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175 The Glory and Chivalry Seemed Gone  12  THE MILITARY AND POLITICAL SITUATION had changed dramatically since Duke’s capture at Buffington. Militarily, the South was hanging on by a shoestring, and even its strongest advocates realized that victory was not likely to be obtained on the battlefield. Astute Southerners and their sympathizers in the North began to search for a political solution. It was a presidential election year, and the warweary Democrats nominated the popular George McClellan to run against Abraham Lincoln. Many Southerners naively believed that a McClellan victory could result in a negotiated peace settlement.Even if such an optimistic assessment of McClellan was correct, Sherman’s capture of Atlanta at the beginning of September 1864 proved to most of the Northern skeptics that the war could be won.1 By the summer of 1864, Governor Thomas E. Bramlette of Kentucky had become part of a strong opposition core that formed the nucleus of the state’s Union Democracy Party.The Union Democrats strongly condemned the government’s plan of reconstruction and its policy of enlisting African Americans into the Union army. They also supported McClellan’s bid for the presidency. This infuriated General Stephen Burbridge and other Republicans in Kentucky, who threatened to use force to ensure a Lincoln victory in November.In an open letter to the people of Kentucky, Bramlette advised treating any interference with the election by the military with “indignant contempt” and “scorn[ing] obedience which implies perjury and cowardicetoyou ,”furtherincreasingtensions.AlthoughthenationelectedLincoln,McClellan won the state by thirty-six thousand votes.The results of the 1864 presidential election were to have a profound impact on Kentucky and on Duke’s postwar politics and career.2 In Virginia, Morgan’s death had a decided influence on Duke’s attitude toward the prosecution of the war. He wrote: “When [Morgan] died, the glory and chivalry seemed gone from the struggle, and it became a tedious routine, enjoined by duty, and sustained only by sentiments of pride and hatred.”What Duke seems not to have realized was that, during his thirteen-month absence from active duty, the dynamics of the war had changed dramatically. Having achieved an overwhelming 176 Basil Wilson Duke, CSA superiority in men and material over the South, the North shifted its focus to the prosecution of total war, the destruction of the South’s very ability to wage war. Glory and chivalry did not die with Morgan; they died with Grant and Sherman at Atlanta and, perhaps more significantly for Duke, at Buffington.3 The war in Appalachia may have appeared to be little more than a military sideshow and has certainly attracted less attention than the war in Virginia and Georgia, but the combat there was just as ferocious—and perhaps even more so. The Union armies under General Gillem in east Tennessee and General Burbridge in Kentucky were becoming more aggressive and, by September 1864, were pressing the Confederates on two fronts. Because of his treatment of civilians in Kentucky , Burbridge was already hated both within and without the state.His activities and those of his subordinates in eastern Kentucky in the fall of 1864 had caused many Kentuckians to desert the Confederate army and wage their own independent warfare “in their native mountains.”4 The same day that Duke took possession of Morgan’s body at Carter’s Station, he received orders from General Echols to take command of Morgan’s men.Echols’s order was somewhat irregular because D. H. Smith was still senior in rank to Duke and first in line for the command of the brigade. Smith had, however, declined the command in deference to Duke—although Echols believed Smith’s real reason to be that the command had deteriorated beyond repair. Notifying General Cooper of Smith’s decision, Echols spoke favorably of Duke: “I am sure that he will improve the condition, as he is a most intelligent and efficient officer.”5 With his orders in hand, Duke took command of the brigade, “comprised of Cassell’s and Cantrill’s Battalions,” to find that there were only 273 effective troops and 50 serviceable weapons. It was a brigade in name only.The men were armed so poorly that Duke wondered “how they could fight at all.” It was going to take a significant effort on Duke’s part to raise the brigade to the level of combat effectiveness that he had always demanded of his troops. This would be a challenge since the majority...

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