This plays a big part in the first book of TS Stribling's trilogy of novels set in Florence....The Forge. Anyone who hasn't read these books yet has a great in store!
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Heck, Winston County seceded from the Confederacy! There's a long-established tradition of free-thought in North Alabama!
DF
Winston County was a refuge of draft-dodgers and deserters. They later spun this into something positive.
Saying Winston county was a place for draft dodgers and deserters to go to, is not the real truth. The play that was held at Double Springs at Looneys Tavern showed that there was a civil war just in the county of people fighting for their own beliefs of the larger picture of the Civil War. Several residents that was fighting to stay a union were gunned down and in the same manner that south should have states rights were gunned down.
History can not point to one issue that the civil war was fought over. Many local residents went to war for reasons they didn't understand. Others did not want loved ones to go to war because they knew they might not return. Even after battles, soliders returned home for different reasons of distress. Eventho they may have been considered deserters, they were accepted back to their community with no harm.
Read the book that TS Stribling wrote will show a lot of the history and if it is still in publication is the Free State of Winston. Times were different and what people thought of war tells a lot of what we think of war now.
I'm convinced that most Southerners went to war to repel yankee invaders. It we had turned the tables and gone on to Washington after the first battle of Manassas, that would have been the end of it.
It was a failed rebellion. The United States defeated the Southern version of the Taliban with one hand tied behind their back. Y'all need to discontinue your glorification of failure.
Two counties in upstate New York seceded from the US during the same war. The counties served as a staging ground for Confederate raiders operating out of Canada. Winston county did not secede from Alabama or the CSA. That comment was made by a Confederate sympathizer during the meeting at Looney's tavern.
As the South inflicted twice the number of casualties as the Nawth, the conflict was hardly a piece of cake. Together, the number of casualties exceeded any other war. And, on a much smaller population base.