of their produce. It is not strange
that an intemperate reaction against the planters and their leadership
followed. The illusion spread that they were not doing their share of
the fighting; and as rich men were permitted to hire substitutes to
represent them in the army, this really baseless report was easily
propped up in the public mind with what appeared to be reason.

In North Carolina, where the peasant farmer was a larger political
factor than in any other State, this feeling against the Confederate
Government because of the tax in kind was most dangerous. In the course
of the summer, while the military fortunes of the Confederacy were
toppling at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, the North Carolina farmers in
a panic of self-preservation held numerous meetings of protest and
denunciation. They expressed their thoughtless terror in resolutions
asserting that the action of Congress "in secret session, without
consulting with their constituents at home, taking from the hard
laborers of the Confederacy one-tenth of the people's living, instead of
taking back their own currency in tax, is unjust and tyrannical." Other
resolutions called the tax "unconstitutional, anti-republican, and
oppressive"; and still others pledged the farmers "to resist to the
bitter end any such monarchical tax."

A leader of the discontented in North Carolina was found in W. W.
Holden, the editor of the Raleigh Progress, who before the war had
attempted to be spokesman for the men of small property by advocating
taxes on slaves and similar measures. He proposed as the conclusion of
the whole matter the opening of negotiations for peace. We shall see
later how deep-seated was this singular delusion that peace could be had
for the asking. In 1863, however, many men in North Carolina took up the
suggestion with delight. Jonathan Worth wrote in his diary, on hearing
that the influential North Carolina Standard had come out for peace:
"I still abhor, as I always did, this accursed war and the wicked men,
North and South, who inaugurated it. The whole country at the North and
the South is a great military despotism." With such discontent in the
air, the elections in North Carolina drew near. The feeling was intense
and riots occurred. Newspaper offices were demolished--among them
Holden's, to destroy which a detachment of passing soldiers converted
itself into a mob. In the western counties deserters from the army,
combined in bands, were joined by othe