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

Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War

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 Kentucky and Missouri. By far the most complex examination to date, the book sharply focuses on the “borderland” between the free North and the Confederate South. As a result, Rebels on the Border deepens and enhances understanding of the sectional conflict, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.

After slaves in central Kentucky and Missouri gained their emancipation, author Aaron Astor contends, they transformed informal kin and social networks of resistance against slavery into more formalized processes of electoral participation and institution building. At the same time, white politics in Kentucky’s Bluegrass and Missouri’s Little Dixie underwent an electoral realignment in response to the racial and social revolution caused by the war and its aftermath. Black citizenship and voting rights provoked a violent white reaction and a cultural reinterpretation of white regional identity. After the war, the majority of wartime Unionists in the Bluegrass and Little Dixie joined former Confederate guerrillas in the Democratic Party in an effort to stifle the political ambitions of former slaves.

Rebels on the Border is not simply a story of bitter political struggles, partisan guerrilla warfare, and racial violence. Like no other scholarly account of Kentucky and Missouri during the Civil War, it places these two crucial heartland states within the broad context of local, southern, and national politics.

Genres: History, Civil War

344 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2012

Reviews

[Amber · Rating 3 out of 5]

This work provides critical insight to the complexity of the Civil War as a whole by highlighting the unique contexts of Border States Kentucky and Missouri. It challenges traditional narratives about Union vs. Confederate political aims, the roles of enslaved African-Americans, and processes of Reconstruction. Moreover, it successfully represents the aims and engagements of African American men and white women (though African American women remain notably absent)--perspectives not often enough integrated into castings of political discourse in that era.

[Charlsie Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book served my purpose wonderfully (I'm writing a fictional work on Reconstruction in Mississippi, but my hero is from KY). The work gave an excellent overview of the situation in KY at the time of my story--and the reasons for many Kentuckians' regrets are sweet on my Southern ears.

Many of the supporting references were as meaty as the narrative itself and the book contained an extensive bibliography--the latter two I love when reading a history book. Highly recommended to those interested in the CW/Reconstruction era.

[Jason S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting account of the civil war and reconstruction in the border states, arguing that conservative unionism turned into belated confederatism as the period progressed.