1865 Alabama: From Civil War to Uncivil Peace

by Christopher Lyle McIlwain

Overview

The epic final year of the Civil War in Alabama and its effects on Alabama politics today

To understand Alabama today, it's necessary to understand what happened in 1865. In 1865 Alabama: From Civil War to Uncivil Peace Christopher McIlwain examines the end of the Civil War and the early days of Reconstruction, tracing how the action—and inaction—of leaders in the state during those twelve months shaped the decades that followed as well as state politics today. McIlwain focuses on four factors: the immediate and unconditional emancipation of enslaved people, the destruction of Alabama’s industrial economy, significant broadening of northern support for suffrage rights for freedmen, and a long scarcity of investment capital. Each element proves important to understanding aspects of Alabama today.  

Relevant events outside Alabama are woven into the narrative, including McIlwain’s controversial argument regarding the effect of Lincoln’s assassination. Most historians assume that Lincoln favored black suffrage and that he would have led the fight to impose that on the South. But he made it clear to his cabinet members that granting suffrage rights was a matter to be decided by the southern states, not the federal government. Thus, according to McIlwain, if Lincoln had lived, black suffrage would not have been the issue it became in Alabama.

In his fresh analysis of what really happened in Alabama in 1865 and why—McIlwain illuminates that Alabama's challenges were neither entirely the fault of northern or southern policies but rather the complex interaction between the two. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780817361938
Publisher:	University of Alabama Press
Publication date:	09/16/2024
Pages:	376
Sales rank:	309,359
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Christopher Lyle McIlwain Sr. is an attorney in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who has spent the last twenty-five years researching nineteenth-century Alabama, focusing particularly on law, politics, and the Civil War. He is the author of Civil War Alabama.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

"The Fever of Your Imagination"

One of the many flaws of historian John Witherspoon DuBose's Alabama's Tragic Decade is that, in making his argument for Alabama's righteousness and for Northern sins, he conveniently skips over any detailed discussion of the Civil War. His first chapter, in fact, begins in May 1865. Much happened in the first four months of that year that undermines DuBose's conclusions.

As 1865 dawned and the end of the Civil War neared, Confederate Alabama was a sitting duck. Her sister states Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia had already been substantially overrun by Union forces and were virtually impotent. North Alabama was occupied. Mobile Bay had fallen to the Union navy a few months earlier. The Confederate Army of Tennessee under Gen. John Bell Hood might have provided Alabama some defense, but it had left Alabama in November and been defeated and nearly annihilated by Union forces under Union general George Henry Thomas at the Battle of Nashville on December 16, 1864. The implications of this debacle were quickly realized in Richmond, Virginia, the Confederacy's capital. Gen. Josiah Gorgas, a future president of the University of Alabama, wrote that if Hood's army were "defeated & demoralized" as the Northern press was trumpeting, "there is no force to cover Alabama & Georgia, & the enemy may penetrate these states at his leisure."

What was the true mental state of Hood's beaten and retreating army? Alabamian Edward Norphlet Brown, a quartermaster, had written to his wife, Fannie, on Christmas Eve from Bainbridge, Alabama, on the north side of the Tennessee River, where frantic efforts were being made to cross the river and escape capture by pursuing Union forces. Brown revealed to her that the Yankees had "routed our army & drove it pell mell from the battle ground." There was, he continued, "never such a rout in modern times." In the process, "Hood lost eighty-two pieces of artillery, about ten thousand men & not less than fifteen thousand small arms." Brown described the survivors as "entirely demoralized" and "worn down" and the army "ruined." As a result, he concluded, "the cause of the South is sadly on the wane & I fear we shall be subjugated."

Word of Hood's defeat had reached some others in Alabama by the time Alabamians ushered in the New Year. "We arrive at the painful conclusion that General Hood's expedition to Tennessee has been most disastrous," wrote the worried editor of the Greensboro Alabama Beacon. The people were no less out of sorts. Hear their voices:

We hear bad news now, namely, that Hood has fallen back to Corinth. I am much depressed and dread the coming of the enemy. If it was only the Lord's will that we could have peace, how thankful I certainly would be.

Give my love to all the connexion [sic]. Pray fervently for me. And oh kiss my sweet children for me, for in all probability I will never get to do it myself. I cannot help but grieve.

I frankly acknowledge that I trimble [sic] for the denouement of the great tragedy, and fear that we are approaching that point when according to holy writ destruction will inevitably follow — a house divided against itself.

What a contrast between this and a New Year's morning five years since, before the advent of this miserable war! Then the house echoed with many voices crying to each other. "I wish you a Happy New Year!" But, this morning, each child seems to know and feel by common consent there is no happy year in store for us, and all such expressions are hushed.

