When the Civil War ended, Martin Van Buren Bates returned home to the farm on which he had been raised in eastern Kentucky. But some of his neighbors were not happy with Bates and his family.
The number of slaveowners in the mountain counties of the states where slavery existed was relatively small. Consequently, the number of residents who had supported the Confederacy was minimal.
That is why, for example, Virginia split in two with several of its mountain counties breaking away and entering the Union as West Virginia in 1863. Likewise, in Tennessee the majority of men from the state’s mount...
Reader Comments(0)