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OHIO VALLEY HISTORY A Collaboration of The Filson Historical Society, Cincinnati Museum Center, and the University of Cincinnati. VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 3 • FALL 2005 OHIO VALLEY EDITORIAL BOARD HISTORY STAFF Compton Allyn Christine L. Heyrman Joseph P. Reidy Editors Cincinnati Museum Center University of Delaware Howard University History Advisory Board Wayne K. Durrill J. Blaine Hudson Steven J. Ross Christopher Phillips Stephen Aron University of Louisville University of Southern Department of History University of California California University of Cincinnati at Los Angeles R. Douglas Hurt Purdue University Harry N. Scheiber Joan E. Cashin University of California Managing Editors James C. Klotter Ohio State University at Berkeley John B. Westerfield II Georgetown College The Filson Historical Society Andrew R. L. Cayton Steven M. Stowe Bruce Levine Miami University Indiana University Ruby Rogers University of California Cincinnati Museum Center R. David Edmunds at Santa Cruz Roger D. Tate University of Texas at Dallas Somerset Community Zane L. Miller Editorial Assistant College Cathy Collopy Ellen T. Eslinger University of Cincinnati Department of History DePaul University Joe W. Trotter, Jr. Elizabeth A. Perkins University of Cincinnati Carnegie Mellon University Craig T. Friend Centre College University of Central Florida Altina Waller James A. Ramage University of Connecticut Northern Kentucky University CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER THE FILSON HISTORICAL BOARD OF TRUSTEES SOCIETY BOARD OF DIRECTORS Chair David Bohl Steven R. Love President George H. Vincent Ronald D. Brown Kenneth W. Love R. Ted Steinbock Past Chair Otto M. Budig, Jr. Craig Maier Vice-President H.C. Buck Niehoff Brian Carley Jeffrey B. Matthews, M.D. Ronald R. Van Stockum, Jr. John F. Cassidy Shenan P. Murphy Vice Chairs Dorothy A. Coleman Robert W. Olson Secretary-Treasurer Jane Garvey Richard O. Coleman Scott Robertson Henry D. Ormsby Dee Gettler Bob Coughlin Yvonne Robertson David L. Armstrong R. Keith Harrison David Davis Elizabeth York Schiff Emily S. Bingham William C. Portman, III Diane L. Dewbrey Steve C. Steinman Jonathan D. Blum Treasurer Edward D. Diller Merrie Stewart Stillpass Sandra A. Frazier Mark J. Hauser Charles H. Gerhardt, III James L. Turner Margaret Barr Kulp Leslie Hardy Secretary Thomas T. Noland, Jr. Francine S. Hiltz Martiné R. Dunn Barbara Rodes Robinson David Hughes H. Powell Starks President and CEO Robert F. Kistinger J. Walker Stites, III Douglass W. McDonald Laura Long William M. Street Vice President of Museums Orme Wilson III John E. Fleming Director Mark V. Wetherington Ohio Valley History (ISSN Louisville, Kentucky, 40208. nati. Cincinnati Museum History. Back issues are $8.00. 746-3472) is published in Editorial Offices located at Center and The Filson Historical For more information on Cin- Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louis- the University of Cincinnati, Society are private non-profit cinnati Museum Center, including ville, Kentucky, by Cincinnati Cincinnati, Ohio, 45221-0373. organizations supported almost membership, visit www.cincymu- Museum Center and The Filson Contact the editorial offices entirely by gifts, grants, sponsor- seum.org or call 513-287-7000 or Historical Society. Periodical at [email protected] or ships, admission and member- 1-800-733-2077. postage paid at Cincinnati, [email protected]. ship fees. For more information on The Ohio, with an additional entry Ohio Valley History is a col- Memberships of Cincinnati Filson Historical Society, at Louisville, Kentucky. laboration of The Filson Histori- History Museum at Cincinnati including membership, visit www. Postmaster send address cal Society, Cincinnati Museum Museum Center or The Filson filsonhistorical.org or call 502- changes to The Filson Historical Center, and the Department of Historical Society include a 635-5083. Society, 1310 S. Third Street, History, University of Cincin- subscription to Ohio Valley © Cincinnati Museum Center and The Filson Historical Society 2005. OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Volume 5, Number 3, Fall 2005 A Journal of the History and Culture of the Ohio Valley and the Upper South, published in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky, by Cincinnati Museum Center and The Filson Historical Society. Contents Hope and Humiliation: Humphrey Marshall, the Mountaineers, and the Confederacy’s Last Chance in Eastern Kentucky Brian D. McKnight 3 Addition through Division: Robert Taft, the Labor Vote, and the Ohio Senate election of 1950 Michael Bowen 21 “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around”: Berea College’s Participation in the Selma to Montgomery March Dwayne Mack 43 A Whole New Ball Game: Sports Stadiums and Cover: Cumberland Gap, ca. 1862. The Urban Renewal in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Filson Historical St. Louis, 1950-1970 Society Aaron Cowan 63 Reviews 87 Announcements 110 F A L L 2 0 0 5 1 Contributors BRIAN D. MCKNIGHT is Teaching Fellow of History at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. His book The Swinging Gate: Organized Warfare, Partisan Conflict, and Social Impact in Appalachian Kentucky and Virginia, 1861-1865, will be published by the University Press of Kentucky in Spring 2006. MICHAEL BOWEN is a Ph.D. candidate in American History at the University of Florida. His dissertation is tentatively titled “Fight for the Right: The Quest for Republican Identity in the Post-War Period.” DWAYNE MACK is Assistant Professor of History at Berea College and holds the Carter G. Woodson Chair in African American History. AARON COWAN is a Ph.D. candidate in American History at the University of Cincinnati. 