Civil War in Kentucky

The name “Kentucky” comes from the Cherokee - it means “dark and bloody ground.” At no time in the state’s history was this name more apt than during the Civil War. A hotly contested border state, Kentucky’s ground was dark and bloody indeed from military battles and skirmishes that took place throughout the entire state, in battles that often pitted neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother, and father against son.

Kentucky’s place in Civil War history would have been intriguing even if its status as one of the United States was often precarious. Both U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate President Jefferson Davis were born in Kentucky. Mary Todd Lincoln’s Kentucky relations included John C. Breckinridge, who served the Confederacy. Slavery had divided Kentucky long before it divided the nation. While the rich farmlands of the bluegrass and the tobacco country of the western part of the state relied heavily on slaves, slaves were a relatively rare sight in the Appalachian mountains that make up the eastern part of the state. Naturally, sympathies for the Union and the Confederacy in Kentucky were often divided upon geographic lines - those that separated the plantations from the mountains. The feuds that are the Appalachian stereotype - such as the infamous Hatfield and McCoy feud - sprang from disagreements among neighbors and even in families regarding the Civil War.

Division among Kentuckians regarding the Union and the Confederacy split more than families and neighbors - at one point it threatened to split the state, not unlike the situation with Virginia and West Virginia. The Confederacy attempted to claim the western area of the state (near where Jefferson Davis was born, incidentally), where plantations were many and Confederate sympathies ran high, as the Confederate State of Kentucky. Ultimately this attempt was quashed.

Sites of Civil War-era skirmishes abound in Kentucky, from the Cumberland Gap area near Middlesboro in the southeastern corner of the state to the trail that John Hunt Morgan and his raiders took through western and central Kentucky. Two significant battles took place in Kentucky - Perryville and Mill Springs, both of which are now National Historic Sites.

Perryville was one of the bloodiest battles of the war; the Confederates lost approximately 3400 of the around 22,000 who fought, while the outnumbered Union forces lost 4200 of their 16,000.

At Mill Springs, the number of combatants and the number of casualties were much smaller - only a little over 10,000 men were engaged at Mill Springs and of that number, only around 200 were casualties.

Kentucky’s place in Civil War history is a reflection of that of the entire country during the Civil War era - like the nation, the state of Kentucky was deeply divided over the issues of slavery and secession, a division that made the state truly a dark and bloody ground.