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Yankee Rebels: The Motivation Behind Sectional Identity
Wesley R. Brown
History 498
December 13, 2016
Introduction:

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Edmund DeWitt Patterson was born in Lorain County, Ohio on March 20, 1842.1
Typical of families in the area, Patterson’s parents, originally from New England, moved
to Ohio from Massachusetts and Connecticut during the great westward migration in the
early 1800’s.2 Patterson’s father was a farmer during the summer, and a schoolteacher in
the winter and Edmund received a proper education in the local public school system
until the age of seventeen.3 When Patterson was about eighteen years old he attempted to
become a profitable businessman as a traveling salesman, selling book and magazine
subscriptions. Although Patterson was not successful in selling books, he found success
in a new community as a part time schoolteacher and store clerk. Just as millions of other
young American men of appropriate age for military service, Patterson volunteered for
his local unit at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. In his journal, Patterson wrote
how he wondered if he would ever see his friends and his Ohio home again as he fought
gallantly for his country on infamous battlefields of Manassas, Fredericksburg, and
Gettysburg.4 In a strange turn of events in the summer of 1863, Patterson did return to
his native state where he was imprisoned on Johnson’s Island, Ohio for the remainder of
the war, merely fifty miles from his boyhood home in Lorain County.5
In many ways, Patterson resembled the thousands of other typical young Ohioans
who joined the Union army to preserve the Union during the American Civil War.
However, Patterson’s story is unique because he was not on the Gettysburg battlefield on
1 Edmund DeWitt Patterson, Yankee Rebel: The Civil War Journal of Edmund DeWitt
Patterson, Edited by John G. Barrett, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina
Press, (1966), 1.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid. 4.
5 Ibid. 125.

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behalf of the Union like the 4,400 other Ohio men who fought to save the Union at
Gettysburg. When Patterson left his home as a traveling salesman in 1859 his business
carried him south, first to Tennessee and then into northern Alabama.6 During the two
years prior to the Civil War, Patterson ambitiously carved out a living and created a new
home for himself as a schoolteacher and businessman in Lauderdale, Alabama.7 When
Alabama seceded from the Union in January of 1861 over issues of states rights and
slavery Patterson made the conscious decision to enlist into the Lauderdale Rifles,
Company D, 9th Alabama Confederate infantry.8
Patterson fought with this unit in a number of major battles until his capture at
Gettysburg in 1863. Oddly enough, Patterson’s awkward reunion with his family
occurred when they visited him at Johnson’s Island prisoner of war camp. Patterson’s
Unionist family neglected to bring their starving kin food, provisions, or other kind
sentiments because they did not support his decision to fight for the Confederacy.9
Patterson’s unique “homecoming” brought his life full circle back to his childhood home
and depicted the odd existence of a small number of Northern Confederates who chose to
fight in the Civil War, for their adopted Southern communities, often absent of any
previous ties or allegiance to southern people or culture.
Most “Northern Confederates” – native northerners who fought for the
Confederacy in the American Civil War – were primarily motivated to preserve the
antebellum South’s social order and racial hierarchy within the region’s slave society in
order to protect their positions of economic capital and social power. A smaller
6 Patterson, 2.
7 Ibid. pg. 9.
8 Ibid. pg. 3.
9 Ibid. pg. 129.

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demographic of Northern Confederates were motivated to join the Confederate army
through matters of social necessity involving family relations with southern kin or social
threats from members of their local Southern community. However, most Northern
Confederates suspect of social necessity motivations have issues of race and economics
within southern social connections that can be traced back to as primary influences to
back the Confederacy behind their social necessity.
The journals, memoirs, letters, and interviews of many outspoken and opinionated
Northern Confederates expose the sentiments concerning race and society that
reverberated through assumptions about African American incompetence, a general
defense of slavery, and the perceived economic benefits of the “peculiar institution.”
However, some Northern Confederates appeared to be more candidly motivated by
personal economic interests that were not directly related to race relations or slavery, and
this group displayed no expression of sentiments contemporarily viewed as racist in their
discourse. Northern Confederates motivated by economic interests were often incited to
join the Confederate army with the sole intent of defending their treasured financial
security and social capital. Still, for other Northern Confederates, family relations with
southern kin or the potential threat of social ostracism within their local Southern
community played a role in motivating them to join the Confederate army, but there were
almost always underlying alternative motivations of economic interest within social
necessity. In many cases, a combination of these factors inspired Northern Confederates
to fight for the South.
The Motivations of Northern Confederates

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Understanding the motivations of Northern Confederates is a vital and telling
aspect of Civil War history because the personal ideologies and influences of Yankee
rebels speak to the foundations of Confederate nationalism – defined by Confederate
goals and notions that were reflected and expressed by Northern Confederates; primarily
the defense of the South’s slave society. The motivations of Northern Confederates also
expose the general goals and mentality of the Confederacy as a whole. It is especially
interesting that Northern and Southern Confederates shared the same primary motivations
– to defend the South’s social order and racial hierarchy – regardless of where they were
born and raised before the Civil War.
Northern Confederates’ defense of the South’s social order and racial hierarchy,
built upon slavery, exemplified Confederate reasoning and the social advantages whites
were willing to defend in Southern society as opposed to the North. The betrayal of
Northern Confederates of their native states along with family and friends in the North, in
defense of their financial and social welfare, views on race, and political opinions proves
that the Civil War was fought over more than geographic patriotism. It was instead,
fought over personal issues. The war was much deeper than the allegiances determined
by the Mason-Dixon Line.
Examining the motivations of Northern Confederates also depicts some of the
motivation of Confederates who owned a small amount of slaves or no slaves at all.
Although many Northern Confederates had personal economic interests not directly
related to slavery and most did not own slaves, they too believed in viable incentives to
support the Confederacy and defend slavery. Proslavery politicians and publicists
convinced non-slaveholders and small slaveholders of a system of common values, that

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slavery was the common thread, which stabilized all white southern men’s status in
society.10 According to Stephanie McCurry, “They [proslavery politicians and publicists]
repeatedly reminded white southerners of every class that slavery could not be
disentangled from other relations of power and privilege and that it represented simply
the most extreme and absolute form of the legal and customary dependencies that
characterized the Old South.”11 This proslavery argument socially appealed to non-
slaveholders as it thoroughly convinced many white southerners outside of the wealthy
planter class that slavery enforced the social order of the South, in which whites of all
socioeconomic statuses benefitted.
Non-slaveholding men outside the wealthy planter class were also incited to
defend slavery to preserve their power over women in gender relations on the social and
domestic level. Proslavery advocates of the upper class – namely wealthy planters and
politicians – emphasized the common interest of engendered power so that white
southern men of every socioeconomic class could find value in the Confederacy and the
national struggle over slavery. Slavery acted as a metaphor for the subordination of
women in marriage and social hierarchy, and according to McCurry, “No other relation
was more universally embraced as both natural and divine, and none so readily evoked
the stake of enfranchised white men, yeomen and planters alike, in the defense of slave
society.” Slavery acted as a safeguard to men’s position in the household as heads of the
family and southern men of all social classes could find common ground to the
Confederate cause in defending their engendered power on a domestic and social level.
10 Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds: Yeomen Households, Gender Relations,
& the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, (1995), 213.
11 Ibid. 214.

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Northern Confederates were motivated to preserve their positions of power
afforded to them by the South’s set of societal boundaries that entrenched all African
Americans and women in their subordinated status within the southern social sphere. In
joining the Confederate army, Northern Confederates ultimately aimed to preserve the
social order and racial hierarchy that made up the South’s slave society. Through
identifying Northern Confederate motivations, Confederate nationalism can be more
concretely defined by recognizing the common factors, ideals, and goals that influenced
both northerners and southerners to support the Confederacy.
Historiography of Native Northerners Who Fought for the Confederacy
Historians have devoted an enormous amount of research and analysis towards
the personal motivations of Union and Confederate soldiers who fought in the American
Civil War, but existing study on the motivations of these soldiers is predominantly on
northerners and southerners who fought for their home section. Classical historians like
Clifford Dowdey12 and Bill Irvin Wiley13 focus on the political motivations of Civil War
soldiers and ignore southerners’ views on race and society. Cultural historians who
emerged after the cultural turn of the 1980’s, including James McPherson14 and Chandra
Manning,15 have since refuted the arguments of classical historians, instead, emphasizing
that race relations and slavery were at the core of Confederate nationalism, ideology, and
personal motivation. Contrary to the small amount of work done on Northern
12 Clifford Dowdey, Experiment in Rebellion, Garden City, New York: Doubleday &
Company, Inc., 1947.
13 Bell Irvin Wiley, The Common Soldier in the Civil War, New York: Grosset & Dunlap,
1952.
14 James McPherson, For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
15 Chandra Manning, What this Cruel War was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil
War, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.

