Kentucky and the Secession Crisis: A Documentary History

(previously recorded live on March 9, 2023) After the 1860 election, Americans faced civil war. While northern and southern states mobilized for a conflict that would determine the fate of slavery and the nation, the border state of Kentucky, riven by indecision, debated the future of the Union and its place within it. Dr. Dwight Pitcaithley discusses the political discourse that followed in the months after the election and how it illuminates Kentucky’s struggle toward a decision on whether to remain in the Union or to cast its lot with the slave-holding states of the Confederacy. Dwight T. Pitcaithley worked for the National Park Service for three decades, the final decade as its chief historian. Following his retirement from the National Park Service in 2005, he was a professor of history at New Mexico State University. He is the author/editor of The U.S. Constitution and Secession: A Documentary Anthology of Slavery and White Supremacy and Tennessee Secedes: A Documentary History. Learn more about the Kentucky Military History Museum: https://history.ky.gov/visit/kentucky...