Replies

onedoug: "I'd venture to say that in many respects in the 1860s, the loyalty to one's state oft took precedence over one's fealty to even the national government.
Such was it with Lee and the thousands of others who, even torn between loyalties, struck South."

But it wasn't loyalty to a state which mattered so much as loyalty to the "peculiar institution" of slavery.
That's why it's estimated that even though all-told nearly a million Southerners served in Confederate armies, still 450,000 more served in Union Armies, in units from every Confederate state.

About 150,000 of those Southerners in Union units were black, former slaves, the other 300,000 whites from Unionist sections of their slave-states.
These included:

230,000 from the Border States of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri and Western Virginia.
43,000 from the Upper South states of North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas.
12,000 from the Deep South states of Louisiana, Alabama, Texas and Florida.

So, joining the Union Army in a slave-state could be difficult and dangerous, but many Southerners despised slavery enough to accept the risks.

You'll notice that the neo-confederates are usually careful to predicate their remarks with "only xx% of southerners were slavers" or "my family didn't own slaves" or the cognitively dissonant "I hate slavery but love the cornfederacy" when voicing their support for the slavocracy's rebellion.

Which makes onedoug's comment even more interesting. onedoug's grammatically challenged comment: "Yet even in spite of the tragedy of damned slavery which led to that horrible war, as in the least it is, had I not already been there, I would have gone South."(emphasis mine)

Later, when offered an opportunity to revise his remarks he doubles down:

(BroJoeK to onedoug): onedoug, post #4: "Yet even in spite of the tragedy of damned slavery which led to that horrible war, as in the least it is, had I not already been there, I would have gone South."

onedoug: "Yes sir."

The plain reading of his words are the support of the rebellion, Particular Institution and all. They are not often that candid and for that at least I suppose we should applaud him.