The Crossroads of Conflict: The Upper South in 1861
When Confederate forces bombarded Fort Sumter in April 1861, the eight states of the Upper South—Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri—faced an agonizing decision. These states held the Confederacy’s fate in their hands, possessing over half the South’s population, three-quarters of its industrial capacity, and vast agricultural resources. The region also produced legendary military leaders like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Nathan Bedford Forrest.
The Upper South’s initial response to Lincoln’s call for 75,000 militia troops after Sumter seemed to favor the Confederacy. Governors defiantly refused to comply, with Tennessee’s governor declaring they would furnish “fifty thousand if necessary for the defense of our rights.” Yet beneath this show of southern solidarity lay deep divisions, particularly along the fault line of slavery.
The Surge of Southern Nationalism
News of Sumter’s fall triggered euphoric celebrations across the Upper South. In Richmond, crowds tore down the U.S. flag and raised the Confederate banner amid hundred-gun salutes. A London Times correspondent described North Carolinians “with flushed faces, wild eyes, screaming mouths” cheering for Jefferson Davis. This was no reluctant response to northern aggression but a passionate embrace of southern identity.
Virginia’s secession convention, swayed by firebrands like former Governor Henry Wise, voted 88-55 to leave the Union on April 17. Wise had already orchestrated the seizure of the Harper’s Ferry armory—a critical early Confederate victory that secured machinery to produce 15,000 rifles annually. The capture of Norfolk’s Gosport Navy Yard netted 1,200 cannons, though bungled Union sabotage attempts left the hull of the USS Merrimack intact, destined to become the ironclad CSS Virginia.
The Domino Effect: Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee Follow
Virginia’s decision created a seismic shift. By May, Arkansas had joined the Confederacy after its convention rejected a popular referendum 65-5. North Carolina’s governor seized federal forts before the legislature unanimously enacted secession. Tennessee bypassed a convention entirely, with voters approving separation 104,913 to 47,238—though mountainous East Tennessee rejected it by 70%.
The correlation between slavery and secession was stark. Virginia counties with fewer than 2.5% slaves opposed secession 3-to-1, while areas with 36% slave populations supported it 10-to-1. Similar patterns emerged in Tennessee and Arkansas, revealing the “peculiar institution” as the war’s root cause despite rhetoric about states’ rights.
The Border State Battlegrounds
Maryland’s strategic position surrounding Washington made it the most immediately crucial border state. The April 19 Baltimore riot—where the first bloodshed of the war left four soldiers and twelve civilians dead—precipitated a crisis. Confederate sympathizers cut telegraph lines and burned railroad bridges, isolating the capital. Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus and arrest of secessionist legislators kept Maryland in Union hands, though at significant cost to civil liberties.
Missouri descended into chaos under the struggle between Unionist General Nathaniel Lyon and pro-Confederate Governor Claiborne Jackson. Lyon’s May 10 capture of “Camp Jackson” in St. Louis sparked bloody street fighting, while his famous declaration—”This means war!”—propelled the state into internecine conflict. Guerrilla warfare ravaged Missouri, foreshadowing the brutal irregular combat that would characterize the border regions.
Kentucky attempted neutrality, but geography made this untenable. The state’s control of the Ohio River and rail lines to Tennessee made it indispensable to both sides. When Confederate General Leonidas Polk occupied Columbus in September 1861, he shattered Kentucky’s fragile balance. The legislature demanded Confederate withdrawal, but a rump government later joined the Confederacy—creating the absurd situation of two competing state governments.
The Birth of West Virginia and East Tennessee’s Forgotten Unionists
Western Virginia’s break from the Old Dominion represented the most dramatic political consequence of divided loyalties. With few slaves and economic ties to Pennsylvania, the region rejected Virginia’s secession. The Wheeling conventions of 1861 established the “Restored Government of Virginia,” which bizarrely consented to its own dismemberment. Union military victories under George McClellan secured the region, leading to West Virginia’s admission in 1863—the only state born from Civil War division.
East Tennessee’s Unionists, led by fiery newspaper editor “Parson” Brownlow and Senator Andrew Johnson, suffered grievously for their loyalty. Confederate authorities executed bridge-burners and imprisoned dissenters, creating martyrs. Though 30,000 East Tennesseans would eventually fight for the Union—more than from any other Confederate state—their region remained under rebel control until 1863 due to the Union army’s inability to traverse the Cumberland Mountains.
The Military and Strategic Consequences
The Upper South’s choices had profound military implications. The 425,000 soldiers these states provided to the Confederacy constituted half its total manpower, while their 235,000 white and 85,000 black Union troops significantly bolstered northern ranks. Control of the region’s railroads and rivers proved decisive—the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad became a vital Union supply line, while the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers served as invasion routes into the Confederate heartland.
Yet the border states also drained Union resources. Missouri alone required 40,000 troops to suppress guerrillas. The administration’s delicate handling of slave states—simultaneously courting Unionists while pushing emancipation—complicated Lincoln’s war aims. As the president remarked regarding Kentucky, “I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.”
The Legacy of Division
The Upper South’s experience revealed the Civil War’s fundamental nature as a brothers’ conflict. Kentucky alone saw Senator Crittenden’s sons become opposing generals and Mary Todd Lincoln’s brothers fight for the Confederacy. The war shattered the myth of southern unity, exposing class divisions between slaveholding elites and non-slaveholding yeomen.
West Virginia’s creation and East Tennessee’s failed separatist movement demonstrated that Confederate nationalism had geographic limits. The brutal guerrilla warfare in Missouri and elsewhere prefigured the total war that would engulf the nation. Most significantly, the Upper South’s choices ensured the conflict would be prolonged and bloody—transforming a potential short rebellion into a four-year struggle that fundamentally remade America.
The border states’ experience continues to resonate, offering lessons about the balance between liberty and security, the power of regional identities, and the enduring consequences of political choices made under pressure. Their story reminds us that in civil wars, the most bitter divisions often run not between states, but through them.