone made for Confederate veterans, would be mislead into believeing that this man was a true and faithful soldier of the Confederate army.

Anyway, back to this subject of the newspaper article…

Looking into the records of this veteran (Stephen S. Shook) with the Union headstone, I came to the conclusion that there should be no mistaking his loyalties. Shook applied for (application #377637) and received a pension (certificate #471516) from the U.S. government as early as June 1880. At that time, the U.S. government wasn’t messing around with sifting through loyalties and letting applications slide through the system (though they weren’t nearly as strict later in the early 1900s). I didn’t have a chance to visit the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and personally view these records, but I am familiar enough with these records to know that Shook had to have some serious testimonials from friends and/or comrades as to his having not voluntarily borne arms against the United States. Incidentally, Shook’s wife received a widow’s pension not long after he died in 1902.

Furthermore, a quick review of Shook’s military service revealed that Shook originally enlisted (possibly conscripted?) as a private in Co. A, 58th North Carolina Infantry on 10 June 1862 (at the age of 30). He transferred to Company B, of the 5th Battalion N.C. Cavalry on 27 June 1862 and transferred once again on 3 August 1863 to Co. K, of the 6th N.C. Cavalry. Not long after this transfer, he deserted (2 September 1863) at Loudon, Tennessee.

According to the newspaper article, family members (other than the one who removed the headstone), recalled that Shook deserted from the Confederate army in order to attend his nine year-old daughter’s funeral (who, according to the family story, died in a house fire). “After the funeral, Shook couldn’t return to fight with the Confederacy. And for whatever reason, he later enlisted with a Union regiment out of Tennessee… He tried to come home for the funeral, but they wouldn’t let him and he had to go AWOL.” By the close of the war, as the story goes, “Shook had become a sergeant in Company M, Eighth Regiment of the Tennessee Cavalry, according to the tombstone issued by the federal government and placed over his grave in 1920.”

Story adopted from the February 24, 2008 post on Cenantua’s Blog.