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31 2. PATRIOTS OR TRAITORS Unionists in Civil War Mississippi thomas d. cockrell after extensive study of most all other areas of the american Civil War, a small group of historians are giving more attention to the topic of Unionism and the activities of Unionists in the southern states.At present, there seems to be somewhat of a dearth of published information, most of which originated three decades ago, maybe one of the earliest being Georgia Lee Tatum’s Disloyalty in the Confederacy (1934). Therefore, this chapter is not intended to exhaust every aspect of Unionists in Mississippi or reach any definitive conclusions. The purpose is to cover, to some degree, those areas of the state and classes of citizens who chose to remain loyal to the Union or resist the Confederacy, thereby providing more information for even broader studies yet to come. In Mississippi, as in Alabama, most of the Unionists lived in the northern part of the state with some in the Piney Woods region, and a few in Natchez. Similar areas in North Carolina’s Piedmont and the Big Thicket area of east Texas compared in philosophy with Unionist areas of Mississippi, perhaps due in part to several Jones County residents moving from the Piney Woods region to Texas. Most were non-slaveholding farmers. Some owned many slaves and others held patriotic views due to ancestral loyalty to the concept of the Union. One Virginia Unionist said“he felt like a sane man in a mad house.” Historians even disagree as to what definition may be placed on the term Unionist. Those who opposed secession or came to support the Union during the war with “uncompromising devotion” may not be classified with those who opposed the Confederacy for other reasons or were apathetic about the war. However, in all areas, Unionism was to some degree inherently tied to the secession movement that gained momentum from 1850 to the presidential election of 1860.1 thomas d. cockrell 32 After the Compromise of 1850,Unionists throughout the South did well in the congressional elections of 1851, gaining thirteen seats as opposed to only five for the States’Rights Democrats. In Mississippi, John A. Quitman, known as the leading “fire-eater” in the state and dubbed the “Father of Secession,”bowed out of the gubernatorial race, presenting an opportunity for Jefferson Davis to replace him on the States’ Rights ticket. However, Davis lost the election to the Unionist, Henry S. Foote, and Unionists’ seats in the state Senate numbered twenty-one compared to eleven for the States’ Rights Democrats. Unionists also gained control of the House of Representatives in the state by an impressive 63 to 35 margin.2 In 1850, most Mississippians apparently believed leaving the Union would be of little or no benefit. What changed the South’s nationalism to overwhelming sectionalism over the next decade was a series of events, mostly related to the expansion of slavery from the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 to the Lincoln-Douglas Debate in 1858 and the presidential election of 1860.As the 1850s moved along, the average citizen in the state took the states’rights position, which allowed unrestricted expansion of slavery, to be the absolute and only answer. One newspaper columnist wrote, it was “so often sounded in their ears that they had become somewhat accustomed to it.” In 1859, Mississippi overwhelmingly elected a “fire-eater” governor, John J. Pettus of Kemper County. Regionwide, the States’ Rights Democrats had driven home the concept that if slavery was threatened, then all southerners would suffer due to the resulting economic consequences and social deterioration. Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 was all they needed to convince the majority to secede.3 The strongest opposition to disunion in 1860–1861 came from an unlikely alliance of delegates in the northeastern hill counties and the old Whig areas along the Mississippi River. As seemed to be the case in Alabama, this strange coalition of poor upcountry non-slaveholding farmers and large slaveholding planters in the Delta indicated that Mississippians may have agreed in principle, but their views on Unionism varied significantly. Many poor subsistence farmers saw no need to secede since their plight would be the same in or out of the Union, and they would probably end up fighting a war in which they saw no personal gain. The large planter saw his slaves protected by the Constitution and feared he would lose everything if...

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