Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Edmonson County, Kentucky - Records (Mss 760), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans of selected items (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Collection 760. Primarily nineteenth-century records of Edmonson County, Kentucky, particularly the county court. Includes the county court order book beginning in 1825, the year of the county’s creation, militia lists, deed lists, and fee books. Also includes genealogical and historical data on the Houchin family.

Communism As An Americanism: The Curious Case Of The Red Jeffersonians, Matthew H. Hill

Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

The communist movement in the United States has struggled with many issues over its long history. One of these problems is the problem of American history itself. The United States, in many ways the quintessential capitalist state, would seemingly represent the ultimate enemy for a communist. It is more than a little bizarre, then, to see the, sometimes intense, admiration that many American communists had for men like Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. While contradictory at first, this essay shows the logic behind this admiration, exploring the long history of American communism’s love affair with iconic figures of American history. …

Peckham, L. H. (Sc 3690), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and typescript (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3690. Letter, 23 May 1862, to “Anson” from L. H. Peckham, in camp at Fredericksburg, Virginia. He describes the massing of Union troops in the area in anticipation of a march on Richmond, and the construction of railroad, plank and pontoon bridges. He also remarks on the recent visit of President Lincoln, whose “smiling countenance was met with many cheers by our Troops here, but with dismay by the citizens.”

"Prophecies Of Loss": Debating Slave Flight During Virginia's Secession Crisis, Evan Turiano

Publications and Research

This article examines debates over fugitives from slavery during Virginia’s secession movement. By considering these debates in the context of Virginia’s history of freedom seekers, the constitutional politics of fugitive slave rendition, and white fears of politically informed slave resistance, this article clarifies how proslavery Virginians understood the threat posed by interstate slave flight in 1861. In the wake of Abraham Lincoln's election, proslavery Virginians on both sides of the secession conflict agreed that runaways posed a grave danger to the future of slavery in the state. Early in the convention, southeastern planters and northwestern unionists forged an alliance based …

Hobson, Edward Henry, 1825-1901 (Mss 736), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 736. Photocopied correspondence of Brigadier General Edward H. Hobson of Greensburg, Kentucky. Letters from his family in Bowling Green, Kentucky, fellow soldiers, colleagues and citizens of Greensburg cover his Mexican War and Civil War service, his business ventures, and attempts to win political office. Includes Hobson's memoranda of actions against Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan in 1864, a list of prisoners taken from Morgan's and other brigades, and a letter from Hobson's nephew deploring an 1892 lynching in Bowling Green, Kentucky (Click on "Additional Files" below).

Jillson, Willard Rouse, 1890-1975 (Mss 682), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 682. Writings and supporting materials of Willard Rouse Jillson, State Geologist of Kentucky, author and historian. Includes manuscripts, page proofs, photographic negatives, and promotional pamphlets for his books.

Arming Of The U.S. Army During War 1861, Jessica Colfer

Lesson Plans

Grade Level: 9-12

Lesson Length: 60 minutes

Learning Objectives:

• The student will be able to identify the armament of the Union army at the beginning of the Civil War.
• The student will consider the preparedness of the Union and Confederate armies.
• The student compare and contrast prior knowledge about the Civil War to interpret historical documents.
• The student will be able to analyze and interpret a primary document.

The Election Of 1860 And The Secession Of The South, Jessica Colfer

Lesson Plans

Grade Level: 9-12

Lesson Length: 80 minutes

Learning Objectives:

• Students will be able to analyze primary documents and identify the relation between student attendance and the political and societal context of the time.
• Students will be able to analyze and apply their prior knowledge to interpret the perspectives of those during the outbreak of the Civil War.
• Students will be able to identify the primary causes of South Carolina’s secession from the Union.

The Gettysburg Campaign, Carol Reardon

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

The Battle of Gettysburg has inspired a more voluminous literature than any single event in American military history for at least three major reasons. First, after three days of fighting on July 1–3, 1863, General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and Major General George G. Meade’s Army of the Potomac lost more than 51,000 dead, wounded, captured, and missing, making Gettysburg the costliest military engagement in North American history. Second, President Abraham Lincoln endowed Gettysburg with special distinction when he visited in November 1863 to dedicate the soldiers’ cemetery and delivered his immortal Gettysburg Address. Finally, Gettysburg …

Perry Collection (Mss 676), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 676. Letters, papers, photographs and scrapbooks of the Perry family, principally Gideon Babcock Perry, rector of Grace Episcopal Church, Hopkinsville, Kentucky and his children, Reverend Henry G. Perry, Chicago, Illinois, and Emily B. Perry, Hopkinsville.

