Southern Unionists and the American Civil War

[Hawk1981]

During the secession crisis and subsequent Civil War the Southern upcountry yeomen discovered themselves as a political class. From the earliest days of settlement, there had never been a single white South. In 1860 a majority of white Southerners lived not in the plantation belt but in the upcountry, an area of small farmers and herdsmen who owned few slaves or none at all. In these yeoman areas, the elections for delegates to secession conventions in the winter of 1860-61 produced massive repudiations of disunion and from the outset of the war disloyalty was extensive in the Southern mountains.

From its beginnings the Confederacy suffered from a rising tide of intense domestic hostility, a violent inner civil war, brought on largely by those most responsible for the Confederacy’s creation. Planters excused themselves from the draft in various ways, then grew far too much cotton and tobacco, and not nearly enough food. Soldiers went hungry, as did their families back home. Women defied Confederate authorities by staging food riots from Richmond, Virginia, to Galveston, Texas. Soldiers deserted by the tens of thousands, and draft evasion became commonplace. By 1864, the draft law was practically impossible to enforce and two-thirds of the Confederate army was absent with or without leave. Many deserters and draft dodgers formed armed bands that controlled vast areas of the Southern countryside.

The struggle of Southern Unionists not only helped weaken the Confederate war effort but bequeathed to Reconstruction explosive political issues, and unresolved questions. Their loyalty to the Union did not imply abolitionist sentiment during the war or a commitment to the rights of blacks thereafter, although they were perfectly willing to see slavery sacrificed to preserve the Union. Southern white Unionism was essentially defensive, a response to the undermining of local autonomy and economic self-sufficiency, along with a keen dislike for the ruling class that brought about the devastating impact of the war.

 

[Hawk1981]

East Tennessee

Long conscious of its remoteness from the rest of the state, supporters of the Confederacy formed a small minority in East Tennessee. This mountainous area had long been overshadowed economically and politically by the wealthier, slave-owning counties to the west, and voted by a two-to-one margin, to remain within the Union. Delegates from the region called for secession from the state. Senator Andrew Johnson remained at his post in Washington once the war had begun, and in August 1861 East Tennessee voters elected three Unionists to represent them in the federal Congress.

West Virginia

Meeting to repudiate Virginia’s ordinance of secession, delegates from the western counties formed the Restored Government of Virginia that sent recognized congressmen and senators to the US Congress in 1861. Two years later this Virginia government recognized the departure of the western counties and the resulting West Virginia entered the Union as a separate state.

Winston County, Alabama

Other southern mountain counties also rejected secession from the outset. One of the strongest pockets of pro-Union activity in the Deep South was Winston County, Alabama, where the majority of the subsistence farmers saw Alabama's secession as an illegal act. Winston County's residents held a famous meeting at a local tavern and floated the idea of breaking ties with Alabama. While they never formally seceded, many of the county’s young men hid in the hills and forests to avoid conscription by the Confederate army, and others fled north and fought for the Union. By the war’s end, Winston had supplied twice as many soldiers to the North as it had the South.

Jones County, Mississippi

Jones County, Mississippi, was the site of some particularly violent resistance to the Confederacy. The county became a haven for young men who had grown disillusioned with the Confederate cause and deserted the army. The runaways organized into a Unionist guerrilla outfit called the Knight Company and took to harassing nearby Confederate units. The group effectively disabled the county government, and at one point, its activities sparked rumors that Jones County had seceded from the Confederacy and was flying the stars and stripes over its courthouse.

Arkansas

Many counties in the northern part of Arkansas remained ambivalent about separating from the Unites States. The region eventually supplied as many as six companies’ worth of troops for the US war effort. Like many backwoods regions, the mountainous area was the site of intense guerrilla activity. As the war progressed, it played host to bloody skirmishes and looting by both pro-Union and pro-Confederate bushwhackers.

Texas Hill Country

The Texas Hill Country region of south central Texas was home to some of the Lone Star State’s most hard-line Unionists. Its residents included a large contingent of German immigrants, many of them liberal intellectuals who had fled their home country after a failed revolution in 1848. The German transplants typically considered slavery immoral, and many refused to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy or join its army.

 

[Hawk1981]

Confederate deserters who made it home found plenty of neighbors willing to help them avoid further entanglements with the Confederacy. A disgusted head of the Bureau of Conscription complained that desertion had “in popular estimation, lost the stigma that justly pertains to it, and therefore the criminals are everywhere shielded by their families and by the sympathies of many communities.” When deserters were arrested in Alabama’s Randolph County, an armed mob stormed the jail and set them free.

Some deserters joined with other anti-Confederates in a shadowy antiwar movement, widely known as the Peace Society. The Peace Society was the largest of the many secret or semi-secret organizations, such as the Peace and Constitutional Society in Arkansas and the Heroes of America in Appalachia, which sprang up across the South to oppose the war. Others deserter joined with draft dodgers and other anti-Confederates to form guerrilla bands, often called “tory” or “layout” gangs. They attacked government supply trains, burned bridges, raided local plantations, and harassed impressment agents and conscript officers.

