"Bitterly Divided" lays bare the myth of a united confederacy, revealing that the South was in fact fighting two civil wars--an external one that we know so much about and an internal one about which there is scant literature and virtually no public awareness. A fascinating look at a hidden side of the South's history, historian David Williams shows the powerful and little-understood impact of the thousands of draft resisters, Southern Unionists, fugitive slaves, and other Southerners who opposed the Confederate cause.
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"Bitterly Divided" lays bare the myth of a united confederacy, revealing that the South was in fact fighting two civil wars--an external one that we know so much about and an internal one about which there is scant literature and virtually no public awareness. A fascinating look at a hidden side of the South's history, historian David Williams shows the powerful and little-understood impact of the thousands of draft resisters, Southern Unionists, fugitive slaves, and other Southerners who opposed the Confederate cause.
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I happened on this book, "Bitterly Divided: the South's War with Itself," by David Williams, purely by accident. I had been researching a great great uncle's Civil War service. Uncle Isaac was born in South Carolina in 1841 and moved with his father and extended family, to Henry County, Georgia and then further west to what is now Clay County, Alabama. His older brother James Madison B. was drafted by the Confederate Army and served in an infantry regiment formed in Henry County. Isaac took a different path to war. In 1863 he enlisted for one year in the 1st Tennessee Alabama Independent Vidette Cavalry. This was a Union cavalry regiment formed in the Tennessee River Valley, five of its eight companies were composed of Alabama Unionists. Three companies were formed from several hundred Tennessee volunteers. At full strength the regiment numbered 936 men. I had always heard that the Civil War was one in which brother fought brother and now I had family evidence to prove it. But "Alabama Unionists" seemed like an oxymoron.
Further research revealed dozens Union army regiments made up of Southern men fighting against the Confederacy. And these were not Colored troops! Conventional history of the Civil War mostly ignores any hint of Southern disunity. And Margaret Mitchell's novel, "Gone with the Wind," has greatly helped to create the prevailing myth of legions of southern men marching forward, rallying to save their heritage, their peculiar institutions, the home place, leaving behind their much loved slaves and families, their wives and mothers. There was no place for disunity. Even Ken Burns' powerful documentary series barely mentions the lack of unity in the South for Secession and the War. It is this prevailing myth of a Solid South that is busted by Professor Williams' book.
On the eve of secession Alabama politicians refused to hold a public, state-wide referendum on the issue fearing that it would not pass. Anti-secessionists lived in every county in the state. Alabama seceded from the Union based on the vote at a cocked up convention held in Montgomery. It's delegate majority composed of fire breathing war-mongers. Opposition was strongest in the northern part of Alabama, in those counties along the Tennessee River. Sizable minorities of Unionists lived in the mountain and hill country of Alabama existed as well as in the wiregrass region, along the border with Florida and southwest Georgia. They held a numerical majority in Winston County. This county voted to secede from the state, becoming the Free State of Winston.
Williams' well-documented book lays out the extent of anti-union sentiment and actions throughout the South during the war. Over 5,000 young Alabama Unionists served in the 1st Tennessee-Alabama Vidette Cavalry and in the 1st Alabama Cavalry USA. That regiment was formed in 1861 in Corinth, Mississippi and campaigned across the deep South and led Sherman's troops marching to the sea from Atlanta. In that capacity they heaped destruction on hundreds of plantations. In fact, nearly 250,000 southern men joined the Union Army. These were not colored troops but regiments made up of Southern white men, most of whom were not slaveholders. Most enlisted for three years and came from border states, Tennessee and western Virginia. Alabama provided more troops to the Union Army than any other state in the deep South. When enlistments failed to sufficient men to fill the ranks the Confederate Congress passed the nation's first conscription act in 1862. The act cleaved the South. Plantation owners were granted one exemption for each 20 slaves owned, permitting a generation of able-bodied men to stay home. Thus the war become known as a "rich man's war and poor man's fight" as the burden of carrying arms into harm's way fell on poor whites who owned a few acres or farmed rented land, as tenants.
Granted an exemption from the fight plantation owners promised to raise sufficient food crops to feed the troops and the families they left behind. Williams demonstrates that the plantation owners reneged on this commitment and planted even more acres of cotton and tobacco, becoming profiteers. By the winter of 1862 conditions on the home front were dire. Hunger abounded, with starvation occurring among the poorest and most remote families. Prices for food skyrocketed. Salt disappeared. Women wrote their menfolk, husbands, fathers, brothers, urging them to come home. Williams reports that desperate women took matters in their own hands when local, state and Confederate officials their pleas for food were ignored by. He cites hundred of incidents, throughout the war, where women staged armed raids on government storehouses, leaving with wagonloads of food. These conditions were worse for Unionists as they were denied rations. By 1864 Confederate troops were deserting by the tens of thousands, a fact confirmed by none less than General Robert E. Lee.
As the war went on exemptions from service multiplied. The wealthy could even hire someone to take their place in the ranks when drafted. Draft dodging among poorer whites became commonplace. Thousands hid out in hills and swamps for months. Unionists were funneled along a new "underground railroad" to Union lines where most enlisted for the North. Capture by Confederate militia units often meant torture and execution. By the end of the conflict fully 500,000 southerners, black and white, were fighting for the Union. Without these resources the South lost the war against and the Union. That is not the conclusion of popular traditional histories of the war. As the result, Williams evokes a new and important interpretation of the conflict, and its continued repercussions.