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Confederates, historians have done a great deal of research on native Southern unionists,
such as Victoria Bynum’s 2001 book The Free State of Jones.16
Existing historically study on Northern Confederates is focused on individuals
rather than northerners in the Confederate army as a specific type of soldier. Most
historical study on Northern Confederates on an individual level exists because many
Northern Confederates played influential roles to the survival of the Confederacy and
retained high-ranking positions. One of the few studies on multiple Northern
Confederates was written by Ed Gleeson and is presented in his book, Illinois Rebels. In
his work, Gleeson provides an comprehensive Civil War history of G Company of the
15th Tennessee Regiment, which was fully made up of 34 Confederates from Marion and
Carbondale, Illinois.17 However, the majority of G Company was originally from
Southern states before they moved north, and therefore is not congruent with the
parameters of this study.18 Historical and academic analysis on the motivations of
Northern Confederates as a group has overall been neglected by the vast majority of
historians for a number of additional reasons.
One of the major reasons for a lack of academic historical study on the
motivations of native northerners who fought for the Confederacy is because men with
characteristics that align with the parameters of this demographic of Civil War soldier
were extremely rare. In order to be considered for this paper, the individual must have
16 Victoria E. Bynum, The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War, Chapel
Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
17 Ed Gleeson, Illinois Rebels: A Civil War Unit History of G Company 15th Tennessee
Regiment Volunteer Infantry, Carmel, Indiana: Guild Press of Indiana, (1996), 13.
18 Ibid.

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been born in a northern state and lived there at least until they were above the age of ten,
before moving to the South and ultimately joining the Confederacy in some capacity.
Through discourse, northerners often were not shy about displaying true
sentiments of faith and national patriotism in the Union both prior to and after they had
migrated to the South.19 Many Northern Confederates held public servant positions in
their local community that cooperated with the federal government while living in
northern and southern regions of the country. Many northerners who were veterans of
the federal military, and even some who were currently serving in the United States
Army, at the outbreak of the Civil War joined the Confederate army. Therefore, it made
little sense for many northerners included in this paper to put faith in a newly founded
government and a military that did not exist prior to the secession of Southern states.
Northerners who fought for the Confederacy were also a rarity because along with
deciding to join a movement that contradicted and starkly opposed the government that
many Northern Confederates had devoted at least a portion of their political faith and
patriotism toward, most Yankee rebels knowingly fought against their own family who
still resided in the North. The families of many Northern Confederates vocally
denounced the opinions and actions of family members in the Confederate army.
Edmund Patterson described his awkward family reunion while he was a prisoner of war
saying, “Pa has been here all day… He urges me to give up the cause of the South which
he pronounces to be a doomed one and one which he is willing and anxious to see put
19 David Ross Zimring, To Live and Die in Dixie: Native Northerners Who Fought for the
Confederacy, Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, (2014), 172.

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down.”20 Thus, for many, the decision to join the Confederate army and fight against
their own family was a traitorous endeavor.
The current lack of historiographical research on Northern Confederate
motivations might also be largely due to the social factor that Yankee rebels almost never
intentionally acted as a unified group. According to discourse evidence, prior to the war,
it was extremely rare for northerners to work or socialize together within their new
communities in the South. As one northern migrant to Mississippi explained, “But I
frequently meet with Yankees, who are much more numerous here than I had
supposed…but associate little with each other, except in the way of business. Self here is
the sole object.”21 According to this idea, northerners in the South had no need to create
expat communities in their new societies. This speaks to the strong manifestation of
individualism in the nation during the pre-war era, as migrants to the South saw
themselves as “Americans,” rather than foreigners in a distant land. The absence
organized and unified communities of northerners in the South may have deterred
historians from considering the motivations of Northern Confederates as important or
influential. A combination of these factors has led historians to neglect research on
Northern Confederates and their motivations as a group.
However, there exists one comprehensive study on Northern Confederates. David
Ross Zimring’s 2014 book, To Live and Die in Dixie: Native Northerners Who Fought
for the Confederacy, does examine the motives and sectional identity of northerners
living in the South who chose to either join the Confederacy or remain loyal to the Union
20 Patterson, 129.
21 George Lewis Prentiss, A Memoir of S. S. Prentiss. Vol. 1, New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, (1891), 101.

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and their home section during the Civil War.22 The groundbreaking research Zimring has
gathered is unprecedented in the historiographical spectrum of Northern Confederate
study. Zimring’s work has been extremely valuable and convenient for this paper.
Zimring claims the primary reason behind Northern Confederates’ choice to join
the Confederate army was malleable sectional identity in the antebellum South. The
flexibility of sectional identity, according to Zimring meant that, “No longer would they
[native northerners] have to see themselves solely as adoptive southerners. Now, in their
contributions toward crafting a new nation, they transformed themselves once again, this
time into Northern Confederates.”23 Although Zimring’s ideas about adopted
southerners’ shifted sectional identity are well supported by his claims and correlating
evidence, his argument that sectional identity was the sole motivating factor for Northern
Confederates fails to analyze the ideologies that influenced the shift. Zimring discusses,
and ultimately denies, the possibility that the economic incentives of slavery could have
been a motivating factor to Northern Confederates decision. He also completely neglects
to analyze their discourse to consider opinions on race and Northern Confederates’
desires to preserve the social order and racial hierarchy within the South’s slave society.
By ignoring the true motivations of Northern Confederates, Zimring allows the traditional
argument that sectional patriotism was the driving factor of Civil War soldiers to persist.
Traditional Arguments for Confederate Motivations
22 David Ross Zimring, To Live and Die in Dixie: Native Northerners Who Fought for the
Confederacy, Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, (2014).
23 Ibid.133.

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Political ideology and “states rights” arguments are at the heart of the most
popular traditional claims for Confederate motivation made by native southerners and
classical historians. States rights ideology – the belief that state governments could
create and control their own political policies – guided Southern support. The states
rights argument for slavery originated in 1848 as the byproduct of a political argument
over an idea known as popular sovereignty when settlers in western territories proposed
that they should decide for themselves whether or not to have slavery.24 Confederate
brigadier general and Georgia native, Edward Porter Alexander, reiterated advocated for
the states rights argument in his personal recollections, stating, “That was the view the
whole South took of it. It was not for slavery but the sovereignty of the states, which is
practically the right to resume self government or to secede.”25 The argument over
whether or not states and territorial entities should be allowed to decide their own
political policies continued throughout the pre-war period as southerners clung to the
political ideology of independence and self-rule.26
Southerners also used the states rights argument to support a romanticized idea of
independence. Many Southerners perceived the Civil War as a struggle for their personal
freedom and liberty as they compared their position as a victimized society with patriots
of the American Revolution in the 18th century. For Southerners, the presidential
election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 was their political breaking point on the issue.
Most southerners perceived Lincoln’s policies as overreaching, radical, and tyrannous
24 James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, The Civil War Era, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, (1988), 58.
25 Edward Porter Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of
General Edward Porter Alexander, Edited by Gary W. Gallagher, Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press, (1989), 25.
26 Ibid.

