Dixie Hall was the home of prosperous local merchant, landowner, and slaveholder Julius T. Siler, who joined the Confederate army with about 3,000 other Macon County men and served as captain of Company E, 6th North Carolina Cavalry. One of the last formal surrenders of Confederate forces east of the Mississippi River took place near the house on May 12, 1865. Lt. Col. William W. Stringfield of Thomas’s Legion called this part of North Carolina the “most inaccessible portion of the Confederacy,” with no telegraph system, mountains that greatly hindered transportation, and the nearest railroad six miles east of Morganton. Confederates in the area were among the last in the East to learn of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House, Va., on April 9, and Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s surrender near Durham on April 26. Fighting continued locally, and parts of Thomas’s Legion and Col. William C. Bartlett’s 2nd North Carolina Mounted Infantry engaged Federal troops in Waynesville on May 6-7. Union Col. George W. Kirk then advanced on Franklin, where Capt. Stephen Whitaker commanded what was called the last body of organized army troops remaining east of the Mississippi. After Whitaker learned of the other capitulations, he surrendered his men there to Kirk, who paroled the Confederates and sent them home. After Kirk’s men occupied and looted Dixie Hall, young Alice Siler spat on Kirk’s flag from the upstairs porch.