Books about Kentucky Civil War Politics and Reputation

Over the years, I have read a few books on Kentucky in the Civil War and found that several of them focused on politics and social attitudes as much, or more than, pure military topics. This topic - Kentucky politics and the state’s Confederate image - has become a strong interest for me as I find it to be a complicated, confusing, and, yet, fascinating subject. It currently is one of my main interests in the Civil War.

I do not have any specific family or genealogical connections to the topic, but I had many ancestors in the state during this era, and I do wonder what their life was like or what their beliefs were. At least one of my Kentucky ancestors owned slaves but had a son and multiple grandsons fight for the Union. Did this family’s attitude shift like those of many other Kentuckians as the war progressed and Emancipation and the enlistment of African-American soldiers became realities? Did any of my other ancestors change views during this time? Questions like that help guide me in the direction of such studies. 

I figured I would compile this list in a post and perhaps soon on a separate page. This will help remind me of these books in case I want to look something up and might help others find some interesting reading as I truly enjoyed each of these works. This list is in no particular order, other than how I remembered or thought of them when compiling this post.

Pre-War: 

Kentucky Rising: Democracy, Slavery, and Culture From the Early Republic to the Civil War by James Ramage and Andrea Watkins. (I consider it to be a good “prequel” to the books listed below and wish I had read it before the others.)

War and Post-War:

Kentucky Rebel Town: The Civil War Battles of Cynthiana & Harrison County by William Penn

For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War by Patrick Lewis 

Wild Wolf: The Great Civil War Rivalry by Ronald Wolford Blair

Kentucky Confederates: Secession, Civil War and the Jackson Purchase by Berry Craig 

How Kentucky Became Southern: A Tale of Outlaws, Horse Thieves, Gamblers, and Breeders by Mary Jean Wall

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

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

Lincoln’s Forgotten Ally: Judge Advocate Joseph Holt of Kentucky by Elizabeth D. Leonard 

(Kentucky politics is not a main focus of Lincoln’s Forgotten Ally, but it does touch on the topic and Holt’s life story serve as a wonderful example of how this state’s mixed political identity, especially late in and after the war, affected individual lives and families. How many other books are like that - not primarily concentrating on the political climate of the state, but nonetheless discussing it in terms of how it relates to their main subjects?)

The links are all to my reviews, except for Kentucky Rising. I wrote a long review of it, but accidentally hit the delete button and lost it all and was too frustrated to redo it, so that link is simply to the book’s amazon.com page.

I do realize there are likely many books I have not read or even heard of on this subject, so I will appreciate any suggestions in the future.

Good for her (humor)

With my posting being a bit less frequent recently, I thought this short bit of humor was worth sharing. It is from the Covington Journal of June 21, 1862.

Good for her
Robert Ingalls, of Portland, Me., has gained a divorce from his wife for the trifling reason that she will not cook for him, and threatened his life many times if he voted the Republican ticket. Her pleasant way of stating the case was, was that she would rather sleep with a rattlesnake than with a Black Republican.

New Book on Politics in Kentucky and Missouri

Hat Tip to the fine Confederate Book Review blog for sharing this information.

Here is a direct link to an entry about a new book Rebels on the Border  by Aaron Astor. The description certainly catches my attention as an interesting new perspective on the subject. 

It sounds like it will be a nice fit with Anne Marshall's Creating a Confederate Kentucky, or at least may touch on some of the same issues and topics in the aftermath of the war and emancipation. It is certainly a book that I look forward to acquiring and reading in the future.

Party Proscription

Here is another article from the February 1, 1862 Covington Journal. This has nothing relevant to national - or perhaps even statewide - news, but it's an interesting example of how politics, political feelings and maybe even pure rumors started to play a role in how a local government conducted business and how people's lives were affected. (I must also admit that it does seem unlikely that political sentiments had never been involved in such a decision before, especially in an era where politics was a dominant topic, but allowing a relative's possible beliefs to be the reason to deny someone a job was probably new.)

In selecting teaches for the Public Schools of Covington, a few days since, the Board, for the first time in the history of its transactions allowed party feeling to control the appointments. Four lady teachers - experienced, popular and thoroughly competent - were denied a re-appointment, not because they had taken any part in politics, but because a father or brother was supposed to entertain States Rights opinions. The day is not distant when the members of the Board will be heartily ashamed of the transaction.

The Dissolution of the Republican Party, 1861

The Covington Journal  of September 21, 1861 published this piece, offering what it considered to be a positive sign of things to come.

The dissolution of the Republican party - now manifest and undeniable - is the first glimpse of sunshine that has burst upon the country since the President's War Proclamation in April last. 

The Republican party is afraid or ashamed to go before the country upon the issues it has created. It is afraid or ashamed to defend the unconstitutional acts of President Lincoln; the enormous expenditures of the Executive, or the corruption and imbecility of high officials. This is a good sign. There is yet ground for hope.

Did the antebellum American political system truly fail?

After some of the reading I have done recently, it seems like the easy opinion for me to have is that the American political system failed in the mid-nineteenth century, and that failure is what led to Civil War. After all, war is generally accepted to be a final option, a worst-case scenario, a last resort. This was the thought that inspired one of my previous posts, which ended up debating if the coming of the war was a good or bad thing.

A funny thing happened on the way to this conclusion, however. On a message board on which I’ve started posting, another poster suggested a different way to look at this idea and I admit his thought intrigues me. He claims that the political system of compromise did work for several decades, but eventually reached the point where compromise was no longer possible, making this system no longer capable of maintaining peace. The basic concept is sort of “all good things must come to an end” and that would include the antebellum way of playing politics. The system worked well for a long period of tiem, but as conditions throughout the country changed, the system as it worked could not keep up to that change, and with so much strong disagreement and controversy over the relationship of the government and slavery, compromise was no longer an option. Without this key aspect being possible, the system was now outdated and unsuited for the task at hand. (His point was also that the new political process that replaced the old one was war – i.e. that war itself is a political process, another intriguing concept.)

Whether or not this is the correct philosophy is not something I can definitely declare yet, but I do find it to be an interesting viewpoint and one that I must ponder some more as I read more about the coming of the war in the future. Just how did the American political system handle the many pre-war controversies? Obviously, it did not handle them well, and could no longer adapt to meet the needs of North and South’ but was that a sign of total system failure, or simply a sign of a system or process that had outlived its usefulness? And are those two concepts really different? Is coming to the end of usefulness the same as failure? After all, if you are not useful for the occasion, then you have failed to meet it. Does it depend on how literally you take the word “failure” to mean? Perhaps it will all come back around to being a failure and this whole question of today’s entry could prove to be mere semantics, but it remains a thought and idea that I feel deserves more exploration and thought.