re: Knoxville and East Tennessee were pro Union

So was much of North Alabama and that county in Mississippi. And a bunch of south Alabama boys ran away to keep from joining or deserted and hide in the swamps of Florida. Some going as far south as Seminole country hiding with former slaves and the hunted Indians.

So many of them deserted from Coffee County Al, that when the war was ending they dreaded retribution from other whites there when they returned home. So they convinced a Union leader in Pensacola to raid and burn the county court house in Elba to destroy the records of their enlistments in the confederate army. Trying to avoid he state death penalty for desertion. The old baws in Elba fought them off and then caught up with them in INO, east of OPP, and cut the throats of several Union soldiers inc some of the deserters. Hell of a thing, a civil war. Nothing civil about it.