The year has come around with excitement and trouble for the poor downtrodden people of Alabama.

Another year has come and gone and yet this cruel war is raging. I can see no prospect for peace but all things are possible with God and He can make war cease when He thinks best. Christmas and New Years Days, times for joy and festivity, have passed but they brought no joy to me.

Although woe and desolation stare at us every way we turn, the heart of the patriot is as firm as ever, and determined that, come what may, he will never yield. There is no doubt but we have some among us whose love of self forbids their minds to rise above the dank sod upon which they tread; men who have never known what it is to experience a thrill of pleasure, when listening to the "patriot's moving story, shedding for freemen's rights his generous blood." Such we have among us; but, thank the Giver of all good, they are in the minority.

The year is closed without the least prospect of closing the war, suffering, sadness and gloom cover the land, no one knows the end, humanity seems to have fled, immorality prevails to an alarming extent, food is scarce and if the war continues we may look for scenes among our people to equal the spanish and french troubles.

Instead of a New Year's dinner, that was promised to us in the paper, we got nothing but flour to day, not any meat at all. But so long as we get enough to live on, no matter what, we will not complain.

Everybody is depressed and somber. Military events have as in '62 & 63 closed against us. Still gaiety continues among the young people, & there is much marriage & giving in marriage.

The poor rebels went up into Tennessee and were defeated. I am so disappointed for I was sure they would be victorious, which they would have been had they only held their ground about twenty-four hours longer. They had invested Nashville and would have soon been in it; but Hood's army had been taught to retreat and fight and would not fight without running. It was the worst defeat our army ever experienced and I hope the last.

And to the chagrin of the editor of the transplanted and now Selma-based Chattanooga Rebel, "just now the croakers are in the hey-day of their carnival. Everything has gone wrong. They knew it and told you so."

But the Selma-based Jackson Mississippian joined other members of the Alabama press in misrepresenting the capability of Hood's degraded army to defend Alabama. It was "in a good fighting condition," wrote its editor. The Chattanooga Rebel agreed, declaring that "all the Yankee reports about the demoralization of the [Army of Tennessee] are mere fabrications." Edward Brown had earlier warned his wife not to put credence in positive war news in the press. "This is all inflation gotten up to encourage."

In what may also have been misinformation, one of Hood's many deserters claimed that Hood and his retreating troops had been ordered to Tuscaloosa in west central Alabama to reorganize his "shattered army." The story was telegraphed from Union-occupied Courtland, Alabama, and quickly became national news, thereby placing an even larger target on the City of Oaks and its military academy at the University of Alabama. Whether Hood had actually received such an order is unknown, but it is interesting that a large wagon train of Hood's carrying his army's supplies and pontoons was intercepted and captured by a detachment of General Thomas's cavalry just south of Russellville, Alabama, reportedly while on its way to Tuscaloosa.

As many Confederate civilians from across the South who had already fled to Tuscaloosa had concluded, Tuscaloosa was a very logical destination for a force seeking refuge from an enemy approaching from the north or west side of the rain-swollen Black Warrior River, which in essence served as a broad moat to protect the town. Unless the attacking force brought pontoons, all the defenders had to do was dismantle the privately owned river bridge between Tuscaloosa and Northport, thereby in essence raising the drawbridge over the moat. Bringing pontoons in from the north or west would be very difficult for an aggressor. As a Nashville correspondent to the Chicago Journal put it, Tuscaloosa "was the old capital of the State, but is now a country village, and there is not a pike leading to the place. The bad state of the roads, Davis and Hood thin[k]s will prevent pursuit; and perhaps it will." In addition to its isolation and relative inaccessibility, Tuscaloosa was a good base of supply given the warrelated factories in the area and the availability of river transportation to and from Mobile in the winter and spring. Tuscaloosa was also a satisfactory staging area to protect the mines and foundries in nearby Jefferson and Shelby Counties and the important war-related industries to the southeast in Selma.

If Hood and his exhausted army were headed toward Tuscaloosa, they never made it any farther than Tupelo, Mississippi. According to a report wired to Confederate president Jefferson Davis by Confederate general Richard Taylor, Hood's "army needs rest, consolidation, and reorganization. Not a day should be lost in effecting these latter. If moved in its present condition," Taylor concluded, "it will prove utterly worthless; this applies to both infantry and cavalry." In a subsequent telegram to Davis, Taylor was even plainer. "My telegram of the 9th expressed the conviction that an attempt to move Hood's army at this time would complete its destruction." Taylor was not exaggerating. According to the diary of one of Hood's men who had returned after being away on medical leave for some weeks, "it is enough to discourage the stoutest and most hopeful spirits to listen to the conversation of the men who participated in the recent campaign in Tennessee. They are utterly despondent and would hail with joy the prospect of peace on any terms." They were "fully convinced the Confederacy is gone." Hood's announcement that he had been relieved of command did not improve their morale.

