Border states (Civil War)
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██ The border states ██ Kansas, which entered the Union as a free state after the Bleeding Kansas crisis
██ The Confederacy ██ Confederate claimed and sometimes held territories
The term border states refers to the five slave states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and western Virginia that were on the border between the Northern Union states and the Southern slave states that formed the Confederate States of America. In some of these states, there were both pro-Confederate and pro-Union governments, factions and men (sometimes even from the same family) that fought as soldiers on opposite sides in the American Civil War.
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[edit] Influence and importance
The five border states were Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia (the District of Columbia is sometimes included for geographical convenience). 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 predominantly Southern persona while still having Northern influences.
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.
[edit] Delaware
Both houses of Delaware's General Assembly rejected secession overwhelmingly, the House of Representatives unanimously.
[edit] Maryland
The Maryland Legislature rejected secession (April 27, 1861), but only after the rioting in Baltimore and other events had prompted a federal declaration of martial law. 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 who were believed to support secession were arrested and imprisoned by Union authorities. Maryland contributed troops to both the Confederate and Union armies. Maryland was omitted from the Emancipation Proclamation but abolished slavery during the Civil War.
[edit] Kentucky
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. But when Lincoln requested 75,000 men to serve in the Union, 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 en 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, an act disenfranchising citizens that entered the Confederate States Army was passed. Thus Kentucky's neutral status evolved into backing the Union, with most who originally sought neutrality turning 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 Johnston 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.
[edit] Missouri
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 ordered the mobilization of several hundred members of the state militia who had gathered in a camp in St. Louis for training. Union General Nathaniel Lyon struck first, encircling the peaceful camp and forcing the state troops to surrender. Lyon then directed his soldiers, largely non-English-speaking German immigrants, marched the prisoners through the streets then opened fire on the largely hostile crowds of civilians who gathered around them, killing both unarmed prisoners and men, women and children of St. Louis in an incident that became known as the "St. Louis Massacre."
These events caused greater Confederate support within the state. Governor Jackson appointed Sterling Price, president of the convention on secession, as head of the new Missouri State Guard. Jackson and Price 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 town of Neosho, Missouri, Jackson called the 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 conducted by citizen soldiers 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 also seen elsewhere in occupied portions of the Confederacy during and after the Civil War.
[edit] West Virginia
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. In 1863, the Wheeling forces won approval Lincoln and from the rump Unionist state of Virginia, and they formed the state of West Virginia from Virginia's northwestern counties, seceding from Virginia and entering the Union. Their new constitution freed any slave over 21 years of age; gradually, it would have abolished slavery.
[edit] New Mexico and Arizona territories
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, in March 1862, drove them back to Texas, ending the involvement of New Mexico in the Civil War conflict. [5]
[edit] Other issues
- Though Tennessee had officially seceded, East Tennessee was pro-Union. Tennessee came under control of Union forces in 1862 and was omitted from the Emancipation Proclamation. After the war, Tennessee was the first state readmitted to the Union.
- Winston County, Alabama, issued a resolution of secession from the state of Alabama.
- The Red Strings were a prominent Southern anti-secession group in areas of Virginia and North Carolina that had few slaves.
- There were eighteen "apprentices for life" in New Jersey at the start of the Civil War; inventing this questionable term was necessary so that slavery could be formally abolished in the state without forcing slave-owners to free slaves they already owned.
- Conflict over allowing slavery in Bleeding Kansas, as a result of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, was major fuel to the Civil War. Kansas was admitted in January 1861, after the secession of South Carolina but before the attack on Fort Sumter.
[edit] Border states and emancipation
President Abraham Lincoln's famous Emancipation Proclamation was designed with the interests of border states in mind. The proclamation exempted slaves within current Union-controlled territory to prevent backlash from these states, which Lincoln believed crucial to the war effort. Since the authority for the Emancipation Proclamation came from the President's authority as commander-in-chief to conduct war, Lincoln maintained that only Congress or the border states themselves had the authority to emancipate slaves in areas not in active rebellion against the Union.
[edit] See also
- Constitutional Union Party (United States)
- Free state
- Slave state
- Old South
- Deep South
- New South
- The Solid South
- Golden Circle (Slavery)
[edit] References
- 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
