User talk:2603:7000:3100:234:5D97:F2DD:228F:817C

Robert Breckinridge
From Anne Marshalls "A Strange Conclusion to a Triumphant War" her dissertation for Doctor of Philosophy, Univ of Georgia, which went to print as Creating a Confederate Kentucky.

In late 1861, Robert J. Breckinridge wrote: “the profitable continuance of negro slavery anywhere on this continent, and its continuance at all in the Border Slave States, depends absolutely upon the existence of a common national government embracing both the Free States and the Slave States.” “Our political system,” he asserted, “affords not only the highest, but the only effectual protection for interests that are local and exceptional— and at the same time out of sympathy with the general judgment of mankind. And of all possible interests, that of the owners of slaves, in a free country stands most in need of the protection of such a system.” He predicted that secession would “do nothing more surely than drain the slaves, owned by secessionists in the Border States, farther south—and leave the slave interest in the restored Union, a far weaker political element than when they sought to strengthen it by revolution.” 2

In his own words he is stating that the Federal Government is the optimal system to protect slavery.

https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/marshall_anne_e_200412_phd.pdf pages 28 and 29. KYCivilWarHistNerd (talk) 18:58, 3 April 2023 (UTC)


 * This argument was key in the KY State Legislature to win people over to vote Union. From Anne Marshalls "A Strange Conclusion to a Triumphant War" her dissertation for Doctor of Philosophy, Univ of Georgia, which went to print as Creating a Confederate Kentucky.
 * Unionist politician Joseph Holt also employed arguments about slavery in the interest of capturing public sentiment for his cause. Holt, who served as secretary of war under James Buchanan, and whose political wrangling was largely responsible for a Unionist victory in the state legislature in 1861, argued that only the federally supported Fugitive Slave Law, “effective in its power of recapture, but infinitely more potent in its moral agency in preventing the escape of slaves, that alone saves the institution in the Border States from utter extinction.” Noting that the privilege would be unavailable to them if they joined the Confederacy, Holt appealed to white Kentuckians’ fear of losing their property. Kentucky, he argued, “will virtually have Canada brought to her doors in the form of Free States, whose populations, relieved of all moral and constitutional obligations to deliver up fugitive slaves, will stand with open arms inviting and welcoming them, and defending them, if need be, at the point of the bayonet. Under such influences, slavery will perish rapidly away in Kentucky, as a ball of snow melts in the summer’s sun.” Unionist Kentucky politicians urged their constituents not to secede for the sake of, not in spite of, their property rights and the retention of the status quo.
 * https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/marshall_anne_e_200412_phd.pdf pages 29 and 30
 * Key takeaway is that Unionist Kentuckians believed the Federal Government would be a protector of their property rights including slavery at the beginning of the war. KYCivilWarHistNerd (talk) 19:13, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * All in all I feel the current edit covers the spirit of the complexities that I was making that plagued KY during the war. One of the things that has impacted Kentucky's history over the past decades is the advent of technology. KY had horrible record keeping during the Vicotorian era. Researchers would comment how opaque KY history was as a result. With the advent of scanning and digitizing, once very difficult to find sources of material are now much more easily accessible and we are getting much more granular detail to who and what Kentuckians were.
 * One of the most overlooked topics in KY history as it pertains to the Civil War was Kentucky's Flourishing slave trade. The Smithsonian is referring to this as the "The Slavery Trail of Tears" and Kentucky slave traders were some of the largest movers of enslaved people in the country.  Louisville was the primary transportation depot of this trade due to its direct river route to the Natchez MS slave markets.  The city center had over 300 slave trading firms in a town of 68,000 people.  Its the most overlooked and under studied chapters in African American slavery. KYCivilWarHistNerd (talk) 21:10, 3 April 2023 (UTC)