Southerners who supported the Union?

While doing some research this morning I asked someone for some help since they were more familiar with a specific area and its history. The result was eye opening to say the least. I wanted my main character to have come from the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia after the Civil War. Because of the time frame involved he needed to be the son of an anti-secessionist Southerner. Thinking that they would have been a very small group it was amazing to find that there were a whole lot of them. As I found out from this site Southern Unionists Chronicles. The whole story got started with two main ideas, a Southern Gentleman sitting in his study reading about the travels of Lewis and Clark, and being taken by the descriptions of the horses of the Nez Perce, and the idea of breeding such horses at extremely high altitudes to increase their stamina. Since the breed was almost destroyed after Chief Joseph's famous attempt to get many of his people into Canada in 1877 it was a matter of getting the details worked out to cover the time gap. Which is why it is the son who is the main character and who came west after his father lost everything to both the Confederacy and later to the Carpetbaggers who came south after the war. Now if I can just get the rest of the story to come together it could be very interesting to write.