In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

BOOK REVIEWS 90 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY after the war (147). Nonetheless, combining diligent research in local, state, and national archives with generous nods to recent scholarship , A Generation at War offers us the most richly textured portrait of life in a rural, northern community during the Civil War era to date. As winner of the 2012 Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians for the “most original book on the coming of the Civil War, the Civil War years, or the era of Reconstruction,” Etcheson’s study not only offers a template but issues a clarion call for additional community studies of the Civil War’s northern home front. Brian Matthew Jordan Gettysburg College Rebels on the Border: Civil War, Emancipation, and the Reconstruction of Kentucky and Missouri Aaron Astor Aaron Astor’s eminently readable monograph challenges historians to reorient analysis of secession, the Civil War, and Reconstruction away from the eleven states of the Confederacy to the border states of Kentucky and Missouri. Concentrating on the slave-based regions of the two states—the Bluegrass and Little Dixie—Rebels on the Border examines the nature of political collectives, interrogates the cultural and social meanings of political mobilization , and explores how various historical actors exploited the instrumentalities of power (9-10). The study, Astor argues, does more than “show how the political transformations at the heart of the Civil War and Reconstruction affected a largely ignored region”; instead, it sets “the entire period in a new light” (244). Astor identifies white supremacy and conservative Unionism as the two central components of Kentucky and Missouri’s antebellum political culture. White supremacy, he notes, stood at the center of white values in these border states, while conservative Unionism developed in response to the threat of abolitionists and Free Soilers in the North, and fire-eaters in the South. Conservative Unionist rhetoric rejected these two heresies and “drew from the great strength of the American Republic and the compromises that had allowed the nation to grow to its prosperous status” (48). For conservative Unionists, pragmatism trumped honor and border grievances “reflected more practical concerns with protecting a slave-based economy and society in the face of serious, but not unreasonable, threats” (50). They concluded that slavery remained much safer within rather than outside the Union and saw no reason to withdraw. During war, however, black and white people rebelled against conservative Unionism. During the initial months of the conflict, many white men enlisted in the rebel army, participated in brutal guerrilla conflicts, and harassed their conservative Unionist foes. Slaves, meanwhile , developed a system of communication and organization to confront border state society, exploited divisions in the white population , and used rumor to magnify the threat of black unrest. “Although the insurrectionary fears may have been imagined,” Astor writes, “slaveholders ironically imputed to their slaves BOOK REVIEWS WINTER 2012 91 the political savvy to exploit white moments of panic for their own ends” (70). Unionists held Kentucky and Missouri, Astor argues, but internal challenges posed by rebel guerrillas and slaves brought conservative Unionism to its knees. Most border state rebels refused to identify with the new Confederate government and bristled when Unionists, whom they believed had abandoned constitutional principles , accused them of disloyalty and treason. Astor contends, contrary to prevailing wisdom, that slavery had deteriorated as a viable labor and social system several months before black enlistment began as enslaved people exploited weaknesses in a countryside beset with guerrilla war. When African Americans joined the Union Army they contributed vital manpower and recast the Union cause as a struggle for liberation , but Astor notes that black enlistment looked different in Kentucky and Missouri than elsewhere in the South. In these border states, slaves often fought on the same side as their masters, albeit for very different reasons. Astor argues that during Reconstruction African Americans placed special emphasis on educating their children. He contends that the grassroots struggle to obtain equal access to education “generated as much political value for African Americans in Kentucky and Missouri as the schools themselves” (152). As black people sought education for their children, white Kentuckians and Missourians actively remade white male democracy. For their part, conservative...

pdf

Share