THE CIVIL WAR TO FIGHT A CIVIL WAR: SOUTHERN PATRIOTS VS THE CONFEDERACY

A friend recently told me: “I immigrated to the U.S. at middle school age. Before I was here, I had a very superficial understanding of the American civil war, but it was mostly around slavery. Once I am here, the first thing the teacher said was the war was about states’ rights and cultural differences between north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line. And I went to school in a blue state in the 80s and 90s.”

The truth is that the Civil War was all about slavery - whether it would be abolished everywhere or maintained and expanded beyond its territorial limits. Every one of the eleven Articles of Secession passed by the insurrectionist enslaver state legislatures cited northern opposition to slavery as the main cause of secession.

On March 21, 1861, Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the newly-created Confederate States of America, spoke in Savannah Georgia, where he delivered what is called “The Cornerstone Speech,” in which he explained the reasons for the insurrection and its goals. He said:

“The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the ‘rock upon which the old Union would split.’ He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the ‘storm came and the wind blew.’

“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

This truth, which was at the heart of the Civil War, makes the war’s reality far different from the national myths that have grown like southern kudzu over the past 150 years. It wasn’t “the War Between The States.” It was te War of Freedom and Democracy against Enslavement and Autocracy.

Far too many history books teach that the North’s greater population and industry explain Union victory. Yes, the North was strong but what the Confederacy lacked was sufficient food and men willing to carry arms in its defense. Certainly the North’s population was greater, but Confederate armies were outnumbered mainly because so many Southerners refused to serve, or served on the Union side. This is the history both sides deny to this day.

From the beginning, the Confederacy suffered from intense domestic hostility. Most white Southerners, three-fourths of whom owned no slaves, made it clear in the winter 1860-61 in elections for state convention delegates that they opposed immediate secession. The votes in opposition to secession were strongest in Appalachia, the world of the Scotch-Irish “Hill Billies.”

In Alabama, three elections were held, with secession losing each one. The same thing happened in Mississippi and it took Georgia two tries. Nevertheless, state conventions across the South, all of them dominated by the enslavers, ultimately ignored the majority will and took their states out of the Union, resorting to voter suppression and denial of the democracy they claimed to defend in order to do so.

Hostility to the enslaver class was not new in 1861. The southern planter aristocracy had done their best in the decades before the war to stifle all economic and social development that did not directly benefit them and their business of enslavement. After 1861, they brought on increased hostility by excusing themselves from the draft in various ways, then growing far too much cotton and tobacco for export, 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.

In October 1861, one worried Confederate wrote that “our people don’t seem to be inclined to offer their services.” That same month, a recruiter from Columbus, Georgia, reported to the war department that it was almost impossible to find volunteers. In February 1862, W. H. Byrd of Augusta, Georgia, wrote that he had been trying for two weeks to raise a company in what he called “this ‘Yankee City,’ but I regret to say every effort has failed.” That failure did not result from a lack of potential recruits. The Augusta Chronicle and Sentinel had noted a week earlier that “one who walks Broad street and sees the number of young men, would come to the conclusion that no war . . . was now waging.”

The Confederacy’s response to its recruitment problems served only to weaken its support among plain folk. In April 1862 the Confederate Congress passed the first general conscription act in American history. However, men of wealth could avoid the draft by hiring a substitute or paying an exemption fee. Congress also exempted one white male for every 20 slaves owned.

“Free state” was a phrase widely applied to north Alabama’s Winston County. Soon after Alabama seceded from the Union, Winston seceded from the state. A December 1861 letter to Alabama’s governor warned that “if they had to fight for anybody, they would fight for Lincoln.” And they did. Twice as many Winston County men served in the Union army as did in the Confederate. Even many of those who initially signed on with the Confederacy soon had a change of heart. Frank and Jasper Ridge, two brothers from Jackson County, deserted after just fifteen days. By the summer of 1863 there were at least 10,000 deserters and conscripts in the Alabama hill country formed into armed bands. Some did so to fend off Confederate authorities, killing officers sent to arrest them. Others went on the offensive; in Randolph County about 400 deserters organized and carried out “a systematic warfare upon conscript officers.”

In Louisiana, James Madison Wells denounced the Confederacy as a rich man’s government and organized a guerrilla campaign against it. From his Bear Wallow stronghold in Rapides Parish, Wells led deserters and other resisters in raids against Confederate supply lines and depots. Louisiana was a hotbed of loyalist sentiment. The Cajun population, particularly, held no love for the planters and enlisted in Union units in considerable numbers. The Irish, Germans and Yankees of New Orleans saw the Confederate cause as treason; when Butler and Farragut steamed up the Mississippi in April, 1862, the dragooned men holding Ft. Jackson spiked their guns and shot the officers who wouldn't agree to surrender. The fort fell without a Union shot being fired.

