Keyword Exclusive - More on the Civil War in Kentucky
by: Paula Deimling
Supplement to “Family Stories of the Civil War”
More information on the Civil War
Civil War Organizations
Roster of Kentucky Soldiers
MORE INFORMATION ON THE CIVIL WAR
Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System
National Park Service’s Online Record of Veterans
www.itd.nps.gov/cwss
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives
300 Coffee Tree Road
Frankfort, KY 40602-0537
(502) 564-8300
Kentucky Historical Society
100 W. Broadway
Frankfort, KY 40601
(502) 564-1792
www.history.ky.gov
An American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War, 2d ed.
By Charles P. Roland
McGraw Hill, 2004
Contested Borderland: The Civil War in Appalachian Kentucky and Virginia
By Brian D. McKnight
The University Press of Kentucky, 2006
The Civil War in Kentucky
By Lowell Harrison
The University Press of Kentucky, 1975
Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle
By Kenneth Noe
The University Press of Kentucky, 2001
Rebel Raider: The Life of General John Hunt Morgan
By James A. Ramage
The University Press of Kentucky, 1986
Tracing Your Civil War Ancestor
By Bertram Hawthorne Groene
John F. Blair Publisher, 1995
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CIVIL WAR ORGANIZATIONS
National Woman’s Relief Corps
Auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic Inc.
GAR Memorial Museum
629 S. 7th Street
Springfield, IL 62703
(217) 522-4373
Morgan’s Men Association Inc.
1691 Kilkenny Drive
Lexington, KY 40505
http://members.tripod.com/~Morgans_Men
Sons of Confederate Veterans
Kentucky Division
P.O. Box 10
Calhoun, KY 42327
www.kyscv.org
Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War
Department of Kentucky
2411 Spring Avenue
New Albany, IN 47150
812-944-3916
http://suvcw.org
United Daughters of the Confederacy
UDC Headquarters
328 North Boulevard
Richmond, VA 23220-4009
www.hqudc.org
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ROSTER OF KENTUCKY SOLDIERS
“Kentucky was overwhelmingly on the side of the Federal government during the war, as evidenced by the numbers of soldiers who enlisted,” points out Timothy Downey of Kentucky’s Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. “Most figures put the ratio at 3 to 1 in favor of the Federal side.”
Downey synthesized the following figures from The Union Cause in Kentucky, 1861-1865: Kentucky contributed 16 regiments of cavalry to the Civil War, plus five regiments of veterans. These cavalry regiments, plus artillery, engineers, and other detachments totaled 23,382 men. There were 42 regiments of Infantry, plus nine veteran regiments, for a total of 48,893 men. Add these together for 72,275 men, plus 12,486 state troops for a total of 84,761 men on the rolls of these units. Subtracting 5,407 men who had re-enlisted gives a total of 79,354 individual men in Kentucky Union Army units.
Among the nearly 80,000 Union soldiers were 23,703 black soldiers in Kentucky who responded to President Lincoln’s and Frederick Douglass’ call to join the ranks of the United States Colored Troops. An unknown number of African-Americans were also pressed into service of the armies, serving as cooks and body servants, etc.
The count of Confederate soldiers from Kentucky is not as well-documented. “40,000 is our best guesstimate,” says Don Shelton, past division commander of Kentucky’s Sons of Confederate Veterans, but estimates have ranged from 25,000 to 51,000 Kentucky Confederate soldiers. One issue that has complicated the count is that some Kentucky soldiers crossed the border into Southern states, like Virginia and Tennessee, to enlist. Thus the listed muster location does not reflect some soldiers’ true place of residence.
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To read the Kentucky Living August 2006 feature that goes along with this supplement, click here: Family Stories of the Civil War
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