Project MUSE®: Register of the Kentucky Historical Society - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Register of the Kentucky Historical Society.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 108 (Summer 2010) through current issueLatest Articles: Register of the Kentucky Historical SocietyTWOProject MUSE®Register of the Kentucky Historical Society2161-03550023-0243Latest articles in Register of the Kentucky Historical Society. Feed provided by Project MUSE®The Lost Indigenous World of the Ohio River Valley
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988038
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How did Indigenous communities survive the militia onslaught led by George Rogers Clark during the Revolutionary War? Clark gained notoriety by capturing the small villages of Kaskaskia in 1778 and Vincennes in 1779, neither of which had a substantial defense. Both victories, won with minimal effort, were acclaimed great defeats for the British. The threat to nearby Native villages came from Clark’s ragtail army of followers. Their hatred for Indians rivaled his own. Clark passionately believed that “the whole race of Indians [be] extirpated, that for his part he would never spare Man woman or child of them on whom he could lay his hands.” He terrorized Native people by declaring that if they threatened war on the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524/image/coversmallThe Lost Indigenous World of the Ohio River Valley2026-04-10text/htmlen-USThe Lost Indigenous World of the Ohio River Valley2026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®1117562026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10Taking Kentucky: Theft, Murder, and Enslavement in the First American West
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988039
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Colonel John Bowman, commander of the Kentucky County militia, wrote a rather grim letter to General Edward Hand from Harrodsburg, Virginia, on December 12, 1777. He explained that the “poor Kentucky people” were running low on horses and supplies and requested that the general “order some corn to this place for our support.” The situation that Bowman described in Kentucky County, a western outpost on the far side of the Appalachian Mountains, was bleak. He explained that Indigenous warriors had destroyed most of their corn holdings at neighboring plantations and noted that “we have not more than two months bread.” The colonel explained that, after months of being confined to forts, and without horses to bring
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524/image/coversmallTaking Kentucky: Theft, Murder, and Enslavement in the First American West2026-04-10text/htmlen-USTaking Kentucky: Theft, Murder, and Enslavement in the First American West2026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®921742026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10On the Margins from the Middle: Kentucky and the Expulsion of Native Peoples
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988040
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Every September since 1988 there has been an intertribal pow wow held in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Named the Trail of Tears Pow Wow, the event is organized by the Trail of Tears Commission and is hosted at the Trail of Tears Commemorative Park. At its inception, the commission’s stated mission was “to develop and promote [the] historical significance of the Trail of Tears to Hopkinsville and Christian County; to create a park that would pay tribute to the importance of Native American Indians to our history and culture, with special emphasis on the Cherokee[;] and to encourage tourism to the area through the park, its museum, and special activities.” As of 1996 the park is an official segment of the Trail of Tears
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524/image/coversmallOn the Margins from the Middle: Kentucky and the Expulsion of Native Peoples2026-04-10text/htmlen-USOn the Margins from the Middle: Kentucky and the Expulsion of Native Peoples2026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®692022026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10“The Sweets of Liberty”: A Q&A with W. Caleb McDaniel
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988041
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As we commemorate America250 and America250KY, scholars in this special issue of the Register are rethinking Kentucky’s early history. This Q&A with W. Caleb McDaniel explores slavery in Kentucky, the tenuous nature of Black freedom, and the “long and jagged process” of emancipation. As McDaniel shows, Kentucky’s story helps us understand the contradictions within our nation’s founding documents. For example, how did enslavement exist within a nation founded upon the idea that “All men are created equal?” Through the stories of Henrietta Wood and Zebulon Ward, McDaniel illustrates how a border state and proslavery Unionism gave birth to captive and captor in the long fight for freedom.McDaniel is the Mary Gibbs
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524/image/coversmall“The Sweets of Liberty”: A Q&A with W. Caleb McDaniel2026-04-10text/htmlen-US“The Sweets of Liberty”: A Q&A with W. Caleb McDaniel2026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®367282026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10Forever Belle: Sallie Ward of Kentucky by Randolph Paul Runyon (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988042
