AHC: Kentucky in the Confederacy

The challenge-have Kentucky seceed from the Union and join the Confedercy in the Civil War. You can use any POD you want, so long as the Civil War happens in a recognizable form.

Also, any ideas of how Confederate Kentucky might affect the war? It would certainly give the Confederacy more strategic depth in the western theater, and the Ohio river seems like a good natural defensive line-better than the long straight line of the Tennessee border, at any rate.
 
IIRC KY was one of the most populated and industrial slave states and the river would have given a good natural boarder, so it would have sure helped but I still do not think it would have been enough.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
There was a secessionist movement in Kentucky;

it failed.

Twice.

Something like 70 full regiments of USVs (infantry and cavalry) were recruited in Kentucky, along with large number of USCT regiments; I think the number of CS regiments recruited in Kentucky was 10 or less.

Gives a reasonable approximation of the depth of support for the rebellion in Kentucky.

Best,
 
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The challenge-have Kentucky seceed from the Union and join the Confedercy in the Civil War. You can use any POD you want, so long as the Civil War happens in a recognizable form.

Also, any ideas of how Confederate Kentucky might affect the war? It would certainly give the Confederacy more strategic depth in the western theater, and the Ohio river seems like a good natural defensive line-better than the long straight line of the Tennessee border, at any rate.

Easy: Have the Union invade Kentucky instead of the Confederates.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Grant wasn't as reckless as Polk;

the US could play for time, while the rebels could not, and both houses of the state Legislature were loyalist after the summer, 1861 elections.

Kentucky was just not going to rebel, despite the wishes of Magoffin et al.

Best,
 

katchen

Banned
If Kentucky joined the Confederacy, we might well see East Kentucky seceding from the rest of Kentucky ala West Virginia to form the state of East Kentuckyd, where slavery is illegal to be followed immediately by East Tennessee and then North Alabama. It would then become a very different Civil War with irregulars from Kentucky engaging in acts of terrorism in southern Illinois, Indiana and Ohio and Grant using the Appalachians as his way into the South.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
The Appalachians were hardly a roadway anywhere in the 1860s

no river transport and very limited railway mileage would not have made for much of a road.

Best,
 
I don't know about seceding in 1861.

But, say Bragg gets a little nerve in him after Lee wins in the East and decides to fight Buell on an equal footing and possibly wins/holds Frankfort then the secessionist government of Kentucky sits in the state capitol.

May sway things, especially because it would divert the war from Tennessee.
 
Elect a Radical Republican, not Lincoln, and have them invade Kentucky.

"I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone, we can not hold Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland. These all against us, and the job on our hands is too large for us. We would as well consent to separation at once, including the surrender of this capitol." - Abraham Lincoln, 1861

Both Davis and Lincoln were born in Kentucky. Davis moved South to Mississippi, which is practically byword for racial injustice, while Lincoln moved North to Illinois, the state which has been the friendliest to African-Americans politically. Great symbolism, that.
 
I was actually wondering myself if a more radical Republican would do the trick. How plausible would it be to have a President Fremont in 1860?

Alternatively, maybe we could have Fremont be made governor of Kentucky, and piss off enough people such that when the Confederates invade, they get more support than OTL.
 
I'm a Kentuckian, and I think it would be very hard for the majority of Kentuckians to support the Confederacy. The Northern part of the state was overwhelmingly pro-Union, and that's where the population is clustered. Unlike the South, Kentuckians don't fight the Civil War anymore, most residents practically worship Lincoln.
 
Step 1: Remove Leonidas Polk from his command before he invades Kentucky.

Where things go from there is a little unpredictable but that's a good start. You may not see Kentucky secede from that action alone but if Grant invades first it would at least provoke more men to form gray regiments.
 
Easy: Have the Union invade Kentucky instead of the Confederates.

I don't think even that will do it. The pro-Union and pro-Confederate sides of the South were very well established, and their symapthies not really subject to change. The issue was what kind of pretext was necessary to drag reluctant secessionists into full blown secession.

Confederates firing on Federal troops on Fort Sumter didn't push most Virginians into supporting the Union. Lincoln asking for volunteers in response however made the state secede. The sympathy of the Virginians was very obvious. At some point, they were going to secede once war started. Of course, that call for volunteers did squat to convince Western Virginians to support the Confederacy.

Kentucky is in a similar situation. You have lots of people who don't want to make that existential choice, and they are trying to delay that choice for as long as possible. Once the war entered Kentucky soil, there was no longer any chance of delay. That it was the Confederates who invaded made a good pretext for the Unionists, but very few would choose a different side if Union troops entered the state first unless Federal troops began attacking Kentuckians as opposed to simply moving through the state.

Both Union and Confederate commanders were watching each other and Kentucky closely. The moment one army entered, the other would. There is not enough time difference between the moves to create a new frame or debate that would substantial numbers of Kentuckians from one side to another.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
If Polk had not occupied Columbus (or, better yet for the South, had never been made an army officer), it is entirely possible that Union forces would have moved to occupy Paducah and other strategic points sometime in the fall of 1861. That makes the North, and not the South, the ones who violated Kentuckian neutrality and that makes a HUGE difference. About a third of the Kentucky population was made up of fence-sitters who, IOTL, were outraged when the South moved into Kentucky; ITTL, that anger would be directed towards the North.

People point out that there were more Kentucky units in service with the Union than the Confederacy and suggest that this is evidence that the state as a whole was overwhelmingly pro-Union. But this ignores that obvious fact that Kentucky was occupied by the Union for almost the entire war and that it was vastly easier for the North to recruit soldiers than it was for the South. It's impossible to know for sure, but my own estimate would be that the state was about 60%-40% in favor of the Union. If the fence-sitters had been made to throw in with the Confederacy in the fall of 1861, that proportion could easily be reversed.

It's also pointed out, correctly, that relatively few Kentucky men joined the Confederate army when it briefly occupied the bulk of Kentucky in the fall of 1862. But it's also worth pointing out that the Confederate Army encountered lots of goodwill throughout the state, with people coming forward with supplies, cheering crowds welcoming the Southern troops in many towns, and other displays of pro-Southern sentiment.

Had secession taken place, the whole situation in Kentucky would have transformed radically. It's worth remembering that Virginia had been generally pro-Union up to the moment of secession, but that Unionist sentiment essentially vanished (except in West Virginia) the moment that secession became an accomplished fact. Kentucky could easily have been much the same way.

As for what would have happened, I think Lincoln was correct when he said that to lose Kentucky was to lose the whole game. A fair chunk of the 75,000 men Kentucky sent to the Union Army during the war would instead be fighting in gray uniforms, the vast logistical and agricultural resources of Kentucky would have greatly added the Southern cause, and there would have been tremendous geographic advantages as well. Just as a single example, the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers could have been defended much more easily on Kentucky soil than from Forts Henry and Donelson.
 
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