Loyalty and Loss
Author: Margaret M. Storey
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2004-09-01
Total Pages: 324
ISBN-13: 9780807130223
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThough slavery was widespread and antislavery sentiment rare in Alabama, there emerged a small loyalist population, mostly in the northern counties, that persisted in the face of overwhelming odds against their cause. Margaret M. Storey’s welcome study uncovers and explores those Alabamians who maintained allegiance to the Union when their state seceded in 1861—and beyond. Storey’s extensive, groundbreaking research discloses a socioeconomically diverse group that included slaveholders and nonslaveholders, business people, professionals, farmers, and blacks. By considering the years 1861–1874 as a whole, she clearly connects loyalists’ sometimes brutal wartime treatment with their postwar behavior.