American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

The little redheaded girl not only puts up with my interest in the American Civil War she often provides me with new books. Recently she came across a batch of used books at a flea market including Lincoln's Loyalists by Richard Current. This is a study of those southerners who chose to support the United States over the Confederacy.

Anyone who has studied the ACW is aware of the Virginians in the western part of the state who refused to leave the union and eventually formed West Virginia and most are aware of the strong union sentiments in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina that Lincoln wanted to support. However I had previously known little about the extent of the support given the Union from the remainder of the southern states.

This is not light reading, it has excerpts from communications between the parties involved in recruiting these southern born loyalists, some references to specific regiments and their effectiveness and a lot of data about the number of recruits from each state. But it provided me with information I was not previously aware of concerning the extent of the union support throughout the south and would be of interest to the serious ACW student.

Moved to correct folder.

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Gen. Ken Miller



The McKeesport Union Guard

1/1/I
AotP

Indeed it seems to be an interesting topic although much overlooked, I just came across this because of some mentioning in the Day-by-Day Thread of General Simms.

Do these numbers come close to the ones from the book?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Unionist

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Lieutenant General Christian Hecht
Commander I Corps, Army of the Potomac

"Where to stop? I don't know. At Hell, I expect."

The numbers are fairly close. The author shows state's records that would indicate @ 90,000 southern 'yankees'. He calculates there were probably at least another 10,000 that served in regiments from northern states who were not counted and uses an estimate of about 100,000 total that served in union regiments. He also makes the point that not only did it provide 100,000 soldiers to the union but deprived the confederacy of their service resulting in a reduction in their available forces of that same number. Although some of the loyalists were actually conscripted by the confederacy and later deserted or were captured and joined the union side. In addition there were others who while not enlisting in volunteers regiments served as local militia to protect the union supporter's families from confederate raiders.

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Gen. Ken Miller



The McKeesport Union Guard

1/1/I
AotP

In the same vein, I would recommend "Fall of the House of Dixie".
Jim Gleason

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Jim Gleason LTG
LTG 3-3-II AoP