The Union's great advantages in population and industry would prove to be vital factors in the Union's victory over the Confederacy in the American Civil War.

The Union states had nearly five times the white population of the Confederate states (23 million to 5 million). In comparison to the Southern Confederacy it opposed, the Union was heavily industrialized and far more urbanized than the rural South. Union is usually used in contexts where 'United States' might be confusing, 'Federal' obscure, or ' Yankee' dated or derogatory. Since the Civil War, the term 'Northern' has been a widely used synonym for the Union side of the conflict. Southern Unionists were extensively used as anti- guerrilla forces and as occupation troops in areas of the Confederacy occupied by the Union. Still, nearly 120,000 Southern Unionists served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and every Southern state, except South Carolina, raised Unionist regiments. Confederate soldiers sometimes styled them 'Homemade Yankees.' However, Southern Unionists were not necessarily northern sympathizers and many of them – although opposing secession – supported the Confederacy once it was a fact. Also, in the public dialogue of the United States, new states are 'admitted to the Union,' and the President's annual address to Congress and to the people is referred to as the ' State of the Union Address'.ĭuring the American Civil War, those loyal to the federal government and opposed to secession living in the border states and Confederate states were termed Unionists. Because the term had been used prior to the war to refer to the entire United States (a 'union of states'), using it to apply to the non-secessionist side carried a connotation of legitimacy as the continuation of the pre-existing political entity.

The Uncivil War by Robert R. Mackey