Southern Unionist

White Southerners opposed to secession and the American Civil War

This article is about anti-secessionism in the southern United States. For pro-UK sentiment in Ireland outside Northern Ireland, see Unionism in Ireland.

Newton Knight (Mississippi), leader of the Knight Company and one of the founders of the Free State of Jones.

In the United States, Southern Unionists were white Southerners living in the Confederate States of America and the Southern Border States opposed to secession. Many fought for the Union during the Civil War. These people are also referred to as Southern Loyalists, Union Loyalists,[1] or Lincoln's Loyalists.[2] Pro-Confederates in the South derided them as "Tories" (in reference to the pro-Crown Loyalists of the American Revolution). During Reconstruction, these terms were replaced by "scalawag" (or "scallywag"), which covered all Southern whites who supported the Republican Party.

Tennessee (especially East Tennessee), Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, North Carolina, and Virginia (which included West Virginia at that time) were home to the largest populations of Unionists. Other (primarily Appalachian) areas with significant Unionist influence included North Alabama, North Georgia, Western North Carolina, the Texas Hill Country, northern Loudoun County in Virginia, North Mississippi, North Texas, the Arkansas Ozarks,[3] and the Boston Mountains in Arkansas.[4] These areas provided thousands of volunteers for Union military service. Western North Carolinians, for example, formed their own loyalist infantry, cavalry, and artillery regiments, while West Virginians formed a new Union state admitted in 1863.

## Description

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Josiah Dunlow - 1st North Carolina Union Volunteers

The term Southern Unionist, and its variations, incorporate a spectrum of beliefs and actions. Some, such as Texas governor Sam Houston, were vocal in their support of Southern interests, but believed that those interests could best be maintained by remaining in the Union as it existed. Some Unionists initially opposed secession (especially in the states of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia), but after it came, served in the Confederate armies, or supported the Confederacy in other ways, usually out of a sense of duty to their states. Others refused to fight, went or stayed north to enlist in the Union Army, forming dedicated Unionist units, or launched insurgencies behind Confederate lines. Some remained in the South and tried to stay neutral. The term could also be used for any Southerner who worked with the Republican Party or Union government in any capacity after the war ended in 1865.

A study of Southern Unionists in Alabama who continued to support the Union during the war found that they were typically "old fashioned" or conservative "Jackson" Democrats, or former Whigs, who viewed the federal government as worthy of defending because it had provided economic and political security. They saw secession as dangerous, illegitimate, and contrary to the intentions of the Founding Fathers, and believed that the Confederacy could not improve on the United States government. The desire for security was a motivation for Unionist slaveholders, who correctly predicted that secession would entail a war that the South could not win, ultimately leading to the loss of their slaves. Others saw the end of slavery as preferable to the end of the Union, or saw slavery as doomed in the long run and preferred to see it go peacefully and be compensated for their loss than have abolition imposed by a Northern army. The Southern ideals of honor, family, and duty were as important to Unionists as to their pro-secession neighbors. They believed, however, that rebelling against the United States, which many of their ancestors had fought for in 1776 and 1812, was the unmanly and dishonorable act.[5]

### Baggett study

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In 2003, historian James Alex Baggett profiled more than 1,400 Southern political activists (742 Southern Unionists, and 666 Redeemers who eventually replaced them) in three regions (the Upper South, the Southeast, and the Southwest). He coded them as follows:

Score | Activity

|

1 | Breckinridge supporter in 1860 election
2 | Bell or Douglas supporter in 1860 election
3 | 1860–61 opponent of secession
4 | Passive wartime unionist
5 | Peace party advocate
6 | Active wartime unionist
7 | Postwar National Union Party supporter

Baggett claimed that each activist's score was roughly proportional to the probability that the activist was a Southern Unionist. Baggett further investigated the lives of those Southern Unionists before, during, and after the war, with respect to birthplace, occupation, value of estate, slave ownership, education, party activity, stand on secession, war politics, and postwar politics.[6]

## History

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Before the war there was widespread belief in the North that the states that had not yet seceded might be persuaded to stay within the Union. This idea was predicated on the fact that many believed that the newly elected President Lincoln would declare a relaxed policy toward the South that would ease tensions. Given the fact that there were a good number of Southern Unionists known to be found in the South it was hoped that this deliberate policy of non-provocation would subvert extremists from irreversible action. Admirable though their sentiments might have been, the claims of these Northerners were greatly embellished. In fact, there were fewer Unionists in the South than many Northerners believed, and they tended to be concentrated in areas such as northwest Virginia,[7] East Tennessee, and parts of North Carolina where slave owners and slaves themselves were few. Furthermore, in the states that had already seceded, irreversible action had already taken place; federal buildings, mints, and courthouses had been seized.

