Booknotes: Deserter Declarations

New Arrival:

• Deserter Declarations: Letters from North Carolinians Who Abandoned Their Confederate Units edited by Judkin Browning (UGA Press, 2026).

It's easy to see why Judkin Browning selected North Carolina for his study of deserter appeals. In addition to his earlier published work on the Civil War in the state, North Carolina was a natural choice given that, among the Confederate states, it "had the highest number of deserters. The Old North State also represents a microcosm of the entire South’s geography and demography." Browning's Deserter Declarations: Letters from North Carolinians Who Abandoned Their Confederate Units "explores nearly two hundred letters from Confederate deserters to Governor Zebulon B. Vance from 1861 to 1865."

The letters, "from 169 individuals referring to 228 North Carolina deserters," were written by soldiers and citizens alike but "usually take the form of humble petitions written by those who were hiding in the woods or languishing in prison" (pp. 1-3).

More from the description: Browning's study "shares the voices of deserters or friends and family petitioning on their behalf. Browning helps us understand who deserters were and lets us tease out some of the factors that motivated soldiers to leave their posts. These letters add vivid specificity to the often-contentious debates over deserters in the Confederacy and shed light on the changing attitudes of deserters over the course of the war." These appeal letters petered out in number by the final six months of the war, a situation Browning primarily attributes to soldiers being "no longer willing to risk their lives to rejoin the army in a doomed cause" (pg. 1).

The letters are presented chronologically in six chapter groupings corresponding to time intervals of varying lengths. In addition to a general introduction, Browning contributes chapter introductions and footnotes identifying persons, places, and events mentioned in the letters. Browning has also posted supplemental material related to this study at the website www.tarheeltroops.org.