mall slaveholder was the most enthusiastic and resolute
secessionist and supporter of the Confederacy. He was just rising in the
world, and anything which barred the upward way was denounced as
degrading and insulting. A larger class of Southerners who joined with
measured alacrity the armies of defense were the small farmers of the
hills and poorer eastern counties; but the "sand-hillers" and
"crackers," the illiterate and neglected by-products of the planter
counties, were not minded to volunteer, though under pressure they
became good soldiers because they dreaded the prospect of hordes of free
negroes in the South more than they did the guns of the North. Small
farmers and landless whites all felt the necessity of holding the slaves
in bondage, and thus a society of sharp class distinctions, openly
acknowledged by all, was moulded into a solid phalanx by the proposed
invasion of the South and the almost certain liberation of the slaves.
Moreover, the churches of the South, including the Catholics in New
Orleans, Charleston, and elsewhere, were now at the height of their
power. Planters, farmers, and the so-called "poor whites" acknowledged
the importance of religious faith and discipline; and the leaders of the
churches, from the bishops of the Episcopalians to the humble pastors of
negro congregations, freely gave their blessings to slavery and urged
their membership to heroic sacrifice for the common cause. Sermons like
that of Dr. Palmer, of New Orleans, in November, 1860, were preached all
over the South, and they were as effective in stirring the warlike
impulses of the people as the fiery addresses of the most enthusiastic
statesmen.

Although there was a unity and a cooeperation among all classes of people
from Washington City to southwestern Texas, there were certain areas in
which volunteers, even during the early days of excitement, were not
readily forthcoming. In the pine woods of the Carolinas and the Gulf
States, where nine tenths of the soil was still covered by primeval
forests, and among the high mountains of Virginia, North Carolina,
Georgia, and Tennessee, many people resisted the authority of the
Confederacy passively or actively from the beginning. From the southern
Appalachian region the Union armies drew at least 200,000 recruits, and
in certain counties of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee more
soldiers per thousand of the population volunteered for the Federal
service than could b