A new exhibit at the Rural Heritage Museum at Mars Hill University hopes to show people that the Civil War played out in North Carolina in complicated ways.
The mountain communities of Appalachia mostly wanted to be left alone, says museum director Les Reker, but were conscripted and tormented by Confederate leaders. The massacre of 13 “Unionist” men and boys at Shelton Laurel was a brutal example of how fractious the Civil War was in western North Carolina.
Host Frank Stasio talks with Les Reker and journalist David Forbes, who wrote about the killings in a recent article for Scalawag magazine.
