Confederate Reckoning

At the outset of the US Civil War, the Republican Party was associated with anti-enslavement views, even though not all of its members were abolitionists. The politicians of the Republican Party who did support a nation-wide ban on enslavement were derisively called “Black Republicans.”

This was a term to describe “moderate secessionists,” who were open to the South seceding from the United States but argued that debates and votes must first be held at a conference hosting representatives and leaders from across the South.

On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued an executive order, known to historians as the “Emancipation Proclamation,” declaring that all enslaved people in the Confederacy were now free and eligible to join the Union army. There were exceptions for states that remained in the Union and for parts of Louisiana under Union control, but it still laid the groundwork for freeing the vast majority of enslaved people in the United States and was an important step toward the total abolition of enslavement with the Thirteenth Amendment.

Fire-eaters was a slang term for radical supporters of Southern secession from the United States.

This was a slang term used by Union troops for pro-secession civilians.

During the debate in the South over Southern secession from the United States, the straight-outs wanted each of the Southern states to secede immediately. This was contrary to the cooperationists, who only supported secession if it was decided upon after a conference of leaders and representatives from all the Southern states.

Used by contemporary historians, “subaltern” refers to any population that is excluded from direct political power. In the case of the United States at the eve of the US Civil War, that would include African Americans and women.

To quell fears of revolts by the enslaved, the Confederacy in 1862 passed more legislation concerning the Confederate draft. The new legislation included what was popularly called the “twenty-negro law,” which gave an exemption to one white overseer for every 20 enslaved people on a plantation. In practice, this exemption meant that wealthy enslavers were much more likely to escape military service than their working-class counterparts.

The Unionists were Southerners who opposed secession. Since Unionists were more likely to be women, African Americans, and working-class people, the South’s exclusionary political system underrepresented their views.