Southern Unionist

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 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), 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.

  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