Daily Archive

Divided Family in Civil War America, by Amy Murrell Taylor
University of North Carolina Press.

Description from publisher:

The Civil War has long been described as a war pitting “brother against brother.” The divided family is an enduring metaphor for the divided nation, but it also accurately reflects the reality of America’s bloodiest war. Connecting the metaphor to the real experiences of families whose households were split by conflicting opinions about the war, Amy Murrell Taylor provides a social and cultural history of the divided family in Civil War America.

In hundreds of border state households, brothers–and sisters–really did fight one another, while fathers and sons argued over secession and husbands and wives struggled with opposing national loyalties. Even enslaved men and women found themselves divided over how to respond to the war. Taylor studies letters, diaries, newspapers, and government documents to understand how families coped with the unprecedented intrusion of war into their private lives. Family divisions inflamed the national crisis while simultaneously embodying it on a small scale–something noticed by writers of popular fiction and political rhetoric, who drew explicit connections between the ordeal of divided families and that of the nation. Weaving together an analysis of this popular imagery with the experiences of real families, Taylor demonstrates how the effects of the Civil War went far beyond the battlefield to penetrate many facets of everyday life.

About the author
Amy Murrell Taylor is assistant professor of history at the State University of New York at Albany.
From the Introduction of the book:

Abraham Lincoln warned in 1858 that a “house divided against itself cannot stand.” His words, prophetic of the war that was to come three years later, continue to resonate today. That phrase—just one part of a much larger address—has become one of Lincoln’s most recognizable contributions to our American political vocabulary. But those words were not unique to the nineteenth-century president. The image of a “house divided,” or a family in conflict, was a timeless one that drew on a long tradition in literature and political thought. From the Bible to Greek tragedies to Shakespeare’s works to the political theories of John Locke, the family has offered a common language for understanding the complexities of human relationships. For Lincoln, the family provided a rhetorical shorthand, allowing him in just six words to convey what slavery might do to the relationship between Northern and Southern citizens.

Lincoln was not alone in describing a nation in family terms. Historians across the globe have uncovered numerous moments in which family language and metaphor figured centrally in the imagining of nations—particularly nations in conflict. We can see this in the French Revolution, Russian propaganda during World War I, and the Cold War, to name a few examples. The widespread use of the family image raises important questions about national identity—where it comes from, how it is defined, and how attachments to family and nation coexist and reinforce one another. In the United States we can trace the roots of the family metaphor at least to the Revolution, as colonists imagined themselves as children of a tyrannical British father. The Civil War only amplified this association of nation and family with an outpouring of speeches and stories that joined Lincoln in comparing the nation to a divided house. Even today, in movies, Web sites, children’s literature, and John Jakes novels, we continue to see the warring nation as if it were a quarreling family—or a war of “brother against brother.” It has become a cliché, easily recognizable and frequently invoked. Less understood is why this image has taken root in American culture.

This book offers the first sustained historical study of the divided family in the American Civil War. It takes what we often consider to be just rhetoric or common sense and finds within this image something more meaningful for those who lived through the war. It was meaningful, on a profound level, because it was real. Thousands of families did divide in what was widely considered to be a shocking dimension of the Civil War. Brothers did fight brothers; even Abraham Lincoln had relatives in the Confederate army. The image of the divided family therefore captured something tangible and authentic about the experience of war. But, on another level, it offered to Civil War Americans a framework for making sense of new and unprecedented problems. How could a country that was once one nation be carved into two? How could fellow citizens kill one another? Americans looked to the vocabulary of family—deference and authority, affection and conflict—for guidance in framing those difficult questions. This book follows the interplay of these two levels—experience and language—to provide a social and cultural history of the divided family in Civil War America.

We need not reach far into the vast library of Civil War history to find evidence of divided families. The idea that two brothers, or a father and son, or a husband and wife could assume opposing stances in the war has both captivated and perplexed scholars, writers of fiction, and filmmakers since the first shots were fired over Fort Sumter. Family division has become one of the “curiosities” of the war, filling out war narratives with colorful images and dramatic flourishes. Stories of divided families almost always appear in some form in anecdote books, a staple of Civil War popular culture, under titles such as “Love and Treason” and “‘Brother against Brother’ Was Real. Biographies of some of the most prominent Civil War political and military leaders rarely fail to mention a personal connection to the enemy side. Many central figures of that era were split from a family member, including Confederates Robert E. Lee, Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, and their Union-sympathizing sisters, and U.S. Senator John J. Crittenden and his Confederate son. Indeed, the more one looks for evidence of divided families in the war, the more numerous they appear.

The Civil War was literally brother against brother on many levels.  The following families are representative of the more well-known splist caused by the Civil War:

1. President Lincoln (Union) was divided against his Confederate brother-in-law, General Benjamin H. Helm
2. General George McClellan (Union) was divided against his cousin Major H.B. McClellan
3. General George Meade (Union) was divided against his brother-in-law General Henry Wise
4. General Thomas T. Crittendon (Union) was divided against his cousin, General George B. Crittendon
5. Generals Napolean Nuford and John Buford were divided against their cousin General Abraham Buford

There were 38 Union Generals born in the South who fought on behalf of the Union.  They included:

• Stephen Hurlbut from South Carolina
• Benjamin Prentiss from Virginia
• Winfield Scott from Virginia
• George Thomas from Virginia

The Confederacy fielded 33 Officers during the Civil War, all of whom were born in the South.  Most noticeably they included

