Border states (Civil War)

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In this map:      Union states      Union territories      Kansas, which entered the Union as a free state after the Bleeding Kansas crisis      Union border states that permitted slavery      The Confederacy      Confederate claimed and sometimes held territories
In this map:      Union states      Union territories      Kansas, which entered the Union as a free state after the Bleeding Kansas crisis      Union border states that permitted slavery      The Confederacy      Confederate claimed and sometimes held territories

The term border states refers to the five slave states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia which bordered a free state and aligned with the Union during the American Civil War. All but Delaware share borders with states that joined the Confederacy. In Kentucky and Missouri there were both pro-Confederate and pro-Union government factions. Though every slave state (except South Carolina) contributed some troops to the Union side,[1][2] the split was most severe in these border states, with men from the same family often fighting on opposite sides.

West Virginia was formed in 1863 from the northwestern counties of Virginia that had seceded from Virginia after Virginia seceded from the Union. In the cases of Kentucky and Missouri, the states had two state governments during the Civil War, one supporting the Confederacy and one supporting the Union.

In addition, two territories not yet states—the Indian Territory (now the state of Oklahoma), and the New Mexico Territory (now the states of Arizona and New Mexico)—also permitted slavery. Yet very few slaves could actually be found in these territories, despite the institution's legal status there. During the war, the major Indian tribes in Oklahoma signed an alliance with the Confederacy and participated in its military efforts. Residents of New Mexico Territory were of divided loyalties; the region was split between the Union and Confederacy at the 34th Parallel. Oklahoma is often cited as a "border state" today, but Arizona and New Mexico are rarely, if ever, so characterized.

With geographic, social, political, and economic connections to both the North and South, the border states were critical to the outcome of the war and still delineate the cultural border that separates the North from the South. After Reconstruction, most of the border states adopted Jim Crow laws resembling those enacted in the South, but in recent decades some of them (most notably Delaware and Maryland) have become more Northern in their political, economic, and social orientation, while others (particularly Kentucky and West Virginia) have adopted a Southern way of life.[3] Telsur Southern Dialect Regional Map

Today, the phrase is also sometimes applied in common usage to the states of the upper South that formed the northern tier of the Confederacy, such as Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina.[citation needed]

Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, designed as a war-measures act, applied only to territories not already under Union control, so it did not apply to the border states. Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia each changed their state constitution to prohibit slavery. Slavery in Kentucky and Delaware (as well as remnants of slavery in West Virginia and New Jersey) was not ended until the 1865 ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.


Contents

Both houses of Delaware's General Assembly rejected secession overwhelmingly, the House of Representatives unanimously.

Main article: Maryland in the American Civil War

The Maryland Legislature rejected secession in 1861, Governor Hicks voted against it. As a result of the Union Army's heavy presence in the state and the suspension of habeas corpus by Abraham Lincoln, several Maryland state legislators, as well as the mayor and police chief of Baltimore, who supported the secession, were arrested and imprisoned by Union authorities. (Notice that with Virginia having seceded, Union troops had to go through Maryland to reach the national capital at Washington D.C.) Had Maryland also joined the Confederacy, Washington D.C. would have been totally surrounded. Maryland contributed troops to both the Confederate and Union armies. The majority of their troops went to the Union, (60,000), less (25,000) went to the Confederacy. The state of Maryland would remain under martial law until the official end of the war on June 23, 1865. Maryland was not covered by the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. Maryland adopted a new state constitution in 1864, which prohibited slavery and thus emancipated all slaves in the state.

Main article: Kentucky in the American Civil War

Kentucky was strategic to Union victory in the Civil War. Lincoln once said, "I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone, we cannot hold Missouri, nor 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 capital" (Washington, which was surrounded by slave states: Confederate Virginia and Union-controlled Maryland). He is further reported to have said that he hoped to have God on his side, but he had to have Kentucky.

Kentucky did not secede, but a faction formed a government, and it was recognized by the Confederate States of America as a member state.

Kentucky Governor Beriah Magoffin proposed that slave states like Kentucky should conform to the U.S. Constitution and remain in the Union. When Lincoln requested 75,000 men to serve in the Union, however; Magoffin, a Southern sympathizer, countered that Kentucky would "furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern states."

Kentucky tried to remain neutral, even issuing a proclamation May 20, 1861, asking both sides to keep out. The neutrality was broken when Confederate General Leonidas Polk occupied Columbus, Kentucky, in the summer of 1861, though the Union had been openly enlisting troops in the state before this. In response, the Kentucky Legislature passed a resolution directing the governor to demand the evacuation of Confederate forces from Kentucky soil. Magoffin vetoed the proclamation, but the legislature overrode his veto. The legislature further decided to back General Ulysses S. Grant and his Union troops stationed in Paducah, Kentucky, on the grounds that the Confederacy voided the original pledge by entering Kentucky first.

