To Live and Die in Dixie: Native Northerners Who Fought for the Confederacy by David Ross Zimring (review)

In To Live and Die in Dixie: Native Northerners Who Fought for the Confederacy, David Ross Zimring investigates what became of white “northern emigrants” who moved to southern states before the Civil War and found themselves on the opposite side of the sectional divide from their families and native region (p. 3). His study, based largely on the writings of 303 emigrants, finds that these individuals overwhelmingly adopted the South as their home, defended the region enthusiastically during the sectional crisis, and often solidified their identities as bona fide white southerners by helping the Confederate war effort.

Zimring focuses most of his study on the process through which northern emigrants became southerners and, ultimately, Confederates. Many of these emigrants headed to southern states as young adults looking for adventure and new career opportunities. Zimring points out that northern emigrants typically found that they could earn a better living in the South; more than that, a northern education gave them an advantage if they wanted to teach or practice medicine or law. Once they arrived in their southern homes, though, they did not try to maintain their identities as northerners. Some men married southern women and served in local governments; and Zimring finds that by the time of the sectional crisis, many of them espoused pro-southern (and often secessionist) political views. Like their native white southern counterparts, these “adoptive southerners” maintained that the North had changed from the region they knew as children (p. 13). Some tried to serve as mediators between the North and South, while others who had become slaveholders argued that slavery was a benign institution and that northerners were the ones fanning the sectional flames. Zimring finds that 80 percent of adoptive southerners supported the Confederacy. Readers will notice how these adoptive southerners’ experiences compare with those of native-born Confederates once the war began. Some emigrants enlisted, rose through the ranks of the Confederate army, and served as diplomats and wartime governors. On the home front, northern-born women ran plantations and bought war bonds.

According to Zimring, these northern-born Confederates illustrate that sectional identity was incredibly fluid in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Certainly sectional stereotypes abounded in antebellum popular culture, but Zimring finds that they did not really exist on the ground. Northerners who moved to southern communities generally were not vilified by their neighbors for being Yankees. Even during the war, Zimring argues, northern-born Confederates were generally judged by their performance in battle more than by their place of birth. In short, until 1865, northerners could become southerners simply by deciding to do so. Zimring’s argument is convincing, but it raises questions about the postwar years. Although it is largely beyond the scope of his study, Zimring points out that after the war, northerners came to be viewed as invading carpetbaggers and could not so easily become southerners. This assertion seems correct. Historians are well aware of stereotypical images of rascally carpetbaggers profiting from white southerners’ misfortunes. Recent historiography has also demonstrated convincingly that sectional reconciliation was incredibly limited. Zimring’s study, though, raises questions about the ways that cultural stereotypes played out in daily life. After the war, was it possible for white southerners to hate “Yankees” and still accept emigrants they knew as neighbors into their communities?

This study does more than simply raise questions about how northern emigrants adapted to life in the South. Recent studies have shown that African Americans and immigrants used the war to act out their allegiance to the Union or the Confederacy. Zimring’s study of northern Confederates complements these studies nicely. His book serves as further evidence that nationalism (whether it be Union or Confederate) was based much more on espousing a correct set of behaviors and political beliefs than it was on any innate cultural identity. [End...