University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-2011 For Union, for Confederacy, for slavery : motivation for enlisting & serving among Kentucky's Civil War soldiers. James F. Osborne 1987- University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Recommended Citation Osborne, James F. 1987-, "For Union, for Confederacy, for slavery : motivation for enlisting & serving among Kentucky's Civil War soldiers." (2011). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1083. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/1083 This Master's Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FOR UNION, FOR CONFEDERACY, FOR SLAVERY: MOTIVATION FOR ENLISTING & SERVING AMONG KENTUCKY'S CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS By James F. Osborne B.A., University of Louisville, 2009 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Department of History University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky May 2011 -------------- Copyright 2011 by James F. Osborne All rights reserved -------- FOR UNION, FOR CONFEDERACY, FOR SLAVERY: MOTIVATION FOR ENLISTING & SERVING AMONG KENTUCKY'S CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS By James F. Osborne B.A., University of Louisville, 2009 A Thesis Approved on April 11, 2011 by the following Thesis Committee: • Thesis Director ii "Abe Lincoln was playing it safe, easing along the way," the Colonel said. "He knew nobody could come right out and tell a Kentuckian what to do. He was born in Kentucky." "But Davis was born in Kentucky, too." "Well," said the colonel, "Seems to me I've read somewhere that God and the Devil both started out in heaven."l --Union Colonel Sidney M. Barnes, 8th KY Infantry 1 Maude Miller Barnes, Dear Wife: Letters From a Union Colonel (Ann Arbor, MI: Sheridan Books, 2001), 19. 111 DEDICATION For Mom, Dad, William, and Andrew iv ACKNOWLEDGMENT Of course, my biggest thanks goes to Dr. Thomas C. Mackey, who has been my mentor since I was a sophomore. Over the years, he has been more than generous with his time and knowledge. If this work possesses any redeeming qualities, it is due to his mentorship. I would also like to thank Dr. Daniel Krebs and Dr. Allison M. Martens for agreeing to be committee members and for bringing their expertise-military history and law and public policy, respectively-to bear upon this work. Dr. A. Glenn Crothers was an important influence on Chapter Two and without his knowledge and editorial eye, it surely would have suffered. Dr. Ann T. Allen granted me co-authorship and allowed me to aid her in the research and writing of what became my first published journal article; the experience was invaluable and I would like to thank her for giving me the opportunity. Jon-Paul Moody and Lee Keeling have been more than helpful with the administrative tasks of completing a master's thesis and degree-and a special thanks to Lee, who was more than willing to be a sounding board and read drafts. I would also like thank to the InterLibrary Loan staff at the University of Louisville's Ekstrom Library. My research required many elusive books and articles, and the ILL staff helped me get my hands on nearly all of them. I am convinced they are the unsung heroes of research at the University of Louisville. The archival staff at Filson Historical Society and Kentucky Historical Society helped point me toward overlooked primary sources and made no fuss over many copies I requested. To everyone else who I have not mention but who has assisted me along the way, thank you. v ABSTRACT FOR UNION, FOR CONFEDERACY, FOR SLAVERY: MOTIVATION FOR ENLISTING & SERVING AMONG KENTUCKY'S CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS James F. Osborne May 14,2011 Beginning with Bell Irvin Wiley's 1943 The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy, historians have produced many works describing the motivations for soldiers to enlist and serve during the Civil War. However, because they often set up an artificial North-South divide, while suggesting the North and South were homogenous units, the motivations of border state soldiers are not well represented in these works. This thesis starts to mend this oversight and it explores the motivations of white Kentuckians to join both sides of the conflict and remain at arms. This thesis also argues that slavery played a pivotal role in soldier motivations for both Union and Confederate Kentucky soldiers, a point not well developed by the few previous works on Kentucky Civil War soldiers. VI TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................... v ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION: KENTUCKY'S CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS ...... 1 CHAPTER TWO: MORE NECESSARY THAN EVIL: THE REJECTION OF EMANCIPATION ............................................................................................. 18 CHAPTER THREE: FOR UNION, FOR SLAVERY: KENTUCKY'S UNION CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS .............................................................................................. 41 CHAPTER FOUR: FOR CONFEDERACY, FOR SLAVERY: KENTUCKY'S CONFEDERATE CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS .................................................... 90 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 127 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................. 133 CURRICULUM VITAE ............................................................................................... 147 vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: KENTUCKY'S CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS Considering the importance of the state of Kentucky during the Antebellum and Civil War eras of United States history, it is surprising that historiography of the state is not comprehensive or of the highest quality. One of the more significant gaps in the literature is lack of work on Civil War Kentucky soldiers. While historians have written several books about Kentucky soldiers, such as William C. Davis's The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn't Go Home (1980) and Kirk C. Jenkins's The Battle Rages Higher: The Union's Fifteenth Kentucky Infantry (2003), none move beyond a regimental or brigade history and much of the work done is narrative with little analysis. No historians have delved into the study of motivation to serve among Kentucky Civil War soldiers. Such a study, as this one proposes to be, will contribute greatly to the understanding of how Kentucky and Kentuckians fit into the larger picture of the Civil War. E. Merton Coulter's 1926 The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky became the first defining work on Kentucky during the Civil War. Written by an unreconstructed Southerner, Coulter's book provides a slanted view of Civil War Kentucky which overstates the pro-Confederate sentiment in the state at the beginning of the war. Coulter claims that the main consideration for Unionism in Kentucky was due to economic ties 1 with the North, rather than any ideological attachment to the Union.' Coulter also dismisses the Unionist victory in the 1861 Congressional elections by suggesting Southern sympathizers "spumed the election and had stayed away from the polls generally" and the Unionism reflected in the votes did not represent attachment to the Union but a desire for neutrality in the coming conflict.2 While The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky was a strong start for the historiography of Civil War Kentucky, its advanced age and crippling bias prevent it from being an acceptable modem authority on the subject. In 1975, Lowell Hayes Harrison published The Civil War in Kentucky, a slender volume covering the major events of Civil War Kentucky. While it does well to correct much of Coulter's pro-Southern bias on the historiography by noting that Unionism was the prominent sentiment in Kentucky at the beginning of the war, the book's short length detracts from any serious contribution made to the historiography. 3 More recently, in 2000, Kent Masterson Brown published a collection of essays by himself and others as The Civil War in Kentucky: Battle for the Bluegrass State. While some essays in the book, such as Charles P. Roland's "The Confederate Defense of Kentucky," and John Y. Simon's "Lincoln, Grant, and Kentucky in 1861," are strong contributions, many of the essays are point-by-point battle accounts with little analysis. Though the essays discuss literal battles in the Bluegrass State, they did no discuss the actual battle for the loyalties of Kentuckians by both Federal and Confederate , E. Merton Coulter, The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1926), 17. 2 Ibid., 95. 3 Lowell H. Harrison, The Civil War in Kentucky (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1975), 13. 2 governments. Brown's The Civil War in Kentucky is a useful contribution to the historiography, but still leaves much to be desired. The modem common consensus