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because the policies he advocated denied states’ governments the right to make decisions
on the issue of slavery.27 Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of
America, justified secession in 1861 stating,
Actuated solely by the desire to preserve our own rights and promote our own
welfare, the separation of the Confederate States has been marked by no
aggression upon others, and followed by no domestic convulsion. The cultivation
of our fields has progressed as heretofore a terrible responsibility will rest upon it,
and the sufferings of millions will bear testimony to the folly and wickedness of
our aggressors. We have entered upon the career of independence.28
Northerners and southerners alike echoed the political arguments for states rights and
romantic strives for independence presented by Confederate elites in defense of their
decision to fight for the Confederacy. Classical historians like Clifford Dowdey
continually reinforced arguments reflective of Jefferson’s justification of Confederate
secession in the 20th century by portraying the South as victims of tyrannous political
oppression.
Many Southerners were also concerned with what they viewed was “Yankee
meddling” in regional affairs that would destroy the South’s agricultural way of life.29
Although economics were strongly connected with agriculture, Southern agriculture and
economic systems were based on slavery, making the South socially and economically a
“slave society.” The backbone of the South’s antebellum economy was in agricultural
and cash crops such as cotton, rice, sugar, tobacco, and hemp. Cotton in particular,
reigned supreme as the dominant source of profit within the Southern economy. While
27 Edward E. Baptist, The Half has Never been Told: Slavery and the Making of
American Capitalism, Basic Books, New York, (2014), 389.
28 Jeffrson Davis, 1861, Jefferson Davis’ First Innaugural Address, in “The Papers of
Jefferson Davis” Digital Archives, Accessed December 13, 2016,
https://jeffersondavis.rice.edu/Content.aspx?id=88.
29 Battle Cry of Freedom, The Civil War Era, 100.

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prices and production of tobacco and sugar gradually increased between 1850-1860,
cotton value rose by more than 50%; and consequently, cotton production doubled to four
billion bales annually by the late 1850’s.30
The real catalyst of Southern and Northern economic strength was the use of free
African American slave labor. In 1850 there were over 3 million slaves in the South, the
overwhelming of whom worked on highly profitable cotton plantations.31 Southern
slaveholding states became completely dependent upon slave labor to support their state’s
economy and lavish lifestyle of the wealthy aristocratic upper class. James Hammond, a
South Carolinian governor and plantation owner, exclaimed, “The slaveholding South is
now the controlling power of the world. Cotton, rice, tobacco, and naval stores command
the world… No power on earth dares to make war on cotton. Cotton is King.”32 Wealthy
southern planters took pride in their agricultural dominance and were ultimately
motivated and highly incentivized to fight in order to preserve personal economic
interests coupled with the system of racial hierarchy. Subsequently, wealthy proslavery
advocates successfully recruited yeomen farmers and other poor freemen to defend
slavery by presenting their arguments in a conservative Christian frame. (209)
In the South Carolina Low Country, cotton and rice plantations were highly
profitable for the planter class, yet for the majority of poorer white citizens in the region,
these yeomen farmers usually only had enough goods and crops to support themselves.33
Yeomen families were trapped in their low socioeconomic status because 95 percent of
30 Battle Cry of Freedom, 100.
31 “XIV. Statistic of Slaves,” United States Census Bureau, (1900).
32 John McCardell, The Idea of a Southern Nation: Southern Nationalists and Southern
Nationalism, 1830-1860, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, (1979), 134.
33 McCurry, 27.

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property yeomen owned was the least desirable high pine land which had little value and
was only suitable for the cultivation of provision crops and range land for livestock.34
This trend was not limited to the South Carolina Low Country and common all across the
South.35 Although the planter class hoarded distribution of quality land, and
consequently wealth, non-slaveholders and small slaveholders were still convinced of the
social benefits of slavery. According to Stephanie McCurry, in South “male yeomen
demonstrated an unequivocal commitment to hierarchical social order and to their version
of Christian conservative proslavery discourse promoted [by southern elites].”36 Non-
slaveholding and small slaveholding males across the South prescribed to wealthy planter
rhetoric and proactively defended slavery as white southern men by joining the
Confederate army in order to defend their cherished social and domestic positions they
believed were cemented in society by the institution of slavery.
Traditional arguments for Confederate motivations that revolved around political
and economic ideology were conceived with the intent of defending white southerners’
well being. However, the defense of slavery can be directly traced to the root of almost
every factor that influenced northerners and southerners alike to support the Confederacy.
Understanding that the South’s social order and economic systems during the antebellum
era revolved around slavery and racial hierarchy is crucial to historical interpretation of
Northern Confederates’ personal discourse and motivation to support the Confederacy.
Comparing and contrasting the ideologies of northerners and southerners who believed in
the South’s “slave society” and fought for the Confederacy allows the true motivations
34 McCurry, 27.
35 Ibid. 29.
36 Ibid. 225.

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and goals behind Confederate nationalism and sectional identity to be identified and
historically analyzed.
Northerners Migrate South
Although three times as many people born in slave states had migrated to free
northern states by 1850, there were also a large amount of northerners who moves to the
South by this time.37 During the pre-war period, from 1830 until the outbreak of the Civil
War, around 350,000 northerners migrated to the southern region of the United States.38
This pre-war migration south was similar to the great migration movement from the east
coast states to the mid and far west during the early 19th century.39
Many northerners who picked up and moved their lives in this second great
American migration of the 1800’s migrated south out of a sense of personal ambition in
order to find a community where they could create a new and successful life. Most
Northern Confederates in this study were well educated, receiving a quality formal
education in the North before they moved south.40 Northern Confederates’ wide ranging
skills, a result of their high levels of education, afforded them various opportunities in
business, law, engineering, politics, and medicine.41 Most northerners who migrated
south travelled alone, carving out a new chapter of life in southern communities
independently and becoming a part of an emerging Southern middle class with minimal
connection to slavery.42 Rather than slave-owners, traders, or buyers, members of the
new Southern middle-class acted as social liaisons to the wealthy planter class and white
37 Battle Cry of Freedom, 91.
38 Zimring, 11.
39 Ibid. 24.
40 Ibid. 20.
41 Ibid. 21.
42 Ibid. 15.

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non-slaveholding class.43 Northerners who entered the emerging Southern middle-class
took financial advantage of southern social and racial hierarchy and acted as spokesmen
for the defense of the slavery to the lower classes because the institution was intertwined
in all social and economic factors in the South as a slave society.44 The South’s social
order, based upon secure racial hierarchy, allowed educated white Northerners to easily
mingle with and imbed themselves into southern society.
In addition to migrating south for new lives, some Northern Confederates
analyzed in this paper traveled south on military assignment serving with the United
States Army prior to the war. John C. Pemberton, a native of Pennsylvania and
commander of the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi during the Civil
War, was assigned to U.S. army post in Norfolk, Virginia where he met his southern wife
before the war.45 Thirty-two northerners who graduated from the United States Military
Academy at West Point became Northern Confederates including Samuel Cooper,
Franklin Gardner, Bushrod Johnson, Francis Shoup, and many more high ranking
Confederate generals.46 As did their civilian counterparts who migrated south seeking
economic success, many northern military men also quickly assimilated into southern
culture and adopted the region’s views on race and politics. Some northerners who
retired from their careers in the U.S. army stayed in the South to pursue financially
business opportunities available to them by connections with southerners made before the
war.
43 Zimring, 24.
44 Ibid. 20.
45 Michael B. Ballard, Pemberton: The General Who Lost Vicksburg, University Press of
Mississippi, Jackson, (1991), 64.
46 Zimring, 20.

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Finally, there were some northerners who found themselves in the South through
family connections with native southern kin or by marriage. Even in the case of family,
Northern Confederates proved well educated and most had an even easier transition, than
those who migrated for economic success or because of military maneuvers, into
southern culture and society, through local connections. Family migrants from the North
also often benefited economically through the generosity and community networks of
their family members. It is possible that some family migrants felt inclined to align their
identity and ideologies with their adoptive community and state. George Eggleston, a
native of Indiana, moved to live with his wealthy family in Virginia in 1858 where he
adopted the region’s views on politics and race.47 Many other northerners who migrated
south assimilated their political ideologies, views on race, and personal economic
concerns as they transformed their sectional identity. Consequently, many of the reasons
that caused northerners to migrate to the South often correlated with the influential
factors that motivated Northern Confederates to support the Confederacy.
Race and Slavery at the Root of Northern Confederate Discourse
The most popular factor that motivated the average northerner to join the
Confederate Army was the political rhetoric that surrounded the issue of slavery.
Accordingly, the viewpoints of both northern and southern Confederates that slavery was
morally, economically, and politically justified were displayed in formal discussions,
speeches, and writings. For example, Indiana native Francis Shoup vocalized his defense
of slavery and states rights before and after the war even more so than many
47 George Cary Eggleston, A Rebel’s Recollections, New York: Hurd and Houghton,
1875.

