Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama Part 6

SEC. 3. CONSCRIPTION AND EXEMPTION

Confederate Enrolment Laws

In the spring of 1862, the Confederate Congress pa.s.sed the Enrolment Act, by which all white men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five were made liable to military service at the call of the President, and those already in service were retained. The President was authorized to employ state officials to enroll the men made subject to duty, provided the governor of the state gave his consent; otherwise he was to employ Confederate officials. The conscripts thus secured were to be a.s.signed to the state commands already in the field until these organizations were recruited to their full strength. Subst.i.tutes were allowed under such regulations as the Secretary of War might prescribe.[176] Five days later, a law was pa.s.sed exempting certain cla.s.ses of persons from the operations of the Enrolment Act. These were: Confederate and state officials, mail-carriers, ferrymen on post-office routes, pilots, telegraph operators, miners, printers, ministers, college professors, teachers with twenty pupils or more, teachers of the deaf, dumb, and blind, hospital attendants, one druggist to each drug store, and superintendents and operatives in cotton and wool factories.[177] In the fall of 1862, the Enrolment law was extended to include all white men from thirty-five to forty-five years of age and all who lacked a few months of being eighteen years of age. They were to be enrolled for three years, the oldest, if not needed, being left until the last.[178]

At this time was begun the practice, which virtually amounted to exemption, of making special details from the army to perform certain kinds of skilled labor. The first details thus made were to manufacture shoes for the army.[179] The list of those who might claim exemption, in addition to those named in the act of April 21, 1862, was extended to include the following: state militia officers, state and Confederate clerks in the civil service, railway employees who were not common laborers, steamboat employees, one editor and the necessary printers for each newspaper, those morally opposed to war, provided they furnished a subst.i.tute or paid $500 into the treasury, physicians, professors, and teachers who had been engaged in the profession for two years or more, government artisans, mechanics, and other employees, contractors and their employees furnishing arms and supplies to the state or to the Confederacy, factory owners, shoemakers, tanners, blacksmiths, wagon makers, millers, and engineers. The artisans and manufacturers were granted exemption from military service provided the products of their labor were sold at not more than seventy-five per cent profit above the cost of production. On every plantation where there were twenty or more negroes one white man was ent.i.tled to exemption as overseer.[180]

In the spring of 1863 mail contractors and drivers of post-coaches were exempted;[181] and it was ordered that those exempted under the so-called "twenty-negro" law should pay $500 into the Confederate treasury; also, that such state officials as were exempted by the governor might be also exempted by the Confederate authorities. The law permitting the hiring of subst.i.tutes by men liable to service was repealed on December 28, 1863, and a few days later even those who had furnished subst.i.tutes were made subject to military duty.[182]

A law of February 17, 1864,[183] provided that all soldiers between the ages of eighteen and forty-five should be retained in service during the war. Those between the ages of seventeen and eighteen, and forty-five and fifty were called into service as a reserve force for the defence of the state. All exemptions were repealed except the following: (1) the members of Congress and of the state legislature, and such Confederate and state officers as the President or the governors might certify to be necessary for the proper administration of government; (2) ministers regularly employed, superintendents, attendants, and physicians of asylums for the deaf, dumb, and blind, insane, and other public hospitals, one editor for each newspaper, public printers, one druggist for each drug store which had been two years in existence, all physicians who had practised seven years, teachers in colleges of at least two years' standing and in schools which had twenty pupils to each teacher; (3) one overseer or agriculturist to each farm upon which were fifteen or more negroes, in case there was no other exempt on the plantation. The object was to leave one white man, and no more, on each plantation, and the owner or overseer was preferred. In return for such exemption, the exempt was bound by bond to deliver to the Confederate authorities, for each slave on the plantation between the ages of sixteen and fifty, one hundred pounds of bacon or its equivalent in produce, which was paid for by the government at prices fixed by the impressment commissioners. In addition, the exempt was to sell his surplus produce at prices fixed by the commissioners. The Secretary of War was authorized to make special details, under the above conditions, of overseers, farmers, or planters, if the public good demanded it; also (4) to exempt the higher officials of railroads and not more than one employee for each mile of road; and (5) mail carriers and drivers. The President was authorized to make details of old men for special service.[184] By an act pa.s.sed the same day free negroes from eighteen to fifty years of age were made liable to service with the army as teamsters. These acts of February 17, 1864, were the last Confederate legislation of importance in regard to conscription and exemption. During the year 1864 the Confederate authorities devoted their energies to construing away all exemptions possible, and to absorbing the state reserve forces into the Confederate army.

