The Civil War in Kentucky: Battle for the Bluegrass State.

Edited by Kent Masterson Brown. (Mason City, Iowa: Savas Publishing Company, 2000. Pp. viii, 320. $29.95, ISBN 1-882810-47-3.)

"Kentucky played an unusual if not unique role in the Civil War," writes Charles P. Roland in his essay in this volume (p. 23). Unfortunately, that role is only partially explored in this new collection that mostly revisits well-worn stories. This is not to say that it does this poorly or uninterestingly. Most of the writers are the recognized authorities on their subjects, and a couple of the chapters--Lowell H. Harrison's on the state Confederate government and Kenneth W. Noe's on the battle of Perryville--are drawn from research for new book-length studies.

Battle in the subtitle should be taken literally, for every piece save Harrison's deals primarily with military topics, and the state Confederate government he chronicles had strong elements of martial interposition. Despite the military emphasis, however, there is no overview of the 1862 E. Kirby Smith-Braxton Bragg invasion, although the four articles devoted to it--on the baffles at Richmond, Munfordville, and Perryville, and on Irish Confederate Patrick R. Cleburne (a curious inclusion since no Kentuckian other than the ubiquitous-yet-inconsequential John Hunt Morgan receives a full profile)--consume half the volume. Voices of common soldiers are rarely heard, even in editor Brown's "tribute" to the already heavily eulogized Orphan Brigade. Pieces by Roland on Confederate military actions in the state during late 1861 through early 1862 and John Y. Simon on the military-political problems the Union faced in the self-declared neutral commonwealth during the same period are good overviews but break no new ground.

It should be noted, however, that this book reflects how Kentucky likes to remember its part in the conflict--with decisive battles and military action, Morgan's dashing raids, and a general tilt to the Confederate side of the scale. But it is not an accurate depiction of Civil War--era Kentucky. There was arguably only one engagement in the commonwealth truly large enough to qualify for full-scale "battle" status (Perryville) and no conventional military activity of any consequence after that battle in October 1862. Around 70 percent of the Kentuckians who fought during the war did so in the Union army. Morgan and his plundering hordes were feared much more than welcomed. To the dismay of Confederates in and out of the state, there was no groundswell for their side during the Bragg-Smith invasion and the raids. That came later in the war and afterward, in response to being treated like an occupied territory.

The story of Kentucky's "unusual if not unique role," then, is not primarily a martial one, contrary to the portrayal in this volume. The true "battle for the Bluegrass State" was for the hearts and minds of a people literally and figuratively caught in the middle of an epic struggle. That story has yet to be told, and in fact the last full treatment of the state during the era is three-quarters of a century old (E. Merton Coulter, The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky [Chapel Hill, 1926]). While Brown's Civil War in Kentucky is a fine collection of essays on major military activities in the commonwealth, it does little to advance broader understanding of the Bluegrass State during the contentious middle period.

KENNETH H. WILLIAMS
Kentucky Historical Society