Capt. Brown's company was never as far north as Mobile; always operating along the Florida line, 1863-65. The reference to Barbiere's Cavalry Battalion is an old mistake by the War Department which will never be corrected.

As for Unionist sentiment, if you can identify an isolated area anywhere in a Southern state with limited access to newspapers, schools and contact with the outside world, you are sure to find Unionist sentiment there during the war, especially during 1863-65. The piney woods area along the Florida border probably produced as many or more recruits for for the Federal army as the counties in the northern third of Alabama.

If you back up a couple of years before the war, almost every man in Alabama would have proudly claimed to be a Union man. In 1859 labeling a man a secesionist was about the same as calling someone a racist today. Things changed rapidly from late 1859 to the election of Abraham Lincoln a year later. That's one of the many paradoxes of the war and events leading up to secession.