If the remnant of the Army of Tennessee had reached Tuscaloosa, one wonders what type of reception they would have received. Even before Union general William Tecumseh Sherman's devastating march through Georgia and Hood's crushing defeat in Tennessee, there were strong signs that many Tuscaloosans were anxious for peace and would settle for the best terms available. Most probative in this regard was the fact that planter-industrialist Robert Jemison (fig. 1), a highly influential community leader who had been elected to the Confederate Senate in 1863 and taken his seat in December of that year, had chosen not to return to Richmond when the Confederate Congress last convened on November 7, 1864. Possibly more telling, Jemison's decision does not appear to have generated any public controversy for almost three months, and even then it was only from Mobile Advertiser and Register editor John Forsyth in Mobile, not the local press. Forsyth, Alabama's foremost Confederate propagandist, wondered whether Jemison's absence might be "owing to private business," but in any case Forsyth called on Jemison to resign his senate seat and "leave it to some man who has time to devote to the public service. If from any other reason, the public has a right to know." And know the whole public and the nation soon would. In three months, the Richmond Dispatch would publish a list of public men in the South that the New York Tribune alleged were "in favor of reconstruction on the basis of the Union and the Constitution" — code words for reunion with slavery intact — and one of the nine Alabamians on the list was Jemison.

Not long after Jemison's no-show in Richmond, former Whig Tennessee governor Neil Smith Brown appeared in Tuscaloosa to attempt to revive the spirit for war and independence there. According to the Tuscaloosa Observer, Brown addressed a group at a church in Tuscaloosa, warning of the horrors that would flow from emancipation and confiscation under Lincoln's regime if the South ever stopped fighting and submitted to his control:

What a state of society would we then have? Ourselves impoverished, our negroes among us and on an equality with us, our lands in the hands of Yankee owners, who would farm them with our negroes at nominal wages. Such was now the sad picture in Tennessee and those border States that the Yankees hold. What has been will be again. Were we willing to submit to such degradation? Were the sons of those noble pioneers, who converted the wilderness into these smiling gardens and fruitful fields — who erected these temples to God — these courts of justice — these educational institutes, and these happy homes, amidst the attack of a savage foe, willing to yield our noble heritage to the vandal foe — the hated Yankee? Are we too craven to defend it? No! Never! We will conquer our independence, or we will die.

Up to that point, however, the Confederate army alone had already suffered an estimated 146,845 casualties, and more recently Hood's army had suffered thousands more. It was later estimated that 35,000 Alabamians in the Confederate army had been killed or wounded since the war began. Some of the grim consequences of those stunning losses were staring Tuscaloosans in the face. Episcopal bishop Richard Hooker Wilmer, a strong supporter of the Confederacy, had visited Tuscaloosa to preside over the dedication of a new orphanage sponsored by the Episcopal Church. War had caused the innocent children terrible, life-altering losses for which there was no adequate compensation. Guilt may in part explain the fact that $50,000 had been raised in west Alabama (more than $8,000 in Tuscaloosa) to underwrite the construction and operation of the home. Other religious organizations engaged in fund-raising efforts for orphanages around Alabama were experiencing the same outpouring of support. But even more children would eventually become orphans unless the fighting stopped.

Morale on the home front in other parts of Alabama was also poor. Some members of the Alabama press were openly blaming Davis for their predicament. Samuel Pickens, a soldier from west Alabama who was serving in Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, noted that men returning from home "give a deplorable account of the sentiments of the people in Ala. & also in Ga. & So. Ca. Everybody whipped & despairing of our cause: wanting peace on any terms, reunion, submission — anything. How shameful!" He hoped it was "only a temporary fit of despondency caused by the disastrous campaign of Hood, the bold & well nigh unopposed march of Sherman, and the utter demoralization of our (Hood's) army down there." Similarly, a worried soldier who had just rejoined Hood's army noted that "it is well known that Georgia is taking the initiatory steps looking to submission — at least the matter is being discussed in primary meetings held for that purpose, and I know that her course is approved and even applauded in the army." In fact, he continued, "shameful though it be ... three-fourths of the Army of Tennessee, and perhaps as great a proportion of the citizens of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, are in favor of peace on any terms, no matter how ignominious they may be."

