#nickajack

Today I learned about a part of the south that almost fought for the Union: an area of southern Tennessee/northern Alabama that would have been called Nickajack (“a corruption of the Cherokee word ᎠᏂ ᎫᏌᏘ Ᏹ (Ani-Kusati-yi) which translates to Coosa Town, but more likely references Koasati Town”).

In the period leading up to the American Civil War, there had been increasing talk of secession by the politicians representing wealthy plantation owners in the Black Belt. Hill country residents, however, were typically poor dirt-farmers and rarely slave owners. They believed such a war of secession would be "a war for the rich, fought by the poor," and they wanted to have nothing to do with it.

On January 7, 1861, Alabama Governor Andrew B. Moore called delegates from Alabama to Montgomery for a convention to debate the Articles of Secession. Delegates from South Alabama wanted the convention delegates to determine the vote, while northern delegates wanted the issue put to a popular vote. Because the apportionmentof delegates to the convention was based on total population (including slaves), the Southern delegates effectively voted "on behalf" of the African-American slaves, who made up a large proportion of the population in the region. The results of the poll determined that the balance of power would shift to the North, where the population was mostly white.