Shelton Laurel Massacre and “Bloody Madison” County

On January 18, 1863, a Civil War-era tragedy that has come to be known as the Shelton Laurel Massacre took place. The incident grew out of a series of raids on the town of Marshall by Unionists claiming that Confederate authorities had denied them provisions. Brigadier General Harry Heth was the Confederate commander in the area.  Heth and his men went into the Shelton Laurel area and marched three boys, ages 13 and 17, and 10 men, 20 to 56, out from their homes and into the woods. The group, suspected of being Unionists, were ordered to kneel. Hesitating on Heth’s first command to shoot the 13, the troops complied with the second. In addition, “several women were severely whipped and ropes were tied around their necks.” No one was prosecuted as a result of the incident.

Within days of the killings, Governor Zebulon B. Vance wrote that the affair was “shocking and outrageous in the extreme.”  A writer in 1955 observed that “nowhere is there a microcosm more chill and revealing than this episode of war at its heart and core.”

In 1968, William and Bud Shelton placed new granite stones at the graves of family members slain in 1863. Six of the 13 men killed were members of the Shelton family.

Other related resources:

• The Civil War on NCpedia
• Documents on the Shelton Laurel Massacre from the State Archives
  
• The North Civil War Experience from N.C. Historic Sites
• North Carolina and the Civil War from the N.C. Museum of History
• The North Carolina Civil War Sesquicentennial Committee
• North Carolina as a Civil War Battleground from N.C. Historical Publications
• The War Within the War in the Mountain Region from the N.C. Museum of History

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