Sapphire Blue Poem Essay

Zebulon Vance
AKA Zebulon Baird Vance

Born: 13-May-1830
Birthplace: Buncombe County, NC
Died: 14-Apr-1894
Location of death: Asheville, NC
Cause of death: unspecified
Remains: Buried, Riverside Cemetery, Asheville, NC

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Occupation: Politician
Party Affiliation: Democratic [1]

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Governor and Senator from N. Carolina

The American politician Zebulon Vance was born in Buncombe County, North Carolina, on the 13th of May 1830. He was educated at Washington College, at Salem, Tennessee, and the University of North Carolina (1851-52). Entering politics as a Whig, he was elected solicitor of Buncombe county (1852) and a member of the state House of Commons (1854), and served in the national House of Representatives from December 1858 until the 3rd of March 1861. As captain of a company in the 14th and as colonel of the 26th North Carolina regiments, he took part in the Virginia campaigns of 1861-62. From 1862 until the close of the war he was Governor of the state, and from the 20th of May to the 5th of July 1865, when he was released on parole, was held as a prisoner by the United States authorities in Washington. Having been elected to the United States Senate in 1870 and been refused admission because his disabilities -- due to his participation in the war -- had not been removed, he took the lead in the fight against "carpet-bag" misrule and was chosen Governor in the political revolution of 1876, serving in 1877-79. He was again elected to the Senate in 1878 and was re-elected in 1884 and 1890, serving from March 1879 until his death. Senator Vance was a typical Southern Whig. He disliked slavery and he hated secession. In common with other Whigs, he was forced to remain in the Democratic party after the war by the fear of negro domination. He died at Asheville, North Carolina, on the 14th of April 1894.

. Vance was married twice. His first wife, Harriette Espy of Quaker Meadows, Burke County, whom he married on 3 Aug. 1853, bore him four sons: Robert Espy (b. 1854, died young), Charles Noel (b. 1856), David Mitchell (b. 1857), and Zebulon Baird, Jr. (b. 1860). She died in 1878

Refusing all overtures to be a candidate for the Confederate Congress Vance raised a company of "Rough and Ready Guards" and on 4 May 1861 marched off to war with a captain's commission. By June the "Guards" had become Company F, Fourteenth North Carolina Regiment, and were on duty in Virginia. In August Vance was elected colonel of the Twenty-sixth North Carolina, which he ably led in battle at New Bern in March 1862 and shortly afterwards in the Seven Days fighting before Richmond.

Although Vance was a good combat officer, he could not remove himself completely from politics. Thus he gladly accepted the Conservative party nomination for governor in 1862. The Conservatives, composed primarily of old-line Union Whigs, were led by W. W. Holden, editor of the North Carolina Standard and a bitter critic of President Jefferson Davis. The Confederate party, as the Democrats called themselves, selected "original secessionist" and railroad executive William Johnston of Mecklenburg County. The result was an overwhelming victory for Vance but not a verdict for reunion. It was more an expression of dissatisfaction with state and Confederate leadership and trying war conditions.

As war governor Vance worked

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