Policy of the State in Regard to Conscription

To return to 1861. The state legislature, when providing for the state army, authorized the governor to exempt from militia duty all railway, express, steamboat, and telegraph employees, but even the fire companies had to serve as militia.[185] The operation of the enrolment law stripped the land of men of militia age, and on November 17, 1862, the legislature ordered to duty on the public roads men from sixteen to eighteen years of age, and forty-five to fifty-five, and later all from sixteen to fifty as well as all male slaves and free negroes from fourteen to sixty years of age.[186] Militia officers between the ages of eighteen and forty-five were declared subject to the enrolment acts of Congress,[187] as were also justices of the peace, notaries public, and constables.[188]

Yet, instead of making an effective organization of the militia, the legislature in 1863 proceeded to frame a law of exemptions patterned after that of the Confederacy. It released from militia duty all persons over forty-five years of age, county treasurers, physicians of seven years'

practice or who were in the public service, ministers, teachers of three years' standing, one blacksmith in each beat, the city police and fire companies, penitentiary guards, general administrators who had been in service five years, Confederate agents, millers, railroad employees, steamboat officials, overseers, managers of foundries, salt makers who made as much as ten bushels a day and who sold it for not more than $15 per bushel. Besides, the governor could make special exemptions.[189] In 1864 millers who charged not more than one-eighth for toll were exempted.[190] It will be seen that in some respects the state laws go farther in exemption than the Confederate laws, and thus were in conflict with them. But it must be remembered that the Confederacy had already stripped the country of nearly all the able-bodied men who did not evade duty. To this time, however, there was no conflict between the state and Confederate authorities in regard to conscription. An act was also pa.s.sed providing for the reorganization of the penitentiary guards, and only those not subject to conscription were retained.[191] A joint resolution of August 29, 1863, called upon Congress to decrease the list of exemptions, as many clerks and laborers were doing work that could be done by negroes. At the end of the year 1863 the legislature asked that the conscript law be strictly enforced by Congress.[192]

On the part of the state rights people, there was much opposition to the enrolment or conscription laws on the ground that they were unconst.i.tutional. Several cases were brought before the state supreme court, and all were decided in favor of the const.i.tutionality of the laws; furthermore, it was decided that the courts and judicial officers of the state had no jurisdiction on _habeas corpus_ to discharge from the custody of a Confederate enrolling officer persons who had been conscripted under the law of Congress.[193] A test case was carried to the state supreme court, which decided that a person who had conscientious scruples against bearing arms might pay for a subst.i.tute in the state militia and claim exemption from state service, but if conscripted he was not exempted from the Confederate service unless he belonged to the religious denominations specially exempted by the act of Congress.[194] The court also declared const.i.tutional the Confederate law which provided that when a subst.i.tute became subject to military duty his princ.i.p.al was thereby rendered liable to service.[195] In 1864 the supreme court held that the state had a right to subject to militia service persons exempted by the Confederate authorities as bonded agriculturists under the acts of February 17, 1864, and that only those overseers were granted exemption from militia service under the act of Congress in 1863 who at the time were not subject to militia duty, and not those exempted from Confederate service by the later laws,[196] and that the clause in the act of Congress pa.s.sed February 17, 1864, repealing and revoking all exemptions, was const.i.tutional.[197] In other cases the court held that a person regularly enrolled and sworn into the Confederate service could not raise any question, on _habeas corpus_, of his a.s.signment to any particular command or duty,[198] but that the state courts could discharge on _habeas corpus_ from Confederate enrolling officers persons held as conscripts, who were exempted under Confederate laws;[199] that the Confederacy might rea.s.sert its rights to the military service of a citizen who was enrolled as a conscript and, after producing a discharge for physical disability, had enlisted in the state militia service;[200] and finally, that the right of the Confederacy to the military service of a citizen was paramount to the right of the state.[201]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FIRST CONFEDERATE CAPITOL. The State Capitol, Montgomery.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MONTGOMERY RESIDENCE OF PRESIDENT DAVIS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CONFEDERATE MONUMENT, MONTGOMERY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE INAUGURATION OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. (From an old negative.)]

