Nickajack - Civil War Era

Civil War Era

On January 7, 1861, Alabama Governor Andrew B. Moore called delegates from Alabama to Montgomery for a convention to debate Articles of Secession. Delegates from South Alabama wanted the convention delegates to determine the vote, while Northern delegates wanted the issue put to a popular vote. Because the apportionment of delegates to the convention was based on total population (including slaves), the southern delegates effectively voted "on behalf" of the African-American slaves which made up a large proportion of the population in their region. In a popular vote, the balance of power would shift to the North, which was mostly white.

Ultimately, the Ordinance of Secession was passed by a vote of 61 to 39, split along geographic lines. In addition to Nickajack, Winston County, Alabama threatened to form its own Free State of Winston. These threats of internal separation never officially materialized, but men in the region fiercely resisted conscription into the Confederate Army; with many joining the Union Army.

Read more about this topic:  Nickajack

Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil, war and/or era:

    Since the Civil War its six states have produced fewer political ideas, as political ideas run in the Republic, than any average county in Kansas or Nebraska.
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)

    They who say that women do not desire the right of suffrage, that they prefer masculine domination to self-government, falsify every page of history, every fact in human experience. It has taken the whole power of the civil and canon law to hold woman in the subordinate position which it is said she willingly accepts.
    Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)

    Then think I thus: sith such repair,
    So long time war of valiant men,
    Was all to win a lady fair,
    Shall I not learn to suffer then,
    And think my life well spent to be,
    Serving a worthier wight than she?
    Henry Howard, Earl Of Surrey (1517?–1547)

    ... we are apt to think it the finest era of the world when America was beginning to be discovered, when a bold sailor, even if he were wrecked, might alight on a new kingdom ...
    George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)