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Forever Belle is an apt title for one of America’s early “celebrities.” Sarah “Sallie” Ward might be one of the early figures in American history who achieved the status of a “reality” star in popular culture. Her activities were widely reported in Kentucky as well as nationally. She was not a prominent businesswoman, political or social activist, or a philanthropist. Sallie’s fame came from her beauty, her bold, often flamboyant behavior, and her family name.Sallie was quite aware of her personal attributes, and she used them to her advantage. She “was a charmer,” according to Runyon (p. xiii). Her beauty provoked poems and duels alike. She and her siblings were lavishly indulged, and because of her parents’
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524/image/coversmallForever Belle: Sallie Ward of Kentucky by Randolph Paul Runyon (review)2026-04-10text/htmlen-USForever Belle: Sallie Ward of Kentucky by Randolph Paul Runyon (review)2026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®67972026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10Killing over Land: Murder and Diplomacy on the Early American Frontier by Robert M. Owens (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988043
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Robert M. owens is an accomplished historian of colonial America and the early American republic. An expert of Indian-white affairs, he has published such books as Red Dreams, White Nightmares: Pan-Indian Alliances in the Anglo-American Mind, 1763–1815 (2015) and Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American Indian Policy (2007). Each one tracks the contentious relationship between Indigenous peoples and white Americans on the trans-Appalachian frontier, especially in the two generations after the American Revolution. These books are careful studies of white American attitudes and policies toward Native peoples on the post-Revolution frontier. Owens continues this line of inquiry in his
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524/image/coversmallKilling over Land: Murder and Diplomacy on the Early American Frontier by Robert M. Owens (review)2026-04-10text/htmlen-USKilling over Land: Murder and Diplomacy on the Early American Frontier by Robert M. Owens (review)2026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®62202026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10Quitting the Nation: Emigrant Rights in North America by Eric R. Schlereth (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988044
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Whereas historians of American citizenship have long written about the barriers faced by those seeking membership in the polity (racial barriers to naturalization, the battle for the vote, the struggle to hold political office, and so on), Eric Schlereth directs his attention to the rights claims of those seeking to abandon the polity. His focus is “emigrant rights, a bundle of privileges that includes the freedom of movement and expatriation” (p. 1). Most historians of immigration are aware of the struggles of immigrants to the United States when it came to asserting a right to self-expatriate from their native countries. But Schlereth uncovers an entire world in which, from the very beginnings of the republic
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524/image/coversmallQuitting the Nation: Emigrant Rights in North America by Eric R. Schlereth (review)2026-04-10text/htmlen-USQuitting the Nation: Emigrant Rights in North America by Eric R. Schlereth (review)2026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®68012026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10The Iron Dice of Battle: Albert Sidney Johnston and the Civil War in the West by Timothy B. Smith (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988045
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Certain “what if” questions have circulated about Civil War events since even before the conflict ended. A select few dominate. For example: What if Stonewall Jackson was not mortally wounded at Chancellorsville? What if the Army of the Potomac had pursed the Army of Northern Virginia with more vigor following Gettysburg? And, what if Albert Sidney Johnston had survived the Battle of Shiloh? A considerable amount of research and thought is required to get at the value of asking these speculative questions—which indeed are worth our consideration when judging their true validity. With his recent book, The Iron Dice of Battle: Albert Sidney Johnston and the Civil War in the West, historian Timothy B. Smith provides
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524/image/coversmallThe Iron Dice of Battle: Albert Sidney Johnston and the Civil War in the West by Timothy B. Smith (review)2026-04-10text/htmlen-USThe Iron Dice of Battle: Albert Sidney Johnston and the Civil War in the West by Timothy B. Smith (review)2026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®71062026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10The Army under Fire: The Politics of Antimilitarism in the Civil War Era by Cecily N. Zander (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988046
