Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State

摘要

Creating a Confederate Kentucky addresses a deceptively simple question: after the US Civil War, how did the Confederate effort come to dominate public memory in Kentucky, a border state that was initially neutral and ultimately sided with the Union? Short but dense, Marshall's book uses material from diaries and newspapers to novels and songs, from state voting patterns to public celebrations of the war effort. Examining both dominant and less-visible accounts of how Kentucky remembered and was remembered in the Civil War and its aftermath, Marshall addresses well-worn topics. Her assessment of postbellum social and racial politics in Kentucky, however, moves across such a range of texts and perspectives that it brings a refreshing depth to a familiar story that spanned two centuries and continues today.