MISSOURI AND KENTUCKYKentucky’s Unionism was a strategic blow
to the Confederacy, but its Unionists
became increasingly unhappy with the
Federal war effort.FORTS HENRY AND DONELSON
The Tennessee and Cumberland rivers provided
convenient lines of advance for Federal forces. On
February 6, 1862, Ulysses S. Grant led the capture
of Fort Henry and received the surrender of
Fort Donelson 104–05 ❯❯ on February 16.
These captures were the first substantial
Union military successes of the war.KENTUCKY’S DISSATISFACTION
Despite their importance to the early Union
war effort, many Kentuckians became ever
more disenchanted with the Lincoln
administration as it moved in an
increasingly anti-slavery direction. In the
1864 elec tion 236–37 ❯❯, McClellan received
61,000 civilian votes from Kentucky, compared
to 26,000 for Lincoln, the state’s native son.QUANTRILL’S RAIDS
William Quantrill was the most controversial
of the guerrilla “bushwhackers” who
operated in Missouri and Kansas during the war.
His exploits included attacks on Independence,
Missouri, and Lawrence, Kansas 224–25 ❯❯.AFTER
feeling among some Missourians
worsened matters, as German settlers
formed the bedrock of Republican
and Unionist support in St. Louis.
Lyon effectively ended Jackson’s
schemes to support secession and
chose to go on the offensive in May
1861 by capturing a secessionist
militia camp called Fort Jackson near
St. Louis. The militiamen surrendered
peacefully, but violence broke out
afterwards in the city itself, and it
quickly took on ethnic overtones.
Lyon’s measures outraged some
moderate Unionists and pushed them
into the secessionist camp. While
Lyon swiftly crushed Jackson and his
allies in the state legislature, small
groups of Confederate guerrillas, or
“bushwhackers,” would plague the
state for the rest of the war.
Lyon, who was promoted to
general in July 1861, was killed
during the Confederate victory at
the Battle of Wilson’s Creek the
following month, and meaningful
Southern defiance would be crushed at
Pea Ridge in March 1862. This made
the resistance of Confederate guerrillas
strategically insignificant, but it was
cold comfort for the civilians who had
to cope with the chaos of a fierce and
brutal civil war, triggered in part by
overly aggressive reactions by
Missouri’s Union leaders in 1861.
The Kentucky divide
Kentucky was in many ways the
quintessential border state. Birthplace of
both Lincoln and Davis, its northern
border on the Ohio River had always
been a symbolic and powerful dividing
line between the Free-Soil North and
the slaveholding South. In Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s famous Uncle Tom’s
Cabin, one character makes a daring
escape to freedom with her son across
the Ohio River in order to save him
from an unscrupulous slave-trader.
Unionist sympathies were qualified,
however. Only 1,364 Kentuckians voted
for Lincoln in the election of 1860,
while 91,000 chose the conservative
Unionists, Douglas and Bell.
The Ohio River also formed a useful
natural military boundary for the newly
formed Confederacy. If Kentucky did
not ally itself with the Confederacy,
Tennessee would be vulnerable to
Federal invasion, because both the
Tennessee and Cumberland rivers
provided avenues of invasion
into central Tennessee. Both ran north
to south in the border area, and thus
could serve as convenient supply routes
for Federal armies attempting to
penetrate the Confederate border,
as Grant did in the campaign of forts
Henry and Donelson in February 1862.
Kentucky’s Northern location tied it
economically to the Union, and many
Kentuckians lived in Northern states,
including 100,000 in Missouri, 60,000 in
Illinois, 68,000 in Indiana, 15,000
in Ohio, and 13,000 in Iowa. While
slavery played an important role in
Kentucky’s economy, as in UnionistMaryland, the state had little enthusiasm
for the “King Cotton” nationalism of the
Lower South. After all, its most famous
son, Senator Henry Clay, was the man
who saved the Union three times with
compromises in 1820, 1833, and 1850.
On an individual level, Kentuckians
would remain profoundly divided until
the end of the war. At least two-fifths
of Kentuckian soldiers fought for the
Confederacy, including four brothers
of Lincoln’s own Kentucky-born wife.Four grandsons of Lincoln’s old political
hero, Henry Clay, fought for the South,
another three for the Union. Political
compromiser Senator Crittenden saw
one son become a Union general and
another a Confederate general.Strategic state
With its people so finely divided,
Kentucky tried to remain neutral after
the attack on Fort Sumter. But this was
an inherently untenable position, and
by September 1861 it had collapsed.
The governor, Beriah Magoffin,
sympathized with the Confederacy
but was only willing to go as far as a
secret agreement that permitted its
recruiters to enter the territory.
Unionist and pro-Confederate
Kentuckians began to arm themselves
during the state’s tense period of“This means war ... One of
my officers will call for you and
conduct you out of my lines.”
CAPTAIN LYON TO GOVERNOR JACKSON, JUNE 12, 1861
neutrality. Lincoln, who knew this
region well, bided his time, initially
humoring his home state’s desire to
stay out of the war, and even allowing
the Confederacy to purchase supplies
there. In Congressional and legislative
elections that summer, Unionists scored
crushing victories, and Kentucky finally
declared itself for the Union after
Confederate forces crossed the border
from Tennessee and entered Columbus,
Kentucky, on September 3, 1861.Anti-Confederate satire
The Union blasts away at the monster of secession
in a cartoon of 1861. Demons represent secessionist
states —divided Kentucky is depicted as a creature
with two torsos just above the monster’s head.The ferocious guerrilla war in Missouri
produced the notorious James brothers
(Jesse and Frank), Confederate
“bushwhackers” from Clay County.Death of a general
Missouri’s Nathaniel Lyon was a bold and aggressive
political leader, and he conducted his final battle, at
Wilson’s Creek in August 1861, in the same manner.
He was the first Union general to be killed in combat.