[Colonel Kangaroo]

There were several hundred thousand white Southern Union soldiers but they get nowhere the attention as the dubious speculation over the existence of a handful of black Confederate soldiers. The Lost Cause myth of a united Solid South is as persistent as it is misleading.

[riverdawg]

There have been many books written about how the Civil War divided families, North and South, and pitted brother against brother (and sister). Stonewall Jackson was from the part of Virginia that separated to form West Virginia in 1861. Jackson, of course, remained with his native state but his sister remained loyal to the Union, not the “original” state of Virginia. Similar stories were played out by the tens of thousands within lesser known families.

There were entire communities in the South that remained loyal to the North and, similarly, there were entire communities in the North (especially in Pennsylvania but even as far north as Vermont) that were loyal to the South. This is all well-known to historians, and interested non-historians like myself.