Actually, I said this in my 2006 book, "America's Victories: Why the U.S. Wins Wars," although the number I gave was 100,000 southern whites. I'm anxious to see his source on this, because it only strengthens my case.
But it didn't help the South that in 11 of the first 12 major battles or campaigns in which more than 6,000 men were involved, the Confederacy lost a higher % of troops deployed than did the Union, even though the Union occasionally lost more men in real terms. You can't win a war, particularly a defensive war, losing more in every engagement with the enemy.
I’m wondering if he’s including West Virginians in that 300,000 figure. That seems like an awfully high number considering the population of the South at the time.
The divisions in the Southern population aren’t really new news. I remember hearing a lot about it studying history growing up in Virginia. There were some absolutely vicious mini “civil wars” in the mountain counties of North Carolina and Tennessee between Unionists and Confederates. Many of the counties that are now in the Shenendoah Valley in Virginia barely stayed in the Union when the western counties split off to become West Virginia—and this despite the tremendous victories Stonewall Jackson won on that very same soil in 1862. The story my college history prof told me was that Rockingham County, Virginia (where I went to college at JMU) stayed in Virginia by one single vote. The generals like Lee and Jackson were revered up there, but the war was by no means popular.
Folks up in the Piedmont and toward the mountains generally didn’t own slaves, or at least not nearly as many as the rich planters along the coast. Appealing to their loyalty as Northerners invaded their home states worked to a point (especially in Virginia) but for folks further up in the mountains in places like West Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, they didn’t feel like they wanted to get involved in a rich man’s war.
The truth’s in the middle—yes, having 500,000 Southerners (white and black) fighting for the Union definitely made things worse for the Confederacy. But the North’s crushing industrial superiority was decisive, as well as them finally finding generals like Grant and Sherman willing to take that material superiority and use it to grind the South down. BTW, it doesn’t surprise me that the Urinal-Constipation takes an opportunity to pee on the former Georgia state flag and the SCV in general. I imagine the idiots at the AJC were big fans of King Roy’s Placemat.
}:-)4
LS, He considers Marylanders, West Virginians, Delawareans, Kentuckians and Missourians as Southerners even though none of these states ever were really part of the Confederacy - because these states were culturally part of the South.
And part of his larger argument, which tends to be obscured, is that following myth:
"The people of the North were united as one against the slave power/The people of the South were united as one against the Yankees"
is a myth that serves the worst elements on both sides.
It serves the anti-Southerners who want to tar the entire Southern people with Confederate ideology, and it serves the anti-Northerners who want to portray the North as cultural imperialists.
The reality is that in both Union and Confederacy there were sizable elements of the population who were not on board with their government's goals.
No way the US could win another war using the "more men, more resources" strategy.
In “Lincoln’s Loyalists” Richard Nelson Current comes up with your figure. The Provost Marshall General gives official figures of 86,009 for enlistments but this figure is considered too low by those who looked into the question.
Another author, Charles Anderson in “Fighting by Southern Federals” claims 296,579 whites but includes those from the Border states (he also claims 200,000 southern born Northerners enlisted for a total 634,255 southerners fighting to preserve the greatest nation in history). This is close to the 300,000 this author claims. I think it is safe to claim at least 250,000 black and white troops served.
In “Lincoln’s Loyalists” Richard Nelson Current comes up with your figure. The Provost Marshall General gives official figures of 86,009 for enlistments but this figure is considered too low by those who looked into the question.
Another author, Charles Anderson in “Fighting by Southern Federals” claims 296,579 whites but includes those from the Border states (he also claims 200,000 southern born Northerners enlisted for a total 634,255 southerners fighting to preserve the greatest nation in history). This is close to the 300,000 this author claims. I think it is safe to claim at least 250,000 black and white troops served.