In 1861 which states were the border states

Learn more about the Peninsula Campaign. Kentucky made its choice by choosing to remain in the Union, an official part of the United States, but the sentiment remained divided in Kentucky. There were still thousands of pro-Confederate people in Kentucky. The secessionist minority called a convention of its own in November and voted to join the Confederacy. There were only 11 Confederate states and the Confederate flag had 13 stars, one of those was for Kentucky.

Kentucky sent nearly 75, men into the Union Armies, and Kentuckians fought with the Confederate Army. Kentucky voted against Abraham Lincoln in the Presidential election as the State suffered from a particularly vicious form of guerrilla warfare during the conflict. Ironically, after the war, Kentucky became a Confederate State.

The four border states in the civil war were Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware. Also considering the events that led a piece of the state of Virginia, to split from the state and form a new state called West Virginia, which in effect became a fifth border state. Kentucky stayed in the union because on September 3, , Confederate General Leonidas Polk ordered Southern troops to occupy Columbus, Kentucky, a strong point on the Mississippi River.

It was a wise military move but politically it was a disaster, so the Unionist asked the federal government to help drive the Confederates out by creating a military force to oppose Confederates in the state. The two sides in the civil war were called the states of Union and the states of Confederacy.

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Related Resources. Political Boundaries. View Collection. Territorial Divisions. Introduction to Unions and Alliances.

View Activity. In the ensuing melee, several soldiers and a number of civilians were killed. Worse still, the police commissioner ordered the railroad bridges outside the city destroyed and Page [End Page 17] the telegraph lines cut, and Unionist Governor Thomas Hicks, who had earlier refused to call the legislature into session, wavered and implored the Lincoln administration not to send any more troops across the state.

Hicks's request threatened to isolate Washington and leave the capital unprotected. John Hay, President Lincoln's private secretary. Recognizing the delicate balance of opinion in the state, Lincoln resisted the impulse to force the right of transit and agreed temporarily not to send any more troops through Baltimore.

Troops were still needed in Washington, however, and military authorities quickly devised a less direct route by sea and rail through Annapolis. Although Lincoln hoped to nurture pro-Union sentiment in the state, he took no chances. He authorized the military to suspend the writ of habeas corpus along any military line in the state. It was thus in Maryland that Lincoln, feeling his way in dealing with this unprecedented crisis, first suspended the writ and authorized arrests without trial.

Before long, although the state government continued to function, Maryland was essentially under military occupation. Encouraged by this strong military presence, public opinion, initially inchoate and undeveloped, quickly swung to the Union side. When the state legislature assembled in May, it called for the recognition of the Confederacy but, under the watchful surveillance of the military, it took no steps toward disunion. In the special congressional election in June, Unionist candidates polled 72 percent of the vote and triumphed in all six races.

The fall election of was conducted in an atmosphere of intimidation as federal troops arrested prominent secessionist members of the legislature, guarded the polls in a few areas on election day, and seized disloyal citizens who tried to vote. Even so, critics overstated the extent of military intervention. John A. Dix, the commanding general of the Middle District, refused official requests to apply a loyalty oath and generally restrained the army's activities in order to avoid negative publicity.

Page [End Page 19] Bradford, who was elected governor by a better than two-to-one margin. No doubt Bradford would have prevailed in any event, but federal actions helped swell his margin of victory.

Throughout the war, the state was heavily garrisoned because of the need to protect the capital, but it posed no military threat to the Union. When Lee invaded the state in , few Maryland residents welcomed him. During the remainder of the war, relations between the federal government and the state revolved around two questions: arbitrary arrests and federal interference with free elections, and problems related to the institution of slavery.

In addition, the Lincoln administration was drawn into the factional struggle for control of the burgeoning state Republican party. Complaints of federal interference in elections in Maryland were endemic during the war.

