Republic of Winston

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The Republic of Winston (Winston County, Alabama) is one of several places in the former Confederate States of America where disaffection with the Confederacy during the American Civil War ran deep. In Winston County, this disaffection was particularly deep, with long-lasting political consequences—deep enough to generate legends after the war that the county had in fact seceded from the Confederacy.

Winston County is in the hilly uplands of northwestern Alabama. It is in an area almost wholly unsuited to plantation-style agriculture, and as such had never been home to any sizeable number of slaves. Many of the residents viewed the Confederacy with suspicion, seeing it as a way of maintaining the supremacy of a wealthy planter class over small freeholding farmers and merchants. Also coming into play were many of the typical highland-flatlands cultural issues.

Winston County's representative in the Alabama secession convention, schoolteacher Christopher Sheats, refused to sign Alabama's ordinance of secession and was arrested. He later became a leader of a pro-neutrality group. More broadly, many Winston County residents refused induction into either the Confederate Army or the Confederate Home Guard. This "disaffection" was not tolerated by state authorities, who quickly moved to enforce Confederate loyalty through conscription and loyalty oaths. Not surprisingly, these actions did little to enamor the county's citizens to the Confederate cause.

After the Union Army reached northern Alabama along the Tennessee River in 1862, many disaffected residents joined militia units loyal to the Union, such as the First Alabama Cavalry. The idea of independence grew out of a series of meetings at Looney's Tavern, a local establishment, in which a local wag, upon hearing the discussion of dissenting from the Confederacy, satirically suggested that they must now be residents of the "Free State of Winston". Many saw this as a favorable and realistic option, given the circumstances which confronted them.

While the area was occasionally raided by Confederate Home Guard troops and guerrillas, many of whom were little more than criminal gangs, the Confederacy was never able to establish effective control over the area during its four-year existence -- a fact shared with many other areas in the South, particularly isolated ones far removed from the seats of power, which Winston County certainly was.

After the war, Winston County became a bastion of the Republican Party, even after the Democratic Party returned to power in the "redemption" of 1874.

This history has become the basis of a small tourist industry revolving around it, including an outdoor drama based on the events of the time, and a passenger boat named the Free State Lady which plies the waters of a nearby manmade lake. A statue of a young man dressed half as a Union troop and half as Confederate called "Dual Destiny" is frequently photographed.