For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War

273 Pages·2015·2.056 MB·English

by  Patrick A Lewis

Praise for
For Slavery and Union
“Well-researched, well-argued, and well-written, For Slavery and Union is an
exemplary study. Benjamin Buckner of Kentucky personifies the dilemma of the
Upper South proslavery unionist, both during and after the Civil War. Patrick A.
Lewis ably portrays the trials, contradictions, and struggles of those who favored the
Union, but also saw it as capable of protecting slavery. Once the conflict became one
to end slavery, Buckner zealously joined blue and gray allies in protecting whiteness.
By placing Buckner fully in the context of his time, Lewis reveals that the old unionist
did not change, but rather the circumstances in the world around him did. To
Benjamin Buckner, the best way to protect slavery was to keep the Union together. He
joined the Union cause as the Civil War began, but his opposition to emancipation
brought about his resignation from the army. Soon he joined his former enemies in
trying to shape a postwar world that would replicate the prewar racial one. All of
this is well told in Lewis’s wonderful case study.”—James C. Klotter, state historian of
Kentucky and professor of history at Georgetown College
“Patrick A. Lewis’s splendid For Slavery and Union is a most welcome contribution to
Civil War, Kentucky, and border-state historical scholarship. Deeply researched and
gracefully crafted, Lewis’s book provides the best insights available into the conflicted
ideological and social worlds of Benjamin Forsythe Buckner and like-minded
proslavery unionists during the Civil War era. Better than any previous scholar, Lewis
untangles the conundrum conservative and upwardly mobile white southerners
confronted as the nation dissolved. They believed not only that unionism and slavery
went hand in hand, but envisioned that secession signaled the death knell not only
of the ‘peculiar institution’ but also of white southerners’ much-boasted-about way
of life, a weltanschauung predicated on white supremacy. Lewis’s mature, richly
interpretive study places Buckner’s postwar life in the whirligig world of Jim Crow/
New South Kentucky, a world he quietly embraced.”—John David Smith, author of
Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops
“Benjamin Forsythe Buckner was a conservative proslavery unionist who was for
the Union because he thought slavery would be safest in the Union, and who never
accepted emancipation as a Union war aim. This insightful book positions Patrick
A. Lewis among the cutting-edge scholars who have punctured the mythology about
Kentucky’s benign slave system, harmonious social order, and enlightened political
leadership.”—Daniel W. Crofts, author of Reluctant Confederates: Upper South
Unionists in the Secession Crisis
“Patrick A. Lewis paints a splendid picture of proslavery unionism in the form of
Major Benjamin Buckner. His portrayal of the Kentucky planter gives texture, depth,
and nuance to an ideological position that has confounded historians for many years.
This may be the first biography we have seen that captures the cultural and political
center of Civil War–era Kentucky, including the state’s embrace of a conservative
Union in 1861 and its rejection of a transformed Union in 1865.”—Aaron Astor,
author of Rebels on the Border: Civil War, Emancipation, and the Reconstruction of
Kentucky and Missouri
“As part of a recent book project, I researched the letters Benjamin Forsythe Buckner
wrote to his fiancée. This revealing collection of Civil War documents offers the
perspective of a Kentucky Union officer who resigned his military commission in
1863 specifically to protest the Emancipation Proclamation, long before his home
state saw its slaves freed by wartime realities. Patrick A. Lewis has turned this small
set of letters into a larger, more troubling story—the postwar transformation of the
formerly loyal Bluegrass State into an unreconstructed southern state, accomplished
by the defiant politics of racial hatred, war allegiance, and fictive memory.”—
Christopher Phillips, author of The Civil War in the Border South
“Patrick A. Lewis has written an engaging and insightful portrait of a man who
embodied the struggle many loyal whites in the Upper South endured during
the Civil War era. His nuanced examination of Benjamin Buckner’s outlook and
choices elucidate the phenomenon of proslavery unionism shared by many white
southerners. This is a biography that deepens our understanding of an important but
understudied wartime faction.”—Anne Marshall, Mississippi State University
“Deeply researched and narrated with elegance and verve, For Slavery and Union is
the story of a fascinating Kentuckian whose life mirrored the larger ordeal of the state
in the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction. In Lewis’s skillful hands, Benjamin
F. Buckner’s life becomes an account of loyalties divided but never fully reconciled,
and of a proslavery unionism that foundered in the face of emancipation. The result
is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand why Kentucky sided with the
Union in the Civil War—and then turned south to align with the former Confederate
states in the decades beyond. A sobering but thoroughly enjoyable read.”—Amy
Murrell Taylor, University of Kentucky
“White unionists in Kentucky, argues Lewis, fought with the Union for the benefit of
slavery, not despite slavery. This insight is the basis of a gracefully written, beautifully
argued reinterpretation of Kentucky’s experience in the Civil War era that also speaks
to American political culture more generally. Even as the Civil War divided the
nation, support for slavery and racial inequality flourished in both the Union and
the Confederacy, suggesting how difficult it would be to resolve the conflicts that led
the nation to war.”—Laura F. Edwards, author of A Legal History of the Civil War and
Reconstruction: A Nation of Rights
For Slavery and Union

