'Between the hawk and the buzzard': The Civil War in Henderson and Daviess counties, Kentucky

Despite Kentucky's crucial importance to both the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War, the state has hardly been touched as an area of scholarly study. While the lack of historical research at the state level is notable, there is an almost complete and total absence of scholarly studies at the local level during the Civil War era. This is especially true concerning the counties of Henderson and Daviess. In many ways these two counties were indicative of many counties in the Green River valley, of which both Henderson and Daviess counties are a part. Both produced copious amounts of tobacco and possessed numerous slaves. Both were closely tied into the economic system of the Ohio River valley and the Market and Transportation Revolutions of the mid-nineteenth century. And both, much like the rest of the Green River country, were strong-Whig counties, as well as being pro-Union at the outset of the war. Additionally, during the Civil War, these two counties experienced the myriad of problems that not only the people of the Green River valley were beset with, but that many Kentuckians experienced. They dealt with the presence of regular Union and Confederate forces in 1861 and 1862. They also dealt with terrifying and destructive outbreaks of irregular war during the conflict, as well abusive actions by the federal government. The citizens of Henderson and Daviess counties also watched helplessly as the promises that the Republican controlled government made early in the war were ignored and, as the war dragged on and the hopes of a quick and easy victory were dashed, harsher more pro-abolitionist polices emerged. Kentuckians saw the Emancipation Proclamation and the recruitment of African Americans into the Union army as the culmination of perceived lies and betrayal that the federal government inflicted upon them, a loyal southern state. Thus, an examination of these two county's' experiences is revealing not only of life in the lower Green River valley, but throughout much of Kentucky during the Civil War.