1855-1879
If you had lived through this 25-year period, you could look back at the end of the 1870s and still have trouble believing everything that had happened in the life of the county and of the country. This is just a sampling of what you would have seen, from this historical rearview perspective:
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Picture of the Fayetteville Arsenal
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QUOTABLE
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'The blood lay in puddles in the grove, the groans of the dying and the complaints of those undergoing amputation was horrible.'
-- Jane Smith, whose family lived in Averasboro, writing about the results of the battle that began in Cumberland County and spilled over into Harnett County in March 1865
'When Sherman's troops were first taken away from Fayetteville, and the town was put in the hands of its citizens, they showed a disposition to revive the slave code, and to enforce certain city ordinances that were full of the old spirit; Negroes were not to be allowed to meet together for worship, unless a white man was present in the assembly; no Negro was to carry a walking cane, etc.; one man, after being convicted of some offense, was publicly whipped.'
-- Isham Sweat, a black barber who became active in county politics, describing the postwar situation in October 1865
'Two or three yankees have opened dry goods stores here. Benny Robinson has started a paper here the first number of which was issued yesterday. It will be a relief to see something besides those abominable yankee sheets that are constantly taunting us with our downfall.'
-- From the June 29, 1865, diary entry of Melinda Ray of Fayetteville, as a Union cavalry regiment oversaw the town
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