Georgia was one of the most divided states 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.

While the Sotch-Irish literally carved West Virginia out of Virginia during the war, there were other “free states” of the mountain people. “The Free State of Nickajack,” comprised of eastern Tennessee and northern Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, named for the Nickajack River that runs through the region, was strongly hostile to the Confederacy from 1862 on.

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

Unionist feeling in Alabama was strongest in the northern half of the state. The 1st Alabama Cavalry, U.S. Volunteers was the military result of that anti-secession feeling. The unit was formed in 1862 in Huntsville and Memphis and mustered into Federal service that December in Corinth, Mississippi.

The Myth of the Lost Cause demands the loyalists be branded poor soldiers. The 1st Alabama was one of six Union regiments from Alabama, the only cavalry unit; its ranks contained both whites and blacks, an anomaly that would not be repeated until President Truman’s desegregation of the armed forces in 1948. While they never tamed "that devil Forrest," the 1st Alabama did humble Joe Wheeler and Wade Hampton.

Along with General Phillip Sheridan’s devastation of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, of which he wrote at the conclusion that a crow flying across the valley would have to carry its own provisions in order to get to the other side, General Sherman’s Georgia-Carolinas Campaign truly proved his later statement that “War is hell.”

Sherman’s staff included Major Thomas McKelvey (your author’s namesake), son of James McKelvey who had arrived in America “a skip ahead of Cornwallis’ rope.” At the outbreak of war, he had just taken a teaching position at Oberlin College in Ohio, but returned to Pennsylvania where he joined the 9th Pennsylvania Cavalry, and took part in the Western campaign, being recognized for holding his squadron’s position at Shiloh - the first really bloody fight of the war - against Confederate attacks on the first day of the battle. He joined Sherman’s staff when Grant was called east to take command of the Army of the Potomac. He’s listed as having worked with the 1st Alabama.

After taking Atlanta on September 2, 1864, Sherman paused his offensive until after the elections, to insure there was no bad news of battles lost before the votes were in. Once Lincoln was re-elected, Sherman began “The March to the Sea” on November 15, 1864. Knowing the value of the 1st Alabama as symbols of the loyal South, Sherman selected the unit to be his escort.

The first real resistance to the Union advance was the Battle of Griswoldville on November 22. Wheeler's cavalry struck Kilpatrick's Union cavalry. Several small actions followed. Wheeler struck in a rearguard action at Ball's Ferry on November 24-25. While Howard's wing was delayed near Ball's Bluff, the 1st Alabama engaged the Confederate troops. On November 25–26 at Sandersville, Wheeler struck at Slocum's advance guard. Kilpatrick’s force, including the 1st Alabama, feinted toward Augusta before destroying the railroad bridge at Brier Creek and moving to liberate the Camp Lawton prisoner of war camp at Millen. On December 4, Kilpatrick's cavalry routed Wheeler’s troopers at the Battle of Waynesboro, which opened the way to Savannah.

After Savannah fell December 10, Sherman ordered a month-long delay for rest, then marched north through the Carolinas, intending to complete his turning movement and combine his armies with Grant's against Robert E. Lee.

The 1st Alabama’s finest action was the battle of Monroe’s Crossing, fought on March 10, 1865. The 800 men of the Third Brigade of Kilpatrick’s cavalry division, including the 1st and two other regiments, were surprised in camp by 5,000 of Hampton's and Wheeler's cavalry. The 1st Alabama held off the main attack, which came out of a swamp, when their artillery was wheeled into position at the last minute and they cleared the swamp with grapeshot. When the smoke cleared, the Third Brigade had routed 5,000 Confederates. The insurrectionists lost 103 dead and many more wounded at a cost to the Federals of 18 dead and 70 wounded. A potential disaster had become a clear cut victory.

After a successful two-month campaign, the 1st Alabama was present at the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston’s Confederate army in North Carolina on April 26, 1865. “Sherman’s March” was complete.

Tomorrow I will write about the Great Betrayal of The Other South by the North, and the erasure of The Other South from History,

You can support That’s Another Fine Mess with a paid subscription for only $7/month or $70/year, saving $14. Your support with a paid subscription - now that my partner is gone and the financial situation here has changed - will be deeply appreciated.

Comments are for paid subscribers.