I understand a widespread scare of slave uprisings - but why then go after white southern unionists?
Apparently a fear of political opposition as much as any actual slave insurrections. W.L. Yancey in 1858 had laid out the policy, even before the war, that it was necessary to dissuade the public from any possible hope in a national or even sectional party, or government, but only in Southern independence...
Unionism was equated in the South with "servile insurrection" or "black" republicanism. John Townsend in 1860...
An independent Southern Confederacy was floated as the singular answer to both concerns.
By 1861, those in the Southern States not particularly concerned about the incoming Lincoln administration, were described in the papers etc. as "cooperationists"...
Many in the South were hopeful that abiding the "secession" movement would calm the situation, disperse the vigilance committees and regulators, and dissuade any more John Brown invasions from the North.
After the commencement of the war, anyone inclined to consider the authority of the Lincoln administration was described as "Unionist" or worse, and subject to the war powers of the Confederacy.
I understand patriotism for the Union - but why kill a person because "treasonous southern propaganda" in a northern state where such propaganda essentially was without any effect?
The Fugitive slave act of 1850 had angered many in the northern States. The outrage increasing, beyond the abolitionists, with increased suspicion many of those apprehended and extradited Southward, were not actually slaves.
There were several incidents in the 1850s in the North. Among the most violent being the Christiana, PA riot of 1851, in which a Maryland slave owner was killed in attempting to arrest to black men he claimed as runaways.
In 1854 a mob attempting to liberate Anthony Burns, who had been arrested as a fugitive slave under the fugitive slave act, killed a guard at the Boston Courthouse, named Mr. Batchelder.
Before even that fugitive slave act controversy in the North, there had been many violent incidents in opposition to emancipation and abolition ideals in the North in the decades before. Like the 1834 New York anti-emancipationist riots, the 1835 anti-emancipationist riot in Boston, and the burning of the Philadelphia Hall for hosting an emancipation meeting in 1838... These had all been suppressed by State Militia after more or less significant damage...
In that same period, there were lynch mobs acting across the South against any emancipation/abolition sentiment...
There was also the breaking of the US Mail to search any letters and papers from the Northern States for any abolition sentiments. In Charleston a bonfire was made of northern papers....
Subsequent State laws were enacted in the South to search the mail for "incendiary" publications, and to punish the receivers of the same. A bill was floated in the US Government for the Post Office itself to remove anti-slavery mail. Senator Thomas Morris of Ohio opposed any federal laws to that effect, speaking in 1836:
No such act was passed, and the failure to censor the mail continued to be a complaint in the Southern States through the 1850s. In 1861, the Confederate Government was formed and claimed to be the means to finally block "incendiary" publications... from either the Northern States, or from among Southerners...
The Kansas war of 1854-1858 pitted anti and pro slavery forces against each other in the struggle over the Territory's Statehood in a shooting conflict. The "Jayhawkers" against establishing slavery in Statehood, and the "border Ruffians" supporting it.
The John Brown raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859 brought things to a head. In the Southern States, anyone from the North, or supporting what were being called northern principles, was suspect...
In the election of 1860 there was a considerable amount of tough talk, and even some street violence in cities across the country. In the secession period afterward, the violence was evidently increasing, particularly in the South, in the aftermath of the election. The secession movement increasing in popularity therein.
In the North meanwhile persons supporting the southern secession in 1861 were cowed into silence...
Particularly after the battle of Fort Sumter. From New Jersey...
In the same period in the South, Northerners or persons accused of "northern" (Union) principles were targeted...
The secession movement promoted itself, in the South, as the means of solving all of the violence and disorder and concern, within the Southern States. But led to larger issues. President Lincoln's proclamation raising soldiers, after Fort Sumter, was described as the measure which united the South against external "coercion"...
All that presaged the war. With war, any opposition to the Government could be viewed as seditious or even treasonous.
I understand northern soldiers being appalled when confronted with realities on plantations of the Deep South - but why at times such deep ingrained aggressivity towards all Southerners regardless of their class as traitors whose houses best were burned down?
War, generally speaking.
But particularly speaking,
insurrectionary war.
