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  • Kentucky Rebel Town: The Civil War Battles of Cynthiana and Harrison County by William A. Penn
  • Mark A. Furnish
Kentucky Rebel Town: The Civil War Battles of Cynthiana and Harrison County. By William A. Penn. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2016. Pp. [viii], 374. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8131-6771-8.)

For decades, local historian William A. Penn has written articles in regional publications unfolding the peculiar nature of the Civil War in northern Kentucky, particularly Harrison County and its seat of government at Cynthiana, which contemporaries considered a thoroughly "Rebel town" (p. 5). In a book-length study, Rattling Spurs and Broad-Brimmed Hats: The Civil War in Cynthiana and Harrison County, Kentucky (Midway, Ky., 1995), Penn deftly details the military operations encompassing the two battles of Cynthiana, which occurred during Confederate cavalryman John Hunt Morgan's raids of Kentucky in July 1862 and June 1864. Penn, eager to find the depths of Harrison County's reputed Confederate sympathies, has expanded his inquiry to produce a new book that successfully integrates elements of social, political, and military history and is a serious contribution to the growing genre of border South community studies. Kentucky Rebel Town: The Civil War Battles of Cynthiana and Harrison County places Cynthiana's dramatic but brief military encounters with Morgan in the context of a four-year crescendo of social conflicts between frightened Unionists, disgruntled secessionists, heavy-handed Federal soldiers, and autonomy-seeking African Americans.

Penn eschews classic geographic, economic, and ethnocultural arguments for Harrison County's pro-South proclivities and instead emphasizes the outsized influence of a cadre of popular states'-rights politicians and eminent local men. Prominent secessionists led seven companies of Harrison men to volunteer for the Confederacy at the outbreak of war, supported rebel families who endured arrests, imprisonment, and confiscation of property by Union officials, and spearheaded efforts to erect Kentucky's first Confederate memorial at Cynthiana after the war. Penn acknowledges that 22 percent of Harrison County's potential voters were slave owners and that most of them aligned with the Confederate cause. Nevertheless, he denies that slavery was a central factor in determining loyalty in Harrison County, as most of its power-wielding Union men owned slaves as well. Penn's study clearly reveals the county's residents' strong Confederate sympathies but offers no direct answer to explain it; then again, he is hardly the first historian to be flummoxed by loyalty in Civil War Kentucky.

The strength of Kentucky Rebel Town lies in its meticulous research, careful analysis, and evenhanded judgments. Penn has been researching Harrison County for decades, and the rich array of primary sources he cites—including letters, diaries, newspaper accounts, government documents of all levels, military railroad maps, archaeological studies, first-person interviews, and more—shows it. With these sources, Penn prudently examines issues commonly discussed in recent border South community studies: political [End Page 982] partisanship, enlistment and conscription of troops, the challenge of suppressing guerrillas and safeguarding Union supply lines, martial law, the suppression of civil liberties, the destruction of slavery, the enlistment of exslaves into the Union army, and the postwar ascendency of the Lost Cause. Penn also demonstrates a broad knowledge of current and relevant academic works, but he largely draws on their factual content and ignores historiographical debates. In truth, perhaps the most distinctive feature of this book is its journalistic "just the facts" style, which emphasizes detailed description and clear explanation instead of authorial interpretation.

Some readers may be put off by Penn's mindful factuality and dispassionate tone. In fact, the challenge to distinguish truth from the romantic myths and self-serving lies propagated during the Lost Cause era dictates this approach, which actually enhances his credibility. Kentucky Rebel Town is a worthy contribution to the study of the border South.

Mark A. Furnish
Frederick Douglass Papers Project
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