THE
Confederate States of America
fought two wars, one against the
armed forces of the United States and one
against fellow Southerners who joined
either the Union Army or pro-Union guer-
rilla groups. Although they came from all
classes, most Southern Unionists differed
socially, culturally, and economically from
their region’s dominant prewar, slave-own-
ing planter class. As many as 100,000 men
living in the 11 Confederate states eventu-
ally served in the Union Army. The major-ity of them were from Tennessee, North
Carolina, and Virginia/West Virginia.
In 1860, most white residents of the
slave states did not live in the so-called
“plantation belt.” Instead, they lived in
areas substantially populated by small
farmers and herdsmen who owned few if
any slaves. Opposition to secession was
greatest in slave states sharing a border
with a free state. Border state slave owners
may have feared that many of their slaves
would successfully run away if their state
left the Union because the Fugitive Slave
Act, which required that runaways who
reached free states be returned to their
owners, might be repealed.
The 13 states the Confederate govern-
ment claimed included Missouri and Ken-
tucky, which did not formally secede from
the Union. Maryland was not included. To
keep Washington, D.C., from being sur-rounded by the Confederacy, the Federal
government quickly imposed martial law
in Maryland and garrisoned it with Union
troops, thus effectively preventing the state
from leaving the Union.
Most of the white Southerners who
chose to join the Union Army lived in the
Confederacy’s border states and the Deep
South’s relatively poor “white counties,”
which were too infertile to support plan-
tation agriculture. As a result, they had
few if any black residents, either slaves orfreedmen. White counties were concen-
trated in but not confined to the
Appalachian Mountains—western Vir-
ginia, eastern Kentucky, western North
Carolina, eastern Tennessee, northern
Georgia, and northern Alabama. Many
Southern Unionists in these states shared
Northerners’ hatred of the region’s aris-
tocratic, slave-owning oligarchy.
Widespread opposition to secession ini-
tially kept Virginia in the Union. Suchopposition was strongest in western Vir-
ginia, where only one out of 100 voters
owned slaves. Nonetheless, half of Vir-
ginia’s northwestern counties (which in
1863 became the state of West Virginia)
were in favor of Virginia seceding. As many
as half of West Virginia’s eligible men later
fought for the Confederacy.
So strong was pro-Union sentiment in
mountainous North Alabama and adjoin-
ing East Tennessee that it was proposed the
two regions unite to form a new loyal state
called Nickajack. Representatives from 26
counties in East Tennessee’s mountainous,
grain-growing and stock-raising region
agreed to secede from Tennessee. Their
petition to do so was rejected by the state
legislature, and Confederate troops were
sent to occupy East Tennessee to prevent
its secession. In East Tennessee the vast
majority of whites owned no slaves, andUnion supporters outnumbered Confeder-
ate supporters. The majority of Confeder-
ate soldiers did not own slaves.
When the war began, Union leaders
greatly overestimated how many Southern
civilians were Unionists at heart and
assumed that if they were treated well they
would turn against the Confederacy. When
that proved not to be the case, President
Abraham Lincoln and his generals turned
to a hard war policy that targeted anythingSoutherner
A sizable minority of Southerners, particularly
in border states such as Tennessee, Missouri, and
Kentucky, did not support the Confederacy. Acts
of civil disobedience and sabotage led to a severe
crackdown on Southern Unionists.
BY CAROLE E. SCOTT
VS. SOUTHERNER
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