Abe Knew They Would Come Back…
While doing research for the previous post, I discovered an interesting fact. The 34 star U.S. Flag shown here was the official flag at the beginning of the American Civil War. Even after the Southern states seceded, President Lincoln would not allow a reduction of the number of stars. He figured they would be back, voluntarily or kicking and screaming. Wise man, that Lincoln…
Another interesting tidbit is that despite their acceptance of slavery, four states, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, did not secede and join the Confederacy. The populace and politicians in these border or buffer states had divided loyalties, but generally provided troops, supplies, safe passage and haven to the Confederacy.
Tennessee was the last state to pull out of the Union and join the Confederacy, and if not the first, one of the first to officially rejoin the Union following collapse of the Confederacy. As a kid growing up in West Tennessee, I also remember learning that my home county, Carroll County, never went along with secession and voted to remain loyal to the United States under President Lincoln. I have not been able to confirm that bit of lore, but like to believe that it is in fact true…
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Like me, Pres. Lincoln was born in a state other than the one considered his home. He in Kentucky, me in Michigan. The far south of Illinois had strong ties to the South, but, of course, never seceded. Back when I was returning to college after serving in Viet Nam (Southern Illinois University at Carbondale), my then wife and I went to visit one of the parks along the Ohio (in Southern Illinois). We had a VW microbus, and were camping in it. We certainly didn’t look like hippies (my hair hadn’t grown back yet!), although I had a little beard. A sherrif’s deputy rolled by as we were sitting about in our campsite, stopped, and out of the blue asked where we were from, we said Carbondale. He then advised us that they didn’t want any trouble around there (or something like that) and said, verbatim now: “We’re too far south to have any trouble.” He drove away. The year was 1969.
If I remember correctly, several counties in western Tennessee, Carroll included, did vote against secession.
“In fact, I did remember correctly,” he said, while working a search engine in the other window. The details:
“The result of this second election, June 6, 1861, approved exiting the Union. A comparison of the February and June returns reveals that there was little change in opinion in either the west or the east. The former remained in tune with secession, although Weakley, Carroll, Henderson, Decatur, and Hardin counties did defeat the proposal and went on to provide significant numbers of recruits for the Union Army.”
Scott County left the state as well and never officially rejoined until about twenty or so years ago. We went camping out at the Big South Fork River (or something like that) when it first opened. The county was having a celebration where the state “officially” welcomed them back. It was a July 4th weekend.
I’m just glad we were able to reunite. It would have Balkanized the country and we’ve seen how that worked in Europe.