Many Southern soldiers remained loyal when their states seceded.[8] During the war, many Southern Unionists went North and joined the Union armies. Others joined when Union armies entered their hometowns in Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, and elsewhere. Around 100,000 Southern Unionists served in the Union Army during the Civil War, with every Southern state except South Carolina raising official organizations of white troops.[9] Though no regiments of Southern Unionists were formed in South Carolina due to a smaller unionist presence, the Upstate region of the state would be a haven for Confederate Army deserters and resisters, as they used the Upstate topography and traditional community relations to resist service in the Confederate ranks.[10]

State | White soldiers serving
in the Union Army
(other branches unlisted)

|

Alabama | 2,700[11]
Arkansas | 9,000[12]
Florida | 1,000[13][14]
Georgia | 2,500[citation needed]
Louisiana | 5,000-10,000[15][16]
Mississippi | 545[17]
North Carolina | 10,000[18]
Tennessee | 31,000[19]
Texas | 2,000[20]
Virginia and
West Virginia | 21,000–23,000[21]

The Southern Unionists were referred to in Henry Clay Work's song "Marching Through Georgia":

> Yes and there were Union men who wept with joyful tears,
>  When they saw the honored flag they had not seen for years;
>  Hardly could they be restrained from breaking forth in cheers,
>  While we were marching through Georgia.

Southern Unionists were extensively used as anti-guerrilla forces and as occupation troops in areas of the Confederacy occupied by the Union. Ulysses S. Grant noted:[22]

> We had many regiments of brave and loyal men who volunteered under great difficulty from the twelve million belonging to the South.

## See also

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* List of Southern Unionists
* East Tennessee Convention – Political assembly
* Wheeling Convention – 1861 secession movement of West Virginia from Virginia
* Nickajack – Region in East Tennessee and northern Alabama
* Copperhead, a Northerner sympathetic to the Confederacy

## Notes

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1. ^ Philip B. Lyons, Statesmanship and Reconstruction: Moderate Versus Radical Republicans on Restoring the Union After the Civil War (Lexington Books, 2014), p. 262: "Hart was one of the first native white Union Loyalists to speak out in favor of black suffrage and equal rights."
2. ^ Richard Nelson Current, Lincoln's Loyalists: Union Soldiers from the Confederacy (Northeastern University Press: 1992).
3. ^ Howard, Rebecca Ann; ‘Civil War Unionists and Their Legacy in the Arkansas Ozarks (Ph.D. thesis) (2015).
4. ^ Lause, Mark A.; Race and Radicalism in the Union Army, p. 5 ISBN 0252034465
5. ^ Storey, Margaret M. (February 2003). "Civil War Unionists and the Political Culture of Loyalty in Alabama, 1860-1861". The Journal of Southern History. 69 (1): 71–106\. doi:10.2307/30039841. JSTOR 30039841.
6. ^ Baggett, James Alex (2003). The Scalawags: Southern Dissenters in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press. ISBN 9780807130148. Archived from the original on 13 April 2016. Retrieved 9 Jul 2016.
7. ^ Foner, Eric, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution – 1863–1877, Harper, 2002, pg. 39
8. ^ Pryor, Elizabeth Brown (2011-04-19). "The General in His Study". Disunion. The New York Times. Retrieved April 19, 2011.
9. ^ Current, Richard Nelson (1992). Lincoln's Loyalists: Union Soldiers from the Confederacy. UPNE. p. 5. ISBN 9781555531249. "except South Carolina."
10. ^ Carey, Liz. (July 5, 2014). The dark corner of South Carolina. Independent Mail. Retrieved October 30, 2023.
11. ^ The Civil War in Alabama – Legends of America. Retrieved January 29, 2021.
12. ^ Arkansas Military Records Research Guide. Retrieved January 29, 2021
13. ^ Florida's Role in the Civil War: "Supplier of the Confederacy". fcit.usf.edu. Retrieved January 29, 2021.
14. ^ Robinson, Jim. (January 30, 2005). Black Soldiers Played Proud Roles In Civil War Combat. Orlando Sentinel. Retrieved January 30, 2021.
15. ^ Sacher, John M. Civil War Louisiana | 64 Parishes. Retrieved January 29, 2021.
16. ^ Hunter, Howard (April 10, 2013). "Unionist Troops in Louisiana". 64 Parishes. Retrieved 15 February 2025.
17. ^ Rein, Christopher. (2001). Trans-Mississippi Southerners in the Union Army, 1862-1865. LSU Master's Theses. Retrieved February 7, 2021.
18. ^ Willard, David C. (2010). North Carolina in the Civil War - NCpedia. January 29, 2021.
19. ^ McRary, Amy. (August 26, 2017). East Tennessee's Civil War: Pro-Union with divided loyalties. knoxnews.com. Retrieved January 29, 2021.
20. ^ Union Supporters in Texas - NEISD. Retrieved January 29, 2021.
21. ^ [Snell, Mark A., West Virginia and the Civil War, History Press, 2011, pgs. 28-29 ISBN 978-1-59629-888-0 "The discrepancy between the Union low figure of approximately twenty thousand to the 'official' high of thirty-two thousand can be explained by the fact that thousands of enlistees in West Virginia's Union regiments were natives of Pennsylvania and Ohio..."
22. ^ Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, 1885, vol 2. chapt. 68, p. 636\. Project Gutenberg online edition

