For Slavery And Union: Benjamin Buckner And Kentucky Loyalties In The Civil War

Benjamin F. Buckner (1836--1901) faced a dire choice as the flames of Civil War threatened his native Kentucky. As an ambitious Bluegrass aristocrat, he was sympathetic to fellow slave owners, but was also convinced that the Peculiar Institution could not survive a war for Southern independence. Buckner joined the Twentieth Kentucky Volunteer Infantry in 1861 as a Union soldier. President Lincoln's issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 ultimately destroyed Buckner's faith in his cause, however, and he resigned his commission. This book uses Buckner's story to illuminate the origins and perspectives of Kentucky's conservative proslavery Unionists, and explain why this group eventually became a key force in repressing social and political change during the Reconstruction era and beyond. Free from the constraints imposed on the former Confederate states, men like Buckner joined with other proslavery forces to work in the interest of the New South's brand of economic growth and racial control.

• | Author: Patrick A. Lewis
• | Publisher: University Press Of Kentucky
• | Publication Date: Feb 08, 2019
• | Number of Pages: 272 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 0813177510
• | ISBN-13: 9780813177519