The John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History debuted its second digital project — U.Va. Unionists — on May 3. U.Va. Unionists restores lost University and national history regarding division in the South during the Civil War by highlighting the experiences of University alumna who served on the side of the Union during the war. Brian Neumann, postdoctoral researcher and editorial assistant, and Will Kurtz, managing director and digital historian, introduced the project to the public during a live Facebook and Zoom webinar.
On the U.Va. Unionists website, visitors can access primary source documents and essays outlining each Unionist’s life and contributions before, during and after the Civil War. Research behind U.Va. Unionists was conducted by Neumann, Kurtz and around a dozen student researchers, and the Nau Center — a University program dedicated to studying and educating the public on content related to the Civil War — hosts the project website.
So far, U.Va. Unionists has identified 68 University alumni and faculty members who aided the Union during the Civil War. The 68 Unionists range from 14 to 47 years old at the start of the Civil War in 1861. Around half fought in the military while the other half took on civilian roles, such as medical workers or prison guards. Two-thirds of the Unionists came from Southern states, and half came from slaveholding families.
Neumann noted a difference between the tone of U.Va. Unionists and the Nau Center’s first digital project, Black Virginians in Blue. The Black Virginians in Blue website — which launched April 13 — hosts a database for 256 Black men from Albemarle County who fought for the Union as soldiers and sailors. Neumann characterized that project as more “celebratory” storytelling and framed U.Va. Unionists as an effort to “recover” stories to help understand the past.
“U.Va. Unionists is a more complicated story in that some of these men [were] more bitterly conservative,” Neumann said.
During the first half of the event, Neumann gave a brief overview of the context surrounding U.Va. Unionists and the results of the four years of research conducted for the project.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, the University pushed forward the narrative of the Lost Cause — a false narrative that glorifies the Confederate cause and asserts that Confederate armies fought for states’ rights, not slavery — by honoring alumni who fought for the Confederacy and erasing the names of those who supported the Union, according to Neumann. Honor came in the form of “well-kept” records of Confederate alumni, Confederate monuments and Confederate reunions.
“U.Va. had embarked on a bold campaign to forget,” Neumann said. “To rewrite the past and erase the memory of men … who had stayed loyal to the Union.”
Two Confederate monuments still remain on Grounds, including the Frank Hume Memorial Fountain, otherwise known as the Whispering Wall. The removal of the Wall — which was vandalized twice in April — is currently under review by the Committee on Naming and Memorials, which plans to make a recommendation on the Wall’s future by the Board of Visitors’ meeting in June. There is also a bronze statue of an unidentified Confederate soldier in the University cemetery.
Statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson remain standing in Charlottesville, although a Virginia Supreme Court ruling in April paves the way for removal.
In 1913, an anonymous editorial published in the “Staunton Daily News” criticized the University and other local schools for “almost entirely [overlooking]” those who fought for the Union. The University Alumni Bulletin later admitted that there was no complete record of alumni who served in the Union Army, which is what U.Va. Unionists attempts to accomplish almost 100 years later.
Despite the 68 individuals who fought with the Union army, many University members fought with and assisted the Confederate side of the war. 50 percent of alumni who graduated before the start of the Civil War — along with 90 percent of students who attended the University at the start of war — joined the Confederate army. In comparison, around one percent of alumni and faculty members joined 300,000 white Southerners and 150,000 former slaves in fighting for the Union.
“U.Va.’s Unionists remind us that Confederate nationalism, that support for the Confederacy was not inevitable or unanimous,” Neumann said. “Other choices were always possible and thousands of Southerners made them.”
Neumann moved on to share the stories of specific Unionists. Class of 1855 alumnus William Meade Fishback was a staunch Unionist and opposed secession. Fishback wrote for a Republican newspaper and advocated for emancipation as a strategy to preserve peace in 1864.
However, during Reconstruction, Fishback opposed suffrage for freedmen, claiming that they were “incapable of taking care of themselves.” Fishback exemplifies the political moderateness of many other Southerners who prioritized the preservation of the Union over social and political transformation, according to Neumann.
“Many southerners, in fact, stayed loyal to the Union precisely because they believed slavery was safest in the Union,” Neumann said. “Americans accepted emancipation as a military necessity.”
Class of 1840 alumnus Henry Davis Winter came from a slaveholding family, but felt a “strong revulsion of feeling at the aspect of slavery at U.Va.” Though he opposed abolitionists at the beginning of the Civil War, Winter later embraced a more “radical” political agenda and championed “explicit legal protection” for freedmen and redistribution of confiscated Confederate property among former enslaved people. As a U.S. representative, he voted to pass the 13th Amendment in 1865, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except in the case of punishment for a crime. Winter is one of several University Unionists who pushed for racial justice in the 19th century.
“The moderation of most Unionists helps explain why Reconstruction failed,” Neumann said. “The radicalism of these men reminds us that the advent of Jim Crow, segregation, was not inevitable or immediate or uncontested.”
Following Neumann’s talk, Kurtz gave a tour of the U.Va. Unionists website. Detailed search filters in the database allow users to find Unionists based on factors such as occupation and military status. Maps are also available, detailing the locations of birth and death for Unionists. Kurtz recommends first-time visitors to read the two overview essays linked on the homepage.
“Those are two overview essays that will give you ... that larger sense of, ‘Okay, what is the larger story that we're trying to convey here — what do all these individual stories add up to?’” Kurtz said.
Neumann closed the event by emphasizing the importance of the U.Va. Unionists from a local and national perspective. Locally, U.Va. Unionists restores a narrative that the University erased, he said. Nationally, Neumann asserted, the project counters a misconception that Southerners had no choice in who to side with during the war — there was division in the South.
“I think the major takeaway is that these U.Va. Unionists — despite their small numbers — matter,” Neumann said.
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