Harding, Aaron, 1805-1875 (Sc 3466), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and typescript (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3466. Letter, 13 February 1863, of Aaron Harding, Washington, D.C., to Dr. Archibald S. Lewis, Greensburg, Kentucky. Serving in Congress as a representative from Kentucky, Harding reports on his efforts to obtain a promotion to brigadier general for Colonel Edward H. Hobson, including his appeal to President Abraham Lincoln in a “private interview.” He fears that Hobson’s nomination will nevertheless be passed over by the “radicals” in the U.S. Senate, who he criticizes for “sinking themselves and the country lower and lower.” He also refers to a …

Green Family Papers (Mss 674), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 674. Business and personal correspondence, as well as business records (chiefly invoices and statements from Louisville suppliers) for the Green family at Falls of Rough, Grayson County, Kentucky. Green operated a number of businesses, including saw mills, a grist mill, woolen mill, and a general store. He also operated a large farm raising tobacco and livestock, as well as a herd of Shetland ponies. Although his businesses are covered extensively in the correspondence and records, politics and local economic development is also discussed.

Newcomb, Horatio Dalton, 1809-1874 (Sc 3437), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3437. Letter, 9 March 1863, from H. D. Newcomb, Louisville, Kentucky, to Sumner(?) Wells, Chicopee, Massachusetts, asking for help in locating a suitable house for his sister in nearby Springfield. Newcomb also offers his thoughts on the Civil War: his proximity to its “desolating influences” in contrast to New England; the disunion perpetrated by the “imbecile abolitionists” of the Lincoln Administration; the corruption of the government; the financial perils of the war; and the necessity for a negotiated peace with the Confederacy.

Coleman, John Winston, Jr., 1898-1983 (Sc 3369), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3369. Letters to WKU faculty member Frances Richards from author, historian and Kentuckiana collector J. Winston Coleman, Jr., primarily regarding his books. Includes book notices, biographical and publication data, and a speech of Coleman’s on Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.

Cox, Hilda-Gay (Fa 1239), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1239. Student folk studies project titled “Sequent Occupance of the Main Business District of Hodgenville, Kentucky,” which includes a list of illustrations with brief descriptions of residents and buildings in the main business district of Hodgenville, LaRue County, Kentucky. List entries may include a brief description of building, resident, location, donor, and photo.

Blotner, Joseph Leo, 1923-2012 (Mss 200), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 200. Research material collected by Joseph Leo Blotner for his literary biography of Robert Penn Warren. Includes Warren’s correspondence (photocopies from various repositories), interview transcripts, notes, news clippings, critical essays, and other documentation about Warren. Also includes drafts, galley proofs, and permissions related to the biography.

Ballew, William A., 1842-1915 (Sc 3277), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and typescript (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3277. Letter, 12 November 1864, from William A. Ballew to Thomas Hopkins, Clinton County, Kentucky. Writing from Spring Hill, Tennessee, where he is serving with the 12th Kentucky Infantry, Ballew notes his regiment’s support of presidential candidate George B. McClellan (“little mack”). Although they were not yet enfranchised, he cites a mock election held by African Americans in Nashville as evidence for President Abraham Lincoln’s likely reelection. He notes the good health of his fellow soldiers, including Hopkins’ two sons, Lewis and Shelby.

The Second Great Awakening And The Making Of Modern America, Kerry Irish

Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics

In the decades before the Civil War which began in 1861, the Second Great Awakening was the most powerful social movement in America. It inspired the conversion of millions of Americans to faith in Jesus Christ. And that faith motivated many of those people to attempt to transform the moral habits of the nation. Slavery was ended, consumption of alcohol reduced, women’s rights, though often opposed by people of faith, were set on a path that would result in woman’s suffrage in the early Twentieth century. A host of other reforms, too many to list, were instigated. It is not …

God And Mr. Lincoln, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

On the day in April 1837 that Abraham Lincoln rode into Springfield, Illinois, to set himself up professionally as a lawyer, the American republic was awash in religion. Lincoln, however, was neither swimming nor even bobbing in its current. “This thing of living in Springfield is rather a dull business after all, at least it is so to me,” the uprooted state legislator and commercially bankrupt Lincoln wrote to Mary Owens on May 7th. “I am quite as lonesome here as [I] ever was anywhere in my life,” and in particular, “I’ve never been to church yet, nor probably shall …

Is Trump The De-Regulator-In-Chief?, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Abe Lincoln was a regulation cutter. Who would’ve known that?”

That line in a speech on December 8 by President Trump sent a number of pundits flocking to their history textbooks for fact-checking, especially after he followed it with the claim that, based on the numbers, he had actually exceeded Lincoln’s first-year total. “That’s pretty good for 10 months.”

