True Blue

“Clayton Butler has done a service to the field of Civil War history by offering this engaging and well-researched analysis of Unionism in the Deep South. By exploring the wartime experiences of southern white Unionists, their shifting policy positions during Reconstruction, and the ways that they and their descendants remembered their place in the conflict, Butler helps us better understand the complex and fascinating story of the Civil War era. This is an essential read.”- Jonathan W. White, associate professor of American studies at Christopher Newport University and author of Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln

“Clayton Butler’s new book takes its place in a growing body of scholarship and popular writing that challenges the very foundation of the Lost Cause. True Blue’s focus on the military service of southern Unionists in the Deep South uncovers a largely unknown story of loyalty to the United States government and defiance against secession and the Confederacy. Though their numbers were relatively small, the men of the First Alabama and First Louisiana Cavalry offer a new perspective on the scope of violence that took place on battlefields such as Fort Pillow as well as the challenges they posed to the forging of Confederate nationalism and the possibility of reestablishing loyal governments during Reconstruction. This book is a must-read.” - Kevin M. Levin, independent historian and author of Remembering the Battle of the Crater: War as Murder

“Clayton Butler’s True Blue is an impressively researched history of white men from the Deep South who defiantly enlisted in the U.S. Army during the American Civil War. Butler skillfully explains how a commitment to Union remained a guiding principle of their lives, as they moved from combat into Reconstruction politics and eventually into an alliance with their former Confederate enemies. Full of incredible and deeply human stories, True Blue helps explain why a war with so much transformative power gave way to the reactionary forces of white supremacist ‘redemption.’ It is a welcome and compelling addition to the growing library on southern Unionism.” - Amy Murrell Taylor, T. Marshall Hahn Jr. Professor of History at the University of Kentucky and author of Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps

“Butler makes an important contribution to our understanding of Unionists in the Deep South during and after the Civil War… . Small in number but consequential nonetheless, these Deep South Unionists found ‘their voices drowned out by the chorus of returning Confederates and their descendants’ (p. 166). Clayton Butler’s book reminds us of why those voices and their actions matter.” - Journal of Southern History

“Collectively, Butler’s wartime chapters remind us that the conflict’s ground-level complexity almost always defies our neat binaries and that the Federal government was still technically responsible for its citizens trapped in enemy-occupied territory during the war… . True Blue is a worthwhile read for scholars of the Civil War, Reconstruction, nineteenth-century military history, and southern identity.” - Journal of American History

Clayton J. Butler is a postdoctoral fellow at the Nau Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia.