This week I was astonished to learn the history of a Civil War regiment that hailed from my old stomping grounds in north Alabama. These volunteers mustered in Huntsville, AL in October 1862 to fight for the Union. I know some people who were taught some true Lost Cause bullshit in school; some things that were parroted by kids in class. Thankfully I never had an actual teacher tell me that the war was fought over taxes or that Lee was an honorable man or that blacks were better off enslaved. But it does seem that the extent of support the Union enjoyed in my local area had been supressed for a long time. I knew vaguely that the counties south of me were a secede-from-Alabama hotbed and there was a musical about it (Incident at Looney’s Tavern) but I think I learned that through osmosis, not school.
I soaked up a lot of local history as a kid. Mostly this was regarding NASA and military rockets. But I also loved going to Constitution Hall where the state of Alabama was inaugurated in 1819. I talked with reenactors there and at a historical festival in Limestone County. I feel like I pored over every historical marker from East Huntsville to Athens. My hometown of Madison wasn’t founded until 1869, so didn’t have a Civil War history. The area was occupied by Union troops in 1862 without a major battle and I was taught it was a backwater. That’s still probably true, but considering how prominent the war is in the Southern collective memory, you might have thought that somewhere, at some time between ages 5 and 25, I might have heard mention that 2,066 men, mostly white but some black, mustered in Huntsville to take up arms against their rebel neighbors and preserve the Union. Or that those men traveled for 3 years with Sherman’s army through Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas through 13 engagements.
I don’t think my 9th grade Alabama History coach conspiratorially hid this from me but I think it’s a testament to the pervasiveness of the Lost Cause mentality. I was led to believe that nearly every white southerner supported the rebels, thus normalizing the morality of the enslavers. I hope that kids today in Madison County learn this vital context that I was denied.
1st Alabama Cavalry Regiment (Union) via Wikipedia
History from 1st Alabama reenactors (HTTP, out of date)
ETA: I would presume that most US Volunteers from Alabama felt unfavorably about slavery, I don’t want to imply that everyone in a county that voted against secession was anti-slavery or morally perfect. A lot of enslavers were anti-secession because they thought provoking the other states into a war was a supremely stupid idea.
