Why read Creating a Confederate Kentucky?

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

Book description

Historian E. Merton Coulter famously said that Kentucky ""waited until after the war was over to secede from the Union."" In this fresh study, Anne E. Marshall traces the development of a Confederate identity in Kentucky between 1865 and 1925 that belied the fact that Kentucky never left the Union…

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American history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Creating a Confederate Kentucky as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Brad Asher

Author

When I moved to Kentucky many years ago, the large Confederate memorial on a downtown street was a puzzle to me because I knew that Kentucky had been a Union state. As one historian said many years ago, “Kentucky seceded after the war was over.” Marshall’s book walks us through that process. She covers everything from politics to postwar violence to children’s literature to the resistance efforts of Kentucky’s African Americans as she explains why those Confederate memorials and monuments went up all around the state.

From Brad's list on The best books about the Civil War and the Lost Cause in Kentucky.