During the year 1864 Governor Watts had much trouble with the Confederate enrolling officers who insisted upon conscripting his volunteer and militia organizations, whether they were subject to duty under the laws or not. The authorities at Richmond held that while a state might keep "troops of war" over which the Confederacy could have no control, yet the state militia was subject to all the laws of Congress. "Troops of war," as the Secretary of War explained, would be troops in active and permanent service,[202] and hence virtually Confederate troops. A state with troops of that description would be very willing to give them up to the Confederacy to save expense. Thus we find the legislature of Alabama asking the President to receive and pay certain irregular organizations which had been used to support the Conscript Bureau.[203] The legislature, now somewhat disaffected, showed its interest in the operations of the enrolling officers by an act providing that conscript officials who forced exempts into the Confederate service should be liable to indictment and punishment by a fine of $1000 to $6000 and imprisonment of from six months to two years.[204] It went a step further and nullified the laws of Congress by declaring that state officials, civil and military, were not subject to conscription by the Confederate authorities.[205]

Effect of the Enrolment Laws

Few good soldiers were obtained by conscription,[206] and the system, as it was organized in Alabama,[207] did more harm than good to the Confederacy. The pa.s.sage of the first law, however, had one good effect.

During the winter of 1861-1862, there had been a reaction from the enthusiastic war feeling of the previous summer. Those who thought it would be only a matter of weeks to overrun the North now saw their mistake.[208] Many of the people still had no doubt that the North would be glad to make peace and end the war if the government at Richmond were willing. Numbers, therefore, saw no need of more fighting, and hence did not volunteer. Thousands left the army and went home. A measure like the enrolment act was necessary to make the people realize the actual situation. Upon the pa.s.sage of the law all the loyal population liable to service made preparations to go to the front before being conscripted, which was deemed a disgrace, and the close of the year 1862 saw practically all of them in the army. Those who entered after 1862 were boys and old men.[209] Many not subject to service volunteered, so that when the age limit was extended but few more were secured.

Great dissatisfaction was expressed among the people at the enrolment law.

Some thought that it was an attack upon the rights of the states, and the irritating manner in which it was enforced aroused, in some localities, intense popular indignation. Conscription being considered disgraceful, many who would have been glad for various good reasons to remain at home a few months longer went at once into service to escape conscription. Yet some loyal and honest citizens found it disastrous to leave their homes and business without definite arrangements for the safety and support of their families. Such men suffered much annoyance from the enrolling officers, in spite of the fact that the law was intended for their protection. The conscript officials, often men of bad character, persecuted those who were easy to find, while neglecting the disloyal and refractory who might make trouble for them. In some sections such weak conduct came near resulting in local insurrections; this was especially the case in Randolph County in 1862.[210] The effect of the law was rather to stop volunteering in the state organizations and reporting to camps of instructions, since all who did either were cla.s.sed as conscripts. Not wishing to bear the odium of being conscripted, many thousands in 1862 and 1863 went directly into the regular service.[211]

While the conscript law secured few, if any, good soldiers who would not have joined the army without it, it certainly served as a reminder to the people that all were needed, and as a stimulus to volunteering. Three cla.s.ses of people suffered from its operations: (1) those rightfully exempted, who were constantly annoyed by the enrolling officers; (2) those soon to become liable to service, who were not allowed to volunteer in organizations of their own choice; and (3) "deadheads" and malcontents who did not intend to fight at all if they could keep from it. It was this last cla.s.s that made nearly all the complaints about conscription, and it was they whom the enrolling officers left alone because they were so troublesome.