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southerners.48 The rhetoric that termed slavery as an acceptable necessity and the South
as a rightful slave society convinced many northerners that supporting the Confederacy
rather than their native state was the right decision.
Most northerners adopted and believed the arguments for secession, based upon
states rights and economic necessity, presented by southern leaders in the Democratic
Party. Many Northern Confederates seemed to take the argument for states rights to
another level, possibly in an effort to assimilate into and be accepted by their local
community. George Cary Eggleston, a former student of Asbury University, and adopted
Virginian expressed his own opinion of the war and the southern perspectives in his
book, A Rebel’s Recollections.49 According to Eggleston, “The Southerners honestly
believed in the right of secession, not merely as a revolutionary, but as a constitutional
right of every state when any people finds the government under which it is living
oppressive and subversive.”50 Like Eggleston, many northerners in the South agreed and
advocated for states rights because they were surrounded by an echo chamber of political
rhetoric in defense of slavery and southern independence.
Numerous other Northern Confederates reflected identical sentiments in defense
of states rights. Robert Hatton, an Ohio-born Tennessee lawyer, Congressman, and later,
a brigadier general in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia expressed his southern
sympathies in a letter to a friend in 1861 in claiming, “If it cannot be preserved-the North
will not yield to us what are our rights–will not guarantee us those rights-destroy the
48 James W. Raab, Deliverance from Evil: Genderal Francis Asbury Shoup, C.S.A, New
West Conshohocken, PA, Infinity Publishing, (2012), 13.
-Francis A. Shoup, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin Forty Years After,” The Sewanee Review, Vol.
2, No. 1, (1893).
49 Eggleston, 56.
50 Ibid.

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Union, by destruction of what it was intended to secure and establish-then, we will have
no alternative but to look to ourselves-rely upon our own strength for security.”51
Northern Confederate, Joseph Garey was a native Pennsylvanian who moved to
Cockrum, Mississippi in 1860 claimed himself a true “Southerner” in his wartime diary,
writing, “We are fighting for our unalienable rights & for them we inaugurated war.”52
In their own words, northerners claimed to have served in the Confederate army for the
same reason southerners did: to preserve those southern rights being encroached upon by
a radical and oppressive northern government. Just as many southern Confederates and
classical historians did, Northern Confederates too, claimed they were motivated to fight
for the Confederacy by portraying the South as a section of victimized people who’s
rights had been unjustifiably infringed upon by a radical northern government.
The political argument for states rights and southern victimization, although real
to most southerners, also failed to address the underlying issue of race relations and
slavery. Although some Northern Confederates did not specify the specific in their
diaries and letters, the specific political rights they aimed to preserve, others did describe
that their opinions on northern political interferences in southern affairs were motivated
by the preservation of slavery.
According to the personal discourse of several Northern Confederates, leading up
to the Civil War northern personal liberty laws were the most opposed and influential
51 James Vaulx Drake, Life of Robert Hatton, Including His Most Important Public
Speeches, Together With Much of His Washington & Army Correspondence, Nashville:
Marshal & Bruce, (1867), 320.
52 Joseph Garey, A Keystone Rebel: The Civil War Diary of Joseph Garey, Hudson’s
Battery, Mississippi Volunteers, Edited by David Welker, Gettysburg: Thomas
Publications, (1996), 95.

21. Brown 21
political policies that drove northerners to support the Confederacy.53 Several northern
states passed personal liberty laws were passed by the late 1850’s in order to counter the
Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850 that provided for the return of slaves who escaped
from the South into free states and territories.54 Each state personal liberty law opposed
the federal fugitive slave laws differently. Some allowed jury trials for escaped slaves
and others, forbid state authorities from cooperating in the capture and return of fugitive
slaves.55 Edward Wells, a Massachusetts-born Northern Confederate who moved to
Charleston, South Carolina in 1860, only a year before the firing on Fort Sumter, claimed
the personal liberty laws were an insult to southern power in instances of political
53 Battle Cry of Freedom, 40.
54 Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, “An Act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons
escaping from the service of their masters,” United States Congress (1793), in Virginia
Foundation for the Humanities Digital Collections, accessed December 13, 2016,
http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_An_Act_respecting_fugitives_from_justice_and_p
ersons_escaping_from_the_service_of_their_masters_1793.
-The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, “An Act to amend, and supplementary to, the Act
entitled ‘An Act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service
of their masters,’ approved February twelfth, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-
three,” United States Congress (1850), in Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Digital
Collections, accessed December 13, 2016,
http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_An_Act_to_amend_and_supplementary_to_the_A
ct_entitled_An_Act_respecting_Fugitives_from_Justice_and_Persons_escaping_from_th
e_Service_of_their_Masters_approved_February_twelfth_one_thousand_seven_hundred
_and_ninety-three_1850.
55 “An Act for the Defense of Liberty in this State,” Connecticut (1854), “An Act to
Protect the Rights and Liberties of the People of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,”
Massachusetts (1855), “An Act to protect the rights and liberties of the inhabitants of this
State,” Michigan (1855), “An Act to further protect personal liberty,” Maine (1855), “An
Act to secure freedom and rights of citizenship to persons in this State,” New Hampshire
(1857), “An Act to prevent kidnapping in Ohio,” Ohio (1857), “Of the Writ of Habeas
Corpus Relative to Fugitive Slaves,” Wisconsin (1857), “An Act to secure freedom to all
persons within this State,” Vermont (1858), in Thomas D. Morris, Free Men All: The
Personal Liberty Laws of the North, 1780-1861, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1974.

22. Brown 22
jurisdiction.56 Even before South Carolina officially seceded from the Union, Wells was
a vocal advocate for secession, stating, “The Yankee States had already vilified the Union
with acts like the personal liberty laws.”57 In a similar tone, Northern Confederate Henry
Richardson, a native of Maine living in Louisiana, wrote to his parents arguing, “The best
solution involves the North repealing their unconstitutional personal liberty laws.”58
Both men believed that the policies imposed on the South by northern government
inflicted unfair and oppressive treatment upon their adopted states. Within their personal
discourse, many Northern Confederates expressed discontent with northern policies and
echoed rhetoric that argued for southern political independence and states rights
perspectives.
Many Northern Confederates were motivated to join the Confederacy with the
goal of preserving southern slavery because they openly opposed abolitionists and
defended, or at least attempted to justify, the peculiar institution. Northerners living in
the South before the Civil War viewed abolitionists as a great danger to the antebellum
system of racial hierarchy built upon the South’s slave society. The abolition of slavery
was a direct threat to the social hierarchy that allowed white northerners to easily
transition into southern society, and for northerners who owned plantations in the South,
threatened to outlaw the institution of free labor that afforded them great fortunes.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809, Albert Pike travelled throughout the west
during his early adulthood until he settled in Arkansas in 1833.59 Pike was commissioned
as a brigadier general and given Confederate command of the Indian Territory on
56 Zimring, 121.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid. 112.

23. Brown 23
November 22, 1861.60 Before and after the Civil War Pike worked as a politician, poet,
and administrator to the Free Mason Society. Prior to the secession crisis he told a
northern audience, “Let us, and our slaves, alone. Let the whole matter of slavery alone.
We are as humane as you, and as intelligent as you, and will do the very best we can with
that which is with us to be dealt.”61 Pike attempted to justify the institution by comparing
southern slavery with the cruel treatment and harsh conditions he had seen northern
industrial wage laborers receive in the North, asserting that, “Pauperism, in your
[northern] cities, separates more families than slavery does on our plantations.”62 Pike’s
argument is flawed because unlike white industrial workers in the North, southern slaves
had no agency or possibility to advance in the South’s social sphere.
Although his views changed after the war, native Hoosier turned Virginia attorney
George Eggleston also explained how he justified and defended the institution by
claiming that, “Slavery, which indeed exhibited its least oppressive features in Virginia,
was a good institution, or at least productive of more good than evil.”63 Both men
considered slavery an economic necessity and morally acceptable, and continued in their
rhetoric for the general preservation of the institution throughout the war. Many
Northern Confederates’ advocated for the justification of slavery in their personal
discourse, defending the social order and racial hierarchy that provided themselves with
opportunities as public servants and cemented southern racial hierarchy in work relations.
Some Northern Confederates expressed fear for what might happen to the social
hierarchy of the South if slavery were abolished as an explicit motivator. Southerners
60 Zimring, 112.
61 Ibid. 118.
62 Ibid. 112.
63 Eggleston, 12.

