When Kentucky Did NOT Straddle the Fence

Tweet

Studying the history of the US Civil War, you’ll see my home state of Kentucky made every attempt possible to “straddle the fence” in the War Between the States. Kentucky was a state where slave ownership was allowed; yet it did not join the Confederacy. Both side of the Civil War had presidents from Kentucky: Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Most of Kentucky’s participation in the Civil War came in the form of families being pitted against each other, with one member joining the Union forces and another joining the Confederacy. One major exception to that was the Battle of Perryville. Today the battlefield is a Kentucky state park and a location on the National Historic Register. The Battle of Perryville took place in October 1862. While the South inflicted more casualties on the North (900 dead or missing, versus about 500 Confederates) and “won the battle,” it was, in the long run, a loss for the South, as they couldn’t hold their position in Kentucky. The battle isn’t considered all that “important” in the grand scheme of things, and yet it was. A southern occupation of Kentucky would easily have demoralized the Union, especially given the slavery sympathies in the state. Perryville Battlefield State Historic Park has a museum ($4 admission, with a discount for seniors/veterans) which includes artifacts and a movie about the battle, a driving tour, and a two-mile walking tour of the “inner ring” of the battlefield. On the latter the visitor will see a mass grave of Confederate soldiers killed in the battle (donated by the man who owned the land where the battle took place). This is significant because it’s one of the few places I’ve been in the Civil War tour this year where a Confederate cemetery took precedence over the Union forces’ burial sites (in many of the battlefields, Confederate soldiers’ bodies were exhumed and buried elsewhere). There are also informative plaques pointing out the significance of the areas of the battlefields. The Battle of Perryville was the one time Kentucky did not remain “neutral” in the Civil War...because the War was here.