It’s Complicated
The seat of Alabama’s Winston County is Double Springs, a small town where about 1,000 of the county’s 24,000 people reside. Both highways leading into Double Springs, U.S. 278 and Alabama 195, are only two-lane roads as they approach and pass through the community. Located here are some government offices, a few shops and other businesses, a post office, four churches (by my count) and, of course, a courthouse.
Before 1877, when Cullman County was formed Winston’s eastern side, the county encompassed approximately double its current territory. During the Civil War the county held a population of about 3,500 souls.
Outside the courthouse stands a bronze statue of a soldier sculpted by Branko Medenica of Birmingham and erected in 1987. This work of art is entitled “Dual Destiny.” The plaques around the statue recount Winston County’s experience in the Civil War.
According to one tablet, 351 Winston County men fought in the war, two-thirds of whom fought for the Union.
“The Civil War was not fought between the North and South,” reads one inscription,
GEORGIA’S CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS In Honor of a Fallen Nation Gould B. Hagler, Jr.
This unique work contains a complete photographic record of Georgia’s memorials to the Confederacy, a full transcription of the words engraved upon them, and carefully-researched information about the monuments and the organizations which built them. These works of art and their eloquent nation’s profound grief, praise the soldiers’ bravery and patriotism, and pay homage to the cause for which they fought.
“but between the Union and Confederate armies. Perhaps as many as 300,000 Southerners served in the Union army. The majority of the Appalachian South from West Virginia to Winston County was pro-Union.”
The monument does not pay homage to the Confederate cause that was lost, nor does it praise the Union cause that prevailed. It honors the ordinary soldiers who filled the ranks, men who had little or no say so in the political decisions that led to war. It honors them, but does not attempt to glorify them. It does not recount their brave deeds on the battlefield or extol their martial virtues. There is no passage lauding the fidelity and courage of the women. There is no Latin motto stating that it is sweet to die for one’s country. Instead we are presented with an image of exhausted men who made it home.
“This Civil War soldier, one-half Union and one-half Confederate, symbolizes the war within a war and honors Winstonians in both armies. Their shiny new swords of 1861 were by 1865 as broken as the spirits of the men who bore them; their uniforms of blue and gray, once fresh and clean, were now as worn and patched as the bodies and souls they contained. Johnny Reb and Billy Yank, disillusioned
by the realities of war, shared dual destinies as pragmatic Americans in a reunited nation.”
This monument in Double Springs and the sentiments it expresses are highly unusual. However, the story it tells about the people of Winston County is far from unique. As all CWN readers know, the conflict not only divided the United States, but also created rifts within states, within communities, and within families. Let’s take a look at some of these divisions.
We start with the Lee family in Virginia. The Lees best known to history were Confederates, but some members of that large clan stayed with the old flag. Robert E. Lee’s cousin Samuel Phillips Lee held important commands in the U.S. Navy during the war. A nephew of General Lee’s, Louis
Henry Marshall, served on Gen. John Pope’s staff. Lee wrote to his sister (Louis’s mother) that he could forgive his nephew “for fighting us, but not his joining Pope.”
Montgomery Meigs, the Union army’s Quartermaster General during the war, was a native of
Augusta, Ga. Meigs may not be a good example to cite, as he was raised mostly in the North and his family, as near as I can tell, were all on the same side. There is a plaque in Augusta marking the location of Meigs’s birth.
George Henry Thomas was born into a slave-owning Virginia family. Before the war, he served in the 2nd U.S. Cavalry Regiment under Robert E. Lee but, unlike many Southern officers in this regiment, Thomas decided to stay with the Union. His family in Virginia never forgave him. His decision caused no trouble in his own household: his wife was a native of Troy, N.Y.
Many other prominent examples could be cited, but we will move on to the Unionist sister of a famous Confederate general and to some ordinary Southern men who fought for the North.
Stonewall Jackson’s sister, Laura Jackson Arnold, was an ardent Unionist. As her brother served his cause in battle, Laura supported her side by nursing Federal soldiers in Beverly (Virginia or West Virginia, depending), a town held by the Federals throughout the war. The war separated not only brother and sister but also husband and wife: Mr. Arnold was pro-Confederate.
Jackson and his sister differed in at least one other aspect. He is known for his deep Christian faith; she was an agnostic, or at least leaned in that direction. I suspect that Thomas was more troubled by Laura’s lack of faith than by her political views.
served with Col. Abel Streight’s raiding force that was pursued by Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and captured in May 1863. When Streight surrendered, he asked for and received Forrest’s assurance that all his men would be treated as prisoners of war, a significant matter considering that the Southerners with Streight were subject to the Confederate draft and could be considered deserters. A 1939 monument in Gaylesville, Ala., commemorates this event.
