Kentucky’s Rebel Press: Pro-Confederate Media and the Secession Crisis by Berry Craig (review)

In his latest work, historian Berry Craig—a professor emeritus of history at West Kentucky Community and Technical College—examines pro-Confederate newspapers in Kentucky during not only the secession crisis, but also the war years and Reconstruction. He observes that while historians have written extensively on northern and southern newspapers during the war, they have produced relatively little scholarship on the press in the border states, especially in Kentucky. The commonwealth, Craig asserts, offers an intriguing subject of inquiry. In Kentucky, unlike in most northern and southern states, “the press was unique in that it operated in a vast region where the people were divided to one extent or another” (1). Craig concludes that despite arguing that “slavery and white supremacy were doomed if the state stayed in the Union,” pro-Confederate newspapers were unable to convince a majority of Kentuckians to embrace secession (73). Instead, Kentuckians—the majority of whom possessed strong pro-Union sentiments before the war—reaffirmed their commitment to the Union. With an emphasize on the activities of pro-secessionist forces and the ways in which they argued for secession, Craig’s work stands as a nice compliment to Eric Walther’s The Fire-Eaters (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992) and Charles Dew’s Apostles of Disunion (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001).

Craig begins his narrative by detailing the division that existed within the commonwealth in 1860. While most Kentuckians were unionists, a vocal minority supported secession. Despite this, the author claims, the press in Kentucky was more or less evenly divided with roughly an equal number of pro-Union and pro-southern newspapers in publication. Most pro-southern newspapers supported Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge for president in 1860, while the majority of unionist newspapers endorsed Constitutional Unionist John Bell. According to Craig, “no newspaper of any consequence—perhaps no paper at all—came out for Lincoln” (31). In the wake of the election, the pro-southern Breckinridge press proclaimed Lincoln’s victory an abomination, but maintained that the results of the election alone did not warrant secession. Despite this, these newspapers argued that secession was legal and ought to remain on the table as a possible future course of action. After the first seven southern slaveholding states withdrew from the Union, the pro-southern press began calling for the commonwealth to secede, arguing that “slavery and white supremacy were doomed if the state stayed in the Union” (73). Once the war commenced, they intensified their calls for secession. The state legislature, however, opted for neutrality. During the summer of 1861, the pro-Confederate press experienced two devastating setbacks. In late June, pro-Union candidates won nine out of the commonwealth’s ten seats in Congress. In August, unionist candidates won seventy-six of Kentucky’s one hundred lower house seats and increased their majority in the senate. Armed with a clear mandate from the people, the commonwealth’s pro-Union press and politicians advocated for the establishment of a federal training camp in central Kentucky. In September, when both federal and Confederate forces invaded the commonwealth, the legislature ordered only the latter to leave. During the war, Union forces moved to silence Kentucky’s pro-Confederate press. While only a small number of editors were jailed, most rebel newspapers ceased operations for the remainder of the war. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the rebel press in Kentucky experienced a rebirth during Reconstruction. Despite being on the unpopular side of the secession debate before and during the war, they “found themselves in step with most Kentuckians afterward,” who felt betrayed by the federal government for abolishing slavery (163). In the words of renowned historian E. Morton Coulter, the commonwealth “waited until after the war to secede” (2) (E. Morton Coulter, The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky (1926; repr., Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1966), vii).

Craig claims that his work provides some insights into...