Winston County's Dual Destiny

The Civil War soldier standing in front of the Winston County courthouse here in Double Springs is unlike any other. Look closely and you will see that one half wears Union blue and the other half wears Confederate gray. This is the Dual Destiny monument, and it tells the truth about these hills.

The land here was too steep and rocky for plantations, so few people owned slaves and few wanted to fight a rich man's war. In eighteen sixty-one, residents gathered at Looney's Tavern and demanded that the Free State of Winston be left out of the conflict. The county is said to have sent more men to the Union army than to the Confederate, and families were sometimes split, brothers on opposite sides.

The sculptor captured all of it in one divided figure, dedicated in nineteen eighty-seven.