Kentucky's Civil War Heritage Was Shaped By Race And Slavery. In Many Respects, None Of That Seemed To Have Changed Much, Except For Legal Slavery.

Reflections on how the Civil War shaped Kentucky

One hundred fifty years ago today, on his way to Washington to become president of a nation that was tearing itself apart, Abraham Lincoln was on an overnight stop in Cincinnati.

He brought with him a speech he wanted to give in his native state, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River — an address defending his silence, during four crucial months as president-elect, on policies regarding the secession of Southern states over the issue of slavery, a thriving institution in Kentucky.

“It has been greatly pressed upon me by many patriotic citizens, Kentuckians among others, that I could in my position, by a word, restore peace to the country. But what word? I have many words already before the public; and my position was given me on the faith of those words.” Kentuckians, he wrote, would expect the same of the three defeated candidates, all of whom got many more votes in his native state than he did. “What Kentuckian, worthy of his birthplace, would not do this?” he asked. “Gentlemen, I, too, am a Kentuckian.”

Lincoln wrote those words but never delivered them. He surely saw Kentucky across the river, but he didn't set foot in it. We don't know exactly why; we just know that his wish became a boat not boarded, a path not taken.

This subtle sesquicentennial should also make us wonder about other paths — those taken and not taken by Lincoln's native state, for which the Civil War remains the defining, transformational experience with an impact still felt today.

For Kentuckians, Lincoln's last look at our state is the first of many sesquicentennials inside the big one, the 150th anniversary of the war that began with Confederates' attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and all but ended with Robert E. Lee's surrender on April 9, 1865.

In those four years, Kentucky remained in the Union and supplied it with twice as many troops as it gave to the Confederacy. But unlike the other slave states that did not secede, it joined the losing side after the war. There were many reasons: martial-law mistreatment by occupying Union forces, their recruitment and drafting of African-American soldiers, Lincoln's emancipation of slaves in rebel territory, lack of compensation for postwar emancipation, extension of civil rights to blacks, Kentucky Jacksonians' resistance to a stronger federal government (after emancipation, the other major impact of the war), and the state's fundamentally Southern culture.

Kentucky's late allegiance to the Lost Cause steered the state's politics, which became dominated by former Confederates, with support from many former Unionists such as Samuel Haycraft, a Lincoln friend who had urged the president-elect to visit the state. For such men, voting Democratic “was retaliation for the tight reign of martial law during the war, for the perceived injustice of Reconstruction further south, and most of all, for the violation of racial order in their own state,” historian Anne Marshall writes in her recent book, Creating a Confederate Kentucky.

The postwar Kentucky Democratic Party was like those in states to the south: largely conservative and agrarian, little interested in education, industrialization and economic development. It kept the state on a path that would leave it lagging behind most other states.

Culturally, politically and commercially, Kentucky looked southward, and it seemed satisfied with being better off than the rest of the South — an attitude that was ingrained until the other big tobacco state, North Carolina, began outpacing us in the 1950s.

Finally, a century after Lincoln had his last look at Kentucky and the state was ripped apart, it had a run of progressive governors who got us back in the game. But we had lost much ground, and most of it hasn't been made up yet.

The war left other damaging legacies. It devastated the economy and divided families, weakening the social fabric of communities and the state. So did the guerrilla warfare that morphed into feuds and lawlessness, especially in Appalachian Kentucky — a region that got little attention from the rest of the state partly because it was largely Republican, reflecting its small-farm culture that had little use for slavery.

The rapaciousness of coal barons, the reaction of the United Mine Workers and the reforms of the New Deal turned most Eastern Kentucky coalfield residents Democratic, but that may have been the biggest example of social and political change in the state before World War II. Elsewhere, Kentucky had relatively little of the industrialization and immigration that changed the culture and politics of states to the north.

Meanwhile, the racial attitudes of the state encouraged emigration by African Americans, so today Kentucky's percentage of black population is about half what it was 150 years ago. The small figure, 7 percent, means that we haven't had to confront race in the same way states to the south did, and in some ways that has left much of the state immature about racial issues.

So, as the war's anniversary arrives, here's hoping our state reflects not only on its battles and proclamations, but on its larger legacy. This is not dry and dusty history; it is a living thing, affecting the lives of modern-day Kentuckians — especially those who suffer from lack of education and economic opportunity, poor health and political neglect.

William Faulkner had the Deep South in mind when he wrote, “The past is never dead. It isn't even past.” But it sometimes seems true in a state that is Southern partly by choice.

Al Cross, former Courier-Journal political writer, is director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky. His e-mail address is al.cross@uky.edu. His views are his own, not those of the University of Kentucky.