Recently, I read something about somebody portraying Gen. George H. Thomas at living histories and some people referring to him as a traitor to his own people. Really, I find that a very odd statement to make regarding people of the South who preferred to remain loyal to the United States. While it’s true that a sense of sectionalism grew rapidly over the course of the years leading up to 1860, even after South Carolina’s decision to secede, Unionism held rather well in the upper South (as an example, it was condemned by several newspapers in Virginia), at least up until Lincoln’s call for troops. However, even after the call for troops, for those who felt no ties with the lower South (even after the families having lived, say, in Virginia, for generations) and took no “insult” to the idea of Federal troops moving through Virginia to suppress the rebellion in the deep South, really, why should they have followed those who felt it best to take the leap toward secession? Rather, I agree with John C. Inscoe’s statement in Enemies of the Country that these people simply “found themselves living in a new nation to which they chose not to give allegiance.” They weren’t, by definition, “traitors,” but were stuck in a very awkward situation. The land on which many of them lived had probably been in the family for years, and, deep in their hearts, many probably thought (or held the strongest hopes) that the storm would pass. Why then, should they leave THEIR land? Why should they relocate simply because they were at the odds with (what appeared to be… at least on paper) the popular sentiment?
I personally think that David Hunter Strother (a native of the area of Berkeley and Morgan County, Virginia (now West Virginia) summarized the feelings of Southern Unionist best when he stated that he “felt like a sane man in a mad house.” In his article for Inscoe’s volume about Southern Unionists, Jonathan M. Berkey (“Fighting the Devil with Fire: David Hunter Strother’s Private Civil War”) wrote that Strother “associated disunion with passionate individuals” and that this passionate fanatacism [found in the "secesh"] was the result of a degradation of the Southern people into what Strother saw as “a howling democracy, as a gentlemanly drinker degrades into a bestial sot.” After Virginia troops seized Harpers Ferry (one of the finest examples of chaos and anarchy in Virginia’s history as a Confederate state and certainly worthy of another blog entry), and Strother observed the Virginia flag flying over the arsenal, Berkey noted that Strother “mused, ‘Yesterday I was a citizen of the great American republic… To-day, what am I? A citizen of Virginia… What could she ever hope to be bit a worthless fragment of the broken vase?’”
Where, therefore, in such a statement, as a Southern Unionist, is the treachery? Clearly, as Insoce points out, those who opposed the chaotic nature of secession were soon to be “made one part of a self-conscious minority viewed with suspicion and hostility” as they “threatened the new republic and its cause.” This I can understand. However, to call Southern Unionists “traitors” is more along the lines of nothing more than name-calling in order to make a stronger point.
It goes to show that some people don’t understand the defintion of traitor, let alone the true history behind the American Civil War.
Gabriel Kirk
June 17, 2008
I must wholeheartedly convey my agreement with the author of this essay. My family comes from Wilkes county, NC which was a hotbed of Union sentiment. In fact, my ancestor fled his state to join the Federal Army in Tennessee. Truly, the “homegrown Yankees” had much to endure.
Kevin McCann
June 20, 2008
Thank you for your intelligent and reasonable discussion of Southern Unionists. They are often dismissed by fellow Southerners as simply “Yankees” without serious consideration of why he sided with the Union rather than the Confederacy. It’s an interesting area for more research. Great job!
comparative historian
February 20, 2009
Insightful research and writing–I like it! However, you slander those who hold the opposite perspective, that someone like Strother–who looked condescendingly askance at the flag at Harper’s Ferry–WAS in fact a traitor.
Perhaps you could understand our point of view better by this little thought experiment. Change the setting to Trenton, New Jersey, circa 1776–setting of the Christmas Day chaotic first victory of Washington’s army–but keep the same words.
, ‘Yesterday I was a British subject… To-day, what am I? A citizen of New Jersey?… What could she ever hope to be bit a worthless fragment of the broken vase?’”
Wouldn’t such a hypothetical Unionist be seen today as a traitor? Is it just that Virginia lost, and New Jersey and her Continental Army allies won, that you hold your opinion?
Thanks for your consideration.
cenantua
February 20, 2009
I’m not sure what you mean by “our point of view,” nonetheless…
If we were to engage in speculative history and suggest that the Confederacy was victorious, Strother would (or should) be seen for what he was, a loyalist… not entirely different than the loyalists in the Revolution. I do not look at such loyalists from the Rev olution as traitors, so I would still be unable to see Strother as a traitor. Loyalists of the Revolution adhered to what it meant to be a subject of the crown (which was embraced by many future “patriots” well into the 1770s), just as Strother adhered to what it meant to be a citizen of the United States first, as opposed to a citizen of Virginia first. The difference was that he was an absolute Unionist while several people with whom he was acquainted were conditional Unionist (as seen in their actions in relation to secession).
On the other hand, those who knew Strother and opted for the Confederacy while he opted for the Union… they might see him as having betrayed his friends and neighbors (despite his efforts, after donning blue, to act as a considerate mediator between his “old friends turned Confederate” and the Union army in the Shenandoah Valley… something he was not very successful with, by the way), but this still does not qualify him as a traitor.
Jenkem Jones
August 13, 2011
Traitor is too weak a term to describe General George Henry Thomas. He joined an aggressor nation in murdering his own people. He did not ‘fight for a noble cause’. He joined vicious thugs serving a dictator that knew no boundaries for his power.
Robert Moore
August 13, 2011
How convenient of you to judge with such extensive blinders. Of course, it’s clear that you didn’t go very far into the blog… either that, or you chose to ignore the rest of the posts… many which show how the upper class of the South forced the issue of secession and the Confederacy on that geographic region, and it’s people. If you are so concerned with Southerners being nasty to Southerners, be sure, when pointing an angry finger at GHT, to also point an angry finger at the other Southerners who opted to coerce and kill their own, in the name of non-conformity to their ideas of who should support the Confederacy, and how they should support it.