<P> Caring for war orphans was an important function for local organizations as well as state and local government . A typical state was Iowa, where the private "Iowa Soldiers Orphans Home Association" operated with funding from the legislature and public donations . It set up orphanages in Davenport, Glenwood and Cedar Falls . The state government funded pensions for the widows and children of soldiers . Orphan schools like the Pennsylvania Soldiers' Orphan School, also spoke of the broader public welfare experiment that began as part of the aftermath of the Civil War . These orphan schools were created to provide housing, care, and education for orphans of Civil War soldiers . They became a matter of state pride, with orphans were paraded around at rallies to display the power of a patriotic schooling . </P> <P> All the northern states had free public school systems before the war but not the border states . West Virginia set up its system in 1863 . Over bitter opposition it established an almost - equal education for black children, most of whom were ex-slaves . Thousands of black refugees poured into St. Louis, where the Freedmen's Relief Society, the Ladies Union Aid Society, the Western Sanitary Commission, and the American Missionary Association (AMA) set up schools for their children . </P> <P> People loyal to the U.S. federal government and opposed to secession living in the border states (where slavery was legal in 1861) were termed Unionists . Confederates 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 . East Tennessee never supported the Confederacy, and Unionists there became powerful state leaders, including governors Andrew Johnson and William G. Brownlow . Likewise, large pockets of eastern Kentucky were Unionist and helped keep the state from seceding . Western Virginia, with few slaves and some industry, was so strongly Unionist that it broke away and formed the new state of West Virginia . </P> <P> Still, nearly 120,000 Unionists from the South served in the Union Army during the Civil War and Unionist regiments were raised from every Confederate state except South Carolina . Among such units was the 1st Alabama Cavalry Regiment, which served as William Sherman's personal escort on his march to the sea . Southern Unionists were extensively used as anti-guerrilla paramilitary forces . During Reconstruction many of these Unionists became "Scalawags", a derogatory term for Southern supporters of the Republican Party . </P>

Were the yankees from the north or south