The War Within: North Georgia & Unionism 1861-1865: Recent Episodes
Darren Lee Rollins
Thinking History Podcast (Episodes One -Three)The War Within: North Georgia & Unionism 1861-1865 The existence of Unionists, anti-confederates and social protesters during the American Civil War across the southern states is now readily acknowledged among American historians and academics. Public memory, however, is blurry at best and often non-existent. Public knowledge of the topic is lacking proper attention in museums, popular art, mainstream documentaries, school textbooks and civic commemorations. This research exposes lesser known experiences and prompts critical questions concerning regional identities and national history. The presentation of the research also helps to pique people’s curiosity in order to close the gap between academic knowledge and the beliefs of the general public. This project asks why Unionism was prevalent in the mountainous region of Northern Georgia? It also asks why has it been generally forgotten in public memory?
This episode discusses the reasons for the gap between public and academic knowledge on the topic of Southern Unionism. Among the reasons explored is a prejudiced understanding of Southern Appalachian identity as well as popular national post-war narratives of Northern virtue and Southern Lost Cause mythology. Localism is also emphasized as a significant cause of Unionism in North Georgia as opposed to nationalist goals. The popular belief that the absence of slavery and racial hierarchy in Southern Appalachia promoted a regional allegiance to the Union is contested.
Questions such as "how do we know what we know?' and "why do we want to remember history the way that we do?" are explored in this episode. Specific and under-studied historical uncertainties such as "to what extent did Unionism contribute to the defeat of the Confederacy?" and "were Southern Unionists traitors to their natives states or oppressed people in their homeland?" are also approached in order to better understand the Civil War and the historical heritage of 19th century North Georgia.
Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s9brPkWkXS5iiCe_Lrn1SmBLzZTL9FVaDcLmi9yg3w0/edit?usp=sharing
North Georgia was strongly stereotyped as a “frontier” mountain society in the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century. Its identity — plagued by a history of Native American conflict, rough gold mining communities, and small family subsistence farming — was seen as lacking in sophistication and connection to a greater U.S. economy and political culture. To this day, it is strongly associated with small towns, natural beauty, rivers, mountain roads, rural communities, rugged wilderness and Native American place names.
This idea that the region has been remembered as a wild frontier is considered in this episode as a cause of a misunderstood history, including local Unionism during the Civil War and a convoluted popular image lasting until today. The culture here is not analogous with the stereotypes of antebellum Georgia but instead laden with a confusing identity of “otherness" which propagates images of a unique and marginalized region within an already marginalized South. A larger conversation concerning false impressions of Appalachia as a whole is also touched upon.
Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s9brPkWkXS5iiCe_Lrn1SmBLzZTL9FVaDcLmi9yg3w0/edit?usp=sharing
This episode provides a larger public with an improved understanding on something that popular depictions of the Civil War have not — the lived experience of North Georgians. The specific goal of the episode is to create an over-arching message that both augments common knowledge, identifies specific people and locations and challenges the prevalent public memory of the American Civil War in Georgia. An argument is made that despite a persistent belief in Southern solidarity during the war, Northern Georgia was not a strong supporter of secession and instead became a conflicted region plagued by violence as a result of factionalized groups dedicated to protecting their own communities. Unionist motivations as well as the differences between "disloyalty to" and "disaffection with" the Confederacy are explored as well.
Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s9brPkWkXS5iiCe_Lrn1SmBLzZTL9FVaDcLmi9yg3w0/edit?usp=sharing