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The Army under Fire: The Politics of Antimilitarism in the Civil War Era by Cecily Zander posits that an anti-army animus characterized the Republican Party from its origins in the antebellum period through Reconstruction. “Whatever the army accomplished in the Civil War era,” Zander writes, “it did so while its very existence was being fiercely contested” as “anti-army politics” characterized and shaped Republican governance (p. 174). In making this claim, Zander regularly draws readers’ attention to the military aspects of western expansion. As such, The Army Under Fire joins a bevy of recent works that seek to either understand the Civil War era in broader geographic terms or to re-examine the role of the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524/image/coversmallThe Army under Fire: The Politics of Antimilitarism in the Civil War Era by Cecily N. Zander (review)2026-04-10text/htmlen-USThe Army under Fire: The Politics of Antimilitarism in the Civil War Era by Cecily N. Zander (review)2026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®70852026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South by Robert K. D. Colby (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988047
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Robert K. D. Colby’s An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South is a masterful delve into how enslavement and human trafficking persisted throughout the Civil War. Whereas common sense might lead one to assume that the outbreak of hostilities between the Union and Confederacy might have severely dampened the market for enslaved persons, Colby reveals in his work that this was far from the case. Enslavers continued to buy and sell people throughout the war, with some displaying commitment to the institution of chattel slavery and faith in Confederate victory well into 1865. The persistence of these slave traders, Colby argues, “demonstrates the profound hold cotton capitalism exercised on white
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524/image/coversmallAn Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South by Robert K. D. Colby (review)2026-04-10text/htmlen-USAn Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South by Robert K. D. Colby (review)2026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®54292026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State by Elizabeth Garner Masarik (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988048
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In this book about the influence of sentimentalism on Progressive Era reform, historian Elizabeth Garner Masarik links together plausible motivations with efforts to improve conditions for women and children. The subjects of each chapter range from privately funded charitable endeavors to government campaigns. Some have their own historiographies, which Garner Masarik weaves into the narrative, while others offer fresh perspectives on lesser-known attempts at social change.By beginning with an examination of sentimentalism and the role it played in creating empathy among women across socioeconomic and occasionally racial boundaries, Garner Masarik extends the first part of her discussion to the late eighteenth
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524/image/coversmallThe Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State by Elizabeth Garner Masarik (review)2026-04-10text/htmlen-USThe Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State by Elizabeth Garner Masarik (review)2026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®56592026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10The Violent World of Broadus Miller: A Story of Murder, Lynch Mobs, and Judicial Punishment in the Carolinas by Kevin W. Young (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988049
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Kevin W. Young chose an apt title for his book. Eschewing the classic quotation-colon-clarification format for something more direct and descriptive, Young tells his readers that this study is about a world, and more than that, a violent world in a vortex of murder, lynching, and the criminal justice system in the Carolinas. The world of Broadus Miller, opened to him with his birth in 1904 and abruptly closed with his murder in 1927, was wild and sprawling, even as it remained limited to western North Carolina and South Carolina. It was one shaped by natural hardships (the boll weevil) and human-made ones (poverty, war, white supremacy). This is the pistol-carrying, hard-drinking South, brawling in dirt alleys far
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524/image/coversmallThe Violent World of Broadus Miller: A Story of Murder, Lynch Mobs, and Judicial Punishment in the Carolinas by Kevin W. Young (review)2026-04-10text/htmlen-USThe Violent World of Broadus Miller: A Story of Murder, Lynch Mobs, and Judicial Punishment in the Carolinas by Kevin W. Young (review)2026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®59862026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10Speed Capital: Indianapolis Auto Racing and the Making of Modern America by Brian M. Ingrassia (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988050
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In 1937, the Indiana legislature established the state’s official motto as the “Crossroads of America.” In his book Speed Capital: Indianapolis Auto Racing and the Making of Modern America, Brian Ingrassia draws on the theme of “crossroads” to articulate the development and meanings of the Indianapolis Speedway, focusing on the period from its opening in 1909 until the 1950s. With attention to both the track and its lead creator, Carl Fisher, the author frames the speedway as a cultural crossroads of automobility, new media, consumer culture, and identity ideology. Ingrassia ultimately argues that the speedway, and the annual racing spectacle that would become known as the Indianapolis 500, paved the way for the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524/image/coversmallSpeed Capital: Indianapolis Auto Racing and the Making of Modern America by Brian M. Ingrassia (review)2026-04-10text/htmlen-USSpeed Capital: Indianapolis Auto Racing and the Making of Modern America by Brian M. Ingrassia (review)2026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®59802026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10Beyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class by Aimee Loiselle (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988051