Anti-Confederates, deserters, and resisters alike in the North Carolina mountains also formed defensive militias and set up warning networks. Wilkes County, North Carolina, was home to a band of five hundred deserters organized as a guerrilla force who openly challenged Confederates to come and take them. Wilkes County’s Trap Hill gang was especially aggressive in harassing local pro-Confederates. In Cherokee County, about one hundred layouts formed a resistance force that disarmed Confederate soldiers and terrorized Confederate loyalists.

The state of Georgia was one of the most divided in the South. Anti-Confederate gangs operated in every part of the state. Some areas were so hostile to the Confederacy that army patrols dared not enter them. The Pine Barrens region of southeast Georgia was a favorite hideout for those trying to avoid Confederate patrols.

 

[Hawk1981]

Of about 200,000 blacks under federal arms, four out of five were native Southerners. Together with roughly 300,000 Southern whites who did the same, (about 200,000 of them from states of the border South). Southerners who served in the Union military totaled nearly half a million, or about a quarter of all federal armed forces.

Enslaved blacks in the interior for whom escape was more difficult nevertheless found various ways to resist. What work slaves did, they did grudgingly. Some refused to work at all. Others used the threat of escape to force wage payments from their owners. Fugitive slaves that escaped but could not make it to Union lines often gathered in small, isolated communities. Sometimes these settlements were multiracial. They were so numerous in the southern coastal plain that one source called it “the common retreat of deserters from our army, Tories, and runaway negroes.”

During the war poverty descended upon thousands of upcountry families, especially those with men in the army. Food riots broke out in Virginia and North Carolina. Coupled with poverty was the organization of conscription that convinced many yeomen that the struggle for Southern independence had become “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight,” as expressed in an 1865 edition of Georgia’s Early County News.

 

[Picaro]

A long time ago, on another board, I posted several links to genealogy sites that had info on southern states that had militias forming to fight for the Union, Alabama had a cavalry regiment formed that went North, for instance. It was noteworhty that they were all allowed to go without harassment and in peace, and of course many had brothers and cousins and other relatives on opposite sides; iirc Mississippi was the only state I didn't have any for. Unfortunately, I lost those a long time ago , several crashed PC's ago. I might find that old board on the Wayback Machine, but don't recall if that org was even active that early on.

 

[jwoodie]

What is also forgotten is that Lincoln's call for federal troops to invade the South united it in a way otherwise impossible and directly caused Virginia to reverse its Unionist position and join the Confederacy. Well done, Mr. President!

 

[there4eyeM]

That is always such a laughable comment that one wonders what the person making it could possibly be thinking.
Federal troops are not invading America when they maneuver within its territory. That would be an example of oxymoron.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

I never saw this movie, which was a film dramatization based on the resistance Hawk1981 describes in Jones County Mississippi. Anybody see it? I heard it only got so-so reviews, and lost money — but it is probably worth watching. It is loosely based on this usually ignored history, and has some good actors:

 

[whitehall]

The western portion of Virginia stayed with the Union and became West Virginia. You have to understand that communication was primitive at best in the early 1860's especially in the South. There were poor subsistence farmers in the Shenandoah who never owned slaves and who had no idea of the political issues until Union soldiers broke down their doors, stole everything of value, killed their stock and burned their barns and hanged them if they resisted. Union generals Sheridan, Hunter and Sherman would have been hanged as war criminals today.

 

[gipper]

That is always such a laughable comment that one wonders what the person making it could possibly be thinking.
Federal troops are not invading America when they maneuver within its territory. That would be an example of oxymoron.

If they were just on maneuvers, how did 850,000 Americans end up dead and half the nation destroyed?

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

The western portion of Virginia stayed with the Union and became West Virginia. You have to understand that communication was primitive at best in the early 1860's especially in the South...

This much at least we agree on. And yet even in mountainous West Virginia national issues were discussed and political leaders chose to side with the Union. Of course as in other border states the war fought on their own territory was often brutal and could change opinions. I certainly disagree with your comment about northern Generals being “war criminals” — but war is hell on civilians caught in the middle. Funny this lesson is so often forgotten when the U.S. invades other countries or encourages civil wars in them.

If you enjoy West Virginia Civil War history, you might enjoy some of the articles available for browsing here. I only read some of them, but I found them interesting, and they reminded me of my younger days when I visited the state occasionally to visit a young woman who lived and worked near Fairmont, and once to help a journalist friend cover a miner’s strike: West Virginia Histories

 

[there4eyeM]

That is always such a laughable comment that one wonders what the person making it could possibly be thinking.
Federal troops are not invading America when they maneuver within its territory. That would be an example of oxymoron.

If they were just on maneuvers, how did 850,000 Americans end up dead and half the nation destroyed?

Because slavery had not been dealt with Constitutionally and illegal attempts to destroy the nation over this issue required action.

 

[gipper]

That is always such a laughable comment that one wonders what the person making it could possibly be thinking.
Federal troops are not invading America when they maneuver within its territory. That would be an example of oxymoron.

If they were just on maneuvers, how did 850,000 Americans end up dead and half the nation destroyed?

