A Divided United State

Linda S. McGinnis

Description

This book has its beginning over 30 years ago when I was in pursuit of my first master’s degree. It is shorter than I intended originally. There are two reasons for this. First, the period written about is a short span of time. There has not been a great deal written about these months in Kentucky’s history. One can find volumes of literature almost anywhere about the Civil War, of course, and there are multiple writings about Kentucky and her role in the war. But what was happening in Kentucky during the initial months immediately following the attack on Fort Sumter has been given little more than a nod by most historians. Second, I am in the early stages of learning how to write for readership. The facts shared and the points made in this book would remain unchanged had I been less concise and more verbose. This being said, should I write a second book on another topic, my wish will be for more pages to be warranted.
I remember studying Kentucky history in the fourth grade. Even at my young age, I was curious about our state’s delay in choosing a Union or Confederate side when the Civil War began. I doubt many of my classmates gave it much thought. We were fourth-graders after all. But my curious mind wondered, “Why did we wait so long?”
This question stayed with me into adulthood. When I was older and in graduate school, I read voraciously about Kentucky, our history, and our attempt at neutrality during the summer months of 1861. Only one book, E. Merton Coulter’s The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky, provided some insight into what was happening with our citizens and with our state’s political leaders during this time. Even with the help of Coulter’s insightful and well-researched work however, my question of why we attempted an untenable position was answered only partially to my satisfaction. It occurred to me that digging deeper into this topic would be something I would have to do myself to hopefully find the answers I sought.
After reading several post-period books, I then immersed myself into articles, pamphlets, newspapers, personal letters, and even a fascinating diary; all written during our five months of neutrality. Following a year of intense research, research that took me to libraries all over our state, A Divided United State: Kentucky and Neutrality in 1861 emerged.
My hope is that you find my effort worthy.
Linda S. McGinnis, October 2022

Sujets

• historical
• Histoire
• McGinnis
• Linda
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 24 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669863878
• Langue: English

Extrait

A DIVIDED UNITED STATE
 
Kentucky and Neutrality in 1861
 
 
 
 
 
 
Linda S. McGinnis
 
Copyright © 2023 by Linda S. McGinnis.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023901331
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-6385-4

Softcover
978-1-6698-6386-1

eBook
978-1-6698-6387-8

 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 01/23/2023
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
847487
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
Conclusion
Bibliography
 
