A Short History of Reconstruction [Updated Edition]

by Eric Foner

It was in the secession crisis and Civil War that large numbers of upcountry yeomen discovered themselves as a political class. The elections for delegates to secession conventions in the winter of 1860–61 produced massive repudiations of disunion in yeoman areas. Once the war had begun, most of the upcountry rallied to the Confederate cause. But from the outset, disloyalty was rife in the Southern mountains. Its western counties seceded from Virginia in 1861 and two years later reentered the Union as a separate state. From East Tennessee, long conscious of its remoteness from the rest of the state, thousands of men made their way through the mountains to enlist in the Union Army.