Blood and War at my Doorstep

"Between these pages the reader will learn that North Carolina citizens did not idly stand
by as their soldiers marched off to war. The women worked themselves into “patriotic
exhaustion” through Aid Societies. Civilians with different means of support from the
lower class to the plantation mistress wrote the governor complaining of hoarding,
speculation, the tithe, bushwhackers, unionism, conscription, and exemptions.
Never before had so many died due to guerilla warfare. Unknown before starving
women with weapons stormed the merchant or warehouses in search for food. Others
turned to smuggling, spying, or nature’s oldest profession.
Information from period newspapers, as well as mostly unpublished letters, tell their stories."