Established in August 1863, Camp Vance served as a post for Captain James McRae’s battalion of North Carolina cavalry, and as a training camp for men of the junior reserves from western North Carolina. The camp was along the unfinished Western North Carolina Railroad, roughly four miles east of Morganton. Named for North Carolina governor Zebulon B. Vance the post was one of three camps named for him. The others were an 1861 establishment in Buncombe County that served as the training ground of the 29th North Carolina Troops and a temporary facility near Goldsboro that served Confederate forces guarding the approaches to that city.
McRae’s battalion, authorized by an order from Confederate Secretary of War James A. Seddon, was to be used as an enforcer of the Confederate conscription acts in western North Carolina. The majority of McRae’s men were moved to Asheville by early 1864. The junior reserve regiments, as well as a series of senior reserve counterparts, were authorized in late 1863. Junior regiments consisted of boys aged 17, while the senior battalions were comprised men typically over the age of 45. The law authorizing such units stated that the reserves would not “be required to perform service out of the State.” All members of the junior reserves were to be transferred to regular Confederate army units upon their eighteenth birthday.