24. Brown 24
and Northern Confederates were strictly influenced to preserve the southern system of
racial “subjugation,” the South afterall was a slave society. According to Larry Logue,
“Soldiers on both sides often simply echoed their leaders’ justifications for the war, but
beneath Confederate soldiers’ political rhetoric lay a deeper, more personal concern for
racial equilibrium: the fear of life with the bottom rail on top echoes through southerners’
explanations of why they were in the army.”64 This southern fear originated largely from
numerous slave uprisings in the South dating back to the early 1700’s. Slavers tortured,
hanged, and beheaded fifty slaves after an uprising in 1739 near Charleston, South
Carolina.65 In 1831 insurgent slaves led by Nat Turner, an enslaved lay preacher, killed
almost sixty whites in Southampton County, Virginia during a two-day revolt, including a
baby in a crib and ten children in a log-cabin school. In retaliation, white troops executed
about fifty African Americans, many of whom had not participated in the rebellion. (the
half 208) The memory of slave revolts caused white southerners lived in constant
vigilance and fear of slave rebellions, blacks with guns, and black men raping white
women. This fear created developed into a theory that if slaves were freed in the South,
blacks and radical northern abolitionists would incite a revolution that would completely
reverse the South’s social and racial hierarchy. Although many Northern Confederates
had not been in the South for an extensive period of time before the war began in 1861,
some expressed adopted the same strong concerns about the loss of racial subjugation and
a reversed racial hierarchy in the South.
64 Larry, Logue, “Who Joined the Confederate Army? Soldiers, Civilians, and
communities in Mississippi,” Journal of Social History, Vol. 26, No. 3, (1993), pg.
611.
65 John R. Howe, Allen F. Davis, Peter J. Frederick, Allan M. Winkler, Charlene Mires,
and Carla Gardina Pestana, The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society,
Pearson Education, Inc., New York, (2008), 314.

25. Brown 25
Francis Shoup was born in Laurel, Indiana and, like his northern peer, George
Eggleston, attended Asbury University. However, Shoup later secured an appointment to
the United States Military Academy at West Point where he graduated in 1855 with the
rank of 2nd lieutenant of artillery.66 While practicing law and commanding local militia
in the Indianapolis area, Shoup foresaw the coming conflict between the states and fled to
Florida right before the secession crisis in 1860. Speaking retrospectively, Shoup
explained that his, “whole nature rebelled against the Republican Party, as I had great
horror of abolitionism.”67 Although Shoup was living in the North when he expressed
these sentiments, many northerners shared southerners’ fear of black competition for
jobs, resources, and influence in politics.68 By the 1830’s, blacks were competing with
immigrants for occupations commonly held by lower class whites– coachmen,
stevedores, barbers, cooks, and house servants. Additionally, ninety-three percent of free
northern blacks lived in states where they were kept from voting polls so that whites
could reserve political control by 1840. Exemplified by Shoup, many northerners
expressed the same fear southerners felt toward abolitionism, which incentivized some to
join the Confederacy in its defense of slavery and racial hierarchy in the South.
After the war Shoup spent many years as a professor at the University of the
South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Even then, Shoup abhorred the social progress of African
Americans within the nation. Rather than conceding the idea that the South had lost the
war, Shoup framed the post-war era as one which the white race was victim in a southern
society now ruled by freed African Americans. In 1893 Shoup wrote an article, “Uncle
66 James W. Raab, Deliverance from Evil: Genderal Francis Asbury Shoup, C.S.A, New
West Conshohocken, Penssylvania: Infinity Publishing, (2012), 13.
67 Ibid. 15.
68 The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society, 313.

26. Brown 26
Tom’s Cabin Forty Years After.” In it, Shoup claimed that, “In the train of wreckage,
there had come upon the South a threat of and, in many case, the actual domination of the
whites by the blacks through the elective franchise bestowed upon the latter.”69 In
essence, Shoup believed that the North victimized the South before the Civil War, which
motivated him to support the Confederacy. After the war, he continued to express his
belief that the South was victimized, but now at the hands of freed blacks. Shoup likely
discarded his responsibility in the conflict because he believed that he and the South had
lost their control of social order.
Many other Northern Confederates expressed a sense of fear that white
southerners would be socially and economically “enslaved” in a new social order if
abolitionists were able to successfully free African Americans. White southerners had
such a strong grasp on the South’s racial hierarchy that they believed freed slaves and
radical northerners would retaliate against white southerners by taking everything they
owned and replacing them in their position of high social status. Adopted South
Carolinian, Edward Wells, claimed that the purpose of the North was to, “enslave a free
& noble people [white southerners] so [we] will oppose them, to the bitter end…If
contending for the rights of free men is treason, than every honorable man is a traitor.”70
Wells and other Northern Confederates who expressed this defense ignored the hypocrisy
of their ideology; that they considered white southerners a “noble people” whose freedom
should be preserved, yet they defended their perceived right to enslave African
69 Francis A. Shoup, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin Forty Years After,” The Sewanee Review, Vol.
2, No. 1, (1893), 103.
70 Zimring, 121.

27. Brown 27
Americans in the South in order to ensure that white southerners could forever hold
higher position in southern society.
Additionally, the belief held by many northerners and southerners that whites
were racially superior compared to African Americans acted as evidence to their
argument.71 Many northern whites, like southerners, also believed that blacks were
inferior and depraved race and were often vocal about this opinion in defense of their
jobs and social status. After George Eggleston moved from Indiana and lived on his
family’s plantation for two years, he was convinced that, “Negroes are unfit to be free.”72
In his 1893 article, Shoup went so far as to say that, “For a time, the African dominated
Caucasian; - but, as water put on top of oil will not stay there, so the higher laws of
nature prevailed and the white blood worked its way to the top.”73 Northern
Confederates such as Wells, Shoup, and Eggleston felt strongly about the system of racial
hierarchy of the antebellum South and exemplified the desire to preserve and maintain
racial hierarchy shared by many northerners. Northern Confederates’ journals, letters,
and discussions displayed that a burning concern about racial hierarchy in the South was
a major concern that ultimately motivated their decision to back the Confederacy and join
the Confederate army.
Northern Confederates’ harsh views of blacks were most evident in debates over
the addition of colored troops to Union military forces. In 1862, as the war progressed,
the Union added black regiments-known as the United States Colored Troops-to the
71 The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society, 314.
72 Eggleston, 11.
73 Shoup, 103.

28. Brown 28
federal army with the Militia Act, passed by the 37th Congress.74 According to James
McPherson, the bill, “empowered the president to enroll ‘persons of African decent’ for
‘any war service for which they may be found competent’ – including service as soldiers,
a step that would horrify conservatives and that the administration was not prepared to
take.”75 This bill gave the war new perspective and meaning for African Americans
because as it gave them agency and a participatory role in freeing their enslaved race in
the South. According to one Indiana senator, African Americans could “never live
together equally” with whites because “the same power that gave them black skin, with
less weight or volume of brain, has given us white skin with greater volume of brain and
intellect.”76 Therefore, the Militia Act also challenged many northerners’ and
southerners’ views on race: for the first time African Americans were being recognized
by the Union government as a “competent,” capable, and proficient people.
Along with horrifying many Unionist, Confederates were even more appalled by
African American federal troops. The enlistment of colored union troops also further
motivated non-slaveholding Confederates because black soldiers taken prisoner were
held as private property of their captors.77 One Texas corporal explained the goal of one
of his men, “Never a slave-owner but always wishing to be, he decided then and there to
74 The Militia Act, approved by the 37th Congress in July of 1862. “An Act to amend the
Act calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections, and
repel Invasions, approved February twenty-eight, seventeen hundred and ninety-five, and
the Acts amendatory thereof, and for the Purposes,” in Freedmen & Southern Society
Project digital archives, accessed December 13, 2016,
http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/milact.htm.
75 Battle Cry of Freedom, 500.
76 The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society, 314.
77 Manning, 67.

