Alabamians in Blue: Freedmen, Unionists, and the Civil War in the Cotton State

摘要

Of the roughly 2 million men to don Union blue during the war, about 400,000 came from Southern and border states. Christopher Eein documents the 7,500 Alabamians, black and white, who served between 1862 and 1866. Though their service wasn't necessarily decisive, Rein vies that "they magnified the power of the...army by providing critical intelligence of Confederate dispositions..." and, though small in number, they "helped Federal authorities regain control over Confederate-occupied areas and freed up manpower essential [elsewhere]."