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Article Abstracts and Supplements
The Free State of Winston
by Donald B. Dodd
With a Confederate draft imminent and Federal troops threatening an invasion of north Alabama, the leaders of Winston County called a meeting at Looney’s Tavern, near present-day Addison. More than 2,500 people from Winston and surrounding counties attended. The assembly simply announced their neutrality, but a remark made about “The Free State of Winston” spread quickly around the state, and the hill people of northwest Alabama gained a reputation as “traitors.” Author Donald Dodd, a native of Winston County, recounts the dual heritage of the northwestern county. Not only did Winston County have strong anti-secession beliefs, this area became a natural sanctuary for those whose enthusiasm for the war effort had waned. Winston County and the Unionists of Alabama remained a thorn in the side of the Confederacy throughout the war, according to Dodd. A statue of a composite soldier – half Union, half Confederate – stands in front of the Winston County Courthouse, poignantly symbolizing the war within a war and honoring Winstonians who served in both armies.
The Diary of a Union Soldier from Alabama
by John R. Phillips
In this excerpt from his autobiography, John Phillips recounts his harrowing escapes from the Confederate army and his desperate flight to Union lines. Like many of his neighbors, Phillips opposed secession and hoped to remain neutral in the Civil War before he was conscripted into the Confederate army. He escaped, hid in the woods of Winston County, and eventually joined the First Alabama Cavalry, U.S.A. He records those troubled years in his autobiography, My Life Story, published in 1923: “We had a tough old time, our food gave out, and of all the tired, worn out, hungry set you could imagine, we were that…The raggedest, bare-footedest and most hatless set you ever saw.”
Ezra Winter's Murals: Birmingham Public Library
by George Clinton Thompson
At the first opening of the Birmingham Public Library on April 11, 1927, much of the public's awe focused on the work of New York artist Ezra Winter, one of the most respected American muralists of his day. Best remembered now for his murals in New York's Radio City Music Hall, the Library of Congress and the U. S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D. C., Winter emblazoned the Birmingham, Alabama, library interior with elegant design and color. He painted fanciful characters in the Children's Room, and a series of scenes from world literature in the Reading Room. This article is beautifully illustrated with full-color photographs of the mural subjects such as John Smith and Pocahontas, Lancelot, and Sigurd and Brynhild.
Philip Henry Gosse: An Englishman in the Alabama Black Belt
by Harvey H. Jackson, III
In this engaging story, an English naturalist provides a rare and thoughtful view of plantation society in antebellum Alabama. Author Harvey Jackson writes "Alabama, (Gosse) was told, was a place where men of learning like himself were sought and prized" and with that, Philip Henry Gosse (1810-1888) set out on an adventure in Alabama, landing in Mobile, then on to King's Landing, south of Selma. He worked as a teacher of the children of several elite families, living closely with these early settlers of Alabama and "document(ing) regional distinctiveness in its early stages of development." He detailed the food they enjoyed, their topics of conversation, their humor, and social mores.
DEPARTMENTS
ART IN THE SOUTH – "Sully’s Portrait of an Alabama Beauty" by Robert O. Mellown
THE NATURE JOURNAL – Article Update: "The Cahaba Lily (Revisited)" by L. J. Davenport
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