True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South During the Civil War and Reconstruction By Clayton J. Butler

Abstract

Reviewed by: True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South During the Civil War and Reconstruction By Clayton J. Butler Wendy Hamand Venet True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South During the Civil War and Reconstruction. By Clayton J. Butler. Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2022. Pp. x, 228. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-7662-7.) In True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South During the Civil War and Reconstruction, Clayton J. Butler makes an important contribution to our understanding of Unionists in the Deep South during and after the Civil War. Butler asks several key questions. Who were these white men? Why did they remain loyal to the Union? How were they viewed in the North and the South? What roles did they play during and after the war? He seeks answers to these questions by focusing individual chapters on three Unionist military units: the First Louisiana Cavalry, the First Alabama Cavalry, and the Thirteenth Tennessee Union Cavalry. While acknowledging that his approach undervalues the important role played by Unionist women during the war, Butler notes that “donning a blue Federal uniform represented the most unambiguous expression of national allegiance one could make” (p. 2). Butler finds that white Unionists came from many backgrounds and professed a variety of motivations for their unconditional loyalty. Some were slave owners, while others were laborers motivated by class resentment. In New Orleans, many Unionists were German or Irish immigrants. Although some were former Whigs, many Unionists were Democrats who had voted for Stephen A. Douglas in the presidential contest of 1860. While some Unionists disliked slavery, most did not express sympathy for slaves as a motivation to enlist. Instead, they professed a strong dedication to the United States as a nation. For these men, secession represented a violation of the Constitution and the legacy of the Founders. Butler does not make a case that Unionist soldiers influenced the outcome of the war, but he does argue that these units had a respectable military record, fighting at Port Hudson, Louisiana, in the Red River campaign, and during William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea. Sherman, Butler shows, understood the public relations value of having Unionists serve in his ranks. Of greater [End Page 368] interest to Butler is the role of newspapers’ support of the Union or the Confederacy through the dissemination of information about soldiers’ allegedly heroic or traitorous efforts. Butler’s impressive newspaper research encompasses big city dailies and small-town papers, and it helps broaden the relatively narrow focus of his book. Another strength of this book is Butler’s discussion of the 1864 Fort Pillow massacre, in which Confederate soldiers under the command of General Nathan Bedford Forrest killed close to half the garrison of 585 U.S. soldiers rather than allowing them to surrender. While not taking attention away from the massacre’s Black victims, Butler notes that Forrest’s men also killed nearly one hundred white Unionists, as well as the commander of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, Major William F. Bradford. Bradford initially escaped the bloodshed but was executed by Forrest’s men several days after the massacre. Butler argues convincingly that the episode should be understood both as an expression of Confederates’ racial hatred and as their reaction to the presence of white and Black defenders of Union. In a volume of fewer than two hundred pages of text, the book’s coverage of Reconstruction is understandably brief and largely focused on Louisiana and Alabama. Although many white Unionists ultimately endorsed emancipation during the war, in the postwar period their diverse political views reemerged. Unionists played roles during both Presidential and Radical Reconstruction, but Butler joins other scholars in emphasizing that their failure to form a long-term alliance with African Americans contributed to Reconstruction’s broader failure. In his conclusion, Butler discusses the “relatively small place” unconditional Unionists occupy in both national Civil War memory and current historiography. Small in number but consequential nonetheless, these Deep South Unionists found “their voices drowned out by the chorus of returning Confederates and their descendants” (p. 166). Clayton Butler’s book reminds us of...