Still, nearly 120,000 Southern Unionists served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and every Southern state, except South Carolina, raised Unionist regiments. Confederate soldiers sometimes styled them "Homemade Yankees." However, Southern Unionists were not necessarily northern sympathizers and many of them – although opposing secession – supported the Confederacy once it was a fact. Also, in the public dialogue of the United States, new states are "admitted to the Union," and the President's annual address to Congress and to the people is referred to as the " State of the Union Address".ĭuring the American Civil War, those loyal to the federal government and opposed to secession living in the border states and Confederate states were termed Unionists. Because the term had been used prior to the war to refer to the entire United States (a "union of states"), using it to apply to the non-secessionist side carried a connotation of legitimacy as the continuation of the pre-existing political entity.
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