In another campaign, this one started the following May, the 1st Alabama Cavalry Regiment (U.S.) marched with Sherman’s force to Atlanta, to the sea, and through the Carolinas.
Let’s turn to some Northerners who fought for Dixie.
Who was the highest-ranking officer in the Confederate army? This is always a good trivia question because of the interesting and unexpected answer: Samuel Cooper of Hackensack, N.J., the Confederate army’s Adjutant General.
Gen. Archibald Gracie, C.S.A., was a member of a prominent New York family. Gracie Mansion, the residence of New York City’s mayor, was built by Gracie’s grandfather, also named Archibald, as were General Gracie’s father and son. After West Point and a few years of service, Gracie moved to Alabama to join his father’s business firm. When war loomed, the elder Gracie returned home to New York, but the son stayed with his adoptive state. He rose to the rank of brigadier general and was killed at Petersburg.
Everyone knows that the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson in 1863 gave the Federals control of the entire Mississippi River. Gen. John Pemberton commanded at Vicksburg and surrendered on July 4; Gen. Franklin Gardner, commanding at Port Hudson, capitulated five days later. Pemberton was a Pennsylvanian, Gardner a New Yorker.
Another irony involves the defensive works protecting Richmond and Atlanta. Both were constructed by Northern men in the service of the Confederacy. Gen. Walter Husted Stevens, of Penn Yan, N.Y., oversaw the building of Richmond’s fortifications. Captain Lemuel Grant, a Mainer, designed the defenses shielding Atlanta. In both cases the defenses were never breached: the cities were evacuated when the last rail lines were cut.
Stonewall Jackson’s famous mapmaker, Jedediah Hotchkiss, was a New Yorker who settled in Virginia and taught school. His journal, Make Me a Map of the Valley, was published in 1973.
Our list must also include Gen. Josiah Gorgas, of Running Pumps, Pa. Gorgas ran the Confederacy’s Ordnance Bureau and managed to keep the Confederate forces armed until the very end.
Finally, we can point to ordinary civilians in the South who were secret Yankees; to Copperheads in the Midwest; and, obviously, to citizens of the Border States.
Many more examples could be found, but let’s terminate the list and reflect a bit on what these examples tell us about the war and the warring factions.
Was this a war between two sovereign political entities, or an internecine affair? People started opining on that question when the war began and the opining has never stopped. I will weigh in on that question only to this extent: its complicated.* Certainly, the Confederate States of America possessed the attributes of sovereignty, at least according to some definitions and at least for a time. It is also certain that the C.S.A.’s sovereignty was challenged from the get go and was never recognized by other powers. Whatever the situation was during the war, the Union victory determined the question for the future.
But what about the people? Peoples and polities are not the same thing. Some polities comprise two or more peoples, as in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In other cases, there are peoples who have no state of their own and are split by international borders; the Kurds come to mind. Was there one people, or were there two peoples fighting the war? Less opining on that question, I think, but it is easy to find references to the Yankee nation** or the Yankee race. Or, if you read Raphael Semmes, you will see references to the despised Puritan race which inhabited the North. On the other hand, nearly all the participants shared a history, spoke English, worshipped in Christian churches, grew up under the same laws and political system. In a word, the same culture.
Everyone knows that the American Civil War was not as simple as a fight between the United States and the Confederate States or between the Northern people and the Southern people. The monument in Double Springs reminds us of the jumbled-up nature of the conflict and the overlapping lines of loyalties. The stories of individuals who hailed from one side of the border but fought on the opposite side put emphasis on the same point. In other words, these examples tell us that the questions I posed in the two preceding paragraphs have no clear answer. It’s complicated.
*The reader can google “attributes of sovereignty” and find out how complicated. I found this on one political science website: “The distinctive attributes or characteristics of sovereignty are permanence, exclusiveness, a l l - c o m p r e h e n s i v e n e s s, unity, inalienability, impress scriptability, indivisibility, and absoluteness or illimitability.”
**”Nation” is derived from the Latin word nātiō which means a people, a race or a tribe. Nātiō is related to the word nātus, which means “born.” “Yankee nation” here refers to a people, not to a political entity.
Gould Hagler is a retired lobbyist living in Dunwoody, Ga. He is a past president of the Atlanta Civil War Round Table and the author of Georgia’s Confederate Monuments: In Honor of a Fallen Nation, published by Mercer University Press in 2014. Hagler speaks frequently on this topic and others related to different aspects of the Civil War and has been a regular contributor to CWN since 2016. He can be reached at gould.hagler@gmail.com.