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Virginia Confederate History Month: What about the Pro-Union South?
05/10/10
In the midst of the controversy this spring about the Virginia governor’s proclamation of Confederate History Month, there has been little discussion of the salient fact that not all white southerners were pro-Confederate. Commentators on all sides have assumed the reverse—that the white population was united in its support for the Confederacy.
The historical record suggests otherwise. In 1860 the pro-Union southern candidate, John Bell of Tennessee, won three states, including Virginia, and lost Missouri by approximately 1,000 votes. When the shooting broke out in 1861, some 100,000 white southerners chose to serve in the Union army, including some high-ranking officers such as the Virginian George Thomas. Other white men refused to volunteer and then evaded the draft or deserted the Confederate army. Yet others formed pro-Union guerilla bands within the Confederacy. Several counties within the South tried to secede from the CSA and rejoin the USA. And of course the state of West Virginia was created in 1863 by white southerners who were very strongly opposed to the secession of the state of Virginia.
There is also ample evidence that some well-placed white southerners did not enthusiastically support the War, among them the First Lady, Varina Howell Davis. As the daughter of a New Jersey native (her father) and a Virginia native (her mother), she had relatives on both sides. She lived in Washington, D. C., for most of the fifteen years before the war because of her husband’s political career, and she had many friends from all over the country. During the secession winter, she expressed grave doubts about the South’s ability to fight and win the war, and she made similar remarks after moving to Richmond to become the First Lady. Throughout the war she smuggled letters to her friends and relatives in the North. In early 1865 she said that the last four years had been the worst years of her life. In her old age, then a widow living in New York City, she declared in a newspaper article that it was God’s will that the North won the war.
A number of professional historians have argued in recent years that the South lost the war in part or in whole because of the divisions within the white population. If the Confederate First Lady, of all people, had such doubts, then maybe the whole idea was doomed from the start.