 
To Mom.
You will never see this finished work but without your love and support and your willingness to become a second mom to my children for days on end so their mom could travel and do research, it could not have been started. And for your unfailing faith in me . . . thank you. I miss you every day.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I thank the wonderful people at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green who were there in the late 1980’s, years before Google was launched. They could not have been more helpful or instrumental in my research. These were the days when one had to be physically present in a physical location to do research on anything. Whatever I needed was provided, and some invaluable articles were provided I didn’t even know I needed until I saw them. It was in their Special Collections section I was first shown and allowed to read the Nazro Diary (a first-person account of conversations and events in western Kentucky during the early months of the Civil War). I’m not sure how many of these people are still alive but, whether or not they are, they deserve acknowledgement.
To Charles Bias, PhD, and Robert Sawry, PhD, at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, I owe both of you a debt of thanks. This book began as a graduate independent study which these two men guided and critiqued. Thank you, Dr. Bias, for encouraging me every step of the way and suggesting to me that this should be published. It has only taken me thirty-three years to finally do it. Thank you, Dr. Sawry, for disagreeing with my original conclusion. You were right and I was wrong. After this many years it is doubtful you even remember the student with two young children whose commute was two hours each way. But I remember you. And I feel better about my conclusion now because I finally realized what you were trying to tell me then.
INTRODUCTION
A fter Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860, an enraged and frightened South perceiving Lincoln to be an unbending abolitionist began state-by-state secession proceedings. The once dominant Democratic Party had split into northern and southern factions before the election, attributing significantly to their loss of the nation’s highest office. Despite the party’s division, however, they still controlled the majority of the seats in Congress. Thus, Lincoln came to the presidency with less than 40 percent of the popular vote, an unfriendly Congress, and states leaving the Union. 1
The Republican Party was “utterly without” a following in the South and had not tried to seek southern support for Lincoln but the president-elect still must have been surprised with the rapidity of the secession movement during the next five months. 2 Ohio journalist Donn Piatt talked with him twice during the 1860 campaign and later wrote that Lincoln “considered the movement [in the] South as a sort of political game of bluff gotten up by politicians and meant solely to frighten the North. Mr. Lincoln did not believe, could not be made to believe, that the South meant secession and war.” 3 The President readjusted his beliefs quickly into a plan of action to try to prevent the country from dividing. The South also recovered from the jolt of November and by February of 1861 the southern states had formally withdrawn from the Union. 4
While these two factions were acting in total opposition, a third element emerged — the border states. 5 Neither wholly northern nor completely southern, these states had bonds to both sides. Each would be pulled from within and without until all, eventually, were forced to cast their lot. 6 Two chose the North, four chose the South, and one—Kentucky—tried a stand of neutrality until the position was no longer prudent.
I
“U nder the auspices of Heaven and the precepts of Washington, Kentucky will be the last to give up the Union.” 7 These words, chiseled into stone, were sent to Washington, DC early in 1861 by the Kentucky state legislature. The lawmakers wanted the block of native marble to be built into the then being constructed Washington Monument. Kentuckians were sending a message to their southern and northern countrymen that this commonwealth would stand firmly for the Union.
Outwardly, this action indicated Kentucky’s loyalties clearly and seemed to leave no doubt about her course in the sectional conflict. The words were accurate; Kentucky never left the Union. The symbolic gesture of having its fate chiseled into stone, however, belied the social and emotional earthquake in the state caused by the 1860 election and the firing on Fort Sumter.
In April of 1861, battle lines and swords were being drawn throughout the country. This state, as no other, was torn county by county, family by family. Yet every action taken by the legislature and every majority vote rendered by Kentucky’s citizens in the spring and summer of 1861 was decidedly in favor of the Union. 8 But in May, the state’s governing body had said that Kentucky would not choose a side. Instead, Kentucky would remain neutral and allow no troops from either side within her borders.
The federal government was appalled, the Confederate government was sorely disappointed and some of the state’s spokesmen and many of her leading politicians were enraged and embarrassed. Neutrality pleased no one, was destined to fail, and was so short-lived that historians often discount its significance. Yet there were sound reasons behind this seemingly indecisive action by this last state to declare its Union or Confederate intention.
Kentucky occupied a relatively more important position in the country in 1860 than it does today. The state was ninth in population, fifth in livestock value, and seventh in the value of farms. Kentucky’s agriculture was diversified, supplying the nation with large quantities of tobacco, corn, wheat, hemp, and flax. Kentucky’s geographic location elevated its strategic importance because, should she side with the South, the Confederates would control a “defensible river boundary from which they could launch a drive to the Great Lakes and split the Union.” 9 The state’s location also created internal divisions.
Strong emotional and economic ties with Kentucky’s northern neighbors of Indiana and Ohio rivaled her sister state attachments to Tennessee and Virginia. Kentuckians had always used the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers as trade routes for the state’s northern and southern markets, but the coming of the railroads in the 1850s opened new and profitable markets farther north and even into the east for it and the other border states. For example, in 1849 the border region, including Kentucky, Missouri, western Virginia, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, and southern Illinois, shipped 250,000 barrels of pork and 63,000 barrels of whiskey to the east by river and rail. Only eleven years later, boosted significantly by the developing railroad network, these numbers increased to 860,000 barrels of pork and 300,000 barrels of whiskey. Wheat exportation in the same period increased by 25,000 bushels. 10 Railroads also made migration to and from Kentucky easier.
In 1860 more than 14,000 Ohio-born people were living in Kentucky and 7,000 residents were originally from Indiana. Many Kentuckians moved north as well, and it was this back and forth migration that perhaps prompted Kentucky Senator Garrett Davis, early in 1861, to remark to President Lincoln that he had “no doubt that one-fourth of the people of Indiana are either native-born Kentuckians or the sons and daughters of native-born Kentuckians.” 11 Davis was a loyal unionist and at that particular time was no doubt trying to assure the President of his state’s loyalty; but Kentucky had been formed from Virginia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, and her emotional ties to these soon-to-be Confederate states were strong.
Slavery, though not as economically productive in Kentucky as in the cotton-growing states, was one obvious and highly significant tie between Kentucky and the South. 12 By lower-south standards Kentucky was not a large slave-holding state, but slavery was an established institution and anti-slavery sentiments were not well received. 13 Even the revered Henry Clay saw that slavery was not necessary for Kentucky’s economic survival and often spoke in favor of gradual emancipation. But Clay was in no way an abolitionist, and feared the sudden freeing of all slaves as a much greater evil than slavery itself. It appears that expressions of doubt about slavery decl