The defects in the working of conscription are well set forth in a letter from a correspondent of President Davis in December, 1862. In this letter it was a.s.serted that the conscript law had proven a failure in Mississippi and Alabama, since it had stopped the volunteering. Governor Shorter was reported to have said that the enforcement of it had been "a humbug and a farce." The writer declared that the enrolling officers chosen were frequently of bad character; that inefficient men were making attempts to secure "bomb-proof" offices in order to avoid service in the army; and that the exemption of slave owners by the "twenty-negro law" had a bad influence upon the poorer cla.s.ses. He also declared that the system of subst.i.tutes was bad, for many men were on the hunt for subst.i.tutes, and others liable to duty were working to secure exemptions in order to serve as subst.i.tutes, while large numbers of men connected with the army managed in this way to keep away from the fighting. He was sure, he said, that there were too many hangers-on about the officers of high rank, and that it was believed that social position, wealth, and influence served to get young men good staff positions.[212] Another evil complained of was that "paroled" men scattered to their homes and never heard of their exchange.

To a conscript officer whose duty it was to look after them they said that they were "paroled," and he pa.s.sed them by. The officers were said to be entirely too lenient with the worthless people and too rigorous with the better cla.s.ses.[213]

Exemption from Service

After the pa.s.sage of the enrolment laws, every man with excessive regard for the integrity of his person and for his comfort began to secure exemption from service. In north Alabama men of little courage and patriotism lost confidence after the invasions of the Federals, and resorted to every expedient to escape conscription. Strange and terrible diseases were developed, and in all sections of the state health began to break down.[214] It was the day of certificates,--for old age, rheumatism, fits, blindness, and various physical disabilities.[215] Various other pretexts were given for staying away from the army, while some men hid out in the woods. The governor asked the people to drive such persons to their duty.[216] There was never so much skilled labor in the South as now. Harness making, shoe making, charcoal burning, carpentering--all these and numerous other occupations supposed to be in support of the cause secured exemption. Running a tanyard was a favorite way of escaping service. A pit was dug in the corner of the back yard, a few hides secured, carefully preserved, and never finished,--for more hides might not be available; then the tanner would be no longer exempt. There were purchasing agents, sub-purchasing agents, and sub-sub-agents, cattle drivers, t.i.the gatherers, agents of the Nitre Bureau, agents to examine political prisoners,[217] and many other Confederate and state agents of various kinds.[218] The cla.s.s left at home for the enrolling officers to contend with, especially after 1862, was a source of weakness, not of strength, to the Confederate cause. The best men had gone to the army, and these people formed the public. Their opinion was public opinion, and with few exceptions the home stayers were a sorry lot. From them came the complaint about the favoritism toward the rich. The talk of a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight" originated with them, as well as the criticism of the "twenty-negro law." In the minds of the soldiers at the front there was no doubt that the slaveholder and the rich man were doing their full share.[219]

Very few of the slaveholders and wealthy men tried to escape service; but when one did, he attracted more attention and called forth sterner denunciation than ten poor men in similar cases would have done. In fact, few able-bodied men tried to secure exemption under the "twenty-negro law." It would have been better for the Confederacy if more planters had stayed at home to direct the production of supplies, and the fact was recognized in 1864,[220] when a "fifteen-negro law" was pa.s.sed by the Congress, and other exemptions of planters and overseers were encouraged.[221]

There is no doubt that those who desired to remain quietly at home--to be neutral, so to speak--found it hard to evade the conscript officers. One of these declared that the enrolling officers "burned the woods and sifted the ashes for conscripts." Another who had been caught in the sifting process deserted to the enemy at Huntsville. He was asked, "Do they conscript close over the river?" "h.e.l.l, stranger, I should think they do; they take every man who has not been dead more than two days."[222] But the "hill-billy" and "sand-mountain" conscripts were of no service when captured; there were not enough soldiers in the state to keep them in their regiments. The Third Alabama Regiment of Reserves ran away almost in a body. There were fifteen or twenty old men in each county as a supporting force to the Conscript Bureau, and they had old guns, some of which would not shoot, and ammunition that did not fit.[223] Thus the best men went into the army, many of them never to return, and a cla.s.s of people the country could well have spared survived to a.s.sist a second time in the ruin of their country in the darker days of Reconstruction. Often the "fire-eating, die-in-the-last-ditch" radical of 1861 who remained at home "to take care of the ladies" became an exempt, a "bomb-proof" or a conscript officer, and later a "scalawag."

