"Trust to Us, the Union Men of the South": The 1866 Southern Loyalist Convention and the Fight for Reconstruction

Abstract

In 1866, unconditional Unionists of the South, who had remained loyal to the United States during its civil war, convened in Philadelphia to express their displeasure with President Andrew Johnson. In their view, Johnson���s willful inaction enabled traitors rather than Unionists to continue dominating Southern politics in the aftermath of the war. If the Union defeated the Confederacy but its supporters remained in power, Unionists��� staunch devotion to the Union was rendered pointless. The 1866 Southern Loyalist Convention was the culmination of years of political struggles. Scholarly literature on Southern Unionists is extensive, yet historians have overlooked the significance of this convention. This thesis argues that the convention utilized a narrative of suffering that Southern Unionists employed consistently throughout the Civil War and Reconstruction. In various pamphlets published early in the crisis, Southern Unionists voiced their disapproval of secession and had articulated their perspectives on national affairs. By concentrating those disparate voices in a single location, the Southern Loyalist Convention amplified long standing whispers of Unionist dissatisfaction. Collectively, these broadsheets pointed to deep divisions among Unionists, generally involving disagreements about African American enfranchisement. Despite the internal divisions that ultimately prevented them from forming a powerful Unionist coalition, Southern Unionists were consistent in a few key ways. They insisted upon their undying support for the Union, demanded the implementation of their agenda, and constructed a powerful narrative of their own suffering. Their mutual misery, in fact, became the foundation upon which Unionists built relationships with each other at this convention. This thesis considers how the 1866 Convention contributed to a post-war narrative that historians have labeled the ���Won Cause��� memory of the war