[The following is in regards to self-professed “Unionists,” southerners who spoke against secession and remained loyal to the United States before, during, and after the American Civil War.]
Aughey, who had dared to cast his vote publicly against secession, was hounded. Aughey was doubly suspect because he was originally a Yankee hailing from New York, only a Mississippian by marriage. Aughey was an almost prettily handsome thirty-two-year-old, over six feet tall with a sweep of rich black hair and pronounced cheekbones, but there was nothing delicate about his moral disposition: slavery was sin, secessionists were traitors, and the newly formed Confederacy was unconstitutional. He continued to preach this message on his evangelical circuit around Choctaw and Attala counties, at peril of his life.
”It was now dangerous to utter a word in favor of the Union,” he wrote in a memoir of his experiences. “Many suspected of Union sentiments were lynched… Self constituted vigilance committees sprang up all over the country, and a reign of terror began.”
A local slave was detailed to issue a frightening summons to him. On a piece of paper was sketched a coffin, a freshly dug open grave, and a figure with hands tied behind his back with a sack over his face, ready for execution. In bold letters was written, “Such be the doom of all traitors.”
Source:
Jenkins, Sally, and John Stauffer. “Home.” The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded from the Confederacy. Anchor Books, 2010. 79. Print.
Fuck, that's hard core.