29. Brown 29
make use of his opportunities and capture and confiscate two colored soldiers.”78 In
response to many instances of murder or enslavement of black captives at the hands of
Confederate soldiers, President Lincoln considered implementing capital punishment for
Confederate prisoners but decided against it in order to prevent further Confederate
retaliation.79 In the words of Edmund Patterson, an Ohio born corporal in the Army of
Northern Virginia,
Some Northern journals state that there will not be any more [prisoner] exchanges
until our government consents to treat captured negroes as prisoners of war. If
this be the case, then I hope that there may never be another exchange. If Yankee
government will persist in arming the negroes of the South and sending them
against us, I believe it will amount to the ‘Black Flag.’ One thing I think is very
certain and that is that the army in Virginia will not take negro prisoners.80
Patterson echoed the opinion of most average Confederate soldiers as he advocated for
the killing or enslavement of colored Union troops rather than the exchange of
Confederate prisoners, even as he was a starving prisoner of war in a northern camp at
the time of this journal entry. Without any direct connection to slavery – ownership of
slaves or employment by slaveholding southerners – Patterson and other Confederates
displayed a truly cruel opinion on blacks that lived at the core of Confederate nationalism
and mentality.
For many Northern Confederates, it is indisputable that the defense and
preservation of the South’s social order and racial hierarchy prove to be a paramount
concern within their personal discourse. Although Zimring considers slavery as a
motivating factor for Northern Confederates, he ultimately neglects to analyze Northern
Confederates’ general opinions on race and falls back on his argument that adoptive
78 Manning, 67.
79 Battle Cry of Freedom, 794.
80 Patterson, 128.

30. Brown 30
southerners fought for the Confederacy because their sectional identity was changed.
However, the Northern Confederates whose discourse is analyzed above confirms that the
average northerner who fought for the Confederacy was genuinely concerned with many
issues dealing with race relations and slavery as they attempted to justify their racist
arguments through political and social hierarchical frames. Some Northern Confederates
even displayed their direct racism toward the African American race. Therefore, it is
evident that many Northern Confederates’ joined the Confederacy because they were
motivated, or at least influenced, by racist personal behind their new southern sectional
identity.
Northern Confederates Directly Motivated by Personal Economic Interests
There is greater evidence that a separate group of Northern Confederates, more so
than others, were more directly incentivized to join the Confederate army by the need to
protect their personal economic interests within the southern states. By the time of the
secession crisis, many adoptive southerners who would become Northern Confederates
had found financially successful lives in a variety of fields in their new state. In addition
to protecting the raw capital they had worked so hard to earn, it is likely that many
Northern Confederates joined the Confederate army in order to preserve their newly
acquired business and social connections in the South. By identifying and analyzing the
economic interests that supported the livelihoods of many financially successful
northerners in the South, it is evident that this group of Northern Confederates was
motivated to protect their personal economic interests in the South, more directly than
other northerners living in the South before the Civil War.

31. Brown 31
Northern Confederates in the wealthy southern planter class who owned a large
amount of slaves or had sizeable financial investments in the institution were incentivized
by a combination of ideologies, the preservation of southern social and racial hierarchy,
coupled with a desire to protect their personal economic interests. Many adoptive
southerners who became Northern Confederates acquired large tracts of land used for
agricultural cultivation and took full advantage of the free labor of African American
slaves on their plantations in the South. Some Northern Confederates were economically
invested in the stock of slaveholding plantations or were in a position to receive a
plantation and the slaves that worked on the property through marriage. The motivations
of this group of Northern Confederates who owned slaves or were invested in the
institution proves most representative of the claim that Yankee rebels were primarily
motivated by race and economics – to preserve the South’s racial hierarchy and their
enslaved work force, hence protecting their financial livelihoods.
Although most Northern Confederates who had economic interests involving
slavery still had family and other social connections in northern states, they chose to
defend their cotton plantations and financial well being that was dependent upon slave
labor. Northern Confederate and native of Pennsylvania, Charles Dahlgren, is an prime
example of this group of Yankee rebels motivated by the preservation of slavery and
protection of his personal economic interests. After moving south, Dahlgren worked as
an official with the Bank of the United States at Natchez, Mississippi and eventually
became the owner of around 7,100 acres and more than two hundred slaves.81 Dahlgren’s
biographer wrote, “He would not forsake the South when his domain in Louisiana had
81 Hershel Gower, Charles Dahlgren of Natchez: The Civil War and Dynastic Decline.
Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s Inc., (2002), 37.

32. Brown 32
produced one thousand bales of cotton in 1860.”82 Similarly, by the time of secession
crisis in the South, Maine native Zebulon York had moved south then established himself
as a prominent lawyer and successful cotton planter who owned six plantations in
Louisiana and Mississippi that were worked by over fifteen hundred slaves.83 York
profited highly and gained a fortune on the backs of slave laborers on his plantation,
producing thousands of bales of cotton annually.84 New Jersey born Samuel French
resigned from the federal army in 1856 to manage a plantation in Mississippi he obtained
through marriage.85 Pennsylvanian, Robert MacClay, a West Pointer who only acquired
his plantation in Louisiana in 1860 after resigning from the federal military, then joined
the Louisiana militia in 1861.86 Although these men hailed from states that were
strongholds to the Union cause during the Civil War, these Northern Confederates made
substantial fortunes through slavery and defended their personal economic interests
accordingly. Although there is little to no known personal discourse evidence speaking
to their explicit motives, preservation of the South’s racial hierarchy and protection of the
personal economic interests of slaveholding Northern Confederates cannot be ignored as
a primary source of influence in joining the southern army.
Many other Northern Confederates were explicitly motivated to join the
Confederate army to protect their personal economic interests, yet did not own slaves,
have affiliation with the institution, or political ties to issues regarding race. Most
Northern Confederates in this category were well-educated and savvy businessmen who
82 Gower, 37.
83 Ibid.
84 Ibid.
85 Ezra Warner, Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders, Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University, (1959), 347.
86 Ibid.

33. Brown 33
found financial success in local niche markets within their adoptive southern
communities. Northern Confederates motivated by personal economic interests
independent of slavery made up unique part of a new and developing southern middle
class that helped bridge the gap of Confederate nationalism between the wealthy
slaveholding planter class to white southerners within the non-slaveholding lower class.87
Similarly to slaveholding Northern Confederates in the South, these men were directly
influenced to join the Confederate army to protect their economic interests, rather than
return to the North, start their financial life from scratch, and abandon the livelihoods
they had worked so hard to gain in the South.
One extremely intriguing Northern Confederate who was directly motivated to
defend his economic interests in the South was Bushrod Rust Johnson. Having been
raised in an industrious Quaker family and environment, Johnson was born in Belmont
County, Ohio in 1817, yet surprisingly later attended and graduated West Point in 1840.88
As a source of proof that Johnson was not motivated to fight for the Confederacy to
preserve the institution of slavery, he displayed antislavery convictions throughout his
life and often aided his brother in Underground Railroad activities in Ohio and Indiana by
helping fugitive slaves cross the Ohio River to escape bondage in West Virginia and
Kentucky.89 Johnson moved south after a stent as an officer in the federal military and
became superintendent and professor at the Western Military Institute in Georgetown,
Kentucky before he negotiated a merger and relocation of the academic institution with
87 Zimring, 20.
88 Cummings, Charles M. Yankee Quaker Confederate General: The Curious Career of
Bushrod Rust Johnson. Columbus, OH: The General’s Books. (1993), 47.
89 Ibid. 57.