What the pundits found was largely what they looked for. Blue State Daily’s Matthew Slivan smirked that “Trump likes to conjure comparisons to Abraham Lincoln,” but “the truth is what you’d expect: Trump is a blowhard.” Another reporter rang up …

“Died Of The Spotted Fever”: The Spot Resolutions And The Making Of Abraham Lincoln, Ryan D. Bilger

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

On December 22, 1847, the Speaker of the House of Representatives recognized a young, freshman congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln who wished to speak about the ongoing war with Mexico. The lanky, awkward, high-voiced westerner raised doubts regarding President James Knox Polk’s conduct in starting the war, proposing eight resolutions that challenged Polk to provide evidence for his stated reason for doing so. Polk had said that Mexican troops had shed “American blood on American soil” and forced his hand, but Lincoln challenged this assertion. Lincoln insinuated that the fatal encounter between Mexican and American troops had in fact …

Lincoln's Words At Gettysburg Resonate After Charlottesville, Christopher R. Fee

English Faculty Publications

Seven score and fourteen years ago, Abraham Lincoln eloquently reminded us of the idealism of our founding our fathers, who “brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. “

Lincoln also called upon all persons of good conscience, not simply to remember the sacrifice of those who died preserving these ideals on the battlefield at Gettysburg, but also to act upon those ideals, and to rise to the challenge “to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us….” (excerpt)

How Hard Is It To Drain A Swamp?, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Some humid, summer evening, go out and listen to the swamp. It chirps, it keens, it hoots, it chitters. It is both quiet and restless, serene and ominous. It is alive, full of bats’ wings, copperheads, and clouds of insects. Imagine how it will respond when it learns you plan to drain it.

That thought has some political parallels as Donald Trump finds himself at odds with the bureaucracy of the federal government in an effort to “drain the swamp” of the so-called Deep State. Thomas Jefferson did a good deal of swamp-draining after his victory over Federalist John Adams …

Lincoln’S Forgotten Middle Years, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

It would be difficult to find two books on Abraham Lincoln published in the same year and yet more unalike in their conclusions than Sidney Blumenthal’s Wrestling with His Angel (the second installment in his multi-volume survey of Lincoln’s “political life”) and Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s Six Encounters with Lincoln. Blumenthal’s narrative of Lincoln’s “wilderness years,” from 1849 to 1856, begins with Lincoln at the lowest pitch of his professional life, returning to Illinois from his solitary term in Congress, an embarrassment to his fellow Whigs, only to rise, phoenix-like, from the firestorm of the controversy over slavery in “Bleeding …

Lincoln’S First 100 Days, Hannah M. Christensen

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Imagine trying to avoid a civil war and then having to figure out how to fight one—all in one’s first 100 days in office and all without Congress. That was what Abraham Lincoln’s first 100 days as president essentially looked like. From his first full day in office on March 5th, 1861 to his 100th day in the middle of June, Lincoln barely had time to handle the things presidents normally did, never mind relax.

Caught In The Headlights: Revising The Road Kill Hypothesis Of Antebellum Illinois Bank Failures, Scott N. Clayman, Scott Deacle, Andrew J. Economopoulos

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

Illinois had a dismal free banking experience, with over 80% of its free banks failing by the start of the Civil War. Researchers agree that a dramatic change in bond prices was the catalyst, and some have shown that the riskiest banks, ex ante, were the most likely to fail. This study examines how Illinois free banks adjusted their portfolios in the face of increased political and financial risks prior to Abraham Lincoln’s election as president. Lincoln’s nomination in May 1860 and the Democratic Party schism in June 1860 raised the likelihood of secession and the potential for a significant …

Defending Reconstruction, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

There are no Reconstruction re-enactors. And who would want to be? Reconstruction is the disappointing epilogue to the American Civil War, a sort of Grimm fairy tale stepchild of the war and the ugly duckling of American history. Even Abraham Lincoln was uneasy at using the word “reconstruction”—he qualified it with add-ons like “what is called reconstruction” or “a plan of reconstruction (as the phrase goes)”—and preferred to speak of the “re-inauguration of the national authority” or the need to “re-inaugurate loyal state governments.” Unlike the drama of the war years, Reconstruction has no official starting or ending date. ( …

Commentary: Will The Courts Make Trump's Presidency Less Imperial?, Allen C. Guelzo, James H. Hulme

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Nearly three months ago, Donald Trump assumed a presidency that, for more than a century, had grown seemingly endless discretionary powers. And he did so in company with Republican majorities in Congress and in 32 state legislatures -- all of which should have made his decisions unassailable.

Instead, he has been stymied and embarrassed by resistance from a federal judiciary that has twice halted executive orders on the most prominent issue of his presidential campaign. So, will the federal judiciary become the wall against which Trump bleeds away the power not just of his own presidency but of the “imperial …

Potter, Hugh Oliver, 1905-1986 (Mss 602), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 602. Correspondence, research notes, book manuscripts, promotional material, and editorials related to Hugh O. Potter’s career as a radio broadcaster and his interests in Kentucky history, specifically Owensboro and Daviess County, and Abraham Lincoln. Includes one box of original legal documents (1783-1953) related to the Massie family of Daviess County.

Lincoln Farm Association (Sc 3084), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3084. Certificates documenting membership for H.H. Seldomridge and Louis Hall Comstock in the Lincoln Farm Association. Certificates include an image of Lincoln’s bust, his birth place cabin, and the White House.