I’m wondering if he’s including West Virginians in that 300,000 figure. That seems like an awfully high number considering the population of the South at the time.
The divisions in the Southern population aren’t really new news. I remember hearing a lot about it studying history growing up in Virginia. There were some absolutely vicious mini “civil wars” in the mountain counties of North Carolina and Tennessee between Unionists and Confederates. Many of the counties that are now in the Shenendoah Valley in Virginia barely stayed in the Union when the western counties split off to become West Virginia—and this despite the tremendous victories Stonewall Jackson won on that very same soil in 1862. The story my college history prof told me was that Rockingham County, Virginia (where I went to college at JMU) stayed in Virginia by one single vote. The generals like Lee and Jackson were revered up there, but the war was by no means popular.
Folks up in the Piedmont and toward the mountains generally didn’t own slaves, or at least not nearly as many as the rich planters along the coast. Appealing to their loyalty as Northerners invaded their home states worked to a point (especially in Virginia) but for folks further up in the mountains in places like West Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, they didn’t feel like they wanted to get involved in a rich man’s war.
The truth’s in the middle—yes, having 500,000 Southerners (white and black) fighting for the Union definitely made things worse for the Confederacy. But the North’s crushing industrial superiority was decisive, as well as them finally finding generals like Grant and Sherman willing to take that material superiority and use it to grind the South down. BTW, it doesn’t surprise me that the Urinal-Constipation takes an opportunity to pee on the former Georgia state flag and the SCV in general. I imagine the idiots at the AJC were big fans of King Roy’s Placemat.
}:-)4
Good point on W VA. Hadn’t thought of that, since it technically was the “Union.”
Doesn't appear to be ground breaking research here.
“I’m wondering if he’s including West Virginians in that 300,000 figure.”
The Union enlisted 175,000 black soldiers during the American Civil War, 75% of which came from Confederate statest. That is 132,000 right there. 167,000 more seems believeable, especially when you consider the large numbers of Union supporters in states like Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas and Virginia.
There were white Union regiments raised in every Confederate state. I’d have to check at home to get ther exact number.
” There were some absolutely vicious mini “civil wars” in the mountain counties of North Carolina and Tennessee between Unionists and Confederates.”
.....I live in Mountains of NC and about half fought for the Union in this county...and it wasn’t for abolition either...they wouldn’t have fought to free slaves and they wouldn’t have fought to keep them in bondage....they just felt the Union was their best deal....they were a savagely independant lot....just like their patriot grandaddys who shot the British to pieces at the Battle of Kings Mountain....that bunch lived on squirrel meat and corn whiskey....they were hard men.
Jones county Mississippi too....much of it came from a white deserter who was into black freedwomen....I have a book on that somehwere....I think he got hung eventually
it’s a common family name there
the irony was that he killed blacks too..sort of a desperado in the Leaf river swamps
Newt Knight...that’s it....there is a book written by someone associated with all that...a lefty woman...some of the south bashers here I’m sure know her...Byram or Bynam