Two Kentuckys: Civil War Identity in Appalachian Kentucky, 1865–1915
Two Kentuckys: Civil War Identity in Appalachian Kentucky, 1865–1915
This chapter focuses on James Lane Allen's article in Harper's magazine in which he claimed that there were “two Kentuckys.” Allen's writing fell amid a growing stream of travel and local-color literature about southern Appalachia that had, by the 1880s, introduced the American reading public to the idea that the area comprised a distinctive civilization populated by a unique people. Within this context of Appalachian exceptionalism emerged the idea that Kentucky had endured two divergent Civil War experiences. One featured the landed, slave-owning Bluegrass aristocrats who sided with the South out of custom, kinship, and a proslavery position. In the other, the Kentucky mountaineer, who had little or no contact with the peculiar institution, had, by virtue of his century-long isolation and undiluted devotion to democratic institutions and nationalism, sided with the Union.
Keywords: James Lane Allen, two Kentuckys, local-color literature, southern Appalachia, American reading public, Appalachian exceptionalism
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