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3 Memory and Claims in Kentucky The degrees to which either local circumstances or the public demand for retrenchment determined administrative action varied from state to state. Indeed, even within any given state, the relative importance of these issues generally changed over time. In Missouri, economic urgency, and the attendant demand for retrenchment, eventually gave way to concern over corruption. In Kentucky, although matters of retrenchment consistently shaped structures and methods, the state’s broader political relationship with Washington cast a far greater shadow over the claims proceedings. In contrast to Missouri, Kentucky’s public finances were in remarkably good shape. In 1865, Kentucky’s debt posed no great threat to economic expansion in the postwar era. Unlike Missouri, the antebellum railroads had not overexpanded in Kentucky. Few roads had come into the state, and even fewer had to be capitalized by state bond issues. Kentucky thus avoided the necessity of having to assume the debts of bankrupted companies. Kentucky’s good fiscal fortune continued into the 1860s as the war itself did little to increase the state’s debt. Ironically, the war proved a small boon to the state’s finances as the public debt dropped from $5,698,000 in 1859 to $5,254,000 in 1865. Revenues had remained fairly constant throughout the war, while increases in military spending were offset by decreases in other spending categories. Financial stability continued for much of the Gilded Age as the public debt dwindled to little more than $1 million by 1871, leaving State Auditor Howard Smith to proclaim that there were ‘‘few states, if any, in the Union whose finances are in as sound and healthy a condition as those of Kentucky. . . .’’1 But general financial stability in the early Gilded Age did not mean a lack of problems. Inconsistencies in county property valuations deprived the state treasury of millions in tax dollars. Proving that few 1 For public debt, see E. Merton Coulter, The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1926), 252. Howard Smith quoted in same, 383. MEMORY AND CLAIMS IN KENTUCKY 87 men could be trusted with large amounts of public dollars, sheriffs embezzled over $500,000 from the state in 1872. Perhaps worst of all, Kentucky’s stock investments yielded few dividends. These types of problems were disconcerting and cause for much controversy as governors and legislatures embarked on popular campaigns to clean up the corruption. In spite of all this, the problems were both relatively minor and typical of state governance in the Gilded Age. Kentucky ’s postwar era offered the promise of economic expansion unfettered by a crushing public debt. In terms of war indemnification , there was relatively little economic need for the urgency that so controlled Missouri’s efforts to secure reimbursement.2 Nonetheless, Kentucky’s claims operation did not lack for either urgency or fervor. In 1865 the state estimated that it had spent over $3 million in support of the Union, and it had small desire to lose any portion of a potential reimbursement. Indemnification also became wrapped in Kentucky’s larger, and volatile, political relationship with Washington. Overwhelmingly Democratic and states’ rights in its orientation, Kentucky presented the only legitimately constituted southern opposition to the national administration during most of Reconstruction. Kentuckians spilled much venom upon a perceived radical republicanism that they believed destroyed the constitution and any semblance of state autonomy. In such a climate, Kentucky’s governing leaders viewed any difficulty in gaining reimbursement as reflecting the vindictiveness of a federal government controlled by radical Republicans.3 A logical conclusion given the passions of the period, this analysis of the claims situation was incorrect. To a large extent, Kentucky thought its claims experience unique. Every delay in reimbursement and every rejected claim seemed part of a Republican plan to punish a nonconforming state. Not only was this a short-sighted view that failed to consider the difficulties of other states, but it was also a misreading of evidence that showed Kentucky to have been quite successful. Like most states, Kentucky conducted its intergovernmental operations with a selective sense of what other states were 2 Hambleton Tapp and James C. Klotter, Kentucky: Decades of Discord, 1865– 1900 (Frankfort: Kentucky State Historical Society, 1977), 124–28. 3 Thomas L. Connelly has developed Kentucky’s sense of persecution in his ‘‘NewConfederatism or Power Vacuum: Post-War Kentucky Politics Reappraised,’’ Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 64 (1966): 257–69. [18.191.211.66...

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