Alabama in the Civil War

As one of the first states to secede from the Union, Alabama’s stance during the Civil War was overwhelmingly pro-Confederate. However, the road to rebellion was not, in Alabama’s case, an especially easy one; while most of the state was happy to secede, there were Alabamans who did not go willingly.

Alabama’s Deep-South delta location made it one of the nation’s foremost cotton growing states. The cotton industry was dependent almost completely upon slave labor, as was Alabama’s cotton plantations. It was no surprise, then, that cotton’s supporters in the state were open to the idea of secession if an anti-slavery candidate became president, which is exactly what happened upon the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

In fact, the turning tide against slavery and anti-slavery White House was a forgone conclusion in Alabama in 1860, so much so that the state’s legislature gave Governor Andrew B. Moore permission to call a state convention to decide for or against secession even before President Lincoln took office. Moore, a fervent supporter of secession, began seizing Federal facilities and arming Confederate Alabamans almost before the state officially seceded in January of 1861.

However popular secession was with Moore and those with interests in cotton, the desire to leave the Union was not unanimous. In North Alabama, where piney woods made cotton cultivation difficult to impossible, residents they had little in common with those in the cotton belt, and furthermore felt little in the way of Confederate sentiment. These citizens argued against secession. There were those in North Alabama who even attempted to form a neutral state, which would be called Nickajack, and would include parts of Union-loyal Tennessee, as well. However, these arguments were lost among the fervent cries for secession that abounded throughout the rest of the state.

Although Alabama contributed almost its entire adult male population – 120,000-some men – to the Confederate war effort, the state itself saw little of the war, especially for the first few years. And as the war dragged on and the future of the Confederacy grew more and more perilous, those who’d opposed the war found that their fears about secession were coming to pass. The Federal occupation of the northern part of the state posed a unique problem for those loyal to the Union; while they no longer had to hide their Union loyalties, and gained a modicum of protection from hostile Confederate troops and Confederate-sympathizing citizens, this occupation put a strain on the region’s food supplies, and opened the area up for much guerrilla fighting.

Seen today as a Confederate stronghold, Alabama was actually home to both Confederate and Union loyalists who disagreed about the issue of secession even when they agreed on other issues, including slavery. The desire to remain a part of the Union was so great in Northern Alabama that citizens there suggested seceding from a seceded state to form their own state, Nickajack. Although most of Alabama’s residents eventually threw in their lot with the Confederacy, there were a number who supported instead the Union, for better or for worse.