Relating to home guard activities in the western NC mountains, my ggg grandfather's brother, Robert Hamilton, was the first sheriff of Transylvania County. Born in the late 1820s, he stayed home during the war and served as part of the home guard there. Robert's sympathies were with the union; he led a double life the entire four years. He and wife Ardella Neill Hamilton helped draft evaders and escaped Union prisoners; Robert and his wife operated "Pennsylvania House" - a remote cabin which served as a way station for escaping prisoners from Salisbury. He helped members of the 101st Pennsylvania make their way through the mountains to the Union lines in East Tennessee. This is from the book, 101st Pennsylvania in the Civil War - Its Capture and POW Experience, by Harold Birch. Robert allegedly said, "I never met a Yankee I didn't like..."

Another grandfather living in Valley Head, Alabama (DeKalb County) was William H. Wright. He was too old to fight and was a strong unionist before and during the war. His Southern Claims Commission papers from the mid 1870s relate how the local home guard rode into his yard "like a passel of wild men", snapping their pistols in his face and threatening to kill him - calling him a "damned old Union cur."