Editor’s Note: Kentucky
remained neutral during our nation’s Civil War, but joined the Confederacy in
sentiment after the War. Read the book, “Creating a Confederate Kentucky,” by
Anne Marshall.
Following the murder of nine blacks in a Charleston, S.C.,
church last month by a young white man, who had been photographed earlier holding
a Confederate battle flag, a debate began in Kentucky on whether to remove the
statue of Jefferson Davis from the Capitol Rotunda.
The War pitted brother against brother; the debate over
Jefferson Davis’ statue has two prominent brothers on opposing sides — this
time in sentiments expressed in words, not guns … but evidence nonetheless,
from both brothers, that the War is not really over.
Al Cross, a UK professor and former journalist, in his
bi-monthly op-ed column in The Courier-Journal on June 26, 2015, called Davis
“a traitor to his country,” and said his statue does not belong in the Capitol
Rotunda. Al’s brother, David, an Albany, Ky., lawyer, holds the opposite view,
which he expressed in a column in his hometown newspaper, the Clinton County
News, following Al’s piece in the C-J.
Click here to read Al’s column. Below is David’s column,
reprinted with permission.
By David Cross
[As printed in the Clinton County News]
In 1856-57 a large contingent of prominent families
from Clinton County, Kentucky, migrated to the Red River country of northeast
Texas, settling in and around the town of Paris, Texas.
Among the group were Rice Maxey and his son Sam
Bell Maxey who had been recently defeated in a race for re-election as Clinton
County Court Clerk; William Bramlette, whose brother Thomas Bramlette would be
elected Governor of Kentucky in 1863; and Lemuel Hardin Williams, whose family
farm had been the location where Clinton County was organized after its
creation by the Legislature.
These families soon became prominent in Lamar
County. Rice Maxey became Circuit Judge and Williams was elected a delegate to
the 1861 Texas Convention regarding secession.
Williams was one of the “Seven Immortals” that
publicly cast their votes against secession, as was another Lamar delegate,
George Wright, who was from the Cumberland River region of Tennessee below
Clinton County and was closely associated with the Clinton emigrants.
Secession was overwhelmingly approved by the
Convention. Lem Williams returned to his Lamar County home and instead of
joining the Union Army promptly volunteered for military service locally and
raised a company of men to support the Confederacy.
Sam Bell Maxey, who also opposed secession, entered
the Confederate Army and by mid-war was elevated to the rank of Brigadier
General, being particularly active in the Trans-Mississippi theater. Others who
had opposed secession followed suit.
Were these men traitors? This question is prompted
by the current discussion regarding whether or not Davis’ statue should be
removed from the Capitol Rotunda in Frankfort, including the recent the
mis-characterization of Jefferson Davis as a “traitor” by a Courier-Journal
columnist whom I both love and admire, but seem to disagree with on a
semi-regular basis on certain issues.
On the question of Davis, we are in fact, “A House
Divided”.
Nowhere in America was the Civil War as tumultuous,
divisive, and dangerous as along the Kentucky border region where we reside.
My people are buried in the Irwin Cemetery, in the
shadow of the Poplar Mountains in eastern Clinton County, on the edge of what
was once called Stockton Valley, a cemetery founded by the father-in-law of Lem
Williams.
In one row of graves we find the marker of
Confederate guerrilla Champ Ferguson’s first wife; in the next row, the grave
of Ruben Wood, one of Ferguson’s first victims in 1861. Ferguson was tried and
hanged at Nashville after the war for the killing of Wood, and many others,
after voluntarily surrendering to Federal authorities, believing he was to
receive clemency.
Just down KY 1076 toward the Tennesse border lies
the home place of Ferguson, and just a mile south is the community now called
Maupin, but was formerly known as Elliots Cross Roads, named for the
grandfather of Governor Thomas Elliot Bramlette.
Clinton County was a strong Union county; however,
Overton County, Tennessee, then adjoining it to the southwest, was overwhelmingly
pro-southern.
Jefferson Davis had a sterling public career
including four years as Secretary of War, and as Senator from Mississippi
strongly argued against secession. Volunteering for military service after he
tearfully resigned from the Senate, he instead was persuaded to become
President of the Confederate States of America, in part because many viewed him
as the most qualified man for the position. He was, understandably, indicted
for treason after the war. However, he became a leader of reconciliation
despite being shackled for two years after his arrest.
In Clinton County, the post-war criminal dockets
reveal numerous indictments against Ferguson’s band and other rebels for acts
which they committed during the war. These were dealt with by Governor
Bramlette in 1867 before he left office, when he issued a blanket pardon for
all war crimes, stating that “War made many good people do bad things.”
Bramlette, who remained a Democrat after the war, had been a Colonel in the
Union Army as well as United States Attorney for Kentucky before his election
as Governor.
Bramlette and others soon found that service in the
army of the CSA was nearly a pre-requisite to holding political office in
Kentucky. The “Bloody Shirt” of the Confederacy was waived by Democrats for
thirty years or more in Kentucky.
This glorification of the “Lost Cause” led to
Confederate monuments far out-numbering those for Union soldiers on courthouse
squares in Kentucky– in fact, I know of only two such Union memorials, in the
Republican counties of Butler and Lewis.
In effect, the leaders of the state that they say
didn’t secede until after the war was over wrote history as they wished it to
be written. However, the political alignment of the state for generations to
come was based upon which side people were on during the War.
The native son Davis was much more popular than the
native son Lincoln in the state. Abe “didn’t even scratch” in some counties,
and barely did in Clinton.
Now the Confederate battle flag, the “Stars and
Bars”, has been hijacked by white supremacists and madmen, when the people of
my generation look at it simply as a symbol of southern pride, as evidenced by
Charlie Daniels and Lynyrd Skynyrd since the 1970s.
And Jeff Davis, whose presence in the Capitol
Rotunda in Frankfort is understandably questioned by some, stands there looking
at his northern counterpart, Abraham Lincoln. Doesn’t that say as much about
the divisions of the state as anything else?
It seems that the history of the Civil War (or The
War for Southern Independence, as it was called in the south) is again being
re-written, which occasionally needs to be done. However, to not look at the
events of the past through a 150-year old lens is a mistake. The South lost the
war, but had gallant men who fought and led its effort to establish a separate
country. We remain thankful that such effort failed, but should accept that
bravery on behalf of any cause is to be respected.
Jeff Davis and Lemuel Hardin Williams are to be
respected, and recognized, as men who made difficult decisions in extremely
difficult times.
