In a letter to Senator O. H. Browning in September 1861, Abraham Lincoln summarized Kentucky's strategic importance during the American Civil War, writing "I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game." Though regular Confederate forces failed to seize the state in 1862, the Commonwealth remained bitterly divided and contested for decades. Guerrilla warfare and racial violence commingled with the fruits of U.S. victory and emancipation. In the war's aftermath, a pro-Confederate identity emerged and permeated white Kentucky society. The stories of Kentucky's Unionists and U.S. veterans, including thousands of Black Kentuckians, were overshadowed or silenced.

 

For much of the twentieth century, Confederate apologists like E. Merton Coulter dominated historiography about Civil War era Kentucky. In recent decades, scholars, digital humanists, and librarians have contributed more diverse perspectives and new research on the war and its long-lasting impacts on the lives of Kentuckians across categories of race, class, and gender. This site compiles curated lists of books, journals, articles, databases, and web resources which contain primary or secondary information representing the richness of Kentucky's Civil War history and its complicated legacy. Emphasis is placed on resources which illuminate previously understudied aspects and silenced voices. Graduate students, advanced undergraduate researchers, and other users interested in the scholarly study of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and collective memory will benefit most from this pathfinder.