## References

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* Alexander, Thomas B. (1961). "Persistent Whiggery in the Confederate South, 1860–1877". Journal of Southern History. 27 (3). Southern Historical Association: 305–329\. doi:10.2307/2205211. JSTOR 2205211.
* Baggett, James Alex (2003). The Scalawags: Southern Dissenters in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0-8071-2798-1.
* Butler, Clayton Jonah (2022). True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.
* DeSantis, Vincent P. (1959). Republicans Face the Southern Question: The New Departure Years, 1877–1897. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press.
* Donald, David (1944). "The Scalawag in Mississippi Reconstruction". Journal of Southern History. 10 (4). Southern Historical Association: 447–460\. doi:10.2307/2197797. JSTOR 2197797.
* Ellem, Warren A. (1972). "Who Were the Mississippi Scalawags?". Journal of Southern History. 38 (2). Southern Historical Association: 217–240\. doi:10.2307/2206442. JSTOR 2206442.
* Fleming, Walter L. (1906). Documentary History of Reconstruction: Political, Military, Social, Religious, Educational, and Industrial. 2 vols. Uses broad collection of primary sources; vol. 1 on national politics; vol. 2 on states.
* Foner, Eric (2009). Give Me Liberty! An American History, second ed.
* Franklin, John Hope (1961). Reconstruction after the Civil War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-26079-8. `{{cite book}}`: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
* Garner, James Wilford (1901). Reconstruction in Mississippi. Dunning school monograph.
* Holden, William Woods (1911). Memoirs of W. W. Holden. North Carolina Scalawag governor.
* Keegan, John (2009). The American Civil War: A Military History. Random House.
* Kolchin, Peter (1979). "Scalawags, Carpetbaggers, and Reconstruction: A Quantitative Look at Southern Congressional Politics, 1868–1872". Journal of Southern History. 45 (1). Southern Historical Association: 63–76\. doi:10.2307/2207902. JSTOR 2207902.
* McKinney, Gordon B. (1998). Southern Mountain Republicans, 1865–1900: Politics and the Appalachian Community. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 1-57233-009-0.
* Pereyra, Lillian A. (1966). James Lusk Alcorn: Persistent Whig. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.
* Perman, Michael (1984). The Road to Redemption: Southern Politics 1869–1879. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
* Rubin, Hyman (2006). South Carolina Scalawags. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 1-57003-625-X.
* Tunnell, Ted (2006). "Creating 'the Propaganda of History': Southern Editors and the Origins of Carpetbagger and Scalawag". Journal of Southern History. 72 (4): 789–822\. doi:10.2307/27649233. JSTOR 27649233.
* Wiggins, Sarah Woolfolk (1991). The Scalawag in Alabama Politics, 1865–1881. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0-8173-0557-2.

## External links

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* Excerpts from The Southern Loyalist
* Southerners Against Secession: The Arguments of the Constitutional Unionists in 1850–51

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