<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> <P> Besides organized military conflict, the border states were beset by guerrilla warfare . In such a bitterly divided state, neighbors frequently used the excuse of war to settle personal grudges and took up arms against neighbors . </P>

What was the north's flag during the civil war