Two one-week workshops for eighty school teachers on conflicts in Kentucky and other border states during the Civil War.

Two one-week workshops for eighty school teachers on conflicts in Kentucky and other border states during the Civil War. In this Landmarks workshop, the Kentucky Historical Society takes teachers beyond the battlefield in an exploration of the Civil War in Kentucky. According to the project director, "the conventional studies focus on places like Perryville and personalities like John Hunt Morgan . . . but recent scholarship reveals a complex network of guerillas, political and economic intrigue, expansive questions of loyalty, and sometimes surprising race and gender roles within a divided society." As a border state between North and South, Kentucky was a microcosm of Civil War divisiveness and played a key role in its outcome. As Lincoln said, "I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky." Among the workshop faculty are historians William C. Harris (North Carolina State University), Alicestyne Turley and J. Blaine Hudson (University of Louisville), Brian McKnight (University of Virginia-Wise), Lindsey Apple and James Klotter (Georgetown College), Aaron Astor (Maryville College), Anne E. Marshall (Mississippi State University), Dwight Pitcaithley (New Mexico State University), and Christopher Phillips (University of Cincinnati), the last of whom discusses Missouri and Maryland as other examples of Civil War border states. Readings include three books by visiting faculty: Harris's Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union; Lindsey Apple's The Family Legacy of Henry Clay: In the Shadow of a Kentucky Patriarch; and Anne E. Marshall's Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Memory in a Border State. In addition to reading secondary works, participants consult primary sources from the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society and conduct research in the Society archives. Teachers visit sites in Lexington, Frankfort, and Louisville, such as the Abraham Lincoln birthplace, the Old State Capitol, the Kentucky Military History Museum, the Perryville Battlefield, the Farmington Historic Plantation, and Camp Nelson, a recruiting and training center for African-American soldiers. Participants discuss classroom applications, keep notebooks, and write responses to site visits. Within a month of the workshop, they submit an essay about a primary source for posting on the workshop blog.