Southern sympathizers were outraged at the legislature's decisions, citing that Polk's troops in Kentucky were only in route to countering Grant's forces. Later legislative resolutions—such as inviting Union General Robert Anderson to enroll volunteers to expel the Confederate forces, requesting the governor to call out the militia, and appointing Union General Thomas L. Crittenden in command of Kentucky forces—only incensed the Southerners further. (Magoffin vetoed the resolutions but all were overridden.) In 1862, the legislature passed an act to disfranchise citizens who enlisted in the Confederate States Army. Thus Kentucky's neutral status evolved into backing the Union. Most of those who originally sought neutrality, turned to the Union cause.

When Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston occupied Bowling Green, Kentucky in the summer of 1861, the pro-Confederates in western and central Kentucky moved to establish a Confederate state government. The Russellville Convention met in Logan County on November 18, 1861. One hundred sixteen delegates from 68 counties elected to depose the current government and create a provisional government loyal to Kentucky's new unofficial Confederate Governor George W. Johnson. On December 10, 1861, Kentucky became the 13th state admitted to the Confederacy. Kentucky, along with Missouri, was a state with representatives in both Congresses and with regiments in both Union and Confederate armies.

Magoffin, still functioning as official governor in Frankfort, would not recognize the Kentucky Confederates nor their attempts to establish a government in his state. He continued to declare Kentucky's official status in the war was as a neutral state — even though the legislature backed the Union. Magoffin, fed up with the party divisions within the population and legislature, announced a special session of the legislature and then resigned his office in 1862.

Bowling Green remained occupied by the Confederates until February 1862 when General Grant moved from Missouri through Kentucky along the Tennessee line. Confederate Governor Johnson fled Bowling Green with the Confederate state records, headed south, and joined Confederate forces in Tennessee. After Johnson was killed fighting in the Battle of Shiloh, Richard Hawes was named Confederate governor. Shortly afterwards, the Provisional Confederate Congress was adjourned on February 17, 1862, on the eve of inauguration of a permanent Congress. However, as Union occupation henceforth dominated the state, the Kentucky Confederate government, as of 1863, existed only on paper, and its representation in the permanent congress was minimal. It was dissolved when the Civil War ended in the spring of 1865.

Main article: Missouri in the American Civil War

After the secession of Southern states began, the Missouri legislature called for the election of its own special convention on secession. The convention voted decisively to remain within the Union, but pro-Southern Governor Claiborne F. Jackson called up the state militia to their districts for annual training. Jackson had plans on the St. Louis Arsenal and had been in secret correspondence with Confederate President Jefferson Davis to obtain artillery for the militia in St. Louis. Aware of these developments, Union Captain Nathaniel Lyon struck first, encircling the camp and forcing the state troops to surrender. While marching the prisoners to the arsenal, a deadly riot erupted (the Camp Jackson Affair.)

These events caused greater Confederate support within the state. The already pro-Southern legislature passed the governors military bill. Governor Jackson appointed Sterling Price, who had been president of the Missouri constitutional conventon on secession, as major general of the new Missouri State Guard. Price and Union district commander Harney came to an agreement known as the Price-Harney Truce that calmed tensions in the state for several weeks. After Harney was removed and Lyon placed in charge, a meeting was held in St. Louis at the Planters House between Lyon, his political ally Francis P. Blair, Price, and Jackson. The negotiations went nowhere and after a few fruitless hours Lyon made his famous declaration, "this means war!" Price and Jackson rapidly departed for the capital.

Jackson, Price, and the state legislature were forced to flee the state capital of Jefferson City on June 14, 1861, in the face of Lyon's rapid advance against the state government. In the absence of the now exiled state government, the Missouri constitutional convention reconvened in late July. On July 30 the convention declared the state offices vacant and appointed a new provisional government.

In the town of Neosho, Missouri, Jackson called the exiled state legislature into session where they enacted a secession ordinance that was recognized by the Confederacy on October 30, 1861. With the elected governor absent from his capital and the legislators largely dispersed, Union forces installed an unelected pro-Union provisional government with Hamilton Gamble as provisional governor. President Lincoln's Administration immediately recognized Gamble's government as the legal government, which provided both pro-Union militia forces for service within the state and volunteer regiments for the Union Army.

Fighting ensued between Union forces and a combined army of General Price's Missouri State Guard and Confederate troops from Arkansas and Texas under General Ben McCulloch. After winning victories at the battle of Wilson's Creek and the siege of Lexington, Missouri, the Confederate forces had little choice but to retreat to Arkansas and later Marshall, Texas, in the face of a largely reinforced Union Army. Though regular Confederate troops staged large-scale raids into Missouri, the fighting in the state for the next three years consisted mainly of guerrilla warfare. It was carried on chiefly by men from planter families such as Colonel William Quantrill, Frank and Jesse James, the Younger brothers, and William T. Anderson. Such small unit tactics pioneered by the Missouri Partisan Rangers were seen in other occupied portions of the Confederacy during the Civil War. The James' brothers outlawry after the war has been seen as a continuation of guerrilla warfare.

Governor Thomas C. Fletcher ended slavery in Missouri on January 11, 1865, by executive proclamation.