Some escaped war service by joining the various small independent and irregular commands formed for frontier service by those officers who found field duty too irksome. Though these irregular bodies were, as we have seen, gradually absorbed by the regular organizations, yet during their day of strength they were most unpleasant defenders. The men sometimes joined in order to have more opportunity for license and plunder, and such were hated alike by friend and foe.

Another kind of irregular organization caused some trouble in another way.

Before the extension of the age limits to seventeen and fifty, the governor raised small commands of young boys to a.s.sist in the execution of the state laws, no other forces being available. Later, when the Confederate Congress extended its laws to include these, the conscript officers tried to enroll them, but the governor objected. The officers complained that, in order to escape the odium of conscription, the young boys who were subject by law to duty in the reserves evaded that law by going at once into the army, or by joining some command for special duty.

They were of the opinion that these boys should be sent to camps of instruction. The governor had ten companies of young men under eighteen years of age raised near Talladega, and really mustered into the Confederate service as irregular troops, before the law of February 17, 1864, was pa.s.sed. After the pa.s.sage of the law, the enrolling officers wished to disband these companies and send the men to the reserves. Watts was angered and sharply criticised the whole policy of conscription. He said that much harm was done by the method of the conscript officers; that it was nonsense to take men from the fields and put them in camps of instruction when there were no arms for them, and no active service was intended; they had better stay at home, drill once a week with volunteer organizations, and work the rest of the time; to a.s.semble the farmers in camps for useless drill while the crops were being destroyed was "most egregious folly." The governor also attacked the policy of the Bureau in refusing to allow the enrolment in the same companies of boys under eighteen and men over forty-five.[224] In regard to the attempts to disband his small force of militia in active service, the governor used strong language. To Seddon, the Secretary of War, he wrote in May, 1864: "It must not be forgotten that the states have some rights left, and that the right to troops in the time of war is guaranteed by the Const.i.tution.

These rights, on the part of Alabama, I am determined shall be respected.

Unless you order the Commandant of Conscripts to stop interfering with [certain volunteer companies] there will be a conflict between the Confederate general [Withers] and the state authorities."[225] Watts carried the day and the Confederate authorities yielded.

The enrolment law provided that state officials should be exempt from enrolment upon presenting a certificate from the governor stating that they were necessary to the proper administration of the government. In November, 1864, Governor Watts complained to General Withers, who commanded the Confederate reserve forces in Alabama, that the conscript officers had been enrolling by force state officials who held certificates from the governor and also from the commandant of conscripts, and, he added: "This state of things cannot long last without a conflict between the Confederate and state authorities. I shall be compelled to protect my state officers with all the forces of the state at my command." The enrolling officers referred him to a decision of the Secretary of War in the case of a state official in Lowndes County,--that by the act of February 17, 1864, all men between the ages of seventeen and fifty were taken at once into the Confederate service, and that state officials elected later could not claim exemption. Governor Watts then wrote to Seddon, "Unless you interfere, there will be a conflict between the Confederate and the state authorities." He denied the right of Confederate officers to conscript state officials elected after February 17, 1864: "I deny such right, and will resist it with all the forces of the state."[226] The Secretary of War replied by commending the Confederate officers for the way in which they had done their duty, insisting that it was not a political nor a const.i.tutional question, but one involving private rights, and that it should be left to the courts. This was receding from the confident ruling made in the case of the Lowndes County man. There was no more dispute and it is to be presumed that the governor retained his officials.[227] No wonder that Colonel Preston, the chief of the Bureau of Conscription, wrote to the Secretary of War that, "from one end of the Confederacy to the other every const.i.tuted authority, every officer, every man, and woman was engaged in opposing the enrolling officer in the execution of his duties."[228]

