Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Luke Pryor Blackburn: The Good Samaritan, Nancy Baird

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Luke Pryor Blackburn, Kentucky’s only physician governor, is one of the forgotten public health figures of the 19^th century. As health officer of Natchez in the 1850s he instituted the first effective quarantine used in the Mississippi Valley and became a strong advocate of its use as a preventive measure in the control of yellow fever. During his lifetime Blackburn also became well known for his unselfish aid to communities stricken with the disease.

In March 1878 announced his candidacy for governor of his native state. Local politicians scoffed at his chances for election, but his actions during the …

The Constitutional Union Party In Kentucky, John Lawrence Kelly

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

During the period immediately preceding the Civil War, there arose a new political party, the Constitutional Union party. While nearly every other phase of the era around the Civil War has been covered exhaustively, comparatively, very little has been written about the Union movement and its attempt to prevent the war. What has been written about the Union party deals primarily with the movement at the national level. It is the goal of this author to present a history of the Union movement in Kentucky and the part played in the national party by Kentuckians.

Matthew Lyon In Kentucky, Lyda Smith

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

“Men at some time are masters of their fate:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

Thus Shakespeare has the wily Cassius speak, and thus Matthew Lyon must have believed; else he had not contended so fiercely, so incessantly, and so interminably against such adverse circumstances as the average individual would have submitted to sooner or later. Many may have thought so; the facts often indicated so; yet never in a true sense was Matthew Lyon an underling. His fierce spirit was supreme over material things. Even while an indentured servant …