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In 1973 Crystal Lee Sutton was a third-generation mill worker folding towels at J. P. Stevens Company in North Carolina when management fired her for trying to copy and report an anti-union, racist letter posted on the company bulletin board. Before police escorted her out of the factory, Sutton wrote the word “union” on a piece of cardboard, stood on top of her worktable, and lifted it high above her head. Coworkers switched off their machines and flashed the victory hand gesture in solidarity. Actress Sally Field immortalized this “Norma Rae moment” in the titular Academy Award–winning movie based on Sutton’s life. An often-contentious dynamic between real-life union organizer Sutton and her Hollywood alter ego
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524/image/coversmallBeyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class by Aimee Loiselle (review)2026-04-10text/htmlen-USBeyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class by Aimee Loiselle (review)2026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®67222026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10From Union Halls to the Suburbs: Americans for Democratic Action and the Transformation of Postwar Liberalism by Scott Kamen (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988052
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During the 2016 Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders’ economic progressivism challenged Hillary Clinton’s neoliberal identity politics, surprising many commentators. In his first monograph, From Union Halls to the Suburbs: Americans for Democratic Action and the Transformation of Postwar Liberalism, Scott Kamen, an associate professor of history at the University of New Mexico-Valencia, argues that these tensions were not new, but had long embodied postwar American liberalism. Kamen suggests that the New Politics movement associated with Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), the United States’ most prominent liberal organization, saw the Democratic Party move away from labor toward the suburbs, and that this
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524/image/coversmallFrom Union Halls to the Suburbs: Americans for Democratic Action and the Transformation of Postwar Liberalism by Scott Kamen (review)2026-04-10text/htmlen-USFrom Union Halls to the Suburbs: Americans for Democratic Action and the Transformation of Postwar Liberalism by Scott Kamen (review)2026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®69792026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10DARE to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools by Max Felker-Kantor (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988053
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In DARE to Say No, Max Felker-Kantor, associate professor of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Policing Los Angeles, provides the first comprehensive history of America’s premiere anti-drug program, Project DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education). Taught by uniformed officers, DARE quickly grew in popularity from its inception in 1983 and was eventually adopted by 75 percent of American school districts. Felker-Kantor argues that DARE was never just about keeping kids drug free but was part of a larger effort to re-legitimize and humanize the LAPD amidst their aggressive anti-gang campaigns targeting Black and Brown neighborhoods while also normalizing the presence of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524/image/coversmallDARE to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools by Max Felker-Kantor (review)2026-04-10text/htmlen-USDARE to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools by Max Felker-Kantor (review)2026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®61992026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10Kentucky and the United States at 250
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988054
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In 2026, the United States commemorates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. This year provides an opportunity to consider how the events of 1776 reshaped the thirteen colonies that joined together as the United States, how that era shaped our own times, and how we remember the past. For many Americans, the founding of the United States initiated 250 years of political and social progress. The congressional act creating the United States Semiquincentennial Commission articulated that view, identifying the events of 1776 as critical “in the development of the national heritage of the United States of individual liberty, representative government, and the attainment of equal and inalienable
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/524/image/coversmallKentucky and the United States at 2502026-04-10text/htmlen-USKentucky and the United States at 2502026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®312382026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10