University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2011 “Tentative Relations: Secession and War in the Central Ohio River Valley, 1859-1862” Timothy Max Jenness [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Cultural History Commons, Military History Commons, Political History Commons, Social History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Jenness, Timothy Max, "“Tentative Relations: Secession and War in the Central Ohio River Valley, 1859-1862”. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2011. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/983 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Timothy Max Jenness entitled "“Tentative Relations: Secession and War in the Central Ohio River Valley, 1859-1862”." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in History. Stephen V. Ash, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Daniel Feller, G. Kurt Piehler, Dawn Coleman Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Timothy Max Jenness entitled ―Tentative Relations: Secession and War in the Central Ohio River Valley, 1859-1862.‖ I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in History. Stephen V. Ash, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Daniel Feller______________ G. Kurt Piehler____________ Dawn Coleman____________ Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges______________ Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official student records.) Tentative Relations: Secession and War in the Central Ohio River Valley, 1859-1862 A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Timothy Max Jenness May 2011 Copyright © 2011 by Timothy Max Jenness All rights reserved. ii Dedication To Emily iii Acknowledgements I have collected a great many debts while working on this dissertation. While the limitations of space preclude me from mentioning everybody by name, there are some who deserve special recognition. I would like to thank Stephen Ash for his guidance throughout the many years that it took to reach this point. His unwillingness to accept less than my very best and his confidence in my ability to rise to the occasion have made this dissertation much better than it would have otherwise been. I would also like to thank Daniel Feller, G. Kurt Piehler, and Dawn Coleman for their willingness to read and comment on this project. I will be forever grateful for all the assistance I received at the numerous archives and libraries that I visited while doing my research. On many occasions, I was pointed toward sources I may not have found on my own. Most particularly, I would like to thank Mark Wetherington and his staff at the Filson Historical Society. It was at the Filson where I felt the most welcomed and was treated as a colleague instead of just another graduate student working on his doctoral dissertation. Such collegiality made those long drives on Interstate 75 much easier. I would also like to thank Lynn Champion and Melissa Parker for providing me with opportunities to do what I enjoy the most – mentoring undergraduates. Lynn remains to this day one of my biggest cheerleaders and I feel blessed to count her among my friends. To Aaron, Jake, Paul, and Cinnamon, thanks for your friendship, encouragement, and the lunches we shared. My greatest debt, however, is to my family – my parents Max and Jane Jenness, my wife Emily, and our sons Kieran and Logan. Dad and Mom have always been a source of encouragement and I thank them for that. Kieran and Logan have never known a time when their Dad was not in graduate school. It was a random comment by Kieran one night at the dinner table that reminded me of the importance of family. Thank you, son, for helping me to keep my priorities straight. Thank you, Logan, for that smile that can light up a room. And lastly, whatever success I have already achieved is because of God‘s grace and my wife‘s support. Emily has sacrificed as much, if not more, than I and willingly put her promising career on hold so that I could pursue my academic dream at the University of Tennessee. Without her encouragement, prodding, and support, I may never have finished this project. I hope the results of my effort meet with her approval. Thank you, Emily. You are the brightest light in my life. I love you. iv Abstract In the fall of 1859, John Brown launched a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and in so doing arguably fired the first salvo of the Civil War. That his raid occurred in the border area between North and South should come as no surprise because it was in that area where Americans were the most divided. Citizens across the border state region–that area that comprised the lower North and upper South–soon found themselves caught between two hostile sections. Based on an analysis of letters, journals, newspapers, and public documents, this dissertation is a study of one portion of that border region, the central Ohio River Valley, during the momentous years between Brown‘s raid and the early weeks of 1862, when Indiana Senator Jesse Bright was expelled from the United States Senate for treasonous behavior. Citizens who lived in the river counties between Cincinnati and Louisville shared important economic, cultural, and socio-political views that united them and created a regional bond capable of withstanding the centrifugal pull of sectionalism despite the omnipresent influence of slavery. These trans-river bonds moderated their response to secession and reinforced their Unionist proclivities. Their fidelity to the Union strengthened Abraham Lincoln‘s hand and helped to insure that the Union would endure. v Preface For years scholars viewed the growing sectionalism of the antebellum period from a narrow bisectional perspective, with an industrializing North confronting an agricultural South. That there was an overlapping border region in the middle was frequently overlooked, although the body of scholarship rectifying this omission continues to grow. The border region, comprised of the lower North and upper South, is a crucial area for historians endeavoring to understand the Civil War because of its tendency toward moderation in an era when extremism seemingly had gained the upper hand. The complexities and possibilities of human interaction reveal themselves most vividly in such areas. In the central Ohio River Valley, in particular, the antecedents of Civil War-era compromise and moderation are found in the expressions of community and regionalism voiced there repeatedly by previous generations. The region‘s tradition of compromise was embodied by the great Kentucky statesman, Henry Clay. The Kentuckian was respected, even revered, by many on both banks and his influence persisted long after his death. ―Had Henry Clay never lived,‖ wrote nineteenth-century historians John W. Barber and Henry Howe, ―it is extremely doubtful whether Kentucky would have remained loyal to our common country.‖ The Kentuckian, they said, ―stands with the nation as one whose affections were filled with the idea of the glory and welfare of the American republic.‖1 1 John W. Barber and Henry Howe, The Loyal West in the Times of the Rebellion; also, Before and Since: Being an Encyclopedia and Panorama of the Western States, Pacific States and Territories of the Union (Cincinnati: F. A. Howe, publisher, 1865), 101. Works emphasizing the importance and complexity of the border state region during the Civil War era include Daniel W. Crofts, Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989); William W. Freehling, The South versus the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Edward L. Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863 (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003); Jeremy Neely, The Border between Them: Violence and Reconciliation on the Kansas-Missouri Line (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2007); and Brian D. McKnight, Contested Borderland: The Civil War in Appalachian Kentucky and Virginia (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006). vi Despite its wide expanse, the Ohio River bound the region together. It may have marked the northern limit of slavery, but as historian Darrel Bigham suggests, it ―was no Berlin Wall.‖ Cultural geographers, according to Bigham, ―have never located the regional boundary between North and South at the Ohio River,‖ placing it instead north of the river. In the nineteenth century, the river was an avenue rather than a barrier, a place where ―people, commerce, and ideas‖ passed from shore to shore much like the river‘s water. As George Prentice, the Unionist editor of the Louisville Daily Journal, reminded his readers, the ―great artery of Western commerce‖ served, in many ways, to unite more than divide Kentuckians, Indianans, and Ohioans who lived along its banks, even as the stress of secession threatened to tear asunder existing trans-river relationships.