A good example was the dispute between Governor Bradford and commanding general Robert C. Schenck over the latter's order imposing a test oath for voting in the election. Federal officials were irritated at the state's failure to enact an oath for voters, so Schenck announced that the army would enforce one he promulgated at the polls.

Schenck, who had been elected to Congress from Ohio, claimed that his purpose was to prevent disloyal elements from voting, but he was equally interested in assisting the antislavery forces in the state.

Bradford immediately protested to Lincoln about military interference with the election. After conferring with the general, the president modified Schenck's proclamation, designated General Orders No.

In his reply to the governor, Lincoln chided the state for failing to enact a loyalty oath and noted that under Schenck's order disloyal citizens could regain the right to vote by taking the oath. He managed simultaneously to offer concessions to the governor, avoid undermining the military authority in the state, and publicly affirm his policy that "all loyal qualified voters in Maryland Page [End Page 20] and elsewhere" should be allowed to vote without disturbance.

Indeed, for the election state officials stipulated a stricter loyalty test than Schenck had imposed in , and the election passed with little federal disturbance. Montgomery Blair, Lincoln's postmaster general. The dispute over Schenck's loyalty oath was part of a larger struggle between radical Congressman Henry Winter Davis and Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, a conservative, for control of the Unionist party in Maryland.

Wishing to retain the support of both men, Lincoln tried as much as possible to keep out of this fight, Page [End Page 21] which he viewed as largely personal. While unable to stop the bitter factional struggle within the emerging Republican party in Maryland, Lincoln's temperate actions also bore fruit. Unionist sentiment remained paramount in the state, and in Lincoln and the Republican party gained a clear victory.

The Republicans won control of the statehouse and the legislature and elected a majority of the state's congressmen. Most striking was Lincoln's victory. In , he had received only 2, votes in the state; in , he polled more than 40, votes and secured Lincoln's personal triumph was testimony to his adroit management of affairs in Maryland. Table 2. Presidential Vote, and State Lincoln Other Lincoln McClellan Maryland 2, 89, 40, 32, Kentucky 1, , 27, 64, Missouri 17, , 72, 31, Delaware 3, 12, 8, 8, When the war began Kentucky, like Maryland, found itself torn between its loyalty to the Union and its cultural ties to the South.

Complicating the situation was the fact that the governor, Beriah Magoffin, favored secession. When Lincoln called for troops after the firing on Fort Sumter, Magoffin indignantly refused to supply any, and the state house of representatives officially adopted a policy of "strict neutrality.

Crittenden endorsed the policy of neutrality as a temporary holding action; Kentucky's neutrality quickly became part of a game of maneuver between Unionists and pro-Confederates in the state for political supremacy. Confronted with Kentucky's neutral stance and pleas for restraint from Unionist leaders, Lincoln moved cautiously so as not to provoke public opinion in the state while waiting for the population's latent Unionism to assert itself.

Varying his policy according to the situation, he realized that he could not force the issue the way he had in Maryland. A less restrained approach in the early months of the war might well have driven the state into the Confederacy.

In this difficult period, Lincoln avoided issuing any threats and used conciliatory language. He resisted the demands of Republican governors and editors to adopt a vigorous coercive policy against the state, and also the pleas of military commanders to seize the initiative and invade Kentucky. He forbad the army to recruit volunteers in the state, declined to prohibit trade with the Confederacy, and promised Garrett Davis, a prominent Unionist, that he would not use force against the state if it did not resist the laws and authority of the United States.

He repeated this pledge in another meeting with state leaders in July but was careful not to commit himself as to future action. Time would demonstrate the wisdom of what James Russell Lowell, who demanded a militant approach, sarcastically termed Lincoln's "Little Bo Peep policy.

While antislavery spokesmen such as Lowell fumed, Lincoln's pragmatic policy bore immediate dividends. In a special congressional election in June, Union candidates won nine of ten seats. Throughout the summer, both sides stepped up recruiting efforts in the state, but Lincoln continued to ignore Confederate activities in the state. In another special election in August to elect a new legislature, Unionists scored a resounding triumph, winning seventy-six of a hundred seats in the house and with holdovers twenty-seven of thirty-eight in the senate.

