100,000 From Dixie Fought for the North in the Civil War
05.30.16 12:01 AM ET
Kevin M. Levin
... the push to establish monuments to the Confederacy during the postwar years helped .. erase the history of .. southerners .. willing to give their lives to save the Union.
Southern Unionism took many forms during the Civil War. Some disagreed with the right of a state to secede from the Union at the war’s outset while others grew weary of the Confederacy in response to a number of factors, including a Conscription Act in 1862 that exempted large slaveowners, the impressment of horses or mules for the army, and a “tax-in-kind” law that allowed the government to confiscate a certain percentage of farm produce for military purposes. Others in places like Appalachia and other highland regions that included few slaves saw little value in supporting a government whose purpose was the creation of an independent slaveholding republic ...
... Some joined clandestine political organizations such as the Heroes of America, which may have contained upwards of 10,000 members. Networks of communication kept resistors in touch with one another and their activities throughout the region. Unionists risked arrest by Confederate officials, ostracism from within the family, and violent reprisals from the community.
... somewhere around 100,000 southern white men from Confederate states, except for South Carolina, served in the U.S. military. East Tennessee supplied somewhere around 42,000 men, but other Confederate states yielded significant numbers, including 22,000 from Virginia (and West Virginia) and 25,000 from North Carolina. The First Alabama Cavalry, which was considered one of the toughest units in General William Tecumseh Sherman’s army, took part in his “march” through Georgia and the Carolinas in 1864-65 ...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/30/100-000-from-dixie-fought-for-the-north-in-the-civil-war.html
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Everyone of my ancestors who fought in the Civil War fought for the Confederacy. I'm just two generations removed from the Klan. That's a lot of family history to be ashamed of. If only they had done the brave, noble thing, and fought for the Union, instead of for slavery.
