Reporting from the SHA: Arrivals and Departures: Unionists, Confederates, and Occupiers in the Deep South During the Civil War

This panel was presented at the 2019 Southern Historical Association meeting in Louisville, KY. Panelists were Clayton J. Butler (University of Virginia), Stefanie Greenhill (University of Kentucky), and J. Matthew Ward (Louisiana State University). Presiding over this panel was Lorien Foote (Texas A&M University) with comments by Lorien Foote and Andrew Lang (Mississippi State University).

The first paper by J. Matthew Ward entitled “‘To Rid the Community of All Suspicious Persons’: The Confederate Community in Civil War Louisiana” examined the process of state building in Louisiana once the state seceded from the United States. Ward argued that the boundaries of Confederate power were in flux during the course of the war, that there was a reciprocal process between the military and state during the process of Confederate state building, and that there was often a use of coercion to enforce loyalty to the new Confederacy. Military recruiting was one way that the state reinforced participation in the new Confederacy, whether recruitment into the Confederate army or the formation of Minute Men, Home Guards, or other Southern loyalty groups. The state also tightened control over monetary policies, declared martial law in certain areas, confiscated federal (and other) property, and required the oath of allegiance to the Confederate States. Efforts to provide aid to military families also reinforced state building. Within the efforts to build a loyal Confederate Louisiana, communities policed themselves for elements of disloyalty. While the state often used coercion to enforce this new nationalism, on the local level vigilance committees functioned as a local arm of this state power to determine who could be within this new community and who was disloyal. Under particular scrutiny were any outsiders, who were closely examined for disloyalty and sometimes threatened and run out of town (particularly northerners). Even members of the community who showed any support for abolition or the northern cause would be jailed, have their property confiscated, be threatened by mob action, and/or exiled. Ward called these actions “weaponized patriotism” where anyone who did not fully support the Confederacy could be viewed, and treated, as a traitor. Ward closed his paper by arguing that these enforcers in Louisiana used the same “undemocratic” methods that they accused the North of using—bureaucratic regulations and getting rid of due process—and that New Orleans was already under occupation before the Union forces took control in 1862.

Clayton J. Butler’s paper was “‘We Are True Blue’: White Unionist Regiments in the Deep South during the Civil War” which examined white southern unconditional unionists. He states that there were very few unconditional unionists (those who would continue to support the Union no matter what, even to the point of accepting emancipation), however these unionists became symbolic to both sides disproportionally to their actual numbers. Both North and South projected hopes and fears onto this small groups of white unionists; Union troops looked for unionists as they traveled in the South, hoping to rescue them from a society gone mad while Confederates viewed these families as traitors and threats to their new nationalism. Many unionists were immigrants who had come because of the promise of the United States and remained dedicated to that nation, others were native-born Southerners such as the Taliaferro family who Butler used as a case study in this unconditional unionism. The Taliaferros owned slaves and held southern views about race but supported the Union politically and militarily and did not see slavery as opposed to supporting the nation. They believed that the Constitution protected slavery and that the institution would fare worse if the South left the protection of that document. James Taliaferro supported the Union politically, submitting a protest against secession in January 1861 and continued to support the U.S. while many of his fellows fell in line after secession was made final. Other members of the Taliaferro family supported Lincoln in the 1864 election and one enlisted in the 1st LA Cav (U.S.) and fought for the North. The Taliaferros’ commitment to the Union continued into Reconstruction. While some wartime unionists reunited with other white southerners to oppose federal power in the south and the expansion of rights to freedmen and freedwomen, the Taliaferros supported Reconstruction policies. They themselves lost their slave property in the war, yet James chaired the state convention in 1867-1868 that saw African Americans hold political positions and created the state’s radical constitution. Other members of the family denounced the Lost Cause and called for remembrance of southern unionists after the war. In the conclusion of his paper Butler discussed how family was a determining factor of loyalty and unionism in the South, as evidenced by the unionist Taliaferro family.

The final paper was “‘Yankee Skedadlers’: Unionism, Displacement, and Native Northerners who fled from the Confederacy” by Stefanie Greenhill. The Civil War produced a refugee crisis, a Confederate diaspora, that is not looked at much. When looking at northerners living in the South when the war began, some left and others stayed (either as unionists or supporting the Confederacy). Greenhill found that politics alone did not determine if a family stayed or fled; she found several other factors that determined the movement of northerners in the Confederate South: geographic location, timing, wartime conditions/military activity, gender, social networks, and economic class. In her paper, she used a few families as examples to demonstrate how these factors affected the decisions to stay or flee to the North. William and Mary Longley lived in Macon, GA but fled early in the war and used family connections in Indianapolis and Massachusetts to manage their refugee experience. In this case study, Greenhill pointed to gender and timing. William was facing pressure to fight for the Confederacy, and this was one deciding factor to their decision to leave. The Longleys fled early when it was easier to do so and they were able to use family to help finance their journey and find work once safe in Massachusetts. For Thursa Finch in Virginia, gender also played a factor. As an unmarried woman, she could not flee Virginia to return to New York without being accompanied by family. Her brother and brother-in-law did flee because they were facing pressure to join the Confederate army and there were less restrictions on their movement, but Thursa had to remain in Virginia with the rest of her family. For the Finches, military action became the deciding factor for their decision to flee. They lived near Manassas and when the Battle of Second Manassas loomed the family joined with others fleeing towards Washington, D.C. and made their way back to New York. The third family did not leave the South until late in the war. Frederick Augustus Porter Bernard was a scholar at the University of Mississippi. He tried to prevent his students from enlisting in the army and after the University Greys enlisted he tried to resign from his position, but his resignation was refused twice. The University offered to trade a passport out of the Confederacy in exchange for a report on how to turn the college into a military academy, but Jefferson Davis prevented this because he wanted Barnard to help with certain projects for the South. After the university closed the Barnards were able to move to Newport and from there finally fled north where in 1864 Frederick took a position at Columbia College. In this case Frederick’s career and influence protected him from harm, but also prevented him and his wife from leaving the Confederacy earlier in the war. Concluding, Greenhill argued that logistics were just as important as politics in these decisions and she states that we need to look at the when, where, and how, not just the why northerners became refugees.

The comments from Lang and Foote highlighted that these three papers showed that the Confederacy was not one solid block of loyalty, that there was a more diverse spectrum of loyalty to the Confederacy and remaining unionism in the South. These papers also show that Civil War identities were not in a binary between North and South, that these were real people making decisions based on their environment. Lang also stated that these papers were good examples of historians collapsing the boundaries between the military front and home front, that they show decisions being made in the context of a massive military conflict that had a direct impact on families at the personal level.

Dr. Kathleen Logothetis Thompson earned her PhD in Nineteenth Century/Civil War America from West Virginia University, and also holds a M.A. from WVU and a B.A. from Siena College. Her research is on mental trauma and coping among Union soldiers and she is currently working on her first book, tentatively titled War on the Mind. She currently teaches history at several colleges and university and leads tours of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. Kathleen was a seasonal interpreter at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park for several years and is the co-editor of Civil Discourse.