Creating a Confederate Kentucky

by Marshall, Anne E.

• ISBN13: 9780807834367
• ISBN10: 080783436X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-12-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

Historian E. Merton Coulter famously said that Kentucky "waited until after the war was over to secede from the Union." In this fresh study, Anne E. Marshall traces the development of a Confederate identity in Kentucky between 1865 and 1925 that belied the fact that Kentucky never left the Union and that more Kentuckians fought for the North than for the South. Following the Civil War, the people of Kentucky appeared to forget their Union loyalties, embracing the Democratic politics, racial violence, and Jim Crow laws associated with formerly Confederate states. Although, on the surface, white Confederate memory appeared to dominate the historical landscape of postwar Kentucky, Marshall's closer look reveals an active political and cultural dialogue that included white Unionists, Confederate Kentuckians, and the staters"s African Americans, who, from the last days of the war, drew on Union victory and their part in winning it to lay claim to the fruits of freedom and citizenship. Rather than focusing exclusively on postwar political and economic factors,Lost Cause, Gained Identitylooks at Kentuckians' activities--public memorial ceremonies, dedications of monuments, and veterans organizations' events--over the longer term, by which they commemorated the Civil War and fixed the state's remembrance of it for sixty years following the conflict. Historian E. Merton Coulter famously said that Kentucky "waited until after the war was over to secede from the Union." In this fresh study, Anne E. Marshall traces the development of a Confederate identity in Kentucky between 1865 and 1925 that belied the fact that Kentucky never left the Union and that more Kentuckians fought for the North than for the South. Following the Civil War, the people of Kentucky appeared to forget their Union loyalties, embracing the Democratic politics, racial violence, and Jim Crow laws associated with formerly Confederate states. Although, on the surface, white Confederate memory appeared to dominate the historical landscape of postwar Kentucky, Marshall's closer look reveals an active political and cultural dialogue that included white Unionists, Confederate Kentuckians, and the staters"s African Americans, who, from the last days of the war, drew on Union victory and their part in winning it to lay claim to the fruits of freedom and citizenship. Rather than focusing exclusively on postwar political and economic factors,Lost Cause, Gained Identitylooks at Kentuckians' activities--public memorial ceremonies, dedications of monuments, and veterans organizations' events--over the longer term, by which they commemorated the Civil War and fixed the state's remembrance of it for sixty years following the conflict.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
A Marked Change in the Sentiments of the People: Slavery, Civil War, and Emancipation in Kentucky, 1792-1865	p. 9
The Rebel Spirit in Kentucky: The Politics of Readjustment, 1865-1877	p. 32
Wicked and Lawless Men: Violence and Confederate Identity, 1865-1885	p. 55
What Shall be the Moral to Young Kentuckians?: Civil War Memorial Activity in the Commonwealth, 1865-1895	p. 81
Two Kentuckys: Civil War Identity in Appalachian Kentucky, 1865-1915	p. 111
A Place Full of Colored People, Pretty Girls, and Polite Men: Literature, Confederate Identity, and Kentucky's Reputation, 1890-1915	p. 133
A Manifest Aversion to the Union Cause: War Memory in Kentucky, 1895-1935	p. 155
Afterword	p. 183
Notes	p. 189
Bibliography	p. 209
Index	p. 225
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