Support for the Confederacy in Tuscaloosa was probably not renewed or enhanced by a speech given there in early January 1865 by University of Alabama president Landon Garland, who also served as superintendent of the Corps of Cadets there. Garland declared that "God intends that we shall be free, but He will have no subterfuges. By no foreign intervention, by no Great Western chimera, are we to be disenthralled, but by a Daniel-like endurance in a fiery furnace, by a baptism in blood, by heroic martyrdom and sacrifice are we to be brought forth into the light of liberty." Perhaps not receiving the reaction from the crowd that he had expected to his oratory, Garland observed that "some are gloomy and downcast" and asked was it "because of Hood's reverse" or "because Sherman's army has swept" over Georgia? "Were this the cause," he continued, "your despondency might soon be remedied." Then Garland unwisely resorted to ridicule, accusing his audience of being unenthusiastic for "a graver reason. You are demoralized, in fact subjugated; your patriotism sinks within you at the idea of four more years of war; you shrink appalled at this carnage, its wastings and confiscations, and think the price of liberty too high, even if paid in Confederate money; you hoped that Hood would winter his forces on the banks of the Ohio, and that Sherman would be annihilated before he reached Atlanta. Very well; your expectations were unreasonably high, and disappointment has been the inevitable result — you have to blame the fever of your imagination."

But it was not their imagination that Confederates — from President Davis on down — had earlier made these very unrealistic predictions and thereby created now unmet expectations. Now, promises of future success would fall on deaf ears. Under the circumstances, one course for Tuscaloosans interested in their town's economic future was to avoid the Union army's attention while the war played itself out elsewhere. That appears to have been Robert Jemison's course of action. But the news about Hood retreating to Tuscaloosa had foiled this strategy by putting the name of the town back into the Northern press for the first time in months. Try as they might to take a position of neutrality, Tuscaloosans knew that the war was coming ever closer to them. On January 5, while chasing some of Hood's other wagon trains, Union general James Harrison Wilson's troopers had come as far south as Nauvoo, Alabama, in nearby Walker County. Shortly thereafter, a company of "Tories" — Unionist guerrillas — raided Jasper, the county seat of Walker County, burning the courthouse, jail, and several other buildings, along with the records of the tax collector and assessor and the court clerk. Unless peace came quickly, the next thrust would more than likely reach and destroy Tuscaloosa. Tuscaloosans, as well as all other Alabamians, knew that was not far off.

(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "1865 Alabama"
by .
Copyright © 2017 University of Alabama Press.
Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

List of Figures,
Acknowledgments,
Introduction,
PART I. THE FINAL DOOM OF SLAVERY,
1. "The Fever of Your Imagination",
2. "Treason — Treason — Treason!!!",
3. The "Peace Bubble",
Part II. THE FINAL DOOM OF ALABAMA'S INDUSTRIAL ECONOMY,
4. The Will Is Wanting,
5. The Society of Loyal Confederates,
6. The Wedding Party,
7. "Satan's Kingdom Is Tumbling Down",
PART III. THE FINAL DOOM OF STATE SOVEREIGNTY,
8. "When This Cruel War Is Over",
9. "Glorious News",
10. "A Lull in the Tempest",
11. "Most Prominent and Influential Loyal Men",
12. "Diabolical",
13. The Liberator,
14. "A Radically, Sickly, Deathly Change",
15. "The Rump of the Confederacy",
16. "The South As It Is",
17. The Legacy of 1865,
Abbreviations,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,

Editorial Reviews

1865 Alabama unequivocally demands to be taken seriously as a landmark in Alabama’s historical scholarship . . . Anyone wanting to know about Alabama’s Civil War and Reconstruction experience must reckon with this book.” —The Alabama Review

“Clearly, the first months of ‘peace’ in Alabama, McIlwain concludes, set the tone for the state's economic, political, and social evolution even to the present day. Judging from the convincing arguments herein presented, this lawyer has won his case.” —Civil War Times

“One of the most interesting and provocative studies of a Confederate state that has appeared in recent years. McIlwain presents an impressive amount of fresh research and information that advances a number of striking and controversial interpretations.” —George C. Rable, author of God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War


“McIlwain has produced an engaging, often witty, and always informative study of the development of Reconstructionist thought in Alabama. This is a topic that has only recently garnered serious attention, and so McIlwain stands as one of its pioneers.” —Ben H. Severance, author of Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Alabama in the Civil War and Tennessee’s Radical Army: The State Guard and Its Role in Reconstruction, 1867-1869

From the Publisher