Using Military Service to Ascend to the Governor's Mansion: Zebulon B. Vance
- Judkin Browning
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
By: Landon Benfield, January 19, 2026
Zebulon Baird Vance was a 30-year-old U.S. Representative with a bright political future ahead of him when he reluctantly decided to become a Confederate soldier in 1861. Vance, a native of Buncombe County, had served in Congress since 1858 after graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill six years earlier. A conditional unionist, Vance initially advised against secession writing that “[w]e have everything to gain and nothing on earth to lose by delay, but by too hasty action we may take a fatal step that we never can retrace—may lose a heritage that we can never recover though we seek it earnestly and with tears.”[1] However after shots were fired on Fort Sumter and President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion, Vance realized war was inevitable. He cast Lincoln as the aggressor who wished to end slavery. He argued that it was in the best “interest of the master, of the United States, of the world, nay of humanity itself, [to], keep the slave in his bondage.”[2]
On May 4, 1861, Vance put his political career on hold and returned home to Buncombe County to organize the “Rough and Ready Guards” to fight for the Confederacy.[3] After North Carolina seceded on May 20, 1861, the “Rough and Ready Guards” became Company F of the 14th North Carolina Infantry with Vance was its captain. But the ambitious Vance did not remain in that junior officer position for long. On August 27 he was elected colonel of the 26th North Carolina and traveled with his new regiment to Bogue Banks, near Fort Macon, to defend the coast.
Vance proved to be a charismatic leader who earned the admiration of his soldiers, but he was no trained military man. He recognized the political utility of military service and yearned for a general's star. But he knew a military career could provide more political opportunities in the Confederacy. His officers did not always appreciate his limited focus on military skills. Nineteen-year-old Lt. Col. Henry King Burgwyn, Jr., a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, lamented the free-wheeling nature of the men in Vance’s regiment. Burgwyn blamed it on Vance’s loose hand: “As for discipline not the faintest idea of it has ever entered his head.” Burgwyn declared that Vance’s “abilities appear to me to be more overated [sic] than those of any other person I know of.” While Burgwyn worked hard to instill rigor and better discipline in the regiment, he confessed he was “heartily tired of being under [Vance’s] command.”[4] At least the regiment saw no prospect of action for several months.
That changed in March 1862 when Brigadier General Lawrence O’Bryan Branch ordered Vance to bring his regiment to New Bern to defend against Union General Ambrose Burnside’s coastal expedition. On March 14, the 26th North Carolina participated in the Battle of New Bern, where the regiment fought for five hours. Unaware that their allies had retreated, Vance found his unit facing the enemy alone: “[b]y 11 Oclk every one of our regiments had left except mine, the enemy had crossed the trenches on my left gone through my camp and got half a mile in my rear toward New Bern before I was aware of it.”[5] Despite Vance’s obliviousness, he did manage to escape with his men across Bryce’s Creek, though he almost drowned in the process.[6] Impressed by Vance’s leadership on a grim day, Branch wrote that “[n]o troops could have behaved better than the Twenty-sixth” considering the odds they faced.[7] Vance at that moment became a local war hero in eastern North Carolina whose reputation would soon reach even greater heights.
After its glowing performance at New Bern, Vance’s regiment was ordered to Virginia during June when the Confederacy began rallying all available troops to protect Richmond against General George McClellan’s Army. The 26th was assigned to Maj. Gen. Benjamin Huger’s division but saw no action in the Seven Days Battles until Malvern Hill on July 1. Because of confusing orders from General Robert E. Lee, Brigadier General Lewis Armistead began the assault when Federal batteries were being moved to restock on ammunition, signaling the general attack by supporting Confederate brigades. Luckily for the 26th North Carolina, they were in Brigadier General Robert Ransom, Jr.’s brigade, which attacked late in the evening. Vance and his men advanced “under as fearful fire as mind can conceive,” according to Ransom, and approached no closer than 100 yards from the Federal batteries before being repelled.[8] Despite Ransom’s brigade suffering 499 casualties Vance emerged unwounded from the assault. It would be the climax of Vance’s military career since the world of politics soon captured his attention.
