According to this account, Confederate patriots broke up a peace meeting 150 years ago this month in Greensboro, North Carolina. From the Richmond Daily Dispatch February 6, 1864:
A Peace meeting in North Carolina.
–The New York papers, which copy so much about the Union feeling in North Carolina, will doubtless be a little surprised at the following results of a “peace meeting” recently held in Greensboro’, N. C. The account is from a correspondent of the Raleigh (N. C.)Confederate, dating the 1st inst.
not a traitor (Private Reuben Goodson of Co. G, 52nd North Carolina Infantry Regiment)
The announcement of a “peace meeting” to be held in our town, filled our loyal people with the gloomiest forebodings; but now, as it is over, we breathe more freely. The meeting was a disgrace to our patriotic little town — but it broke up in a row, and a laughable affair it was. Crowds of people came from the country “to see what would be done,” as they said. The three leaders, R. P. D., D. F. C., and J. L., tried to get up a meeting. The Court house bell several times sent out its inviting peals, and finally, at 12 ½ o’clock, the meeting began by one of the leaders trying to speak.–But the crowd cheered, hissed, screamed, and applauded in such a manner that every effort to be heard or to organize was utterly in vain. The resolutions could not be read. The crowd used all kinds of abusive and ridiculous epithets, rendering the appearance of the speaker supremely ludicrous. Even rotten eggs were in demand, and the traitors gave up in despair, and sneaked out of the Court house at 1 o’clock, the meeting having lasted only half an hour.
Late in the day one of the leaders was accosted on the street by a soldier, who asked “if he were one of the Union men?” and upon his replying in the affirmative, gave him a good thrashing, and it left alone might have knocked all his treason out of him, but several persons interfered and he was carried off by a negro man covered with blood.
Regret is experienced by many that the others did not get a thrashing too, but they were smart enough to keep out of the way. The whole town seems to feel indignant at their course, and would like to see them suffer for their attempts to get up a “traitors meeting.” A fourth leader had the sagacity to leave town early on Saturday morning, no doubt having some important business elsewhere which demanded his attention; and his short experience in military matters during the first year of the war having taught him that “discretion is the better part of valor,” and that “he who runs away may live to fight another day.”
Although apparently not at the Greensboro meeting, William Woods Holden “a leader of the North Carolina peace movement. In 1864, he was the unsuccessful ‘peace candidate’ against incumbent Governor Zebulon B. Vance. Vance won overwhelmingly, and Holden carried only three counties: Johnston, Randolph, and Wilkes.”
