By Todd Hatton
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-974861.mp3
Murray, KY – As we progress through 2011, we look back at the Commonwealth in 1861, as the American Civil War was unfolding, in the Kentucky Civil War Dispatch. In this installment, you may know that our region was heavily pro-southern before and during the war, but you may not know why. We'll look at the reasons, on today's Kentucky Civil War Dispatch.
On this date in 1861, the Jackson Purchase was clearly the only Rebel region in Kentucky.
The Bluegrass State had officially declared its neutrality, but within the Union. That was fine with almost all Kentuckians, excepting most citizens of the Purchase. They demanded nothing short of a Confederate Kentucky.
Several Purchase volunteers were already in the Confederate army, and more were preparing to go.
So, why was the Purchase so different from the rest of Kentucky?
From its earliest days, the seven, now eight, counties west of the Tennessee River were decidedly more Southern in outlook than other parts of the Bluegrass.
Many of the first white settlers of the Purchase did not come from elsewhere in Kentucky. They migrated from from Tennessee, North Carolina and elsewhere in the South.
Tennessee's Andrew Jackson, not Kentucky's Henry Clay, was the Purchase's hero. The region was named for Jackson who, along with former Kentucky Governor Isaac Shelby, negotiated its purchase from the Chickasaw Indians in 1818.
In addition, river and rail trade ties bound the Purchase closer to the South than to the rest of the Commonwealth. Paducah, Columbus and Hickman carried on a lively steamboat trade with Memphis and other ports. Paducah and Columbus were northern railheads of lines that ran from New Orleans and Mobile.
All the while, the Purchase stepped to its own political drummer. Inspired by Clay, Kentucky's most important politician ever, Kentucky became a bastion of Whig nationalism and unionism in the antebellum era of sectional controversy over slavery and its expansion. Like Clay, most other Kentuckians always put the Union above all else.
On the other hand, the Purchase mainly favored ardent pro-slavery Democrats who trumpeted "states' rights," meaning the right of states to have slaves. Before the Purchase was Kentucky's "South Carolina," it was Kentucky's "Democratic Gibraltar."
Most Kentucky Unionists were pro-slavery, too. Indeed, almost every white Kentuckian supported the South's "peculiar institution" and the system of white supremacy it upheld.
Simply put, Bluegrass Unionists favored the Union and slavery. They saw no contradiction in that position. In the New York Times online "Opinionator" section, Maryville, Tennessee college historian Aaron Astor wrote that "To most Kentuckians, the Union was the best protector of the slave-based social order." Indeed, Unionists in the Commonwealth sometimes argued that secession was folly because the the Confederates, who left the Union because they feared Lincoln and the Republicans would end slavery, were bound to lose the war and their slaves. In the Confederate states, the areas with the most slaves were the most secessionist-minded; and the states with the largest slave populations were the first to secede.
In Kentucky, Unionism was indeed strongest in the rugged southeastern mountain counties where slaves were rare. But Unionism also prevailed, though to a lesser degree, in the Bluegrass, the region which had the most slaves. The Bluegrass also furnished many more troops to the Union than to the Confederacy.
The Purchase was not a large slave holding region, but its secessionist majority, like the Confederates they admired, believed that slavery and white supremacy could only be sustained by embracing what South Carolina - the first state to leave the Union - called "a great Slaveholding Confederacy."
Paducah's Lloyd Tilghman, a future Confederate general, was typical of Purchase secessionists, indeed of all secessionists. At the almost forgotten 1861 meeting in Mayfield where secession from Kentucky was discussed, Tilghman vehemently denied accusations that he was anti-slavery.
According to newspaper reports of the gathering, Tilghman, who would die in the Battle of Champion's Hill in 1863, called his accuser a "d-- liar!" Tilghman vowed that "if there was one ounce of abolitionist flesh in his frame, he would cut it out."
Kentucky secessionists called themselves the Southern Rights Party. Like "states' rights," "Southern rights" meant the right of Southern and border states to maintain slavery.
Southern Rights men like Tilghman were anathema to Kentucky Unionists. But a Unionist's response to a charge of "abolitionist" probably wouldn't have been much different from Tilghman's testy rebuke. Almost all Kentucky Unionists drew a sharp distinction between themselves and the "Lincolnite Black Republicans" they despised.
WKMS produces Kentucky Civil War Dispatches from West Kentucky Community and Technical College history professor Berry Craig. The Murray State alumnus is the author of Hidden History of Kentucky in the Civil War, Hidden History of Kentucky Soldiers and True Tales of Old-Time Kentucky Politics: Bombast, Bourbon, and Burgoo.