• John C. Pemberton, from Pennsylvania
• Daniel Ruggles from Massachussetts
• Jedediah Hotchkiss from New York
• Otto Strahl from Ohio
• William Quantrill from Ohio

1. Delaware
2. Maryland
3. Missouri
4. Kentucky

There were several regions or areas in the United States that were pro-Union even though thier State officially sided with the Confederacy.  They were:

1. East Tennessee
2. Winston County in northern Alabama
3. Rabun County in the mountains of Georgia
4. Ozark Mountains in northern Arkansas
5. Hill counties (Jones County) of Mississippi
6. Western and central North Carolina
7. Western counties of Virginia

1. South Carolina on December 20, 1860
2. Mississippi on January 9th, 1861
3. Florida on January 10th, 1861
4. Alabama on January 11th, 1861
5. Georgia on Janaury 19th, 1861
6. Louisiana on January 26th, 1861
7. Texas on February 1st, 1861
8. Virginia on April 17th, 1861
9. Arkansas on May 6th, 1861
10. North Carolina on May 20th, 1861
11. Tennessee on June 8th, 1861

What were the largest cities in the North in 1860, just prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War?

1. New York City - Population in 1860 was 813,669
2. Philadelphia - Population in 1860 was 565,529
3. Brooklyn -Population in 1860 was 266,661
4. Baltimore - Population in 1860 was 212,418
5. Boston - Population in 1860 was 177,840
6. Cincinnati - Population in 1860 was 161,044
7. St. Louis - Population in 1860 was 160,773
8. Chicago - Population in 1860 was 112,172
9. Buffalo - Population in 1860 was 81,129
10. Newark - Population in 1860 was 71,941

    The only Southern city to compare was New Orleans with 168,675 citizens.

    Source: 1860 U.S. Census

What were the largest cities in the South (to become part of the Confederacy) by population at the outbreak of the Civil War?

1. New Orleans, LA - Population - 168,675
2. Charleston, SC - Population - 40,522
3. Richmond, VA - Population -37,910
4. Mobile, AL - Population - 29,258
5. Memphis, TN - Population - 22,623
6. Savannah, GA - Population - 22,292
7. Petersburg, VA - Population - 18,266
8. Nashville, TN - Population - 16,988
9. Norfolk, VA - Population - 14,620
10. Wheeling, VA* - Population - 14,083
    West Virginia did not exist in 1860
11. Alexandria, VA - Population - 12,652
12. Augusta, GA - Population - 12,493
13. Columbus, GA - Population - 9,621
14. Atlanta, GA - Population - Top 10 385,237

Source: 1860 U.S. Census

The city of Nashville was the 8th largest city in the Confederate states in 1860, boasting almost 17,000 citizens.

Harper’s Weekly writes:

[Nashville] is, as every body knows, the capital of Tennessee, and is a fine city of about 20,000 inhabitants, situated on the Cumberland River.—Two bridges, a railroad bridge (M’Callumtruss), and an iron suspension bridge, span the river opposite to the city. Nashville stands on a bluff on the south side of the river. It is surrounded by hills, which command it, and render its defense extremely difficult against an army approaching from various points. The large building of which we give a picture herewith is the CAPITOL OF TENNESSEE, a new and handsome structure.

Text from the March 8, 1862 Harper’s Weekly edition stated:

The commerce of Nashville is very large, being carried on by river and railroads, and by turnpike roads, to the construction of which the city has devoted a great deal of attention. The revenue of the port amounts to about $40,000 per annum; but the Government has not yet erected a Custom-house in the city. The average annual shipments are—30,000 bales of cotton, 6000 hogsheads of tobacco, 2,000,000 bushels of wheat, 6,000,000 bushels of Indian corn, 10,000 casks of bacon, 25,000 hogs, and 2500 tierces of lard.

The neighborhood of Nashville is a famous stock-raising country, and has a high reputation for blood-horses, jackasses, mules, cattle, sheep, hogs, and Cashmere goats. The leading business of the city is in dry goods, hardware, drugs, and groceries. Book publishing is carried on more extensively than in any other Western town, and the publishing house of the Southern Methodist Conference is one of the largest book manufactories in the United States. The manufactures are lees important than the commercial interests. There are three flour mills, eight or ten planing mills, and eight or ten machine shops. The value of the taxable property here is $15,000,000. Seven miles from the city is the State Lunatic Asylum, and twelve miles east is the Hermitage, the celebrated residence of Andrew Jackson. The municipal government is vested in a mayor, eight aldermen, and sixteen councilmen. The first permanent settlement was made in 1778-’80; the town was incorporated in 1784, received its charter in 1806, and was made the State capital in 1812. Nashville is 280 miles northeast of Memphis, 206 miles southwest of Lexington in Kentucky, and 684 miles from Washington city.

At the hour we close this record the telegraph reports that the gun-boats and General Buell reached Nashville late last week, and that the city surrendered.

“The rebels evacuated Bowling and Nashville like a flock of sheep chased with dogs. They burn bridges and destroy property and then run like the devil.”

- Sgt. Michael S. Bright, 77th PA

More Civil War-time pictures of Nashville. Pictures attributed to NYHS - the New York Historical Society - are part of the Historical Treasures collection.

This view shows several houses and sheds in from the Capitol building.

Federal camps and civilians observing activity related to the Battle of Nashville from the front of the State House.

Scene overlooking the field of the Battle of Nashville, December 15-16, 1864.