Representatives of Winston County met at Looney’s Tavern and drafted a declaration demanding that the “Free State of Winston” be left out of the Civil War. Located in an area unsuitable to plantation agriculture, most of the county’s population supported the Union and desired to remain neutral. While the county never attempted secession, it served as a gathering point for Unionists avoiding the draft and Confederate deserters, and many of its residents joined the Union army. Today, a statue of a Civil War soldier, half Union and half Confederate, stands in front of the county courthouse in Double Springs.
Ed. note: In the June “This Month in Alabama History,” it should have stated that Dr. Eugene Sledge began teaching at the University of Montevallo in 1962. Thanks to one of his students, Susanne H. Wright, UM class of ’67, for sending us this information: “Dr. Sledge was my biology professor in 1968. He was employed as an assistant professor in 1962 and attained full professorship in 1970 and held this position to retirement in 1990.”
