A new book is uncovering history about Alabama’s involvement in the U.S. Civil War. SILENT CAVALRY: How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta—and Then Got Written Out of History is a historical detective nonfiction novel that tells the story of how yeoman farmers and former slaves aided the Union General named William Sherman during the U.S. Civil War.
Howell Raines, the author and retired executive editor for the New York Times, said he began this story many years ago.
“When I was 18, and a freshman at Birmingham Southern College, I was reading a book called Stars Fell on Alabama, and it told the story of Unionists from Winston County, Alabama, who were killed by federal recruiters for refusing to enlist in the Confederate Army,” he explained. “And in telling that story, the author, Carl Carmer, said they were led by a man called Sheats. So, I began systematically to try to put together a true biography of Chris Sheats.”
Raines said during the research process for Silent Calvary, he uncovered some surprising information.
“I found letters in the archives between Thomas McAdory Owen, the Alabamian, and Professor William Archibald Dunning of Columbia University, who was the most influential Civil War historian in the United States,” he said. “It seems odd that a New Jersey born Ivy League professor would be pro-Confederate, but he was. And so, between the two of them, they managed to point the Southern, or rather, the American Historical Association in a more Confederate direction.”
According to Raines, there were 3,000 white Alabamians who voluntarily enlisted in the Union Army because they did not believe in secession. These Alabamians and the others who enlisted in the Union Army were removed from history by Thomas Macedon. He was the director of the Alabama Department of Archives and History during that time. Macedon said in 1901 that the Alabama Archives in Montgomery would collect only the records of Confederate soldiers.
Raines also said, in North Alabama specifically, there were 2,000 white Alabamians and 16 freed slaves who enlisted in what was called the “1st Alabama Calvary Regiment, U.S.A.”
Alabama Union Soldiers also aided General William Sherman. Sherman was a Union Army General and voluntarily enlisted in the United States Army in May 1861. He was a key figure in the Civil War leading the First Battle of Bull Run and ordering his army of 60,000 men to march through the state of Georgia, burning it in the process.
Raines said the 1st Alabama Calvary fighters were praised by Sherman for their work, but also said the regiment did not do anything much differently than other units.
“They didn't do it so much differently as they did it bravely and efficiently,” he explained. “In addition to being good field soldiers and cavalrymen horsemen, they were very expert at donning civilian clothes and slipping behind Union lines,” Raines continued. “Also, many of their relatives back home in Alabama sent them letters that were militarily useful to General Sherman and the Union army… They were used in very dangerous missions. For example, when the two armies were stalled at Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia, just north of Atlanta.”
Raines said many of the people who were apart of the 1st Alabama Calvary Regiment, were normal, everyday people.
“Most of them were obscure people. They returned home after the war, often to very hostile reception from neighbors who had been lower the Confederacy, and the Ku Klux Klan set out to punish them,” he explained. “There were hangings. There were burnings. They threatened the life of Chris Sheats, who after the war, went to Huntsville to organize Black voters for grants presidential election. He is falsely depicted in Civil War and Reconstruction [and] the most important history about the war in Alabama, as a coward who was silenced by the Klan. Far from that. he remained outspoken,” Raines continued. “He was so outspoken in service to the Union, President [Ulysses S.] Grant appointed him the U.S. Consult to Denmark. After the war, he then came home and was elected to Congress.”
Raines explained that war is more different from what people might think.
“We tend to think of [war] as big a kind of consistent action, but it actually is very sporadic. There were long days of boring marches, separated by moments of terror. And notably, outside Milledgeville, Georgia, the 1st Alabama Cavalry was sent out on a scouting mission, and they stumbled into a very strong Confederate force. They had a pitch battle,” he explained. “That led to one of the few historic markers that honors the 1st Alabama Cavalry placed there by Georgia officials. There are, so far as I can tell, two historic markers on obscure rural highways in Alabama that take note of the presence and activities of the 1st Alabama Cavalry.”
When the Civil War was finally over, Raines said the perspective of the story was different from other stories in history books.
“The Civil War was unusual in that it was the first conflict in that the losers, that is, the Southern side, got to write the history,” he explained. “The original history of the Civil War, by the first generation … was written from a pro-Confederate point of view. That seems odd by today's standards, but it is a fact that pro-Confederate point of view contributed what was called the myth of The Lost Cause,” Raines said.
Raines’ book SILENT CAVALRY: How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta—and Then Got Written Out of History explores more on why the best-known Civil War historians have given no to passing attention to the 1st Alabama Cavalry Regiment of southerners who chose to fight for the North.
The publication is out now. More details can be found here.
