Tar Heel Terrors

The twenty-plus stories in this new collection by Michael Renegar, author of Roadside Revenants and Other North Carolina Ghosts and Legends, range geographically from the coast to the mountains of North Carolina. Some are retellings of classic Tar Heel ghost stories and legends while others stem from the personal experiences of the author and his friends and family. Some stories are of the supernatural, some interesting curiosities, and others are just plain weird. Read about the ghost of a Revolutionary War hero, a haunted road in Forsyth County, a vengeful spirit trapped in a gold mine, and more. Whether read around a campfire or in the safety of your own home, these tales are sure to leave your spine tingling.

Soon after the September 11 attacks in 2001, the United States captured hundreds of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and around the world. By the following January the first of these prisoners arrived at the U.S. military's prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they were subject to President George W. Bush's executive order authorizing their trial by military commissions. Jess Bravin, the "Wall Street Journal"'s Supreme Court correspondent, was there within days of the prison's opening, and has continued ever since to cover the U.S. effort to create a parallel justice system for enemy aliens. A maze of legal, political, and moral issues has stood in the way of justice--issues often raised by military prosecutors who found themselves torn between duty to the chain of command and their commitment to fundamental American values.While much has been written about Guantanamo and brutal detention practices following 9/11, Bravin is the first to go inside the Pentagon's prosecution team to expose the real-world legal consequences of those policies. Bravin describes cases undermined by inadmissible evidence obtained through torture, clashes between military lawyers and administration appointees, and political interference in criminal prosecutions that would be shocking within the traditional civilian and military justice systems. With the Obama administration planning to try the alleged 9/11 conspirators at Guantanamo--and vindicate the legal experiment the Bush administration could barely get off the ground--"The Terror Courts" could not be more timely.

Though the Civil War ended in April 1865, the conflict between Unionists and Confederates continued. The bitterness and rancor resulting from the collapse of the Confederacy spurred an ongoing cycle of hostility and bloodshed that made the Reconstruction period a violent era of transition. The violence was so pervasive that the federal government deployed units of the U.S. Army in North Carolina and other southern states to maintain law and order and protect blacks and Unionists. Bluecoats and Tar Heels: Soldiers and Civilians in Reconstruction North Carolina tells the story of the army's twelve-year occupation of North Carolina, a time of political instability and social unrest. Author Mark Bradley details the complex interaction between the federal soldiers and the North Carolina civilians during this tumultuous period. The federal troops attempted an impossible juggling act: protecting the social and political rights of the newly freed black North Carolinians while conciliating their former enemies, the ex-Confederates. The officers sought to minimize violence and unrest during the lengthy transition from war to peace, but they ultimately proved far more successful in promoting sectional reconciliation than in protecting the freedpeople. Bradley's exhaustive study examines the military efforts to stabilize the region in the face of opposition from both ordinary citizens and dangerous outlaws such as the Regulators and the Ku Klux Klan. By 1872, the widespread, organized violence that had plagued North Carolina since the close of the war had ceased, enabling the bluecoats and the ex-Confederates to participate in public rituals and social events that served as symbols of sectional reconciliation. This rapprochement has been largely forgotten, lost amidst the postbellum barrage of Lost Cause rhetoric, causing many historians to believe that the process of national reunion did not begin until after Reconstruction. Rectifying this misconception, Bluecoats and Tar Heels illuminates the U.S. Army's significant role in an understudied aspect of Civil War reconciliation.

An amazing assortment of twenty-three stories and ten "short shorts" comprise this popular selection. More than merely entertaining, Tar Heel Ghosts captures the "spirit" of North Carolina's past. North Carolina's ghost stories have infinite variety. There are mountainous ghosts and seafaring ghosts; colonial ghosts and modern ghosts; gentle ghosts and roistering ghosts; delicate lady ghosts and fishwife ghosts; home ghosts and ghosts that just want to be noticed. Mysterious signs and symbols appear--small black crosses, galloping white horses, strangely moving lights, floating veils, lifelike apparitions, skulls, dripping blood, and "things that go bump in the night." At least one North Carolina ghost got himself into a court record, and other ghostly phenomena have attracted scientific investigation. These stories have a marked realistic North Carolina flavor. The reader finds mountain cabins and antebellum mansions, Indian trails, water wheels, river steamboats, railroad trains, slave labor on plantations, revenuers and stills in the mountains, a burial in St. James Churchyard in Wilmington, Winston-Salem before the days of Winston, Raleigh in the 1860s, Fayetteville during World War II, and even a new suburb haunted by old spooks.

In the last three decades North Carolina has witnessed a remarkable growth in population, economic development, and political importance, and it now ranks as the tenth most populous state in the Union. The Tar Heel State: A History of North Carolina constitutes the most comprehensive and inclusive single-volume chronicle of the state's storied past to date, culminating with an attentive look at recent events that have transformed North Carolina into a southern megastate.

During the 1890s, North Carolina witnessed a political revolution as the newly formed Populist Party joined with the Republicans to throw out do-nothing, conservative Democrats. Focusing on political transformation, electoral reform, and new economic policies to aid poor and struggling farmers, the Populists and their coalition partners took power at all levels in the only southern state where Populists gained statewide office. For a brief four years, the Populists and Republicans gave an object lesson in progressive politics in which whites and African Americans worked together for the betterment of the state and the lives of the people. James M. Beeby examines the complex history of the rise and fall of the Populist Party in the late nineteenth century. His book explores the causes behind the political insurgency of small farmers in the state. It offers the first comprehensive and in-depth study of the movement, focusing on local activists as well as state leadership. It also elucidates the relationship between Populists and African Americans, the nature of cooperation between Republicans and Populists, and local dynamics and political campaigning in the Gilded Age. In a last-gasp attempt to return to power, the Democrats focused on the Populists' weak point--race. The book closes with an analysis of the virulent campaign of white supremacy engineered by threatened Democrats and the ultimate downfall of already quarreling Populists and Republicans. With the defeat of the Populist ticket, North Carolina joined other southern states by entering an era of segregation and systematic disfranchisement. James M. Beeby is an assistant professor of history at Indiana University Southeast.

A conversation on the challenges of immigration that includes the voices of recent immigrants, the documented and undocumented. A combination of analysis, story, and artistic expression opens up the complexities of immigration for undergraduates and for all Christians. De la Torre's goal is to initiate a civil conversation that can replace the politics of fear that now dominates discussions of immigration.