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

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 state'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 Identity looks 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.

"Rather than focusing exclusively on postwar political and economic factors, Creating a Confederate Kentucky looks over the longer term at Kentuckians' activities . . . by which they commemorated the Civil War and fixed the state's remembrance of it for sixty years following the conflict. . . . Will be a nice addition to your Confederate/Kentucky library shelf. . . . Excellent."

-Lone Star Book Review

"Examines all sides of Kentucky's Union-Confederate postwar dialogue. . . . [A] thoughtful, carefully researched and plausibly presented historical study, illustrated with a handful of vintage black-and-white photographs. Highly recommended."

-Midwest Book Review

"An intelligent narrative. . . . The author writes well and is easy to read. . . . A valuable and serious history of the development of Confederate memory in Kentucky and in America. . . . An excellent book for any student of Reconstruction, the process of reconciliation or the years after the Civil War."

-TOCWOC: A Civil War Blog

"An interesting, informative book. It helps clarify the experiences of many of us who grew up in Kentucky. . . . The book has set a new standard."

-The Kentucky Civil War Bugle

"Anne Marshall's Creating a Confederate Kentucky alters the entire field of Civil War memory study....[It] is a masterful work of scholarship. Its prose is lucid; its research is thorough; and its interpretative power is truly ground-breaking."

-Civil War Book Review

"Marshall has illuminated an important and understudied aspect of how a border region simultaneously departed from and reflected broader patterns of memory. Marshall's excellent study will refine our understanding of how contested and unpredictable memory was and continues to be."

-The American Historical Review

"Marshall has crafted an easily read, easily comprehensible scholarly volume. Recommended. All levels/libraries."

-Choice

"By enriching our understanding of the ways Confederate Kentuckians, white Unionists, and African Americans interpreted the state's participation in the Civil War, Marshall also sheds significant light on the processes through which competing interests claim ownership of history."

-The Journal of American History

"An excellent book: tightly argued, richly detailed, and elegantly written. It is a model of what a state study can do, showing the importance of not just race, but also place, to the story of the Lost Cause."

-Civil War Monitor

"Ideal for a range of scholars.... A pleasure to read."

-Journal of Historical Geography

"Marshall's book is a good read, and it will be of much interest to those seeking a better understanding not only of Kentucky's key role in the 1860s, but also of how all of us have remembered the war ever since."

-Blue and Gray Magazine

"Marshall's book is beautifully written and truly a pleasure to read."--

-Journal Of Southern History

"Creating a Confederate Kentucky is a welcome addition to the study of post-Civil War Kentucky.... Those who teach the history of Kentucky and of the Civil War and Reconstruction will find this book a valuable addition to their reading lists."

-Journal of the Civil War Era

In Creating a Confederate Kentucky, Anne E. Marshall traces the development of a Confederate identity in Kentucky between 1865 and 1925, belying the fact that Kentucky never left the Union. After the Civil War, the people of Kentucky appeared to forget their Union loyalties and embraced the Democratic politics, racial violence, and Jim Crow laws associated with former Confederate states. Marshall looks beyond postwar political and economic factors to the longer-term commemorations of the Civil War by which Kentuckians fixed the state's remembrance of the conflict for the following sixty years.

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.

"Examines all sides of Kentucky's Union-Confederate postwar dialogue. . . . [A] thoughtful, carefully researched and plausibly presented historical study, illustrated with a handful of vintage black-and-white photographs. Highly recommended."

-Midwest Book Review "An intelligent narrative. . . . The author writes well and is easy to read. . . . A valuable and serious history of the development of Confederate memory in Kentucky and in America. . . . An excellent book for any student of Reconstruction, the process of reconciliation or the years after the Civil War."

-TOCWOC: A Civil War Blog "Rather than focusing exclusively on postwar political and economic factors, Creating a Confederate Kentucky looks over the longer term at Kentuckians' activities . . . by which they commemorated the Civil War and fixed the state's remembrance of it for sixty years following the conflict. . . . Will be a nice addition to your Confederate/Kentucky library shelf. . . . Excellent."

-Lone Star Book Review

Anne E. Marshall is assistant professor of history at Mississippi State University.