‘Liberty is the word with me’ the ideologies and allegiances of Civil War soldiers in Hamilton County

This case study of Hamilton County, Tennessee investigates Civil War soldiers to determine how the county was divided and why men chose to fight for the Union or the Confederacy. Using descriptive statistics and Grounded Theory Method, this study analyzes census data, military records, and personal correspondence to show that Confederate soldiers were concentrated in urban areas as wealthy businessmen or poor laborers, while Unionists dominated rural areas mostly as middleclass small farm owners. This research reveals that Confederates adopted an identity and ideology similar to other states in the Confederacy through railroad and business connections, and Unionists resented a perceived slaveholding aristocracy and thought in terms similar to the Free Soil movement, but both groups supported slavery. Unionists and Confederates in this study do not follow national enlistment trends in terms of marital status, slave ownership, and other characteristics, further highlighting the unique nature of East Tennessee in the Civil War