Instrumental Pointer

For history buffs who want to know more about Western North Carolina’s role in the Civil War, and who want relevant sites to be close to their vacation rentals, Asheville NC has many choices.

Many students of history may not know that more Confederate soldiers came from North Carolina than from any other state, and Western North Carolina had the highest enlistment rate in the state.

For visitors in vacation rentals, Asheville NC includes areas where battles were fought, such as the Battle of Asheville that took place in early April 1865 on the site where the University of North Carolina at Asheville stands today.

Visitors will find the Buncombe County Civil War Memorial on the grounds of the Smith-McDowell House Museum at 283 Victoria Road. The house predates the war and is Asheville’s oldest brick residence.

For visitors who are wondering about North Carolina Civil War Trails Markers near their vacation rentals, Asheville NC properties will be near several.

The Brothers In Service marker commemorates Zebulon and Robert Vance at their restored homestead and birthplace at 911 Reems Creek Road in Weaverville. Zebulon Vance served as a colonel in the Confederate Army until 1862, when he was elected governor of the Confederate state. After the war, he was re-elected as North Carolina’s governor, then served as a U.S. Senator. Robert Vance was a brigadier general in the Confederate army, and then served after the war as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Other Civil War Trails Markers can be found in Madison County. These include the Warm Springs Hotel marker in Hot Springs and the Mars Hill College Marker in Mars Hill. The first discusses how the Unionists and Confederates in Warm Springs were fighting one another “on their home soil, brother against brother.” The other also reads of family divisions between north and south, and of how the town of Mars Hill was a strategically important location as a north-south and east-west crossroads.

So decades before the area was known for a destination for recreation and vacation rentals, Asheville NC and the surrounding towns and counties of Western North Carolina were unique stages in the theaters of the Civil War.

We would agree that accidents account for the death of individuals in a species, evolutionary scientists have proven that many traits and inherited characteristics do not allow the individual to survive in the face of elements in the environment in which he dwells, especially the fight for survival that typically marks the life and death of the animals. It can be said that, what may be called bad luck or accident brings forth many deaths of individuals otherwise well suited to live, but when this phenomenon goes on day by day and year by year, we see that at some point a genetic favoritism will begin to come forth.

Herbert Spencer called this process the “survival of the fittest,” and although the phrase may not be strictly accurate in the case of any particular species in any one time period, when we look at that the conflict is going on constantly, during the entire lifespan of each species, we cannot question that overall those who survive are indeed the fittest. The struggle is so intense and so incessant that the smallest defect in any sense organ and any physical weakness will almost certainly, at some point, be fatal.

This constant weeding out of the less fit, in every generation will produce two distinct consequences, which need to be clearly described. The first is the conservation of each species in the highest state of adaptation to the conditions of its existence. As long as these conditions continue unchanged, the result of natural selection is to preserve each well-adapted species unaltered.

The second of these conditions develops whenever the environmental conditions change. The most suited individual will adapt more successfully, and the regular process of natural selection will occur more rapidly, according to the conditions. This process will finally bring about complete adaptation to the new conditions. Some writers admit pure chance, but maintain that the action of natural selection in weeding out the less fit and thus keeping every species in the best state of adaptation.

The issue of natural selection and survival of the fittest does not figure largely into the ongoing debate between the proponents of evolution theory, intelligent design theory, and creation theory. In the evolution, intelligent design, creationism debate the matter of natural selection is nearly a dead end point of contention, given that evolution theory and intelligent design theory are in moderate agreement on the issue, while creation theory denies it altogether.

Learn more about the intelligent design creationist forum debate.