High ranking military officers from the south who stuck with the Union during the Civil War

Factual Questions
1

One of the points Robert E. Lee defenders try to make when people say he’s a traitor, is that back in the day folks were more loyal to their state, rather than to the nation as a whole, which was apparently seen as a loose confederation of sovereign entities.

First of all, was this case, as far as people seeing themselves as citizens of their state first, rather than as citizens of the U.S.?

And, were there any high ranking officers in the military at the time who hailed from the south, but decided to eschew state loyalty, and stick by the Union?

2

here is a guy from Virginia who stayed in the union army. George Thomas

George Henry Thomas - Wikipedia

3

This article lists generals on both sides. In addition to the already mentioned George Thomas, it also lists David Farragut, a Union naval commander who was a native of Tennessee, had lived in New Orleans and Virginia, and had married a Southern woman. He was initially distrusted, but was finally able to prove his worth to the Union later in the war.

6 Generals Who Fought Against their Home State in the Civil War:

I don’t think that’s necessarily true, but one issue that contributed to the Civil War was the issue of state’s rights. Unfortunately, this issue has been twisted quite a bit by folks who like to argue that the South wasn’t really racist and they were just fighting tor rights (which is a load of horse-puckey), but there is actually a valid issue here. Is the US really a loosely allied group of states, or does the Federal government really have the power to force their will upon states? This was a big issue especially where tariffs were concerned, as tariffs that protected northern industrialism hurt southern agriculture, and vice-versa. This went so far as the state of South Carolina declaring that Federal tariffs didn’t apply to their state. The argument was over industrial tariffs vs. slave plantation tariffs, but it does lead to the issue of exactly where the power lies between the States and the Federal government.

The argument goes both ways. If you are a northern industrialist, does the Federal government have the right to enact tariffs and trade policies that drive you out of business because you can’t compete with cheap European goods? And on the Southern side, does the Federal government have the right to enact tariffs and trade policies that increase the cost of your cotton and tobacco so much that folks in Europe don’t want to buy it, threatening your livelihood?

The folks making the arguments at the time tended to favor whichever balance of power benefited them personally the most. So, Union first or State first was often more a matter of selfish economics than idealism.

4

It was absolutely true, it has often been said that prior to the Civil War it was known as These United States, but everafter The United States. I learned today, or had probably forgotten, that Lee had been offered the Union command, but declined after his home state of Virginia seceded. Then he went over. In those days, they considered themselves a Virginian first, apparently.

5

Except that the Republican position on tariffs in the 1860 election was indistinguishable from the Democratic one. Both were pretty damn vague, too: tariffs would protect US business. Note, too, that the Southern Democratic Party’s (Breckenridge) platform on tariffs was identical to the Democratic Party’s (Douglas). Literally – the SDP said the accepted the platform of the Democrats with a handful of added changes, most notably the expansion of slavery. If slavery wasn’t the main issue in the South, why didn’t they vote for Douglas?

6

Winfield Scott, who was supreme military leader in 1861, was from Virginia and stayed with the Union. He was 75 and weighed over 300 pounds but his “Anaconda Plan” was largely the blueprint the Union used to win the war (although more bloodshed was required than he thought).

7

I wasn’t just referring to the election of 1860. The Civil War did not start in the 1860s. The roots of the Civil War go back decades earlier. The Nullification Crisis (when South Carolina basically said F-U to Federal tariffs) was in the 1830s.

In the 1860 election, both the Northern and Southern Democratic platform on tariffs are admittedly rather vague (and as you point out, they aren’t really that much different from each other, except for the issue of slavery).

The Republican platform isn’t quite so vague, however.

[QUOTE=1860 Republican Platform]
That, while providing revenue for the support of the General Government by duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imposts as to encourage the development of the industrial interest of the whole country; and we commend that policy of national exchanges which secures to the working men liberal wages, to agriculture renumerative prices, to mechanics and manufactures an adequate reward for their skill, labor, and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and independence.
[/QUOTE]

(bolding mine)

Eh? Where did that come from?

Slavery was by far the main issue in the South.

Southern political power was divided into two main groups, the southern plantation owners, and the small southern farmers. The plantation owners owned most of the slaves, so their position is really freaking obvious. They wanted to keep their slaves.