Because slavery had not been dealt with Constitutionally and illegal attempts to destroy the nation over this issue required action.

I didn’t expect you to support Lincoln’s belief in the perpetual union and supporting the use of force to keep it so.

 

[there4eyeM]

That is always such a laughable comment that one wonders what the person making it could possibly be thinking.
Federal troops are not invading America when they maneuver within its territory. That would be an example of oxymoron.

If they were just on maneuvers, how did 850,000 Americans end up dead and half the nation destroyed?

Because slavery had not been dealt with Constitutionally and illegal attempts to destroy the nation over this issue required action.

I didn’t expect you to support Lincoln’s belief in the perpetual union and supporting the use of force to keep it so.

Belief? What is the question of "belief" about something that is clearly written int eh Constitution?

 

[gipper]

That is always such a laughable comment that one wonders what the person making it could possibly be thinking.
Federal troops are not invading America when they maneuver within its territory. That would be an example of oxymoron.

If they were just on maneuvers, how did 850,000 Americans end up dead and half the nation destroyed?

Because slavery had not been dealt with Constitutionally and illegal attempts to destroy the nation over this issue required action.

I didn’t expect you to support Lincoln’s belief in the perpetual union and supporting the use of force to keep it so.

Belief? What is the question of "belief" about something that is clearly written int eh Constitution?

So the constitution grants the government the power to murder all who oppose it. I think not. No government is perpetual and this one certainly needs termination.

 

[there4eyeM]

That is always such a laughable comment that one wonders what the person making it could possibly be thinking.
Federal troops are not invading America when they maneuver within its territory. That would be an example of oxymoron.

If they were just on maneuvers, how did 850,000 Americans end up dead and half the nation destroyed?

Because slavery had not been dealt with Constitutionally and illegal attempts to destroy the nation over this issue required action.

I didn’t expect you to support Lincoln’s belief in the perpetual union and supporting the use of force to keep it so.

Belief? What is the question of "belief" about something that is clearly written int eh Constitution?

So the constitution grants the government the power to murder all who oppose it. I think not. No government is perpetual and this one certainly needs termination.

The Union all agreed to at the time was perpetual. All language evolves. All the amendments could be further amended. This can be done Constitutionally, as could have been the perpetual part, the slave part, the arms part, the religion and speech parts. Taking it into your own hands to unilaterally decide it has changed may invite vigorous disagreement. That is what happened to those who sought to secede.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

No government is perpetual and this one certainly needs termination.

Before you go around talking about “terminating” a constitutional republican government, it is a good idea to think about what the alternative is, who your leading “comrades” are. If it is chaos, if they are slaveholding oligarchs ... better to hold your tongue and think again.

 

[gipper]

That is always such a laughable comment that one wonders what the person making it could possibly be thinking.
Federal troops are not invading America when they maneuver within its territory. That would be an example of oxymoron.

If they were just on maneuvers, how did 850,000 Americans end up dead and half the nation destroyed?

Because slavery had not been dealt with Constitutionally and illegal attempts to destroy the nation over this issue required action.

I didn’t expect you to support Lincoln’s belief in the perpetual union and supporting the use of force to keep it so.

Belief? What is the question of "belief" about something that is clearly written int eh Constitution?

So the constitution grants the government the power to murder all who oppose it. I think not. No government is perpetual and this one certainly needs termination.

The Union all agreed to at the time was perpetual. All language evolves. All the amendments could be further amended. This can be done Constitutionally, as could have been the perpetual part, the slave part, the arms part, the religion and speech parts. Taking it into your own hands to unilaterally decide it has changed may invite vigorous disagreement. That is what happened to those who sought to secede.

You would have been loyal to King George.

 

[gipper]

No government is perpetual and this one certainly needs termination.

Before you go around talking about “terminating” a constitutional republican government, it is a good idea to think about what the alternative is, who your leading “comrades” are. If it is chaos, if they are slaveholding oligarchs ... better to hold your tongue and think again.

It’s time has come and gone. Let’s terminate it entirely.

 

[there4eyeM]

That is always such a laughable comment that one wonders what the person making it could possibly be thinking.
Federal troops are not invading America when they maneuver within its territory. That would be an example of oxymoron.

If they were just on maneuvers, how did 850,000 Americans end up dead and half the nation destroyed?

Because slavery had not been dealt with Constitutionally and illegal attempts to destroy the nation over this issue required action.

I didn’t expect you to support Lincoln’s belief in the perpetual union and supporting the use of force to keep it so.

Belief? What is the question of "belief" about something that is clearly written int eh Constitution?

So the constitution grants the government the power to murder all who oppose it. I think not. No government is perpetual and this one certainly needs termination.

The Union all agreed to at the time was perpetual. All language evolves. All the amendments could be further amended. This can be done Constitutionally, as could have been the perpetual part, the slave part, the arms part, the religion and speech parts. Taking it into your own hands to unilaterally decide it has changed may invite vigorous disagreement. That is what happened to those who sought to secede.

You would have been loyal to King George.

You would have been a failure as a mind reader.