A Yankee from Dixie: Benjamin Helm Bristow

A YANKEE FBOM DIXIE: Benjamin Helm Bristow Ross A. Webb A "GRANDFATHER'S MYTH" HAS GROWN UP IN KENTUCKY EMBODYING an allegedly great attachment of nineteenth-century Kentuckians to the Lost Cause. Over the years the glamor and romance surrounding the Confederacy has mounted, and widi it a conviction by new generations of Kentuckians that their common heritage was militandy and overwhelmingly part of that gallant, unsuccessful effort. The state's disenchantment widi die Emancipation Proclamation and die Thirteendi Amendment evidendy has led some historians to prolong the mydi. One important scholar surmised, for example, that "As between the North and the South the finer feelings of sentiment bound die state to die latter."1 No doubt die bulk of die "bourbon aristocracy" was pro-Confederate, but this class by no means represented die majority of the people.2 Actually, die great majority of Kentuckians of 18611865 were Unionists. As a slave state, Kentucky possessed strong Southern ties; but her bond widi die North was to prove more compelling in the national crisis. Despite an economy interwoven with die Soudi as a result of the Ohio-Mississippi waterway, its diversity of products (livestock, hemp and rope, flour, tobacco, candles, soap, liquor, and agricultural implements) allowed die state an unusual freedom of choice with regard to markets. Thus, when the struggle erupted the demand by die Union for Kentucky produce caused a shift of trade from the cities of die Soudi to die cities of die North and East. Strong social bonds between Kentucky and die Soudi also existed, which produced a familiarity, as well as an identity, widi Soudiern culture; yet strong ties of cultural affinity with die North existed as well—die result of pioneering by Kentuckians into the odier states of die Upper Mississippi valley. When the crisis came, many a citizen 1E. Merton Coulter, The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky (Chapel Hill, 1926), p. 17. 2 Of some 83,000 farms in Kentucky, 74,000 cultivated an acreage of from twenty to five hundred acres. Thus the great majority of Kentuckians were small farmers. See U.S. Census: Agriculture, 1860, pp. viii-clxx. 80 of die Bluegrass State found himself unable to break with his flesh and blood in die North.3 But of all factors affecting choice, the most important was political. When Northern tocsins proclaimed die struggle as one to free the slaves, Kentucky slaveholders looked to dieir pocketbooks rather than to dieir hearts.4 With carefully worded assurances, however, President Lincoln attempted to quiet dieir fears. He agreed to respect the proclaimed neutrality of die state, even though diat policy made Kentucky a virtual ally of die Confederacy, and he characterized die struggle solely as one to preserve the constitutional basis of die Union by suppressing secessionism. Kentucky was not able to maintain her neutral position for very long because of a chain of events that began widi the state's invasion by a Confederate army in September, 1861. This action gave General U. S. Grant the excuse to move into Kentucky. He immediately crossed over from Illinois to seize Paducah. Widi opposing armies on their soil, Kentuckians were forced to identify diemselves widi one or the odier. The majority of them flocked to Federal rather than Confederate colors.5 Many of those who came to die Union cause were men of determination who served without hope of glory. It was to this group that Lincoln looked for support, and they did not fail him. Among diose who found dieir way into Union service was Benjamin Helm Bristow, a militant Unionist who struggled desperately to solidify Kentuckian support of the federal government. The son of a distinguished lawyer and statesman, Francis Marion Bristow, he held the same high standards of morality and concepts of legal justice as his father.6 The Bristows made dieir decision in an area of the state 3 In 1860 nearly 332,000 former Kentuckians resided in other states, almost half of them in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. Another 100,000 resided in Missouri. U.S. Census: Population, 1860, p. xxxiii. 4 Kentucky ranked ninth among the sixteen slaveholding states of the nation. As of 1860 approximately 38...