Town Line, NY - The Last of the Confederate States

[JGalt]

Many people don't know about this, but the last holdout of the Confederate States of America was Town Line, New York. They weren't re-admitted into the Union until 1946.

"One guy, he was calling me a Yankee. And I says, ‘Excuse me, I’m from Town Line, I’m a Confederate. We were Confederates for the longest time.’ He said, ‘If that’s true I’ll kiss your rear end in front of everybody to see.’ He looked it up and I guess he believes me now that we were the last of the Rebels.” —Brandon Adkins, resident of Town Line, New York.

Town Line in Erie County, New York is only a few miles from the Canadian border. Go to the local fire station and until recently, you might have seen the personnel wearing shoulder patches reading "Last of the Rebels 1861–1946.” During Civil War celebrations, townsfolk display the Confederate flag and wear the Confederate gray. Any visitor would be baffled. It is well-known that the loyalty of towns farther south, near the Mason-Dixon Line, wavered along the divide between North and South during the war. But in upstate New York a few minutes from Canada? In a town populated in the 1860s by first- and second-generation German immigrants with no kinship ties to the South?

Nobody really knows the reason why, in late 1861, the men of Town Line gathered in a schoolhouse and voted 85–40 (or by some accounts 80–45) to leave the Union and join the Confederacy. They clearly supported Abraham Lincoln in the previous election. Among other provocations, perhaps the most likely was President Lincoln’s call for 75,000 men, to which the German farming community refused to comply.
Things settled back to normal at the end of the war. The secession was conveniently forgotten until 1945. In a wave of patriotism accompanying American victory in World War II, residents realized that they were technically not part of the US. Returning veterans were chagrined and infuriated that they were not American. A special committee wrote to President Harry Truman about the situation. Truman responded good-naturedly, "Why don’t you run down the fattest calf in Erie County, barbecue it and serve it with fixins, and sort out your problems."

The matter was once again put to the vote. Incredibly, the first vote held on December 1945 still failed to secure unity. The town had by now become national news, and the next attempt at reunion was attended by celebrities like movie actor Cesar "the Joker” Romero. Finally, on January 26, 1946, Town Line officially voted to be readmitted into the Union. (Still, 23 rebels decided against the measure—truly the town’s last Confederates.) The rebel flag that had flown for 85 years was hauled down, and the residents took the oath of allegiance."

Upstate town touts role as last holdout of the Confederacy Innovation Trail

 

[DGS49]

Well...

If the Confederate States of America no longer existed after 1865, how could this little hamlet be a part of the CSA? And it's "States," not towns or other municipalities.

Parenthetically, many Americans are not aware that not all of the "slave" states joined the confederacy - these Union-slave states are referred to historically as the "Border States."
And the Emancipation Proclamations DID NOT free the slaves in the Border States (Indeed, Lincoln did not have the legal authority to do so, under the 5th Amendment).