Executing Daniel Bright

Book excerpt: Daniel Bright was executed in 1863 for his involvement in an irregular resistance to Union army incursions along the coast of North Carolina. Executing Daniel Bright uses life and death to exemplify a larger pattern of retaliatory executions and public murders meant to enforce a message of political loyalty and military conduct on the Confederate home front; and to examine the wider experience of guerrilla conflict on the North Carolina coast. The study concludes that guerrilla violence like Bright's hanging was not isolated to the highlands or piedmont region of the North Carolina home front but occurred throughout the state.