Exploring family and community dynamics, Enemies of the Country profiles men and women of the Confederate states who, in addition to the wartime burdens endured by most southerners, had to cope with being a detested minority.
With one exception, these featured individuals were white, but they otherwise represent a wide spectrum of the southern citizenry. They include natives to the region, foreign immigrants and northern transplants, affluent and poor, farmers and merchants, politicians and journalists, slaveholders and nonslaveholders. Some resided in highland areas and in remote parts of border states, the two locales with which southern Unionists are commonly associated. Others, however, lived in the Deep South and in urban settings. Some were openly defiant; others took a more covert stand.
Together the portraits underscore how varied Unionist identities and motives were, and how fluid and often fragile the personal, familial, and local circumstances of Unionist allegiance could be. For example, many southern Unionists shared basic social and political assumptions with white southerners who cast their lots with the Confederacy, including an abhorrence of emancipation.
The very human stories of southern Unionists―as they saw themselves and as their neighbors saw them―are shown here to be far more complex and colorful than previously acknowledged.
ANNE J. BAILEY is a professor of history at Georgia College and State University. Her many books include War and Ruin and The Chessboard of War.
THOMAS G. DYER (1943-2013) was University Professor Emeritus and Vice President for Instruction Emeritus at the University of Georgia. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta and The University of Georgia: A Bicentennial History, 1785–1985 (Georgia).
JOHN C. INSCOE is a professor of history emeritus at the University of Georgia and the founding editor of the New Georgia Encyclopedia. He is coauthor of The Heart of Confederate Appalachia.
ROBERT C. KENZER is the William Binford Vest Professor of History at the University of Richmond. His books include Kinship and Neighborhood in a Southern Community.