Loyalty And Loss: Alabama's Unionists In The Civil War And Reconstruction

Margaret M. Storey

LSU Press, 2004 - History - 296 pages

Though slavery was widespread and antislavery sentiment rare in Alabama, there emerged a small loyalist population, mostly in the northern counties, that persisted in the face of overwhelming odds against their cause. Margaret M. Storey's welcome study explores those Alabamians who maintained allegiance to the Union when their state seceded in 1861--and beyond. Her extensive, groundbreaking research discloses a socioeconomically diverse group that included slaveholders and nonslaveholders, business people, professionals, farmers, and blacks. Narratives of their wartime experiences indicate in astonishingly rich detail the chaos and destruction that occurred on the southern home front. Storey considers the political, social, and military aspects of unionism in Alabama. And by treating the years 1861-1874 as a whole, she clearly connects loyalists' sometimes brutal wartime treatment with their postwar behavior. In extending the study of unionism into the Deep South, Storey sheds important light on the internal strife of the Confederacy as well as the nature of resistance itself.

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• The Political Culture of Loyalism: 18
• Resisting the Confederate Draft: 56
• Unionists Slaves: 88
• Unionists Slaves and the Federal Counterinsurgency: 133
• The Limits of Presidential Reconstruction: 170
• Radical Activism and Klan Backlash: 196
• Epilogue: 232
• Questions Used in Interrogation by the Southern Claims: 244
• Demographic Tables: 254
• Bibliography: 263
• Index: 287
• Index of Loyal Alabamians: 293

About the author

Margaret M. Storey is an associate professor of history at DePaul University in Chicago

Bibliographic information

• Title: Loyalty And Loss: Alabama's Unionists In The Civil War And Reconstruction; Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War Series; Conflicting worlds
• Author: Margaret M. Storey
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: LSU Press, 2004
• ISBN: 0807130222, 9780807130223
• Length: 296 pages
• Subjects: History / United States / 20th Century; History / United States / Civil War Period (1850-1877); History / United States / State & Local / General