An interesting paper I stumbled upon giving an overview of "Southern Unionism", or Southerners who openly defied the Confederacy, fighting a guerilla war during the Civil War against an "Oppressive and illegitimate" government.

Southern Unionism

It's in pdf format and is 14 pages, but a good read.

Some excerpts:

quote:
In 1863, as battles raged on distant fields, a newspaper editor in the central Georgia town of Milledgeville was more concerned about the war at home. In an essay discussing the many ways in which Southerners were working against the Confederacy, the editor wrote: “We are fighting each other harder than we ever fought the enemy.” Samuel Knight agreed. After touring southwest Georgia in the late fall and winter of 1863-64, he wrote to Governor Joe Brown of “strong Union feeling” in that part of the state. Knight concluded that Southerners were “as bitterly divided against each other as the Southern and Northern people ever has been.”[1

quote:
From its beginnings the Confederacy suffered from a rising tide of intense domestic hostility, not only among Southern blacks but increasingly among Southern whites. Ironically, it was a hostility brought on largely by those most responsible for the Confederacy’s creation. Planters excused themselves from the draft in various ways, then grew far too much cotton and tobacco, and not nearly enough food. Soldiers went hungry, as did their families back home. Women defied Confederate authorities by staging food riots from Richmond, Virginia, to Galveston, Texas. Soldiers deserted by the tens of thousands, and draft evasion became commonplace. By 1864, the draft law was practically impossible to enforce and two-thirds of the Confederate army was absent with or without leave. Many deserters and draft dodgers formed armed bands that controlled vast areas of the Southern countryside.

quote:
Wartime disaffection among Southerners had solid roots in the early secession crisis. Most white Southerners, three-fourths of whom owned no slaves, made it clear in the winter 1860-61 elections for state convention delegates that they opposed immediate secession. Nevertheless, state conventions across the South, all of them dominated by slaveholders, ultimately ignored majority will and took their states out of the Union.

quote:
A staunch South Carolina secessionist admitted the same. “But,” he asked, “whoever waited for the common people when a great move was to be made—we must make the move and force them to follow.”

quote:
In the spring of 1862, a southwest Georgia man wrote to Governor Joe Brown about planters growing too much cotton, begging him to “stop those internal enemies of the country, for they will whip us sooner than all Lincolndom combined could do it.” Thousands of planters and merchants defied the Confederacy’s cotton export policy and smuggled it out by the ton. Most states passed laws limiting production of non-food items, but enforcement was lax. With prices on the rise, cotton producers and dealers were getting richer than ever. Some bragged openly that the longer the war went on the more money they made.[6]

quote:
The inevitable result of cotton and tobacco over-production was a severe food shortage that hit soldiers’ families especially hard. With their husbands and fathers at the front and impressment officers confiscating what little food they had, it was difficult for soldiers’ wives to provide for themselves and their children. Planters had promised to keep soldiers’ families fed, but they never grew enough food to meet the need. Much of what food they did produce was sold to speculators, who hoarded it or priced it far beyond the reach of most ordinary people.

quote:
In an open letter to the Savannah Morning News, one enraged Georgian was sure where the blame lay: “The crime is with the planters . . . as a class, they have yielded their patriotism, if they ever had any, to covetousness . . . for the sake of money, they are pursuing a course to destroy or demoralize our army—to starve out the other class dependent on them for provisions.”

quote:
Desertion became so serious by the summer of 1863 that Jefferson Davis begged absentees to return. If only they would, he insisted, the Confederacy could match Union armies man for man. But they did not return.

quote:
Others joined with draft dodgers and other anti-Confederates to form guerrilla bands, often called “tory” or “layout” gangs. They attacked government supply trains, burned bridges, raided local plantations, and harassed impressment agents and conscript officers.

There is so much more.

the general feeling among the non-slaveholding whites was "It's the Rich man's war, but the poor man's fight."

For all those who proclaim that the South should have continued the war through guerilla warfare, they were already dealing with guerilla warfare...from their own citizens.