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Dissertation Information for Margaret deMontcourt Storey

NAME:
- Margaret deMontcourt Storey

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- Emory University (USA) (1999)

ADVISORS:
- James L Roark

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Dan T. Carter
- Patrick N. Allitt

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Southern Ishmaelites: Wartime unionism and its consequences in Alabama, 1860-1874

Abstract: Using Southern Claims Commission testimony, manuscript collections, military unit histories, Freedmen\'s Bureau papers, newspapers, and census records, this study elucidates the history of Alabama unionists during the Civil War and Reconstruction. It argues that while class played a significant role in unionist identity, the most influential factors in dissent were the kinship-bound, tightly-knit rural neighborhoods in which unionists lived. After Alabama seceded in January, 1861, unionists relied on networks of sympathetic kin and neighbors to help men avoid Confederate service and join the Union Army, to assist families crossing military lines into the North, and to collect information about Confederates for federal troops and spies. Free and enslaved blacks took pro-union action during the war and collaborated with white loyalists to advance the Union cause. Such cooperation also reveals the divergent objectives of white and black unionists: while whites strove to preserve the Union, blacks sought to overthrow slavery.

After the war, white unionists believed that political power would be their reward for years of loyalty and sacrifice. Presidential reconstruction policies, however, largely ignored wartime unionists and instead elevated reluctant secessionists and former Confederates to power. White unionists protested through the Union League and Republican party; by 1866, they made their support of Congressional reconstruction clear. Desire for retribution against secessionists drove them to endorse black suffrage, believing that radicals in Congress, if well-supported by southern Republicans, would disfranchise ex-Confederates and elevate white unionists to the forefront of politics. Native Republican support for the 1867 Military Reconstruction Acts spurred violence against white unionists and freedmen by the Ku Klux Klan. Alabama\'s government was \"redeemed\" by the Democrats in 1874. By then, many white unionists had retreated from politics altogether, some, though, continued to associate with the Republican party into the twentieth century, despite the its weakness and factionalism.

MPACT Scores for Margaret deMontcourt Storey

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-03-20 15:48:15

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Students under Margaret deMontcourt Storey

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None