April 26
On this day in 1864, William Pleasant Craig (1840-1874), a deserter from the 6th North Carolina Cavalry, was arrested and confined in the Asheville jail. A 20-year old shoemaker in Buncombe County living with his widowed mother and sister when the war broke out, Craig enlisted in the “Rough and Ready Guards,” led by his former congressman (and future governor) Zebulon B. Vance. On February 18, 1862, he transferred to the Confederate Navy for duty on the ironclad C.S.S. Virginia (formerly the USS Merrimack), and participated in its famous battle with the USS Monitor at Hampton Roads. After the Virginia was scuttled in May 1862, Craig returned to land service, enlisting–though the exact date remains uncertain–in Company D, 7th Battalion N.C. Cavalry, which became Company C, 6th Regiment N.C. Cavalry. His loyalty, however, proved fleeting. He deserted on July 18, 1863, at Sweetwater, Tennessee. While hiding out, he and some fellow deserters stole money and a sword from the home of a cavalry captain. The wronged captain, upon learning the identity of the thieves, sought retribution. He dispatched a posse, which on this day, arrested Craig at his mother’s home. Justice was swift. On July 6, 1864, Craig was court-martialed for desertion and robbery, and sentenced to be shot. In a desperate bid to save her son, his mother pleaded with Asheville Judge John Lancaster Bailey to grant mercy. Deeply moved, Bailey penned an appeal to Governor Vance, recounting how Craig’s mother had taken the blame upon herself, insisting that “while absent from his command, she advised him not to return, kept him out and harbored him.” Vance, respecting Lancaster’s opinion and sensitive to concerns of his constituents, intervened, and the sentence was suspended on September 12, 1864. Though spared by war, fate had its own designs. A decade later, on July 8, 1874, Craig was killed by a lightning strike while plowing a field on his farm in Madison County.
John Lancaster Bailey, who intervened on Craig’s behalf at the request of his mother.
Sources:
Louis H. Manarin and Weymouth T. Jordan, comps., North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, 2:471,799, 5:447; Aldo S. Perry, Civil War Courts-Martial, 283-284; 1860 U.S. Census: Buncombe County; Asheville Weekly Citizen, July 16, 1874; John Lancaster Bailey to Zebulon B. Vance, August 29, 1864, Governors Papers, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh
