NY Times Disunion Blog: Fall of the House of Underwood

The Fall of the House of Underwood is an excellent story from one of the blogs I try to read frequently about one specific example of the mixed sentiments (Union or Confederate) that existed among people in Kentucky (even slaveholders) and some f the reactions to those feelings.

Many Kentucky slaveholders remained loyal to the Union when the war started, feeling that keeping the Union together would be the best way to protect slavery, while rebellion would most likely lead to the end of the institution. As I've mentioned before, Creating a Confederate Kentucky by Anne Marshall does an excellent job of explaining this.

Unfortunately, this incident in early 1862 destroyed the Underwood estate before the Emancipation Proclamation and the use of African-American soldiers became issues for those slaveholders who remained loyal. Some of these started questioning or changing their loyalties because of these issues, thinking the Federal Government had betrayed them. How would the Underwoods, with their apparent strong support of the Union, have reacted to these issues?

I also find it notable that both Confederate and Union soldiers caused much destruction in the area. It was not just one side that behaved more badly than the other, though apparently the actions by men on the Union side did more harm than good to the Union cause.

Here is a map of Kentucky showing the location of Bowling Green.

A Trip to "Dixie"

From the Covington Journal of July 20, 1861. This paper made no secret that its sympathies lie with the South, and this article, listed as "correspondence of the Journal" is no different, but in the second paragraph it does mention Union supporters favoring staying in the Union while their property was protected. In Anne Marshall's Creating a Confederate Kentucky, the author pointed out that many Kentuckians had similar feelings and when Abraham Lincoln released the Emancipation Proclamation (referring to a specific kind of property, though it did not take affect in Kentucky), some Kentuckians felt betrayed and that's when the transformation of Kentucky's image into a Southern state began. In that regard, the author of this article does make an important observation.

We took the cars at Covington, thinking to pass through the interior of the State, and see how things were politically, agriculturally, &c. At almost every station our numbers were increased by way passengers, including many young men whose sympathies and feelings are with the Southern people and their cause, and hence were leaving home and friends to war for what they consider a just cause.

On our trip through the State we met with many Union men, and many more who were for Southern rights.  The Union men expressed themselves for the Union as long as their property can be protected, and as long as Kentucky maintains the position she now occupies; but when these are gone and they are compelled to decide either for the North or the South, they are almost unanimously in favor of our State taking part with her sister States of the South.

At Louisville we were met by hundreds of men who received us with open arms, and extended to us the hospitality of their houses. At 12 A.M. we took the cars, and the train moved off amid loud and prolonged cheering, with as manly and clever a set of Kentuckians as one could wish to see. Not much sleeping was done that night, but instead long yarns were spun and sweet songs sung.


The next morning when the smiling orb of day had dissolved the darkness, we looked out upon green fields and flourishing crops of corn, while shocks of smaller grain were standing thick upon the ground. In all that country, crops are said to be as fine as they have ever been known.


At Russellville we were greeted with a warm welcome, the ladies participating and presenting the "boys" with Confederate flags or bouquets.


At Haydensville we changed cars, it being the nearest place to the State line, and the rolling stock of the road not being permitted to go beyond the line for fear it might be held by the Tennesseans as contraband. Here the depot is filled with contraband goods - whisky (sic), pork, boxes, bales, &c., seized by a U.S. officer placed at this point for that purpose. 


A ride of five miles beyond the State line brought us to "Camp Boone." As we made our way from the cars we were greeted by the smiling faces and cordial welcomes of quite a number of our friends. The camp is situated about one mile from the railroad, in a beautiful grove, having a gradual slope, and extending to a cool and nicely shaded creek. 


After exchanging greetings, we were conducted to our quarters and requested to make our toilet for dinner (a toilet in camp without soap, water, comb or looking-glass was easily made.) The dinner was prepared by Messrs. Campbell and Herbst and to your humble servant it was quite palatable. Bill of Fare - Boiled beans, boiled pork, fried pork, potatoes, onions &c. We congratulated our friends for the proficiency they had attained in the culinary art, in so short a time.


After dinner we took a stroll around the camp. The grounds are of sufficient capacity to accommodate from five to seven thousand men. The camp seemed like a village, with its many tents and wide streets crossing each other at right angles. In front of the quarters of each company there is sufficient space for the forming of the company or for squad drill. The tents are all new and white, the straw sweet and fresh, the blankets clean and large, and provisions bountifully supplied. The boys all have the impress of health upon them, and say they would not exchange their present mode of life for any they have ever indulged in.

Book Review: My Old Confederate Home

 

My Old Confederate Home: A Respectable Place for Civil War Veterans

Rusty Williams

copyright 2010

The University Press of Kentucky

After having read Anne Marshall's Creating a Confederate Kentucky (see my review here), I thought perhaps that Rusty William's book would make for a nice follow-up. That intuition proved to be correct, as I really enjoyed My Old Confederate Home.

In this book, Williams employs a very readable, free-flowing style to tell the tale of a property in Pewee Valley, Kentucky that served as a home for former Confederate veterans for over 30 years. 

William picks a pair of "characters" to build each chapter around, discussing how those two individuals knew each other or what other similarity they held. This is an effective tool and provides consistency throughout the book.

This book is easy to read, full of enjoyable writing and with a good flow.

Williams shows how the seeds for such a house were planted in post-Civil War Confederate groups that sprung up throughout the south and in Kentucky. 

He also discusses many of the people who played major roles in the establishment of this home, the maintenance and administration of it, as well as how state-wide Confederate groups such as the United Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy contributed and/or tried to contribute to the house.

The role women played - and tried to play - is a very interesting "story within a story" as women as individuals and as members of groups showed a keen interest in the upkeep of this institution.

Williams describes the changing roles of Kentucky state politics in the house, from its beginning to its end as the number of residents inevitably declined. The final chapter, with mentions of the numbers of inmates at the house at various time frames does a great job of serving almost as a "countdown" to the home's final days.

The book does concentrate specifically on the Confederate Home and events surrounding it, but the nature of this story does describe some of the same aspects of Civil War memory in Kentucky as does Marshall's book. Williams' piece adds to the study of just how far the image of Kentucky as a Confederate state spread in the late 1800s and early 1900s and the influence former Confederates and Confederate supporters had throughout the state. Marshall spends more time explaining how this happened, but this books provides a good specific example of the effects of that image. Reading these books back-to-back proved to be a terrific idea and one I certainly suggest other readers to consider.

My Old Confederate Home is a very fine book dealing specifically with the Confederate Veteran's Home in Pewee Valley, Kentucky and is a nice addition to the study of Kentucky's image as a Confederate state. 

I gladly recommend this book

Book Review: Creating a Confederate Kentucky, by Anne Marshall

Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State

author: Anne Marshall

copyright 2010

University of North Carolina Press

This may be one of the tougher book reviews I have ever attempted, simply because I do not want it to come across as hagiography, yet I enjoyed it and learned so much from it, I am afraid that is what this review may appear to be. With that out of the way, here I go.

"Image is everything" became a popular marketing slogan in the early 1990's and has remained popular.  It is often used to ridicule people or products that seem to rely on looks or packaging rather than talent or production, and is generally not intended to be complimentary, but for this review I use it to mean exactly what it says, with no disrespect intended.

In Anne Marshall's book, Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State, "image is everything" aptly describes Kentucky's ties to the Confederacy in the post-war years. Marshall shows  how Kentucky's identity as a "Confederate" state blossomed, starting soon after the end of the Civil War (being planted during the war itself) and persisted for decades after the war ended.

She begins by stating in the introduction: "it is important to understand that Kentucky was, before, during and after the Civil War, a southern state." (page 4). I have seen other views on that subject, usually regarding modern-day Kentucky,  but that is the position she takes for this book and it is difficult to argue against her claim, given the evidence that follows throughout the book.

In the first chapter, she discusses the debate in the state about how to proceed once the war started, and shows that emancipation - followed by the enlistment of African-Americans into the Union army - left many Kentuckians feeling upset, even betrayed.  They had supported the Union to keep the country whole, and expected the government to protect them and their property in return.

Additionally, this chapter points out that some Union policies were very harsh, and Marshall even used the term "police state" to describe it; this type of environment clearly did not endear people to the government.

A third intriguing point from this chapter is that the people who supported the Union cause often belonged to the older generation, while the younger citizens often supported the Confederates.  This concept is very logical regarding the long-term implications of Kentucky's image, as the older generation would naturally start losing positions of influence and passing away and the next generation would assumed these leadership roles. I wish there were statistics or a demographic study to show how true this thought really was.

The second chapter looks into Kentucky politics in the years immediately after the war, showing how the conservative Democratic party quickly gained control. Much of the control of this party fell into the hands of former Confederates, but many Union men, upset by emancipation and the arming of African-Americans, also joined this party. Keeping white control of the state was an important element of this political atmosphere, appealing to both former Confederates and former Union men.The lack of Reconstruction policies being forced upon the state benefited this conservative element also.

Chapter three contains a terrific discussion of the lawlessness that was common throughout Kentucky in the postwar years. Much of the violence was against African-Americans, including lynchings, as well as against those who tried to hire the former slaves and other free African-Americans or who otherwise publicly supported Republican positions.  Like the political situation, this appeared to outsiders to be very similar to life in the deep south in prewar years, adding another block in the creation of a Confederate image for Kentucky.

In chapter four, Marshall discusses "memorial activity" in the state from the end of the war through 1895. This chapter shows how Confederate supporters and groups were more active, aggressive and successful in portraying and sharing their memories of the war than were their Union counterparts. She also describes the valuable role women and woman's groups played in shaping post-war memory and perception, another fascinating point.

African-Americans attempted to participate in such memorial experiences also. In 1883, a large convention of African-Americans met in Louisville, with Frederick Douglass serving as chairman and making an impassioned plea on behalf of his people. Reaction was quite mixed, with some moderates trying to show the conference in positive terms, while a more conservative element was not so kind.

Chapter 5 explores the Appalachian region of Kentucky and the images that developed around it. The chapter describes the concept of "two Kentuckies" - Appalachia and everywhere else - that formed during the postwar years and how popular literature and public speakers contributed to the mountainous region's image of being a stronghold of Union support.This image was not totally true, and Marshall also demonstrates that people in the rest of Kentucky used the violence present in the mountains to take attention away from the lawlessness in the rest of the state.

The next chapter is entitled "Literature, Confederate Identity and Kentucky's Reputation, 1890-1915" and shows how many popular writers used Kentucky as the location of their stories.  Authors like Annie Fellows Johnston and others authored popular books with Confederate themes and Kentucky settings. This chapter may be where the "image is everything" theme is most obvious, as these literary works, despite being fictional, still affected how people around the country viewed Kentucky and its people.

The final chapter of the book, chapter 7,  returns to a discussion of the issues of monuments and physical representations of the memories of the war, this time focusing on the period form 1895 to 1935. By this time a spirit of reconciliation had become much more widespread than immediately after the war, yet it was still the Confederate supporters who took the lead in erecting monuments honoring their perceptions and memories, sometimes with the support of Union veterans. The 1895 GAR encampment, held not far from a large Confederate monument, and with former Confederates being present throughout the city, serves as one example.

Still, race was a huge concern, and pages 170 and 171 introduce the "Uncle Tom's Cabin Law" which the state legislature passed to stop the showing of a version of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, when members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy protested it as being a mistreatment of Kentucky's past, and, especially, of their memories of slavery.

That was just one way in which Kentucky state government contributed to the development of the Southern or Confederate image of the state. Marshall then offers other examples of such support, including ways the state helped finance some Confederate memorials.

The Afterword section shows that much of this Confederate identity started to weaken as time passed and that as the twenty-first century began different voices about the Civil War started to be more widespread and noticeable.  The celebration over the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth and other new trails, signs and markers are signs that Kentucky's Unionist heritage may be gaining more attention than in the past.



I cannot recommend this book enough. For anyone interested in Kentucky's history or reputation, or of the study and remembrance of the Civil War, it simply is a must read. I do not know how else to describe it.

It is also informative and enjoyable enough to benefit anyone interested in the Civil War. It is well-written, readable, includes end-notes and a long bibliography, and is full of information and perspectives about its subject. Anne Marshall clearly researched this material and analyzed her findings in a very in-depth fashion.

Creating a Confederate Kentucky is easily among the best books I have ever read and is nothing short of being absolutely remarkable. 

Kentucky's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" Law

While reading Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State, by Anne Marshall, I have read a lot of fascinating information and am really enjoying this book. I will post a full review soon, but something I read today, in chapter 7, really struck me as being an especially sad episode in my state's history and I felt the need to comment on it.

The controversy was in the early 1900s in Lexington, where an opera house in Lexington showed a play called Uncle Tom's Cabin, a traveling play based on Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous novel.

A local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) decided they were offended by this book, which they claimed offered a false portrayal of slavery, and did not show the true nature of the institution and the happiness it created for both slave and master. They believed that seeing props of slaves in chains would have a negative effect both on their children, whose ancestors were supposedly being insulted by this mis-portrayal of slavery and on young blacks who would get a false impression of how their parents and relatives thought of their bondage (and thus might become angry and make the UDC's perception of racial harmony in Lexington disappear.)

The UDC started a public protest, trying to pressure the opera-house owner to stop hosting this play, and other chapters of this group, from other cities in Kentucky and from other states, became involved in it. This play, however, was very popular, playing in front of large audiences, and was quite profitable for this gentleman, despite the protests, and he resisted this pressure and continued to let this show take place in his building. 

After realizing their protest had failed, the UDC adopted a different tactic a couple of years later, and started pressuring legislators around the state to do that. By this time, Kentucky had been well-established in people's minds and memories as a Confederate state, and many former Confederates and Confederate supporters held key offices, so the UDC had a significant amount of influence in powerful places.

In 1906, the state passed a law, stating in part that it would be illegal for any theater or similar building to present a show that "is based upon antagonism alleged formerly to exist, between master and slave, or that excites race prejudice." (See page 170 of this book.)

Basically, the UDC, the supporters of the Confederacy, and those who remembered slavery and the antebellum times as being all happy and gay, made it illegal to have any show that portrayed slavery negatively or that may be seen as insulting their ancestors and lifestyles. Thus, even though slavery had been banned for about 40 years, its supporters were able to have the 1st Amendment abolished within Kentucky, at least on this one subject dear to their hearts and memories.

As the book shows, however, any show that portrayed blacks negatively or based on stereotypes the UDC favored, were permitted to be performed even with this law in effect. (For instance, years later the controversial film Birth of a Nation was allowed to be shown in a theater, apparently largely due to it being a new medium that did not truly exist when the law was passed.)

Frankly, though I'm upset I did not know this had happened, I find it quite embarrassing that my state, in which many of my ancestors were living at this time, could pass such a terrible law. It is also interesting, perhaps fascinating, that slavery created so much controversy four decades after its demise that its defenders had to resort to violating the US Constitution in order to pursue their pro-southern and pro-Confederate agenda, as they pretended that  Kentucky had been a happy-go-lucky, unanimously southern-supporting commonwealth of people, where masters happily ruled and slaves gladly served,  although such a place never existed except in their minds, literature and dreams. (Sorry for the run-on sentence, but it's the best way I can think to express how the UDC was trying to imagine Kentucky's past.)

I've always realized that Kentucky has always had troubles regarding racial equality and has never been progressive at all in this area, but it still surprises me to see such an action taken by the state itself.  I guess it's not much different than other laws requiring segregation, but its so clearly a violation of the most basic American right that it stuns me that this law passed and went into effect.

Previous controversies like the gag order in Congress in the 1830s, or whether the US Postal Service would deliver copies of Stowe's book or other novels are somewhat understandable in that they occurred while slavery existed, but to see such censorship decades after slavery's demise really caught me off guard and, frankly, is a bit upsetting.I do not know if it is totally appropriate for me to admit to such an emotional reaction to this, but this revelation really disgusts me.

I am also surprised that I had not heard of that law before and that a quick google search shows no results for this law, though the novel itself is a popular topic. Even my copy of the The Kentucky Encyclopedia fails to include an entry about this statute.

If anybody knows of more information about this law or how long it lasted, please let me know about it. Marshall's book only mentions it on pages 170 and 171. I will try to find the source listed in her notes section as a starting place for this search.

Pardons for people who helped slaves escape in KY?

The article I am linking here is from May of 2010, and I don't know how I missed it the first time, but I find it interesting and a good idea.

The timing is actually not bad for me, as I'm currently reading Creating a Confederate Kentucky, a very fine book by Anne Marshall, and this article mentions how Kentucky's role in the Civil War was "ambivalent," a description much more understandable when considered alongside Marshall's book. Also the concept of offering pardons for this type of crime, yet no  descendants of those convicted of these offenses offers an interesting perspective on how the war and slavery are remembered in current times.

This article does not mention the names of all 44 who were to be pardoned, and I have not yet found out if the pardons have yet occurred, but I will look into it more and see what I can find.(One quick question: did the people undertaking this project ever list all of the names or publicize them somehow? If not, then it is no wonder at all that no descendants have expressed interest in this work.)

Also, I do wonder if it is accurate for the writer of the article's headline to use the word "abolitionists." I tend to think of that word as being for those who wanted slavery eliminated, but does it also count for those who simply helped (or tried to help) slaves escape? Is it safe to assume that these people (I've seen them called "operators" on the Underground Railroad) favored the abolition of slavery? Is helping a slave escape the same as wanting the entire institution prohibited? I'll have to think about that some more while wondering if I'm being too finicky in asking these questions.

I also recommend reading the New York Times' Editorial on this story. The article linked above includes a link to it as well, but I am also linking it in case that makes it easier to find. It is worth the click.

(And again, it is interesting to find this commentary in the New York Times, a newspaper frequently referred to in Marshall's book for its observations and thoughts about Kentucky in the late 1800s. The use of the phrase "Modern Kentucky" in the editorial quickly caught my attention, presumably because I'm reading the book about Kentucky of the past.)