LONG AND BORING REPLY!!!
LONG AND BORING TO MOST........SORRY. BUT I DO LIKE HISTORY.For the most part your history is correct but needs a little polish. If you will permit me..... and don?t apologize for being a yankee....somebody had to be born up North. LOL
As a matter of fact (and interest but otherwise pure junk for most others) in EASTERN KENTUCKY Floyd County and its neighbor to the North, Johnson County were split over the War Between the States! My OWN family was split along with their Church which was also split. Their politics were split, Johnson County was Republican and Floyd Democrat. There was a battle (really a minor skirmish) with Colonel Garfield (later General and then President) in command of the Union. And General Humphrey Marshall in command of the Confederate forces***. Must not have been much as there is a solitary confederate grave along U.S. 23 that has been maintained by the DAR (of all people) for decades.
November 18, 1861 -- A Sovereignty Convention meets in Russellville and establishes the Provisional Government of Kentucky. George W. Johnson is elected the governor.
December 10,1861 - KENTUCKY IS ADMITTED INTO THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA BY VOTE OF THE CONFEDERATE CONGRESS.
1862
***January 10 - Battle of Middle Creek fought between forces under Union Colonel James A. Garfield and Gen. Humphrey Marshall.
Upon the outbreak of the American Civil War, Kentucky attempted to maintain a position of neutrality, but the geographical position of the state made the plan impossible. THE GOVERNOR REJECTED THE APPEAL OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN FOR TROOPS, AND WHEN THE CONFEDERATE AND UNION ARMIES BEGAN TO POUR INTO THE STATE FROM OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS, FORMAL DEMANDS WERE MADE FOR THEIR WITHDRAWAL. The Union armies soon TOOK POSSESSION, however, and by 1862 the Confederate forces had evacuated the state. Important military operations in Kentucky were the battles of Mill Springs, Richmond, and Perryville; the invasion of Gen. Braxton Bragg; the five successive cavalry raids of the Confederate general John Morgan (1825?64); and the Confederate raid on Paducah under Gen. Nathan Forrest. Including the so-called Home Guards and those who enlisted but were never mustered in, Kentucky furnished more than 90,000 troops to the Union army and 40,000 to the Confederacy. Throughout the war Kentucky remained a slave state; its slaves were freed only after the adoption (1865) of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Western Virginia became an arena of Indian warfare as the Shawnee of nearby Ohio tried to stem the advance of white settlers. This struggle disrupted, but did not halt, the process of settlement between 1750 and 1790. As western Virginia matured during the next 50 years, IT DIFFERED IN IMPORTANT RESPECTS FROM EASTERN VIRGINIA. It was a poorer but freer society, characterized more by subsistence farms than by large plantations. Iron and glass manufacturing developed early in the Wheeling district, while in the Kanawha and Monongahela valleys salt and iron making presaged the later importance of extractive industries. THESE ECONOMIC DIFFERENCES ADDED TO THE POLITICAL RESTIVENESS WESTERNERS FELT UNDER VIRGINIA?S OLIGARCHICAL AND CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL SYSTEM. (Emphasis mine)
Eastern and western Virginia MIGHT HAVE WORKED OUT THEIR DIFFERENCES AMICABLY, AS THEY APPEARED TO BE DOING IN THE 1850S, HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. Instead, Unionist outrage at Virginia?s secession and swift Union military conquests in June?July 1861 encouraged separatist leaders to organize, first, a so-called restored Virginia government based in Wheeling, followed by a separate state government that entered the Union as West Virginia ON JUNE 20, 1863. WELL INTO THE WAR. For strategic and economic reasons, the creators of the state took in the Greenbrier and Potomac regions along the present Virginia border. This gave West Virginia A LARGE Confederate minority, to which a number of disenchanted Unionists were added after 1865. THESE DISSIDENTS GAINED POLITICAL CONTROL OF THE STATE IN THE ELECTIONS OF 1870 AND REMODELED ITS INSTITUTIONS ACCORDING TO VIRGINIA PRECEDENTS.
West Virginia provided to the Union Army 31,872 regular army troops, 133 sailors and marines, and 196 United States Colored Troops, during that terrible conflict of 1861-1865. It is also estimated that somewhere between 16,000 and 20,000 men served in the Confederate Army in this war of "brother versus brother."
