Divided Loyalties: Kentucky’s Struggle for Armed Neutrality in the Civil War by James W. Finck (review)

BOOK REVIEWS SPRING 2013 83 Divided Loyalties: Kentucky’s Struggle for Armed Neutrality in the Civil War James W. Finck The complex story of Kentucky’s attempt to maintain neutrality at the outset of the American Civil War merits careful analysis . In Divided Loyalties, James W. Finck sets out to address this deficiency by focusing attention on the critical year from November 1860 to November 1861, a period that “decided Kentucky’s fate” (xiii). Finck identifies three principal political groups in Kentucky at that time—unconditional Unionists, secessionists, and the largest group, conditional Unionists. Finck blames E. Merton Coulter’s The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky (1926) for overstating the strength of Unionist sentiment in Kentucky and therefore the inevitability of the state’s decision to remain in the Union. In stressing the complexity and fluidity of the political situation in Kentucky, Finck rightly reasserts the importance of close attention to chronology. At the beginning of this critical year Unionists fought for neutrality because they feared that Kentucky would join the Confederacy. However, when Unionist sentiment strengthened , secessionists began to favor neutrality. Finck’s primary contribution is recognizing that neutrality served as the banner of political underdogs within Kentucky’s rapidly changing political landscape in 1860-1861. Ultimately, Finck concludes, “maintaining neutrality would prove to be a difficult task, with men on both sides favoring neutrality for their own agendas. Remaining in the Union was never a foregone conclusion” (xvi). Unfortunately, the chapters that support these conclusions have too many questionable assertions to make this study the final word on the matter. For example, Finck makes the useful pointthat72percentofKentuckycountiesvoted for the same party in 1852, 1856, and 1860, reflecting the persistence of party loyalties, even though the Democrats faced Whigs, Americans, and Constitutional Unionists in those respective elections. He also points out that historians should not necessarily interpret a vote in 1860 for Constitutional Union candidate John Bell as reflecting unconditional Unionist sentiment. Fair enough, but he goes on to argue that a vote for Bell did not represent a vote for the Union James W. Finck. Divided Loyalties: Kentucky’s Struggle for Armed Neutrality in the Civil War. El Dorado Hills, Ca.: Savas Beatie, 2012. 264 pp. ISBN: 9781611211023 (cloth), $26.95. BOOK REVIEWS 84 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY because Virginia and Tennessee also voted for Bell and joined the Confederacy and Bell himself supported the Confederacy. This logic conflates the political situation of November 1860 with that of mid-1861, a violation of the careful attention to chronology Finck urges elsewhere. Finck seeks to prove that Kentucky remained more loyal to its own self interest than to the Union, insisting that even the “massive defeat for the States Rights Party in the May [1861] election did not prove Kentucky’s loyalty to the Union.” Unionists won this election of delegates to a proposed border states convention with an overwhelming 96 percent of votes cast. Finck contends that “numbers do not tell the entire story” (111). If it represented such a great victory for Unionism, he argues, Unionists “would not have blocked the call for a state convention in May or tried so desperately to create and arm its own Home Guard” (132). The May 1861 elections did spell the doom of secessionists in Kentucky, but what political group after winning an election favors another election to reconsider the outcome ? With the state militia in the hands of secessionists , why would Unionists not arm their own military force in opposition? Finck insists that most secessionists did not vote, though if they had “Kentucky’s Unionist image would be far less impressive” (112). However, he fails to explain why the secessionists failed to vote in May. Sources present another problem. Although Joseph Holt figures significantly in Finck’s narrative, Finck does not cite Elizabeth Leonard’s fine biography, Lincoln’s Forgotten Ally: Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt of Kentucky (2011). He also fails to cite William C. Davis’s Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union (2011), though Davis wrote the foreword for Finck’s book. Perhaps these two volumes appeared too late for consultation, but certainly Finck could have profitably examined Anne E. Marshall’s Creating a Confederate...