For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War by Patrick A. Lewis, and: More American than Southern: Kentucky, Slavery, and the War for an American Ideology, 1828–1861 by Gary R. Matthews (review)

In recent years, historians of the nineteenth century and the Civil War era have paid close attention to the Bluegrass State, particularly because of Kentucky’s unique position during and after the Civil War. Many know the progression of Kentucky well: a border-slave state, home to many of the nation’s leading compromisers of antebellum politics (such as Henry Clay and John Crittenden) that first chose neutrality after Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for volunteers, but eventually sided with the Union, before developing a quasi-Confederate identity after Reconstruction. Two new monographs, by historians Patrick A. Lewis and Gary R. Matthews, add to that traditional narrative of Kentucky’s ante- and postbellum experiences. Collectively, these scholars offer up works that pair nicely. Matthews traces the development of a distinct Kentucky culture that looked more toward the American nation than the Lower South states between 1828 and 1861. Picking up roughly where Matthews left off, Lewis focuses on how one proslavery Unionist represented the changing sentiments of an understudied and disheartened population in the Bluegrass States.

Matthews’s More American than Southern is an attempt to provide a new, broad history of antebellum Kentucky. He sets out to provide an examination of the “social, economic, and political processes that created and distinguished Kentucky from the slaveholding states” that eventually seceded from the Union (Matthews, 3). In many ways, Matthews does this to great effect. He begins by thematically looking at the class and political structure of Kentucky, before proceeding to chronologically explore the contentious and growing discord of sectional tension, debate, and compromise from the 1830s to secession. According to Matthews, due to social, economic, and political differences, a radically different culture separated Kentucky from other slaveholding states. Geographically, the climate of the Bluegrass State hampered the success of large-scale plantations and undermined the viability of a large slave population (Matthews, 52–53). As a result, the power of the planter class remained constrained as compared to other Lower South states. Economically, Matthews asserts that a free-labor system developed, especially along the Ohio River and in urban centers, which metaphorically shifted Kentucky’s gaze to the North in search of markets and goods (Matthews, 93–98). Additionally, the presence of the Whig Party, prominent political leaders such as Henry Clay, a strong adherence to the Constitution, and a fear of sectional conflict spilling into the state produced a desire for compromise in Kentucky (Matthews, 81, 269). Self-interest, spawned from this distinct culture, drove Kentuckians to view a “national as opposed to a section environment” as the only means of preserving their way of life (Matthews, 16).

Lewis, on the other hand, takes a different approach in For Slavery and Union. Part biography, part analytical narrative, Lewis studies Benjamin Forsythe Buckner as a window to look outward from Clark County in order to understand how proslavery Unionists understood, experienced, and shaped the years during and after the Civil War in Kentucky. Buckner and these Unionists, Lewis proclaims, aligned themselves “with the Union for the benefit of slavery rather than siding with the Union despite slavery” (Lewis, 2). Through Buckner’s wartime and postwar experiences, Lewis challenges other scholarship that asserts that slavery was either a minor or an unimportant aspect of life for Kentucky Unionists (Lewis, 4). Rather, he asserts, it was a key component of their identity. In the first two chapters, Lewis lays the groundwork of slavery’s importance, the political dimensions of Kentucky, and Buckner’s early life. He then provides two chapters on the wartime and postbellum life of Buckner. The result is...