Unconditional Unionist

When U.S. Congressman Lucian Anderson from Kentucky voted for the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in January 1865, abolishing slavery, he gambled more than his political career. Anderson was from Mayfield, one of the most rabidly secessionist towns in the Bluegrass State. During the Civil War, his political alignment changed from pro-slavery Union Democrat to Unconditional Unionist to Republican. Elected by Unionists in 1863, he soon received death threats and was kidnapped by Confederate raiders who held him for ransom (while he tried to convert them to the Union cause). He was a Kentucky delegate to the 1864 national convention that re-nominated President Abraham Lincoln. Knowing he could not win another term, Anderson did not seek reelection in 1865. Based on newspaper articles, letters and other contemporary sources, this book provides a detailed portrait of an overlooked but significant figure of the Civil War and Kentucky history.

Bolton (history, U. of Southern Mississippi) illuminates the social complexity surrounding the lives of a group consistently dismissed as rednecks, crackers, and white trash: landless white tenants and laborers in the era of slavery. A short epilogue looks at their lives today. Paper edition (unseen), $16.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Wakelyn (history, Kent State U.) presents 18 pamphlets and discusses 22 others in which southerners entreated others to support the United States and oppose the Confederacy. Written between 1861 and 1864, they were preserved by local and national political leaders and private citizens. The best known author is Andrew Johnson, who was later president. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Many accounts of the secession crisis overlook the sharp political conflict that took place in the Border South states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri. Michael D. Robinson expands the scope of this crisis to show how the fate of the Border South, and with it the Union, desperately hung in the balance during the fateful months surrounding the clash at Fort Sumter. During this period, Border South politicians revealed the region's deep commitment to slavery, disputed whether or not to leave the Union, and schemed to win enough support to carry the day. Although these border states contained fewer enslaved people than the eleven states that seceded, white border Southerners chose to remain in the Union because they felt the decision best protected their peculiar institution. Robinson reveals anew how the choice for union was fraught with anguish and uncertainty, dividing families and producing years of bitter internecine violence. Letters, diaries, newspapers, and quantitative evidence illuminate how, in the absence of a compromise settlement, proslavery Unionists managed to defeat secession in the Border South.

Includes lists, tables, and statistics on: Senators; Senatorial elections; Sessions; Party leadership and organization; Committees; Senate organization; and Senate powers.

In this groundbreaking study, Barton A. Myers analyzes the secret world of hundreds of white and black Southern Unionists as they struggled for survival in a new Confederate world, resisted the imposition of Confederate military and civil authority, began a diffuse underground movement to destroy the Confederacy, joined the United States Army as soldiers, and waged a series of violent guerrilla battles at the local level against other Southerners. Myers also details the work of Confederates as they struggled to build a new nation at the local level and maintain control over manpower, labor, agricultural, and financial resources, which Southern Unionists possessed. The story is not solely one of triumph over adversity but also one of persecution and, ultimately, erasure of these dissidents by the postwar South's Lost Cause mythologizers.