The small farmers didn’t want to keep their slaves because they didn’t have any (usually). You can argue that the big plantation owners were acting out of their own self interest and economic survival, but the small farmers had no such excuse. The small farmer’s support of slavery was simple racial hatred. They did not want blacks to have any political power whatsoever and did not want them to have any place at all in southern society. They wanted them kept as slaves, beneath southern society, with no voice, no rights, no nothing. And to be fair, while you might be able to make the argument that the plantation owners were acting for the survival of their plantations, the simple fact remains that they had just as much racial hatred for the blacks as the small farmers.

The northern side in the Civil War is a bit more complex, but the southern side is dirt simple. It’s all about slavery, and not just slave labor, but keeping blacks completely under control and treating them as sub-human.

Anyway, going into great detail regarding all of the factors that fed into the Civil War is probably a bit beyond the scope of this thread. The OP was just questioning State first vs. US first, and I was just attempting to address that.

8

It’s ironic that at the start of the war, the highest rank general in the United States Army was Winfield Scott, a native Virginian. And the highest ranking general in the Confederate Army was Samuel Cooper, a native New Yorker.

9

The tariff really wasn’t a significant issue.

This was back before things like income tax, sales tax, and property tax were common. There was no system in place to collect taxes like that. A government needed money to function and the way governments collected money in that era was by imposing tariffs on imports. You set up collection stations in your ports and you collected tariffs from incoming shipments of goods.

The reason the government put a tariff on industrial products was pretty simple; you collect tariffs on imports and the United States imported industrial goods. If the government had put an equivalent tariff on agricultural products, it would have had no effect. Nobody imported agricultural goods to the United States.

If the government had placed a symbolic tariff on agricultural goods, just to make the southern states feel better, it would have risked hurting the southern economy. An American tariff on agricultural imports wouldn’t have collected much money. But it might have triggered European governments into imposing equivalent tariffs on agricultural imports. And those tariffs would have hurt the southerners who were selling cotton to Europe.

One final point is that southerners weren’t the only people dependent on agriculture. Westerners and mid-westerners were also selling agricultural goods and buying industrial goods. If the national tariff was aimed at Virginia and Georgia and Mississippi, it was equally aimed at Ohio and Minnesota and California. Yet when the split came, the agricultural states in the north and the west didn’t join with the agricultural states in the south. Nobody in the south even thought it was worth asking them. The people in 1860 knew what the real cause of the coming war was and they knew it wasn’t tariffs.

10

While it could well have been true that before the civil war Americans saw themselves first as citizens of their home state and second as American, that is no excuse for Lee. A West Point graduate he took an oath to defend the US, foreswore that oath and should have been hanged for treason. How would you feel if there were statues to Benedict Arnold all over? After all, he was an important part of history.

It took me a long time to realize it, but generally Canadians see themselves as primarily citizens of a province and only secondarily as Canadian. When a friend who was originally from Ontario introduced me as “from Pennsylvania”, I was really taken aback. Yes, it’s true, but I see myself as being from Philadelphia. When a student from Quebec came with me to a meeting in Pittsburgh, he asked if I felt any feeling of being in my home state? Again somewhat taken aback. So it would not at all surprising if a Virginian felt primary identification with Virginia. But then Lee should have refused to take that oath. And once he did he should not have broken. If it were up to me, he would have been hanged.

Incidentally, I just learned this morning that Jefferson Davis lived in Montreal after his release from prison. And the Hudson Bay company used to have a plaque honoring him in their flagship Montreal store. Until they removed during the early hours this morning.

11

Similarly, before the war, it would have been “The United States are…”, and afterwards, it was “is”.

Hari Seldon, whether I think of myself as an “American” or an “Ohioan” or a “Clevelander” depends on the context, in a number of ways. I would not think it at all unusual, when out of the country, to be introduced as an Ohioan, because the separation between points in Ohio pales in comparison to the separation between countries. On the other hand, if I’m in, say, Pittsburgh, then I would probably be a Clevelander, because from Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Cincinnati are quite different. And if I were in Ohio, there would be little reason at all to point out that I’m an Ohioan.

12

A famous interesting example is that USA Navy’s Percival Drayton fought on the other side of his brother CSA Army Thomas Drayton during the battle of Port Royal in their native South Carolina.

13

There is one. Sorta.