But these officers had only themselves to blame. They pursued a short-sighted, nagging policy, worrying those who were exempt--the state officials and the militia--because they were easy to reach, and neglecting the real conscript material.[229] The work was known to be useless, and the whole system was irritating to the last degree to all who came in contact with it. It was useless because there was little good material for conscription, except in the frontier country where no authority could be exerted. During 1862 and 1863 practically nothing was done by the Bureau in Alabama, and at the end of the latter year, Colonel E. D. Blake, the Superintendent of Special Registration, reported that there were 13,000 men in the state between the ages of seventeen and forty-five, and of these he estimated 4000 were under eighteen years of age, and hence, at that time, beyond the reach of the enrolling officers. More than 8000[230]

were exempt under laws and orders. This left, he said, 1000 subject to enrolment. Nowhere, in any of the estimates, are found allowances for those physically and mentally disqualified. The number then exempted in Alabama by medical boards is unknown. In other states this number was sometimes more and sometimes less than the number exempted by law and by order.

A year later, after all exemptions had been revoked, the number disqualified for physical disability by the examining boards amounted to 3933. Besides these there were the lame, the halt, the blind, and the insane, who were so clearly unfit for service that no enrolling officer ever brought them before the medical board. The 4000 between the ages of seventeen and eighteen, and also the 4600 between sixteen and seventeen, came under the enrolment law of February 17, 1864, as also several thousand who were over forty-five. But it is certain that many of these, especially the younger ones, were already in the general service as volunteers. It is also certain that many hundreds of all ages who were liable to service escaped conscription, especially in north Alabama. In a way, their places in the ranks were filled by those who did not become liable to enrolment until 1864, or even not at all, but who volunteered nevertheless.

From April, 1862, to February, 1865, there had been enrolled at the camps in Alabama 14,875 men who had been cla.s.sed in the reports as conscripts.

This included all men who volunteered at the camps, all of military age that the officers could find or catch before they went into the volunteer service, details made as soon as enrolled, irregular commands formed before the men were liable to duty, and a few hundred genuine conscripts who had to be guarded to keep them from running away. It was reported that for two years not a recruit was sent by the Bureau from Alabama to the army of Tennessee or to the Army of Northern Virginia, but that the men were enrolled in the organizations of the state. This means that much of the enrolment of 14,875 was only nominal, and that this number included the regiments sent to the front from Alabama in 1862, after the pa.s.sage of the Enrolment Act in April. Eighteen regiments were organized in Alabama after that date, in violation of the Enrolment Act, many of the men evading conscription, as the Bureau reported, by going at once into the general service. The number who left in these regiments was estimated at more than 10,000.[231] There was not a single conscript regiment.

It is possible to ascertain the number exempted by law and by order before 1865. A report by Colonel Preston, dated April, 1864, gives the number of exempts in Alabama as 8835 to January, 1864.[232] A month later, all exemptions were revoked.[233] In February, 1865, a complete report places the total number exempted by law and order in Alabama at 10,218, of whom 3933 were exempted by medical boards. The state officials exempted numbered 1333,[234] and Confederate officials, 21; ministers, 726; editors, 33, and their employees, 155; public printers, 3; druggists, 81; physicians, 796; teachers, 352; overseers and agriculturists, 1447; railway officials and employees, 1090; mail carriers and contractors, 60; foreigners, 167; agriculture details, 38; pilots, telegraphers, shoemakers, tanners, and blacksmiths, 86; government contractors, 44; details of artisans and mechanics, 570; details for government service (not specified), 218. There were 1046 men incapable of field service who were a.s.signed to duty in the above details, chiefly in the Conscript Bureau, Quartermaster's Department, and Commissariat.[235] It is certain that many others were exempted by being detailed from service in the army.

The list of those pardoned in 1865 and 1866 by President Johnson shows many occupations not mentioned above.