Prior to Malvern Hill, Vance contemplated reentering politics, as many political peers and newspapers encouraged him to run for governor. In response to the queries of the Fayetteville Observer in June 1862 he had concluded that “if my fellow-citizens believe that I could serve the great Cause better as Governor than I am now doing, and should see proper to confer this responsibility upon me without solicitation on my part, I should not feel at liberty to decline it, however conscious of my own unworthiness.”[9] After Malvern Hill, Vance’s political path cleared even further when Governor Henry Toole Clark announced his decision to retire instead of seeking reelection. Vance capitalized on his military reputation to earn the nomination for governor by a Whig-Unionist coalition known as the Conservative Party. Vance’s strategy was to portray himself as primarily a military man who disdained political campaigning and continued defending the South. Instead, Vance let editors Edward J. Hale of the Fayetteville Observer and William Woods Holden of the North-Carolina Standard manage his campaign.[10] Vance’s opponent was William J. Johnston, an openly secessionist Democrat and railroad builder who had never been a soldier. In a culture where military experience provided political legitimacy Johnston was heavily disadvantaged. The passage of the Conscription Act, rampant inflation, and military defeats in the western theater had also weakened support for secessionist Democrats like Johnston. When the election occurred on August 7, 1862, Vance received nearly 73% of the total votes for governor.[11]
While resting and recovering at Petersburg, Virginia, Vance learned of his election victory on August 12 and immediately resigned from his commission, transferring the 26th to the command of the young Burgwyn.[12] Leaving his military career behind, Vance embarked for Raleigh to be inaugurated as governor on September 8.[13] In just fifteen months the 32-year-old Congressman-turned-Confederate-officer had become a national figure after abandoning his political career to fight for slavery’s preservation. However, Vance recognized that he could have never ascended the political ladder so quickly without first being a soldier. It was a clever gambit that paid off handsomely thanks to bravery on the battlefield, and a healthy dose of luck.
NOTES
[1] Zebulon Vance to William Dickerson, December 11, 1860, in The Papers of Zebulon Baird Vance, ed. Frontis W. Johnston, vol 1, (North Carolina Office of Archives and History, 1963) 72.
[2] Zebulon Vance, March 16, 1860 address to the U.S. House of Representatives, quoted in Thomas Calder “Asheville Archives: Zebulon Vance Argues in Favor of Slavery, 1860.” June 16, 2020. https://mountainx.com/news/asheville-archives-zebulon-vance-denounces-abolitionists-1860/.
[3] Weymouth T. Jordan Jr., ed., North Carolina Troops 1861-1865: A Roster, vol. 7 (North Carolina Office of Archives and History, 1991), 455.
[4] Earl J. Hess, Lee’s Tar Heels: The Pettigrew-Kirkland-MacRae Brigade (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 9; Judkin Browning, Shifting Loyalties: The Union Military Occupation of Eastern North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 52.
[5] Zebulon Vance to Mrs. Z. B. Vance, March 20, 1861, in The Papers of Zebulon Baird Vance, vol 1, ed. Frontis W. Johnston (North Carolina Office of Archives and History, 1963), 128.
[6] Zebulon Vance to Mrs. Z. B. Vance, March 20, 1861.
[7] Lawrence O’Bryan Branch to Theophilus Hunter Holmes, March 26, 1861, in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, ser. I, vol IX, ed. Robert N. Scott (United States War Department, 1892), 246.
[8] Robert Ransom Jr., Malvern Hill Battle Report, July 11, 1862, in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, ser. I, vol XI, ed. Robert N. Scott (United States War Department, 1892), 794-795.
[9] Zebulon Vance to the editors of the Fayetteville Observer, June 16, 1862, in The Papers of Zebulon Baird Vance, vol 1, ed. Frontis W. Johnston (North Carolina Office of Archives and History, 1963), 146.
[10] Ricard E. Yates, “Zebulon B. Vance: as War Governor of North Carolina, 1862–1865,” Journal of Southern History 3, no.1 (Feb 1937): 47, https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Journals/JSH/3/1/Zebulon_Vance_as_War_Governor_of_North_Carolina*.html.
[11] Ricard E. Yates, “Zebulon B. Vance,” 72.
[12] Weymouth T. Jordan Jr., ed, North Carolina Troops 1861-1865: A Roster, vol 7 (North Carolina Office of Archives and History, 1991), 463.
[13] Richard E. Yates, “Zebulon B. Vance,” 50.
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