For

Slavery

and
UNION
Benjamin Buckner
and Kentucky Loyalties
in the Civil War
PATRICK A. LEWIS
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Copyright © 2015 by The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern
Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College,
Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University,
Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,
University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.
All rights reserved.
Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky
663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008
www.kentuckypress.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lewis, Patrick A., 1984–
For slavery and union : Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky loyalties in the Civil War /
Patrick A. Lewis.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8131-6079-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8131-6081-8 (pdf) —
ISBN 978-0-8131-6080-1 (epub)
1. Buckner, Benjamin Forsythe, 1836–1901. 2. Unionists (United States Civil War)—
Kentucky—Biography. 3. Kentucky—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Biography.
4. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Biography. 5. United States. Army.
Kentucky Infantry Regiment, 20th (1862–1865) 6. Slavery—Kentucky—History—19th
century. I. Title.
F455.B83L48 2015
973.7'469092—dc23
[B] 2014039418

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American
National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
Member of the Association of
American University Presses
Contents
Introduction: Relationships, Interests, and Identities 1
1. The World Is a Cruel and Cold Place 15
2. Firstborn of the Union 43
3. Brave Hearts and Stout Hands 67
4. I Feel Impelled to Pause 89
5. Privileges and Elections 119
6. Democratic Partisan Militia 157
Epilogue: Glen Avon 187
Acknowledgments 201
Notes 205
Bibliography 241
Index 259

Introduction
Relationships, Interests,
and Identities
For Benjamin Forsythe Buckner, the major of the Union army’s Twentieth Kentucky
Volunteer Infantry Regiment, a dissonant note of defeat accompanied the repulse of
the Confederate invasion of his home state in the fall of 1862. Despite the military
victory, Buckner was left gutted by the news of President Lincoln’s preliminary
Emancipation Proclamation. Halted during the pursuit of the Confederate army
back into Tennessee, Buckner vented his conservative proslavery unionist outrage at
the president’s new war measure in a letter to his secessionist fiancée, Helen Martin.1
“The Union Kentuckians are not shamefully heated,” Buckner wrote, “and by reason
of the presidents want of good faith, which is only equaled by his lack of sense, we
find ourselves in arms to maintain doctrines which if announced 12 months ago,
would have driven us all, notwithstanding our loyalty to the Constitution & the
Union into the ranks of the Southern Army.”2 Furious as he was, though, Buckner
never seriously considered turning rebel. “The people of the South have brought
all this upon us and are not worthy of our support,” he continued. “Nor can they
give us any guarantee of protection or assistance.” Buckner was trapped between the
government he loved and the section of the country (and its institution) with which
he identified—which, indeed, shaped his identity as a white man. “We joined the
people of the North (a people whom we did not love) to fight the South (a people
with whom we were connected by ties of relationship, interest, the identity of our
hearts and institutions) merely upon principle and to preserve that Constitutional
form of government which was the wonder and admiration of the world. But the
president has by the shake of the pen taken away all that.” Stunned, he could only
ask, “But what are we to do[?] Where can we go[?]”3
1