Southern Unionists

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SOUTHERN UNIONISTS

SOUTHERN UNIONISTS during the Civil War were most numerous in the border and upper South states, although across the whole Confederacy many people remained loyal to the federal Union. However, only in Virginia did Unionists precipitate a successful political movement when the counties west of the Appalachians seceded to formthe new state of West Virginia. In the main body of the Confederacy, Unionists achieved greatest concentration in the highland counties of east Tennessee. This predominantly yeoman farm region had always opposed the political and economic supremacy of west and middle Tennessee slaveholders and voted over-whelmingly against secession. When war came, the state's eastern counties vigorously resisted Confederate authority. In general, Unionism found most support in the southern uplands, in frontier areas, and, less openly, in the cities. Unionists were also active in ethnically and culturally distinctive areas such as the German-settled counties of north and central Texas and the so-called "Quaker belt" of piedmont North Carolina, where antislavery beliefs were in evidence. In general, hostility to slavery, as distinct from resentment of slaveholders, though present in many communities, was not a defining feature of southern Unionism, which derived from varying degrees of patriotic, ideological, and materialistic factors and embraced a wide spectrum of commitment and, inevitably, opportunism. Unionist support intensified with the growth of popular opposition to Confederate war policies, notably conscription and impressment. At least 100,000 white residents of the eleven seceded states fought in the federal armed forces, with an estimated two-thirds of the total coming from Tennessee and West Virginia.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Current, Richard Nelson. Lincoln's Loyalists: Union Soldiers from the Confederacy. Boston: Northwestern University Press, 1992.

Degler, Carl N. The Other South: Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.

Inscoe, John C., and Robert C. Kenzer. Enemies of the Country: New Perspectives on Unionists in the Civil War South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001.

MartinCrawford