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Zebulon Baird Vance

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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ZEBULON BAIRD VANCE (1830-1894), American political leader, was born in Buncombe county, North Carolina, on the 13th of May 1830. He was educated at Washington College, at Salem, Tennessee, and the university of North Carolina (1851-52). Entering politics as a Whig, he was elected solicitor of Buncombe County (1852) and a member of the state House of Commons (1854), and served in the national House of Representatives from December 1858 until the 3rd of March 1861. As captain of a company in the 14th and as colonel of the 26th North Carolina regiments, he took part in the Virginia campaigns of 1861-62. From 1862 until the close of the war he was governor of the state, and from the 10th of May to the 5th of July 1865, when he was released on parole, was held as a prisoner by the United States authorities in Washington. Having been elected to the United States Senate in 1870 and been refused admission because his disabilities - due to his participation in the war - had not been removed, he took the lead in the fight against "carpet-bag" misrule and was chosen governor in the political revolution of 1876, serving in 1877-79. He was again elected to the Senate in 1878 and was re-elected in 1884 and 1890, serving from March 1879 until his death. Senator Vance was a typical Southern Whig. He disliked slavery and he hated secession. In common with other Whigs, he was forced to remain in the Democratic party after the war by the fear of negro domination. He died at Asheville, North Carolina, on the 14th of April 1894.

See the Life by Clement Dowd (Charlotte, N.C., 1897).