Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis

Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies

by Daniel W. Crofts

Daniel Crofts examines Unionists in three pivotal southern states--Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee--and shows why the outbreak of the war enabled the Confederacy to gain the allegiance of these essential, if ambivalent, governments.

"Crofts's study focuses on Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, but it includes analyses of the North and Deep South as well. As a result, his volume presents the views of all parties to the sectional conflict and offers a vivid portrait of the interaction between them.-- American Historical Review

"Refocuses our attention on an important but surprisingly neglected group--the Unionists of the upper South during the secession crisis, who have been too readily ignored by other historians.-- Journal of Southern History

Genres: History, Civil War

531 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[William Guerrant · Rating 5 out of 5]

A detailed and scholarly study of Unionism in Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee during the Secession Winter of 1860-61, this fascinating book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in understanding the history of that crucial moment in time. Professor Crofts convincingly establishes that Unionists in those important border states, relying on what they believed to be assurances that the Lincoln administration would not employ force or coercion against the seceded states, had by the beginning of April 1861 effectively crushed secessionism in their states. A surging "Unionist Party" emerged from the ashes of the Democratic and Whig parties to establish dominance in those states, defeating the minority of voters who preferred secession and disunion. When, in the aftermath of the bombardment of Ft. Sumter, Lincoln called for mobilization of a federal army to "suppress the rebellion," the border state Unionists considered themselves betrayed. While they did not want to secede, neither they did not want to go to war against they states that had. Forced to choose between North and South in a war, the great majority of the former Unionists chose the south and endorsed secession. Literally overnight, the Unionist hold on the states (and Arkansas, which is not studied in this book) dissolved, their secession immediately followed, and the scope of the conflict expanded greatly.

The author is a compelling writer, except when he bogs down in the mind-numbing statistical analysis that is typical of historians trained at Yale in the 1970s. Most readers will want to skim over those sections.

One significant criticism: it seems to me that amid the comprehensive examination of the thought and conduct of the key players in this drama, too little attention is given to the most important actor of all--Abraham Lincoln. Only two paragraphs (on page 358) are devoted to the question of what caused Lincoln to make the momentous decision for war, and there is no discussion at all of how he reacted to the sudden reversal of opinion in the border states caused by his proclamation. This sentence is astonishing: "No surviving evidence indicates how he expected the outbreak of war to affect the upper South." It seems nearly impossible to believe. The author speculates that perhaps Lincoln underestimated the "latent pro-Confederate sympathies of states that had recently rejected secession," but the text shows convincingly that the Union's hold on those states was known to be precarious and that Seward in particular was working frantically to hold onto their loyalty. He also speculates that perhaps Lincoln "concluded that the Union could be restored only by fighting against an enlarged Confederacy and that it was better to fight sooner than later." That guess seems more plausible, but still remarkable in light of how much the loss of Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina affected the balance of power and in light of how much importance he ultimately placed on keeping Kentucky and Maryland in the Union. It's an intriguing question left unanswered. Perhaps Professor Crofts returns to it in his book Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery, which sits patiently in my study waiting for me to get to it.

[Jim Hopkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book. Gives you a great feeling for what the thinking was in the upper south during the secession crisis. The one fault I have is that, while, again, it really gets into the mind of the upper south unionists and their efforts to keep secession from sweeping their states, it totally misses the pressure that must have been on Lincoln et al from the northern states, as well as ignoring the fact that Lincoln was set on keeping the entire Union complete, not just limiting it to the 7 initial secession states.

Also, I don't think he's thought about something Lincoln DID care about - and that was proving that a democratic government could survive. If the nation split, it would prove to many that such a government was doomed to end up sliding back into aristocracy or monarchy or whatever you want to call post-revolutionary France. I do believe that THIS was the idea that was foremost in Lincoln's mind in the early days.