Unionists in Virginia organized the Wheeling Convention to set up an independent state. After a series of battles in 1861, the Union Army eventually drove out Confederate forces commanded by Robert E. Lee. Some Confederate forces were recruited in what is now West Virginia. In 1863, the Wheeling forces won approval from Lincoln and from the Unionist Restored government of Virginia to form the state of West Virginia from Virginia's northwestern counties. They seceded from Virginia and entered the Union. The new constitution of West Virginia freed any slave over 21 years of age. It would gradually have abolished slavery over several years.

Conventions at Mesilla, New Mexico, on March 18, 1861, and Tucson, Arizona, on March 23 adopted an ordinance of secession. The conventions established a pro-Southern government for the southern portions of the territory and called for the election of representatives to petition the Confederacy for admission and relief. [1] Lewis Owings of Mesilla was elected the territory's first provisional governor, and Granville Henderson Oury of Tucson presented the territory's petition for admission into the Confederacy. [2] In July 1861, Confederate forces from Texas, under Lieutenant Colonel John Baylor, entered Mesilla, described as "a strongly pro-Confederate community." [3] The following day, Union Major Isaac Lynde approached Mesilla to engage Baylor's forces. Baylor's men, accompanied by militia out of Mesilla, attacked and defeated Lynde at the Battle of Mesilla on July 27. On August 1, Baylor proclaimed that the Confederate territory of Arizona would extend to the 34th parallel and named himself the new territorial governor. [4] The territory was home to several subsequent engagements and skirmishes between the western armies of the Union and the Confederacy during the war. The Confederate loss at the Battle of Glorieta Pass, in March 1862, drove them back to Texas and ended involvement of New Mexico in the Civil War. [5]

Though Tennessee had officially seceded, East Tennessee was pro-Union and had mostly voted against secession. Attempts to secede from Tennessee were suppressed by the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis arrested over 3,000 men suspected of being loyal to the Union and held them without trial.[4] Tennessee came under control of Union forces in 1862 and was omitted from the Emancipation Proclamation. After the war, Tennessee was the first state to have its elected members readmitted to the U.S. Congress.

Winston County, Alabama, issued a resolution of secession from the state of Alabama.

President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was designed with the interests of border states in mind. The Proclamation did not free slaves within current Union-controlled territory because the presidential war power did not extend there. Lincoln maintained that under the Constitution, ending slavery in a state not in active rebellion against the Union could only be done legally by action of that state, or by amendment to the Constitution.

  • Ash Steven V. Middle Tennessee Transformed, 1860-1870 Louisiana State University Press, 1988.
  • Baker Jean H. The Politics of Continuity: Maryland Political Parties from 1858 to 1870 Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.
  • Richard S. Brownlee, Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy: Guerrilla Warfare in the West, 1861-1865 (1958)
  • Coulter E. Merton. The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky University of North Carolina Press, 1926.
  • Curry Richard O. A House Divided: A Study of Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964.
  • Michael Fellman, Inside War. The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri during the American Civil War (1989).
  • Fields, Barbara. Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground : Maryland During the Nineteenth Century (1987)
  • Frazier Donald S. Blood and Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest. Texas A&M University Press, 1995.
  • Donald L. Gilmore. Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border (2005)
  • Hancock Harold. Delaware during the Civil War. Historical Society of Delaware, 1961.
  • Harrison Lowell. The Civil War in Kentucky University Press of Kentucky, 1975.
  • Josephy, Alvin M. Jr., The Civil War in the American West. 1991.
  • Kerby, Robert L. Kirby Smith's Confederacy: The Trans-Mississippi South, 1863-1865 Columbia University Press, 1972.
  • Maslowski Peter. Treason Must Be Made Odious: Military Occupation and Wartime Reconstruction in Nashville, Tennessee, 1862-65 1978.
  • Jay Monaghan. Civil War on the Western Border, 1854-1865 (1955)
  • George E. Moore. A Banner in the Hills: West Virginia's Statehood (1963)
  • Parrish William E. Turbulent Partnership: Missouri and the Union, 1861-1865 University of Missouri Press, 1963.
  • Patton James W. Unionism and Reconstruction in Tennessee, 1860-1867 University of North Carolina Press, 1934.
  • Rampp Lary C., and Donald L. Rampp. The Civil War in the Indian Territory. Austin: Presidial Press, 1975.
  • Sheeler J. Reuben. "The Development of Unionism in East Tennessee." Journal of Negro History 29 (1944): 166-203. in JSTOR
  • Stiles, T.J. "Jesse James: The Last Rebel of the Civil War". Alfred A. Knopf, 2002

  1. ^ http://www.1stalabamacavalryusv.com/loyalist.asp
  2. ^ http://www.worldhistoryblog.com/2007/05/pro-union-southerners.html
  3. ^ Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, by Mary L. Hart, Charles Reagan Wilson, William Ferris and Ann J. Adadie, Univ. of N. Carolina Press, 1989. ISBN 0807818232
  4. ^ Mark Neely, Confederate Bastille: Jefferson Davis and Civil Liberties 1993 p. 10–11


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