Under the customary laws of war at the time, insurgent populations in civil war were not granted the same immunities from punishment and retaliation in war that an occupied foreign population was customarily accorded. In fact far from it. The US Government acted accordingly. In the first half of the war, there was debate among some US generals as to the subject. But it was incorporated into War Department General Orders No. 100 in 1863:
"Art. 151. The term rebellion is applied to an insurrection of large extent, and is usually a war between the legitimate government of a country and portions of provinces of the same who seek to throw off their allegiance to it and set up a government of their own."
Art. 156.
Common justice and plain expediency require that the military commander protect the manifestly loyal citizens, in revolted territories, against the hardships of the war as much as the common misfortune of all war admits.
The commander will throw the burden of the war, as much as lies within his power, on the disloyal citizens, of the revolted portion or province, subjecting them to a stricter police than the noncombatant enemies have to suffer in regular war; and if he deems it appropriate, or if his government demands of him that every citizen shall, by an oath of allegiance, or by some other manifest act, declare his fidelity to the legitimate government, he may expel, transfer, imprison, or fine the revolted citizens who refuse to pledge themselves anew as citizens obedient to the law and loyal to the government.
Whether it is expedient to do so, and whether reliance can be placed upon such oaths, the commander or his government have the right to decide.
Art. 157. Armed or unarmed resistance by citizens of the United States against the lawful movements of their troops is levying war against the United States, and is therefore treason."
On April 15, 1861 the President of the United States proclaimed the existence of an insurrection in several Southern States, calling for the "combinations" supporting it to disperse (which until 1865 they did not). From the 19th of April, a blockade of the States subject to those combinations was proclaimed, elevating it to the state of war. From July 13, 1861 Congress acted to allow the President to determine which States or parts of States were subject to insurrection. The President, under that act, proclaimed the same on August 16, 1861...
www.presidency.ucsb.edu
The President proclaimed the conclusion of the insurrection/rebellion in 1866. The US courts recognized the conflict as a national, "public war" involving the whole citizenry of the country...
During the period of the national public war, any opposition to the US Government by citizens in the loyal States could lead to arrest, etc. Opposition to the Government within the "insurrectionary" districts, or "rebel states" was dealt with by Military law, etc.
In the South, General Henry A. Wise, CSA, late Governor of Virginia, observed in the 1870s that the secessionist movement, once given authority over the Southern States, had subjected the common citizens in the South to the fury of the general Government, by rendering them all "insurgents" against US authority, to the extent they abided their secession States.
He observes, if the Southern State Governments hadn't bothered about opposition to the US Constitution and Government, but otherwise did exactly as they did (under the right of revolution alone), in forming the Confederate Army, fighting the war, etc., then the common citizens of the Southern States would not have been subject to the vicissitudes of the war powers of the Union as an "insurgent" population forfeiting any claim to protection from the Government until they should submit...
Wise thought it had proven rather unpleasant that the Confederate politicians had rendered themselves safe from prosecution, by precipitating their constituents into a conflict where all were classed as insurgents, with, as he says, "the halter" about their necks.
Col. W.C. Oates of Alabama, later Governor of the State, however, observed, that the formation of the Southern Confederacy, precisely as if a foreign nation to the Union, had been a necessity to serve the purposes of the war, and to get the population to adhere to it, in opposition to the Union...
On the Southern side, during the war, the Confederate Government ordered its forces to consider and treat the population of the US States as if a
foreign population; but those within the Confederacy abiding of the US authorities, was considered treason against the Confederate States, etc. and "insurgents" against the CSA dealt with variously and sometimes harshly...
The scale of Confederate military counter-insurgency operations in some districts is not generally appreciated, as it did not lead to battles significant enough to contend for space in the public prints or imagination.
All of those people were compatriots a relative short time before -
and most of those people were commoners and rarely directly involved with the question of slavery
- as they themselves owned no slaves (many Southerners)
or had no direct experiences with the dark sides of slavery (most Northerners).
From North Carolina...
I just don't get the motivation of that erupting violence. Do you?
Col. Mosby of Virginia...
George B. Catlin later reported of Detroit...
Bringing the