34. Brown 34
the University of Nashville in 1855.90 Along with earning a reputation as a quality
educator and director of these military schools, Johnson also slowly acquired a great deal
of capital through his student’s tuition and investments in other southern educational
institutions. As Johnson’s biographer, Charles Cummings explained,
He [Johnson] told the 1860 census taker on June 18 that he owned $5,000 in
Nashville real estate and $1,200 in personal property which would have included
riding horses, carriages, jewelry, household effects, stocks and securities, and his
interest in the school store. The South had made Bushrod the wealthiest of the
Johnson clan. Johnson had almost three times as much property in the South as
he held in the North – a potent economic motive for choosing the side he did.91
By the outbreak of the Civil War, Johnson’s wife was dead and had ensured his son’s
safety by sending him to live with his northern kin in Indiana.92 Without any display of
romantic allegiance to the South, his adoptive state of Tennessee, or family in the area to
protect, Johnson’s motivation can be strongly tied with his desire to preserve his personal
economic interests, which he would fail to protect in the defense of Tennessee’s capital
city in 1864.93
Two former Wabash College students serve as excellent examples of Northern
Confederates who were motivated to join the Confederate army by personal economic
interests that were not directly related to race or slavery. The most interesting and
romantic of which, William Tribbett, spent his life as a world traveler, adventurer, and
business entrepreneur. According to a 1925 article in the Kokomo Tribune Diamond
Issue, Tribbett was born with the given name of David Trabue in Howard County,
90 Cummings, 140.
91 Ibid. 168.
92 Ibid.
93 Ibid.

35. Brown 35
Indiana on August 2, 1828.94 While a student at the preparatory school of Wabash
College, Trabue abruptly disappeared from Indiana altogether after a supposed
“disappointment in a love affair” and embarked on an adventurous journey in which he
travelled to New Orleans, Cuba, France, and Australia.”95 By the time Trabue had
returned to the United States, he had changed his whole name to “William Tribbett” and
failed in a failed endeavor to create a jewelry business in Mobile, Alabama. 96 Tribbett
then decided to return home to his family in Indiana, but was interrupted when he stopped
in Terre, a the small Mississippi town where he settled and began a singing school, taught
part-time at a subscription school, and started lucrative financially successful dry goods
company.97 Tribbett finally returned to Indiana, visiting his family in August of 1860,
where he stayed until after the Civil War was well underway.98 According to the Howard
Tribune, “word came that a Federal force was about to swoop down upon the town. In an
effort to protect his store, he gathered a little money and a few pieces of jewelry, hurried
to the nearest Confederate post, and enlisted.”99 Tribbett ultimately was captured on
three separate occasions; escaping Union custody the first two times he was taken
prisoner.100
94 Kokomo Tribune Diamond Issue, “David Trabue Made his Life Real Romance, His
Career Full of Stuff Which Story Books are Made, He Got Many a Thrill, Lived Most of
Life Under an Assumed Name and Left Relatives a Fortune,” October 1925, in Wabash
College Archives, alumni box, William Trabue folder.
95 Ibid.
96 Ibid.
97 Ibid.
98 Ibid.
99 Ibid.
100 Ibid.

36. Brown 36
After the war, Tribbett’s dry good business and successful investments would
yield him a fortune of nearly $300,000.101 Tribbett’s general store and educational
endeavors in Terre, Mississippi were the first of his successful business ventures that
would eventually lead to a substantial fortune, even compared to contemporary standards.
However, Tribbett would have never gained his wealthy status without his store and
small adoptive southern community. Accordingly, Tribbett had a great amount of
incentive and motivation to join the Confederate army for the sole purpose of defending
his livelihood and personal economic interests in his new southern community.
Another former Wabash College student, Lucas Trafton, relocated from
Evansville, Indiana across the Ohio River to Henderson, Kentucky to practice law in
1853 after losing his left arm when his gun exploded during a hunting accident.102 By the
age of twenty-two, Trafton was elected as the Henderson County judge in 1859 and
according to Henderson County historical records, “During the summer of 1862, he
joined the Confederate Army, and was with General Morgan at his capture, near
Buffington Island, Ohio, in 1863.”103 As a northerner, and especially because he was an
elected official in a staunchly Confederate county, Trafton needed to ensure the people of
Henderson County that he was a loyal representative of their community. Trafton’s
decision to fight for the Confederacy was also a conscious will to defend his
advantageous position in society, cemented by slavery and his adoptive community’s
system of racial and social hierarchy. Therefore, Trafton had a great incentive to join a
101 Kokomo Tribune Diamond Issue.
102 Henderson County Historical Society, History of Henderson County, KY, 751. Wabash
College Archives, alumni box, Lucas Trafton folder.
103 Ibid. 752.

37. Brown 37
local Confederate unit explicitly to protect his social status and economic well being in
his adoptive community.
Northern Confederates such as Dahlgren, Johnson, and Tribbett were motivated to
join the Confederate army to protect their economic investments, opportunities, and
profit. Northern Confederate slaveholders’ had no desire to remain pro Union in order to
ensure their benefit from the fugitive slave act because many expressed their anger about
northern personal liberty laws that refuted the fugitive slave laws. Even though many
Northern Confederates did not have direct connection to race and slavery, their
motivation to join the Confederate army to explicitly protect their personal economic
interests cannot be removed from slavery. Racial hierarchy through the enslavement of
African Americans was inherent to the social status and economic success of all white
southerners and northerners living in the South. Therefore, even Northern Confederates
with personal economic interests lacking affiliation to slavery were directly motivated to
defend the South’s social order and racial hierarchy in which they benefitted from in their
new southern communities. In total, personal economics interests prove to be one of the
core motivating factors for northerners to join the Confederate army, regardless of their
ties with slavery or lack of direct affiliation with the institution.
Northern Confederates and Social Necessity
Social necessity, used as a broad term, refers to the need of northerners to
preserve friendly relations with southern kin, in-laws from marrying a southern woman,
their members of their new local communities, or limitations created by unique social
situations. In analyzing the lives of Northern Confederates who were likely to have been
motivated by social necessity, it is evident that those influenced by southern in-laws or

38. Brown 38
kin were usually members of the wealthy upper class, and sometimes slaveholding
plantation owners. However, through investigation of Yankee rebels’ discourse, it seems
that a very small number of Northern Confederates might have been inclined to join the
Confederate army due to threat of social ostracism.
There are several Northern Confederates who were influenced to join the
Confederate army in order to preserve good relations with their southern in-laws or kin.
In many cases, these Northern Confederates were in line to receive their in-law’s capital
along with plantation land and slaves. As previously mentioned, New Jersey native and
Confederate Major General Samuel French had obtained his Mississippi plantation
through marriage and surely would have desired to preserve his highly profitable source
of income afforded by his in-laws.104
Hoosier native, George Eggleston, first travelled to Virginia in 1857 after being
expelled from Asbury University and was then invited by relatives to visit their lavish
estate.105 Within a week of Eggleston’s arrival, two of his Virginian uncles volunteered
to pay his tuition for college and law school in Richmond.106 After Eggleston’s
aspirations of a college education were seemingly dashed in Indiana, his wealthy
southern family offered to provide him a second chance at the future he had originally
failed to attain. Without his family’s financial generosity and having ideologies parallel
with Confederate nationalism, Eggleston felt inclined to join and fight for the section that
his southern kin were native and loyal to.
104 Warner, 347.
105 Eggleston, 10.
106 Ibid.

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Another Northern Confederate influenced by southern in-laws in his decision to
fight for the Confederacy was the infamous commander in charge of defending the
crucial western Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg along the Mississippi River, major
general John C. Pemberton. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a wealthy northern
family on August 10, 1814, Pemberton was later directly appointed attendance to West
Point by the president and graduated in 1837.107 Pemberton met his future wife, Martha
Thompson in either 1844 or 1855 while stationed at a federal army base in Norfolk,
Virginia.108 Pemberton’s marriage to a southern woman played a vital role in his
decision to join the Confederacy, as displayed in a letter Pemberton’s mother sent to
another daughter-in-law during the midst of the secession crisis, “As long as he remains
[in Washington], he will do he says, anything he is ordered to, except going to attack and
fire upon Norfolk – if he is ordered to do that he would resign at once.”109 Pemberton’s
mother made it clear that her son would perform any task the military asked him,
including assignments detrimental to the South’s early uprising, as he displayed by
raiding and seizing Virginian steamboats after the state’s secession as a way to test his
loyalty to the federal army.110 On the surface of primary source evidence related to
Pemberton’s decision to support the Confederacy, it seems evident that he was likely to
have been influenced by social necessity to appease his wife and new southern family in
Virginia.
107 Ballard, 10.
108 Ibid. 40.
109 Pemberton, Rebecca. Letter by Rebecca Pemberton to Carry Pemberton, April 20,
1861, in The Southern Historical Collection at the Louis Round Wilson Special
Collection Library, John C. Pemberton Papers, 1814-1942. Accessed September 15,
2016. http://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/00586/.
110 Ballard, 84.

