[243] See DuBose, “Life of Yancey,” p. 563.
The non-slaveholders in the Black Belt appear to have been more dissatisfied than those of the white counties at the outbreak of the war. May 13, 1861, William M. Brooks, who had presided over the secession convention, wrote from Perry County to President Davis in regard to the bad effect of the refusal to accept short-time volunteers. He said that though there were 20,000 slaves in Perry County, most of the whites were non-slaveholders. Some of the latter had been made to believe that the war was solely to get more slaves for the rich, and many who had no love for slaveholders were declaring that they would “fight for no rich man’s slave.” The men who had enlisted were largely of the hill class, poor folks who left their work to go to camp and drill. Here, while their crops wasted, they lost their ardor, and when they heard that their one-year enlistment was not to be accepted, they began to murmur. They were made to believe by traitors that a rich man could enter the army for a year and then quit, while they had to enlist for the war. O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. VIII, pp. 318-319.
Horace Greeley in the Tribune was reported to have said: Large slaveholders were not secessionists, they resisted disunion; those who had much at stake hesitated a long while; it was not a “slaveholders’ rebellion”; it was really a rebellion of the non-slaveholders resident in the strongholds of slavery, springing from no love of slavery, but from the antagonism of race and the hatred of the idea of equality with the blacks involved in simple emancipation.—Ku Klux Rept., p. 519. There is a basis of truth in this.
[244] North Alabama before the war was overwhelmingly Democratic and was called “The Avalanche” from the way it overran the Whiggish counties of the southern and central sections. This was shown in the convention, where representation was based on the white vote. Since the war representation in the conventions is based on population, and the Black Belt has controlled the white counties. “Northern Alabama Illustrated,” pp. 251, 756. See also DuBose, “Yancey,” p. 562.
[245] Professor George W. Duncan of Auburn, Ala., and many others have given me information in regard to the people in that section. See also H. Mis. Doc. No. 42, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.; N. Y. Tribune, Nov. 14, 1862.
[246] O. R., Ser. I, Vol. III, p. 249. For much information concerning the conditions in north Alabama during the war, I am indebted to Professor O. D. Smith of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, a native of Vermont who was then a Confederate Bonded Treasury Agent and travelled extensively over that part of the country.
[247] Reid, “After the War,” pp. 348-350; Saunders, “Early Settlers,” pp. 115, 164; Jones, “A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary,” Vol. I, pp. 182, 208.
[248] O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. II, pp. 141. 142.
[249] O. R., Ser. I, Vol. X, Pt. II, p. 638.
[250] Moore, “Anecdotes, Poetry, and Incidents of the War,” p. 215 (Letters from the chaplain of Streight’s regiment); O. R., Ser. I, Vol. XVI, Pt. I, pp. 124, 785 (Streight’s Report); Miller, “Alabama”; Jones, “Diary,” Vol. I, pp. 182-208.