My readers know that I cannot pass up an opportunity to drop some history….and today is one of those days.

Do you know what day it is?

Hundred and sixty three years ago today the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina thus starting the bloody struggle that has been called the “American Civil War”……

For those that slept through American history class….

By 1861, the country had already experienced decades of short-lived but ultimately failed compromises concerning the expansion of slavery in the United States and its territories. The election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States in 1860—a man who declared “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free”—threatened the culture and economy of southern slave states and served as a catalyst for secession. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the United States, and by February 2, 1861, six more states followed suit. Southern delegates met on February 4, 1861, in Montgomery, AL., and established the Confederate States of America, with Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis elected as its provisional president. Confederate militia forces began seizing United States forts and property throughout the south. With a lame-duck president in office, and a controversial president-elect poised to succeed him, the crisis approached a boiling point and exploded at Fort Sumter.

In the South we are taught our state’s history and most book make it seem like the desire to leave the union was overwhelmingly popular…,not accurate….

From its beginnings the Confederacy suffered from a rising tide of intense domestic hostility, not only among Southern blacks but increasingly among Southern whites. Ironically, it was a hostility brought on largely by those most responsible for the Confederacy’s creation. Planters excused themselves from the draft in various ways, then grew far too much cotton and tobacco, and not nearly enough food. Soldiers went hungry, as did their families back home. Women defied Confederate authorities by staging food riots from Richmond, Virginia, to Galveston, Texas. Soldiers deserted by the tens of thousands, and draft evasion became commonplace. By 1864, the draft law was practically impossible to enforce and two-thirds of the Confederate army was absent with or without leave. Many deserters and draft dodgers formed armed bands that controlled vast areas of the Southern countryside.

Wartime disaffection among Southerners had solid roots in the early secession crisis. Most white Southerners, three-fourths of whom owned no slaves, made it clear in the winter 1860-61 elections for state convention delegates that they opposed immediate secession. Nevertheless, state conventions across the South, all of them dominated by slaveholders, ultimately ignored majority will and took their states out of the Union. One Texas politician conceded that ambitious colleagues had engineered secession without strong backing from “the mass of the people.” A staunch South Carolina secessionist admitted the same. “But,” he asked, “whoever waited for the common people when a great move was to be made—we must make the move and force them to follow.”

https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/southern-unionism.html

Even in the South there were enclaves of unionist bravado…..even in Mississippi….Jones county.

The story of Jones County, Mississippi’s Unionist activities has long been clouded by myth and legend, but most historians agree that this small, wooded backwater was the site of some particularly violent resistance to the Confederacy. The pro-U.S. movement in Jones first crystallized a few years into the Civil War, when the county became a haven for young men who had grown disillusioned with the Confederate cause and deserted the army. Led by a mercurial local named Newton Knight, the runaways organized into a Unionist guerilla outfit called the Knight Company and took to harassing nearby Confederate units. Whether Knight and his band were a principled resistance group or mere bandits has been a matter of debate, but there’s no doubt they succeeded in stirring the political pot. The group effectively disabled the county government, and at one point, its activities sparked rumors that Jones County had seceded from the Confederacy and was flying the stars and stripes over its courthouse. The Knight Company’s disruptive reign continued until April 1864, when Confederate Colonel Robert Lowry used bloodhounds to track the guerillas and drive them from their hideout in the swamps. Newton Knight later resurfaced, however, and after the war, he assisted in U.S. reconstruction efforts in Mississippi.

Back in the Dark Ages when I was in school this event was never covered at all.

There were others…..

https://www.history.com/news/6-unionist-strongholds-in-the-south-during-the-civil-war

For more information if interested….

Southerner vs. Southerner: Union Supporters Below the Mason-Dixon Line

You have seen those child soldiers in Africa…..well during our Civil War children as young as 10 fought and died….

Ten times more underage soldiers, from as young as 10-17, fought in the American Civil War than previously recognised, and this had profound implications for US military and legal history. This is a key takeaway from Associate Professor Frances M. Clarke and Professor Rebecca Jo Plant’s prize-winning book, Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era.

“In America’s Civil War era, children remained minors until they turned 21. If they entered the regular army, however, they were emancipated from parental control. To retrieve young sons, parents filed writs of habeas corpus in massive numbers, while the Lincoln administration tried to stymie their efforts by silencing local courts. These disputes led to one of the most significant shifts in US legal history-the federalisation of habeas corpus,” said Associate Professor Clarke, who is a researcher in the Discipline of History.

https://www.nationaltribune.com.au/american-civil-war-prize-winning-new-book-reveals-plight-of-underage-soldiers/

A little history for those that are interested in the American Civil War….

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