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However, personal economic interests through southern ties come into play once
again in this Northern Confederate’s decision as well. Pattie’s family had retained a
fortune in their ownership of a thriving shipping business in Norfolk.111 As Pemberton’s
biographer Michael Ballard explains, “Marriage proved beneficial to John Pemberton,
even in the area of personal economic affairs, which he had always managed so badly.
Pattie insisted that her family money be budgeted so as to eliminate her husband’s
debts.”112 Similarly to other Northern Confederates, Pemberton owed a debt of gratitude
to his new family in the South for their generosity in sharing their financial wealth toward
improving the economic well being of their new family member who was native to the
North. These Northern Confederates who were all at least partially motivated to join the
Confederate army by social necessity through family ties in the South were also strongly
incentivized by the need to appease their southern kin who had generously improved
these northerners’ personal economic interests.
Contrary to Northern Confederates who were influenced to join the Confederate
army out of social necessity due to southern family connections, Yankee rebels who were
motivated by the need to avoid social ostracism were extremely rare. Although there
could have been others who did not reveal this type of social necessity motivation in their
personal discourse, there is only one known Northern Confederate who explicitly states
threat and pressure from members of his adoptive southern community as one of his
motivations for joining the Confederate army. Ohioan Edmund Patterson had moved
south as a travelling book salesman, but after failing in this venture established himself as
111 Ballard, 41.
112 Ibid. 65.

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a schoolteacher and general store clerk at a store in Waterloo, Alabama.113 According to
his diary,
By this time, politics was the all absorbing topic and persons from the North were
looked upon with suspicion, so that I decided to return to Ohio, but before I was
ready to start I had a personal difficulty arising out of a political discussion caused
by an insinuation that I might be a spy, which caused me to remain. The war
came on and in May 1861 I enlisted in a company called the Lauderdale Rifles,
afterwards Company D, 9th Alabama Infantry.114
In his own words, Patterson explains how he came to his decision to enlist in the
Confederate army in order to prove to the members of his adoptive community that he
was not a northern spy and cement his identity as a southerner within his local society.
Proving his loyalty to his community by serving the Confederacy was Patterson’s only
option to avoid social ostracism considering his decision to stay in Alabama.
Although the previously mentioned Bushrod Johnson was strongly incentivized to
join the Confederacy to protect his personal economic interests in Tennessee, a rather
unique and odd form of social necessity also assuredly had strong influence toward his
decision in choosing sides. While serving as Assistant Commissary of Subsistence in
Vera Cruz with the federal army during the Mexican-American War, Johnson wrote a
letter to his commanding officer in New Orleans on July 1, 1847 in which he requested
“500 barrils [sic], 2 or 3 hundred boxes of Sale Soap and about 100 boxes of Candles” to
sell to the men and that he would turn over his net profit between 1200 and 1500 dollars
to his commanding officer.115 Although Johnson intended no harm or dishonesty in his
request, as he stated this acquisition would cause “no injustice to the army’s interests,” he
was ultimately accused of selling contraband goods and forced to resign from the army in
113 Patterson, 2.
114 Patterson, 3.
115 Cummings, 22.

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October of the same year.116 Therefore, Johnson’s situation was extremely unique even
compared to most Northern Confederates. Unlike practically every northerner in the
South during the secession crisis, rather than having the ability to choose returning to the
North and join the Union army, Johnson’s only choices were to either sit out during the
conflict or utilize his vast military experiences and training to serve in the Confederate
army. Furthermore, it is very likely that Johnson was incentivized to join the Confederate
army in order to protect his personal economic interests in Tennessee along with
exercising his odd form of social necessity due to a fourteen-year-old resentment against
the high command of the federal army.
In conclusion, although many aspects in the lives of Northern Confederates point
toward their choice to join the Confederacy due to social necessity, the decision of almost
all Yankee rebels analyzed above can be traced back to alternative pressing motivations.
The decision of Northern Confederates who may have been influenced by southern kin or
in-laws was also intertwined with issues of personal economic interests. Northern
Confederates who received plantations from their southern kin or in-laws were
incentivized by desires to protect their source of financial stability as well as the
preservation of the South’s system of racial hierarchy and the institution of slavery.
Northern Confederates likely did not record their experiences with social pressure and
threats within their adoptive southern communities because they did not want to be seen
as retaining their northern identity along with possibly having a thoroughly converted
expression of motivation to match their southern peers. In addition, even though one
Northern Confederate who explicitly stated social pressure as one of his motives,
116 Ibid. 23.

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Patterson also had a personal mentality that included economically, politically, and
racially based alternative motives aligning with traditional Confederate ideologies.
Therefore, rather than acting as the sole proponent to their decision, social necessity
generally played a role as an additional incentive in pushing adoptive southerners to join
the Confederate army, further affirming their motivations to preserve the South’s
antebellum social hierarchy of racial oppression and personal motivations.
Conclusions and Review
David Ross Zimring claims that a transformation in sectional identity shaped the
decision of northerners to serve in the Confederate army during the Civil War. Although
there is truth in Zimring’s argument of transformed sectional identity, in both the North
and South, that identity was often made up of a view that African Americans were not
competent to be free members of society. Northern Confederates also defended slavery
and their personal economic interests to preserve the social order and racial hierarchy,
which was built upon the South’s slave society that they socially and economically
benefitted from in southern communities. It is apparent that northerners who joined the
Confederate army were primarily motivated to fight for the Confederacy by a number of
issues-the preservation of racial hierarchy and the slave society in the South, the defense
of economic interests, a desire to gain acceptance by southern communities, and family
allegiance. In many cases, a combination of these factors, motivated Northern
Confederates to fight for the South.
It is apparent that Northern Confederates share many of the same motivating
factors that influenced the actions of southerners in the Civil War, primarily to preserve
the South’s system of racial hierarchy and slave society. Although some factors that

44. Brown 44
motivated Northern Confederates were unique because they were not directly related to
issues of race or slavery, preservation of the South’s social order proved to be at the heart
of all Northern Confederate influences. Similar to southern Confederates, Northern
Confederates expressed a concern and desire to the South’s system of social and racial
hierarchy within the South’s slave society. Chandra Manning explains, “Slavery
stabilized an otherwise precarious social structure…Nonslaveholding Confederate
soldiers’ willingness to fight for slavery grew from white southern men’s gut-level
conviction that survival – of themselves, their families, and the social order – depended
on slavery’s continued existence.”117 Southerners believed the preservation of slavery
would have assured continuous social dominance of white southerners, which proved to
be an especially pressing concern for northerners who retained an insecure position in
society as newcomers in their adoptive southern communities. Northerners and
southerners alike also shared equal incentive to protect their personal economic interests
in the South, regardless of whether they were slaveholders or not. Therefore, because
northerners and southerners who fought for the Confederacy shared these motivations
and ideologies, “Confederate nationalism” can be more concretely defined as a primary
concern and desire to preserve the antebellum South’s social order and racial hierarchy
built upon slavery along with being directly motivated to defend personal economic
interests.
The factors that motivated northerners to join the Confederate army are reflective
of the economic concerns and views on race that ultimately materialized in producing
America’s bloodiest conflict. The fact that Northern Confederates hailed from places
117 Manning, 32.

45. Brown 45
distant from the Confederacy’s border also proves that the ideologies characteristic of
Confederate nationalism were not limited by geography. Northern Confederates acted
decisively upon these sentiments, changing their lives forever and also motivating them
to provide a variety of impactful contributions, both negative and positive in nature, to
the short lived existence of the Confederate States of America.
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