It is interesting to notice the fate of the conscript officers when captured by the Federals. Bradford Hambrick was tried by a military commission in Nashville, Tennessee, in January, 1864, charged with being a Confederate conscript officer and with forcing "peaceable citizens of the United States" in Madison County, Alabama, to enter the Confederate army.

He was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor for one year, and to pay a fine of $2000 or serve an additional imprisonment of 1000 days.[236]

To sum up: The early enrolment laws served to stimulate enlistment; the later ones probably had no effect at all except to give the Bureau something to do, and the law officers something on which to exercise their wits. The conscript service also served as an exemption board. It secured few, if any, enlistments that the state could not have secured, and certainly lost more than it gained by hara.s.sing the people. The laws were constantly violated by the state; this is proved by the enlistment of eighteen new regiments contrary to the law. It finally drove the state authorities into an att.i.tude of nullification by its construction of the enrolment laws.

Neither the state nor the Confederate government had an efficient machinery for securing enlistments. If there ever were laws regarded only in the breaking, the Enrolment Acts were such laws. The conscripts and exempts, like the deserters, tories, and Peace Society men, are important, not only because they so weakened the Confederacy, but also because they formed the party that would have carried out, or at least begun, Reconstruction according to the plans of Lincoln and Johnson as first proclaimed. Many of these people became "scalawags" later, probably influenced to some extent by the scorn of their neighbors.

SEC. 4. TORIES AND DESERTERS

In Alabama opposition to the Confederate government took two forms. One was the rebellious opposition of the so-called "unionists" or "tories,"

who later joined with the deserters from the army; the other was the legal or const.i.tutional opposition of the old cooperation or anti-secession party, which maintained an unfriendly att.i.tude toward the Confederate administration, though the great majority of its members were loyal to the southern cause. From this second cla.s.s arose a so-called "Peace Party,"

which desired to end the war on terms favorable to the South; and from this, in turn, when later it was known that such terms could not be secured, sprang the semi-treasonable secret order--the "Peace Society." In 1864, the "tories" and the Peace Society began to work together. Peculiar social and political conditions will in part account for the strength and growth of the opposition in two sections of the state far removed from each other--in north Alabama and in southeast Alabama.

Conditions in North Alabama

To the convention of 1861 forty-four members from north Alabama were elected as cooperationists, that is, in favor of a union of the southern states, within the old Union, for the purpose of securing their rights under the Const.i.tution or of securing safe secession. They professed to be afraid of separate state secession as likely to lead to disintegration and war. Thirty-one of these cooperationists voted against the ordinance of secession, and twenty-four of them (mostly members from the northern hill counties) refused to sign the ordinance, though all expressed the intention to submit to the will of the majority, and to give the state their heartiest support. When war came all espoused the Confederate cause.[237] The cooperationist party as a whole supported the Confederacy faithfully, though nearly always in a more or less disapproving spirit toward the administration, both state and Confederate.

North Alabama differed from other portions of the state in many ways.

There was no railroad connecting the country north of the mountains with the southern part of the state, and from the northern counties it was a journey of several days to reach the towns in central and south Alabama.

Hence there was little intercourse between the people of the two sections, though the seat of government was in the central part of the state; even to-day the intimacy is not close. For years it had been a favorite scheme of Alabama statesmen to build railroads and highways to connect more closely the two sections.[238] Geographically, this northern section of the state belonged to Tennessee. The people were felt to be slightly different in character and sympathies from those of central and south Alabama, and whatever one section favored in public matters was usually opposed by the other. Even in the northern section the population was more or less divided. The people of the valley more closely resembled the west Tennesseeans, the great majority of them being planters, having little in common with the small farmers of the hill and mountain country, who were like the east Tennesseeans. Of the latter the extreme element was the cla.s.s commonly known as "mountain whites" or "sand-mountain" people. These were the people who gave so much trouble during the war, as "tories," and from whom the loyal southerners of north Alabama suffered greatly when the country was stripped of its men for the armies. Yet it can hardly be said that they exercised much influence on politics before the war. Their only representative in the convention of 1861 was Charles Christopher Sheets, who did not speak on the floor of the convention during the entire session.