2 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Hope and Humiliation: Humphrey Marshall and the Confederacy’s Last Chance in Eastern Kentucky BRIAN D. MCKNIGHT he summer of 1862 found the Confederate army preparing for its only comprehensive invasion of the Civil War. In the east, Robert E. TLee’s Army of Northern Virginia would take the war to the enemy by invading Maryland. West of the Appalachian Mountains, the invasion would be broader. Braxton Bragg would lead his Army of Tennessee into Kentucky by way of Nashville, augmented by Edmund Kirby Smith’s force that would drive through the Cumberland Gap. A third column, albeit an afterthought to both Bragg and Smith, would be led out of southwestern Virginia into the mountains of eastern Kentucky by Humphrey Marshall. Although the failures of the Kentucky Campaign have become legend, perhaps the most important result of the invasion was the Confederacy’s realization that the east- ern Kentucky mountaineers, a population long thought friendly to the southern cause, had chosen to remain loyal to the Union. The complex nature of the Civil War in the Appalachian region, combined with Humphrey Marshall’s flaws as both man and commander, would have a signifi- cant impact on the failure of the Confederate cause in the eastern Kentucky mountains.1 Loyalty studies are hardly new to Civil War scholar- ship. One of the most important, Carl Degler’s The Other South, sought to explain the South’s intellectual and cultural diversity more fully than any other existing work. In it, Degler found the same complex loyalties that dogged Marshall during his invasion of eastern Kentucky. Although many of the mountaineers with whom Marshall and his men came Humphrey Marshall. The into contact on their journey likely fell into Degler’s orderly and thoughtful Filson Historical Society categories, the lion’s share likely viewed the Civil War as a family’s personal struggle for self-preservation while caught between two, equally dangerous, enemies.2 William Freehling, in his recent study of disloyalty to the Confederacy within the South, bolsters the argument that Kentuckians largely approached the war from a pragmatic angle. While he notes that approximately twenty- five thousand of the state’s native sons fought for the Confederacy and twice F A L L 2 0 0 5 3 HOPE AND HUMILIATION that number fought for the Union, Freehling acknowledges that nearly 200,000 avoided military service, a conclusion that altogether minimizes the importance of patriotism and suggests that self-interest was the primary motivator for the Kentucky mountaineers in the war.3 Other recent scholarship has sought to answer the myriad questions re- garding the complex loyal- ties along the Civil War’s borderland. Works such as John Inscoe’s and Gordon McKinney’s The Heart of Confederate Appalachia, Todd Groce’s Mountain Rebels, Victoria Bynum’s The Free State of Jones, and Martin Crawford’s Ashe Humphrey Marshall to County’s Civil War have turned under the old myths that suggested that loyalty Alexander Stephens, 22-23 and support were predictable and static within geographic regions.4 Particularly February 1862, Humphrey important are the findings of Inscoe, McKinney, and Groce who all focus on Marshall Papers in Edward Owings Guerrant Papers the pro-Confederate sentiment within regions that were, until recently, often The Filson Historical mistakenly viewed as homogenously unionist. Within this complex fabric, the Society leaders of the Confederate army that operated in eastern Kentucky’s mountains often misunderstood those people whom they promised to protect. ne of these commanders, Humphrey Marshall, had a military edu- cation that belied his lack of martial skill. A member of one of OKentucky’s most renowned families, young Humphrey was raised in Frankfort before winning an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1832. At age twenty, he graduated the Academy forty-second of forty-five cadets in his class. Just as he had not thrived in his military education, Marshall quickly grew tired of armed service and left the army in 1833, only one year after graduating from West Point. From 1833 to 1846, he spent his time practicing law in Frankfort and later in Louisville, where he supported the cause of the Whig party. After serving in Mexico, where he was a colonel of Kentucky volunteers, Marshall returned home, farming briefly in Henry County before winning a seat in the U.S.