Robert B. Vance

Vance was born in 1828, near present-day Weaverville, in the old homestead on Reems Creek, at Buncombe County, North Carolina.[1][2] He was eldest son of David Vance II and Mira Margaret Baird.[2][3]

He was named for his paternal uncle, Robert Brank Vance, a former congressman who was killed in a duel during his 1827 campaign.[4]

Vance came from a Scotch-Irish, slave-owning family, with a history of military and public service, including his paternal grandfather, who served in the Revolutionary War, and his own father, who fought in the War of 1812.[5][6][7] His younger brother was Zebulon B. Vance.

Vance had always grown up around slaves. When he was twelve, his father owned 12 slaves, the names of which eight are known – Sandy, Leah, Ann, Aggy, May, Bob, Richard and Venus.[6][7][8][9] Venus, the eldest of his father's slaves, had raised Vance and his siblings, and was referred as "Mammy Venus."[10][11]

In total, the slaves tended to the Vance children, cooked the family's meals, made the housing wares, fetched the water, cultivated the farm crops, and, otherwise, allowing Vance to spend his formative years pursuing his education and reading the classics from a 500-volume library that his family inherited from his uncle.[10][12][4]

Like his brother, Zeb, Vance was a Whig who subscribed to the political philosophy of Henry Clay.[2]

When Vance was twenty, he was elected clerk of the Buncombe County Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions, the position his father held until his death.[2] Rather than seek re-election, in 1858, he decided to become a merchant in Asheville.[2] Later, he became the joint Secretary and Treasurer of the Holston Conference Female College before it closed during the war.[13]

During the 1860 presidential election, Vance supported the Constitutional Union Party candidate, John Bell.[2]

Following the election, Vance remained a devout Federalist, until President Lincoln began organizing troops, after southern states began seceding from the Union just a month after the election.[2]

After a lengthy recovery from his illness, Vance was placed in charge of the North Carolina–Tennessee mountains under the command of General Braxton Bragg, with orders to harass the Union flanks and disrupt the flow of enemy supplies.[2][14]

On January 14, 1864, he was assigned a mission at Cosby Creek, Tennessee.[14] Vance intercepted a major supply train going to General Ambrose Burnside's troops near Knoxville, but when he tried to take the wagons to North Carolina, Vance, and nearly all of his troops, were captured by Sergeant Everett W. Anderson of the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry.[2][14]

Vance was detained at various Union prisons in Nashville, Louisville, Fort Chase (Ohio), and Fort Delaware until a former prisoner of Vance's, Reverend Nathaniel G. Taylor, intervened on Vance's behalf, as Vance had treated him well and, eventually, released him[2]

President Lincoln issued Vance a special parole, allowing him to buy clothes for other Confederate soldiers. On March 10, 1865, Lincoln granted Vance a conditional full pardon, allowing him to return to North Carolina, but requiring him not to fight again.[2]

Vance married Harriett V. McElroy in 1851. They had six children, two of whom died before adulthood. Harriet died in 1885.[17]

In 1892, he married Lizzie R. Cook.[17] They had no children.

Vance was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.[2]

Prior to the start of the war in 1860, Robert owned seven slaves, including a 32-year-old female slave and two mulatto children, aged 2 and 1.[18][8]

Vance was a Master Mason of Mount Hermon Lodge #118, in Asheville, in 1866, 1867 and 1873.[19] He was Grand Master of Masons of North Carolina in 1868 and 1869.[20]

Vance was a published poet. He released the following collections of his work:[2]

• Heart-throbs from the Mountains[21] (some pieces were written while he was imprisoned in Fort Delaware)
• Oneka
• The White Plume of the Cherokee
• Shadows of Mountain Life