Kentucky Rebel Town: The Civil War Battles of Cynthiana and Harrison County

Description

On April 22, 1861, within weeks of the surrender at Fort Sumter, fresh recruits marched to the Cynthiana, Kentucky, depot -- one of the state's first volunteer companies to join the Confederate army. The soldiers boarded a waiting train as many sympathetic city and county officials cheered. A Confederate flag was raised at the Harrison County courthouse but it was taken down within six months, as the influence of pro-Southern officials diminished. However, this "pestilential little nest of treason" became a battlefield during some of the most dramatic military engagements in the state. In this fascinating book, William A. Penn provides an impressively detailed account of the military action that took place in this Kentucky region during the Civil War. Because of its political leanings and strategic position along the Kentucky Central Railroad, Harrison County became the target of multiple raids by Confederate general John Hunt Morgan. Conflict in the area culminated in the Second Battle of Cynthiana, in which Morgan's men clashed with Union troops led by Major General Stephen G. Burbridge (the "Butcher of Kentucky"), resulting in the destruction of much of the town by fire. Penn draws on dozens of period newspapers as well as personal journals, memoirs, and correspondence from citizens, slaves, soldiers, and witnesses to provide a vivid account of the war's impact on the region. Featuring new maps that clearly illustrate the combat strategies in the various engagements, Kentucky Rebel Town provides an illuminating look at divided loyalties and dissent in Union Kentucky.

Get the book

Amazon.com

Search the book

eBay.com

Search the book

Other editions

• 

  Kentucky Rebel Town: The Civil War Battles of Cynthiana and...

  • 2016-08-26
  • 400 pages
  • Ebook
  • University Press of Kentucky

Similar books

• 

  Rebel Raider: The Life of General John Hunt Morgan

  By James A. Ramage

  Thompson, J.H. Thompson, Manlius V. Thompson, Sarah E. Thorpe, Pat Tod, David Todd, Mary (Mrs. Abraham Lincoln) Tompkins, Sally Louisa Tompkinsville, Ky. Trabue, Robert P. transfer applications Transylvania University triad system Trigg ...

• 

  Kentucky’s Rebel Press: Pro-Confederate Media and the Secession Crisis

  By Berry Craig

  Penn, Kentucky Rebel Town: The Civil War Battles of Cynthiana & Harrison County (lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2016), 65, 69; Collins and Collins, History of Kentucky, 1:95. 55. Penn, Kentucky Rebel Town, 65; ...

• 

  War in Kentucky: From Shiloh to Perryville

  By James L. McDonough

  Explores the strategic importance of Kentucky for both sides in the Civil War and recounts the Confederacy's bold attempt to capture the Bluegrass State.

• 

  General Jo Shelby: Undefeated Rebel

  By Daniel O'Flaherty

  This vivid work, first published by UNC Press in 1954, reveals General Joseph Orville Shelby as one of the best Confederate cavalry leaders--and certainly the most colorful.

• 

  Perryville Under Fire: The Aftermath of Kentucky's Largest Civil War Battle

  By Stuart W. Sanders

  As late as 1900, a note in the December issue of Confederate Veteran stated, “Mrs. W.M. Ritchey, of Athlone, Cal., seeks information on her brother, Isaac Cunningham, who was lost in the battle of Perryville.

• 

  Rebels on the Border: Civil War, Emancipation, and the Reconstruction of Kentucky and Missouri

  By Aaron Astor

  Rebels on the Border offers a remarkably compelling and significant study of the Civil War South’s highly contested and bloodiest border states: Kentucky and Missouri. By far the most complex...

• 

  Rebel Raider: The Life of General John Hunt Morgan

  By James A. Ramage

  Morgan's department came under the jurisdiction of Robert E. Lee , and Lee's first instructions were for Morgan to collect his troops , watch the enemy , and defend the saltworks . Morgan promised to comply , at the same time proposing ...

• 

  Josie Underwood's Civil War Diary

  By Josie Underwood

  A well-educated, outspoken member of a politically prominent family in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Josie Underwood (1840–1923) left behind one of the few intimate accounts of the Civil War written by a southern woman sympathetic to the Union ...

• 

  THUNDER FROM A CLEAR SKY: Stovepipe Johnson's Confederate Raid on Newburgh, Indiana

  By Raymond Mulesky

  With the politically divided landscape of Civil War Kentucky and the steamboat economy of the Ohio River as its backdrop, this is the historically accurate account of surprise nocturnal strikes, opportunistic military occupations, and a ...

• 

  Kentucky Cavaliers in Dixie: Reminiscences of a Confederate Cavalryman

  By George Dallas Mosgrove

  Collier , L. F. Martin , James , transferred from Crawford , J. M. Company H. Colvin , Minor . Morin , Andrew . Dickens , Absolom C. Nelson , Theodore P. Day , Lewis . Newman , John W. Draper , Martin . Orr , Morris , killed Feb.