I apologize if I'm stepping on your toes with the subject change here, but since you are interested in Civil War history I thought you might appreciate this. My state, Montana, is another place you wouldn't expect to find much Civil War/Reconstruction history but there are a few interesting connections I know of:
1. Draft evaders often made their way to Montana where they were beyond the reach of the law.
2. Some Union commanders also allowed defeated Confederate units amnesty if they agreed to go to Montana (beyond the war).
3. The war coincided with the Montana gold rush, and the three-way political struggle among Northern Democrats, Southern Democrats, and Republicans initially related to the question whether gold would be sold in the North or the South.
4. Bannack (SW of Butte) and Virginia City (SE of Butte) were the first major gold finds, in 1863. Virginia City was originally named "Verina (sic)" after Confederate first lady Varina Davis, but the name was changed by a "Yankee" judge.
5. Bannack was initially dominated by Northern Democrats and Virginia City by Southern Democrats; the elected sheriff of Bannack, Henry Plummer, was accused of organizing a bandit gang, the Innocents, that robbed Virginia City stagecoaches and killed an estimated 105 people. The Southern Democrats of Virginia City, including John Bozeman for whom Bozeman is named, organized a Vigilance Committee that lynched roughly 30 individuals, including Plummer and political allies, petty criminals, and Chicanos.
6. Montana Territory was separated from Idaho Territory in 1864 and Hezekiah Hosmer was appointed chief justice by Republican president Lincoln. Hosmer offered amnesty to the vigilantes but put an end to the lynchings.
7. Last Chance Gulch, which became Helena, was the site of a major gold find in 1864 by the "4 Georgians" (only 1 of whom was from Georgia), Southern Democrats.
8. Confederate Gulch (NE. of Helena) was founded in 1864 by Confederate parolees. It did not produce much gold during the war, but struck it rich in 1866 and for a short time became the largest community in Montana Territory. (It was later passed by Bannack, which in the 1870s was the largest community between Minneapolis and San Francisco.)
9. Unionville, S. of Helena, was also founded in 1864 by gold miners with northern sympathies.
10. Thomas Francis Meagher, a Union veteran of campaigns including 1st Bull Run, the Peninsula Campaign, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, and a registered Democrat, was appointed territorial governor by President Johnson in 1865. His attempts to enforce the decisions of the unpopular Republican-led judiciary led to a backlash in which 15 people, mostly Irish-Americans like Meagher (also a veteran of the Young Ireland rebellion against British rule), were lynched near Helena by the Virginia City vigilantes over the next 5 years. Meanwhile a Black Republican was lynched by an Irish-American Northern Democrat in 1867, following a disputed election.
11. In 1872, the Democratic legislature passed a law requiring racial segregation in schools; it was struck down by the Republican-dominated state Supreme Court in 1883.
12. In 1873, with the Democratic Party still deeply divided between northern and southern wings and discredited by Ku Kluxery, a Black Republican, E.T. Johnson, was elected mayor of Helena. His home and barbershop were burned down by vigilantes in 1874.
13. Several of the Indian War fighters (fighting the Sioux and Cheyenne) in Montana were Civil War veterans, including Generals George Crook (Northern Virginia Campaign, Antietam, Chickamauga), George Custer (1st Bull Run, Peninsula Campaign, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Battle of the Wilderness), and O. O. Howard (1st Bull Run, Seven Pines, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and campaigns for Chattanooga, Atlanta, Savanah, and Carolinas; also director of the Freedman's Bureau). Many of the units in Montana, especially those guarding forts, were (except for their white commanders) all-Black and mostly from the South.
14. The United Daughters of the Confederacy erected a monument in Helena to the (nonexistent) Confederate soldiers in 1916, following the screening of the pro-Klan film Birth of a Nation; it was removed by the City Commission following a protest by the state legislature's Native American caucus in 2017.
15. The Vigilante Day parade, an annual tradition glorifying the Vigilantes, began in 1924 and continues to this day in Helena.
