Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama

by Walter L. Fleming

Two members of the convention of 1861, besides Clemens, deserted to the Federals. These were C. C. Sheets and D. P. Lewis. Like Clemens, they were elected as coöperationists and opposed immediate secession, though all three voted for the resolution declaring that Alabama would not submit to the rule of Lincoln. Sheets voted against secession and would not sign the ordinance. For a while he remained quietly at home and refused to enter the Confederate army. At length he reappeared from his place of hiding and assisted in recruiting soldiers for the First Alabama Union Cavalry. He was elected to the state legislature, but in 1862 was expelled for disloyalty. After some time in hiding, he was arrested, and imprisoned for treason. General Thomas retaliated by arresting and holding as a hostage General McDowell. Sheets remained in prison until the end of the war.[287]

David P. Lewis of Madison County voted against secession but signed the ordinance, and was elected to the Provisional Congress by the convention, and in 1863 was appointed circuit judge by the governor. This position he held for a few months, and then deserted to the Federals. During the remainder of the war he lived quietly at Nashville.[288]

Another prominent citizen of Madison County, Judge D. C. Humphreys, joined the Federals late in the war. Humphreys had been in the Confederate army and had resigned. He was arrested by General Roddy on the charge of disloyalty. It is not known that he was ever tried or put into prison, but in January, 1865, Hon. C. C. Clay, Sr., and other prominent citizens of Huntsville, of southern sympathies, all old men, were arrested and carried to prison in Nashville as hostages for the safety of Humphreys, who had been released by order of the Confederate War Department as soon as the rumor of his arrest reached Richmond.[289] In April, 1864, General Clanton, commanding in north Alabama, sent Governor Watts a Nashville paper in which Jeremiah Clemens, “the arch traitor,” and that “crazy man,” Humphreys, figured as advisers to their fellow-citizens of Alabama in recommending submission.[290] There are indications that several such addresses were issued by Clemens, Humphreys, Lane, and others from the safety of the Federal lines, but the text of none of them has been found except those written and published when the war was nearly ended.

Of the men of position and influence who were found in the ranks of opposition to the Confederate government after 1861, Judge Lane is the only one whose course can command respect. He was faithful to the Union from first to last, while the others were erratic persons who changed sides because of personal spites and disappointments. They had little or no influence over, and nothing in common with, the dissatisfied mountain people and the tories and deserters.[291]

Numbers of the Disaffected

At the surrender the deserters came in in large numbers to be paroled. The reports of the Federal generals who received the surrender of the Confederate armies in the southwest show a surprisingly large number of Confederates paroled. A large proportion of them were deserters, “mossbacks,” and tories, who, hated by the Confederate soldiers and fearing that the latter would seek revenge for their misdeeds during the war, felt that it would be some protection to take the oath, be paroled, and secure the certificate. Then, they thought, the United States government would see to their safety. At the surrender of a Confederate command in their vicinity, they flocked in from their retreats and were paroled as Confederate soldiers. To show how large this element in Mississippi and Alabama was, when General Dick Taylor surrendered, May 4, 1865, at Meridian, Mississippi, he had not more than 8000 real soldiers, or men under arms. It is possible, though not probable, that many were absent with leave. Yet of the 42,293 soldiers paroled in the armies of the Southwest[292] about 30,000 of them were at Meridian. Many of these had never been in the army; some had served in both armies; none had been in either for a long time. For weeks they kept coming in at all points where a United States officer was stationed in order to be paroled. The soldiers were furious. The statistics show[293] that strong Confederate armies were surrendered in this section of the country, when, as a matter of fact, the governor of Alabama had for two years been unable to secure sufficient military support to enforce the laws over more than half of the state.[294]

It is difficult to estimate the number of disaffected persons within the limits of the state. Probably in southeast Alabama there were in all, of tories and deserters, 1000 who at times were actively hostile to the Confederate authorities, and who committed depredations on the loyal people, and 1000 or 1500 more would include the “mossbacks” and obstructionists, who were without the courage to do more than keep out of the army and talk sedition. In addition to the 2576 enlistments in the Federal army credited to Alabama, it is probable that several hundred more were enlisted in northern regiments. Some of these were the Confederate prisoners captured late in the war and enlisted as “Galvanized Yankees” in the United States regiments sent West to fight the Indians.

Of deserters, tories, and “mossbacks” there could not have been less than 8000 or 10,000 in north Alabama. Of these, at least half were in active depredation all over the section. There were several thousand deserters from the Alabama troops, most of them from north Alabama and from commands stationed near their homes. At the beginning of the war there were probably no more than 2000 men who were wholly disaffected,[295] and these only to the extent of desiring neutrality for themselves.

On November 30, 1864, the Confederate “Deserter Book” showed that since April, 1864, 7994 Alabama soldiers had deserted or been absent without leave from the armies of the West and of Northern Virginia. Of these 4323 were again in the ranks, leaving still to be accounted for 3671 men. There were many deserters in the hills of Alabama from the commands from other states. After the fall of Atlanta, the number of stragglers and deserters greatly increased, and late in 1864 it was estimated that 6000 of them were in the state, some in every county; there being no longer a force to drive them back to the army. For a year or more the force for this purpose had been very weak.[296]

Much of the toryism and of the trouble resulting from it was due to the weak policy of the Confederate authorities in dealing with discontent and in protecting the loyal people in exposed districts. Many a man had to desert in order to protect his family from outlaws, and was then easily driven into toryism.