Contact: Kenneth Billings
STARKVILLE, Miss.--In a newly released book, Anne E. Marshall of Mississippi State University examines the revisionist post-Civil War history of Kentucky.
"Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State" (University of North Carolina Press, 256 pp.) traces the state's efforts to cultivate a Confederate identity between 1865 and 1925--even though it didn't secede from the Union during the 1861-65 conflict.
"Despite it being a Southern slave state, many do not realize that Kentucky remained loyal to the Union," Marshall, a Kentucky native, said.
"It was only after the end of the war that the citizens of the commonwealth became disaffected with the Union and embraced the lost cause of the Confederacy and chose to rewrite its history as a Confederate state," the assistant professor of history explained.
Rather than focusing exclusively on postwar political and economic factors, the University of Georgia doctoral graduate examines the public memorial ceremonies, dedications of monuments, and veteran organizations' events that residents engaged in over the longer term. In addition to commemorating the Civil War, the activities served to fix the state's remembrance of it for 60 years following the war's end.
Marshall's first book, "Creating a Confederate Kentucky" is the culmination of a 12-year process. After earning a bachelor's degree at Centre College in her home state, she began a thorough examination of the subject for her master's dissertation and doctoral thesis at Georgia. That continuing research served as the basis for her book.
Marshall, who came to MSU in 2006, also is undergraduate student adviser for the history department. In addition to the Civil War in historical memory, her research interests include the 19th century American South, and women and cultural history.
For more information about "Creating a Confederate Kentucky," visit http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=1777.