A crisis suddenly developed, however, when John C. Fremont having actually issued deeds of manumission, a whole company of our Volunteers threw down their arms and disbanded. I was so assured, as to think it probable, that the arms we had furnished Kentucky would be turned against us.

In quick order, U. Grant occupied Paducah, Kentucky, the legislature demanded the withdrawal of the Confederate forces, and when the Confederacy refused, it requested federal aid to expel them. Lincoln promptly responded by sending additional troops to occupy the state, and Confederate forces were soon driven from Kentucky. Despite the establishment of a shadowy Confederate government and General Braxton Bragg's subsequent invasion in , Union control of the state was never undermined.

In his first annual message, Lincoln observed: "Kentucky Merton Coulter concluded, "The South, too impatient to be tolerant and too impetuous to be tactful, lost the greatest prize of the West—Kentucky. This result left Governor Magoffin in a difficult position. Unionists distrusted him, and hence the legislature systematically hamstrung him and, as much as possible, simply ignored him. Eventually in he resigned after the legislature designated an acceptable successor. In , Thomas Bramlette, the Unionist candidate, was elected governor by a commanding majority.

The outcome of the political struggle in Kentucky in , however, did not end Lincoln's problems with the state. One point of irritation was trade. To prevent shipment of contraband to the Confederacy, the Treasury Department required permits for most goods and passengers. Applicants had to take an oath of allegiance and meet a stringent test of past loyalty. Complaints mounted that the permit system was used to punish anyone suspected of disloyalty or who ran athwart military officers.

These protests reached a peak during the tenure of General E. Paine, who was finally removed for abusing his powers. More serious was the growing resentment over arbitrary arrests and military interference in elections. Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus gave wide discretionary powers to military commanders, and he found it difficult to regulate their activities, especially on a day-to-day basis. The various raids of John Hunt Morgan, the flight of many guerrillas from Missouri to the state, and the continuing activities of bands of Home Guards, initially created to prevent secession in , all contributed to the increase in violence and irregular fighting in In July Lincoln imposed martial law on the state, and it remained under this edict for the duration of the war.

The effect of these actions was to alienate Kentucky's Unionists from the administration. Governor Bramlette was particularly outspoken in his criticism. The army's intrusion was especially marked Page [End Page 25] in the election, and matters worsened again in the presidential campaign when several prominent Unionists, including the lieutenant governor, were arrested by military authorities.

The situation required tact and forbearance, but the commanding general, Stephen G. Burbridge, who appealed to the small radical element in the state, was devoid of both. Palmer, a much more capable administrator, but only the end of the war eliminated the problems that had produced such friction. As one Lincoln paper in the state commented, the president either had to change commanders "or give the whole of his time to the management of Kentucky affairs.

It was Lincoln's policy on emancipation and black troops, however, more than arbitrary arrests or military interference with elections, that accounted for his unpopularity in the state. The army's refusal to return runaway slaves produced inevitable friction with Kentucky slaveowners, and Lincoln justified his initial reluctance to accept black soldiers on the grounds that it would turn Kentucky and the border states against the Union.

In early , with enlistments lagging, army officials in Kentucky began enrolling free blacks and slaves, and military authorities arrested several prominent state leaders for resisting recruitment of black soldiers. Black enlistments further alienated public opinion from the administration. Lincoln's policies were only partly successful in Kentucky. More Kentuckians fought for the Union than the Confederacy, and when the rebel army invaded the state on several different occasions, it did not receive a friendly reception.

However, Washington D. During the war, a new constitution was drafted that made slavery illegal in the state. The state of Kentucky passed two resolutions to stay neutral during the war.

While the governor of Kentucky, Beriah Magoffin, believed that states should stick to the Constitution and not secede from the Union, he also refused to furnish troops to defeat the southern states.