Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Alabama in the Civil War

8. Alabama Home Front

Chapter  A year after secession, the war for independence seemed a distant affair to many Alabamians. To be sure, economic hardships were nascent, but the Confederacy’s capital had moved from Montgomery to Richmond, and most of the volunteer regiments were on battlefields hundreds of miles away.John Shorter,the new governor,tried to press home a sense of urgency, but his inaugural address in December  seemed overly dramatic: “Our coasts may be ravaged,our cities and towns reduced to ashes,”he thundered,“but the sacred right of selfgovernment . . . Alabamians never will surrender.”1 Suddenly, in early February  three Union gunboats steamed up the Tennessee River as the vanguard of aYankee invasion. On  February the little flotilla reached Florence, where it captured or destroyed several commercial steamers. This incident produced wild excitement throughout the valley region. Many residents fled, while others hastily mustered local militia units. A considerable number ,however,actually welcomed the enemy,thereby revealing a long-dormant unionist sentiment that belied the secessionist euphoria of the previous year.War had come to Alabama at last,and the state was largely unprepared. Over the next several weeks, Union armies overran the western half of Tennessee,winning the great battle of Shiloh in early April. That same month , bluecoats under Brig. Gen. Ormsby Mitchel swept into northern Alabama.On  April Mitchel’s strike force occupied Huntsville, Stevenson, and Decatur,towns that connected a one-hundred-mile section of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. In the process theYankees captured dozens of locomotives and seized intact several bridges crossing the Tennessee River. These aggressive operations also foreshadowed an emerging hard-war policy.On  May a brigade of midwesterners sacked the small town of Athens in retaliation for mounting Rebel guerrilla attacks. Desperate to repel the invaders, Governor Shorter accelerated the formation of numerous homegrown mounted units. These fought under such renowned Confederate raiders as Nathan Bedford Forrest and Joe Wheeler, but it was a contingent of Alabama horsemen under Capt. Philip Roddey that proved the most consistent  Alabama Home Front defenders of the valley region.A major Rebel offensive into Kentucky that autumn helped drive out the Union occupiers, but residents along the Tennessee would not experience peace for another three years. In the meantime, Alabama offered its manifold fruits to the Confederacy. The state’s central location made it a vital transportation and communication link despite its limited rail system (less than  miles of track). But of equal importance were the state’s invaluable material assets: iron,food,and manpower (both free and slave). In maximizing these resources, however, Alabama’s governing authorities faced unexpected challenges, most notably famine and political dissent, both of which eroded popular support for the overall war effort. Though not apparent at the outset, Alabama became a major supplier of war material. The state possessed rich deposits of iron ore and coal,primarily in its hill counties.Going into the war,there were seven small-scale ironworks in operation.Governor Shorter negotiated generous state contracts with each to produce pig iron for the military. Beginning in early , however, the Confederate government asserted despotic control over this crucial enterprise. Under Josiah Gorgas, head of the Confederacy’s Ordnance Department,Alabama became a militaryindustrial complex. The Nitre and Mining Bureau expanded the existing ironworks and supervised the construction of ten more,all of which were privately owned in name only. Between January  and September , these facilities, with the Shelby Ironworks being the largest, produced over , tons of iron. Though a seemingly modest quantity, historian Joseph Woodward points out that “the blast furnaces of Alabama produced more pig iron for the Confederacy than all the other Confederate states combined.”2 In addition to providing raw materials,Alabama also became the Confederacy’s principal manufacturer of arms and munitions. Recognizing that the Union blockade would eventually eliminate foreign sources of weaponry, authorities in Richmond expanded the South’s inchoate industrial base,particularly in Alabama. For example, the incipient textile industry in Prattville became a center for making cloth for uniforms, while artisans in Tallassee specialized in small arms, producing over , carbines by the end of .The most important factory city, however, was Selma. Ideally situated near the state’s ironworks and along the navigable Alabama River, Selma quickly developed into one of the most diversified industrial locations anywhere in the Confederacy. “By  did our little city present one scene of skill and labor,” recorded longtime resident...