After the Civil War, many educators and reformers flooded into North Carolina and into its mountains, to uplift the Tar Heel. According to historians John Inscoe and Gordon McKinney, there were writers who perpetuated an endearing hillbilly stereotype, and some Americans discussed visiting the mountains again on vacations.
In some places in the North Carolina mountains, the war continued. Like the Hamby Gang in Wilkes County and the Adair gang in Rutherford County, the Teague band in Haywood County continued raiding the countryside even into the fall months of 1865.
The Union commander at Morganton, General Thomas A. Heath, remarked that the instigators were many former Confederate soldiers and he ordered his officers to never patrol alone. For some, wartime exigencies demanded peacetime retribution. Justice was not to be found in the courts and the impatient could not wait until what they believed to be the Final Judgment. The Teague Band of Haywood County was part of this retributive violence.