Samuel Shellabarger's Civil War, 1817-1896

by William A. Kinnison

2022 · Xlibris Corporation

On Mud Run, near the recently abandoned Shawnee Indian village of Pickewe, Samuel Shellabarger was born in a log cabin on December 10, 1817. It was in the middle of an endless Ohio forest, a world away from civilization. Indians said a bird could fly from the Ohio River to Lake Erie never having to land on the ground. Mud Run was so deep into the forest that it seemed unlikely that anyone lost there could in a single lifetime win national fame and fortune. There were clues in Samuel Shellabargers early years that suggest he might surely rise above this wilderness. Shellabargers inspiration for a new America was a religious belief that "God had created of one blood all the peoples of the earth" and all were equal in God's sight, whether he or his father wanted it to be so or not. The nation, he believed, for its own sake, should embrace equality before the law or dire consequences would result. The nation's founders had declared that all men were equal but failed to achieve equality in practice. His generation was called upon to correct the mistake. But they let the opportunity slip from their grasp and created instead a new America he described as, "not fit to be." Samuel Shellabarger did not become famous, though he almost did. He became instead a footnote in a forgotten story that the nation should have remembered. And America, he believed, missed the only chance it might ever have to preserve democracy in the nation.

Kentucky Rebel Town

by William A. Penn

2016 · University Press of Kentucky

This unique Civil War history chronicles the hard-fought battles and divided loyalties of a pro-Southern county in Union Kentucky. When the Civil War broke out, Kentucky was officially neutral—but the people of Harrison County felt differently. Volunteers lined up at the train depot in Cynthiana to join the Confederate Army, cheered on by pro-Southern local officials. After the state fell under Union Army control, this “pestilential little nest of treason” became a battlefield during some of the most dramatic military engagements in the state. Because of its political leanings and strategic position along the Kentucky Central Railroad, Harrison County became the target of multiple raids by Confederate general John Hunt Morgan. Conflict in the area culminated in the Second Battle of Cynthiana, in which Morgan's men clashed with Union troops led by Major General Stephen G. Burbridge—known as the “Butcher of Kentucky”—resulting in the destruction of much of the town by fire. In this fascinating Civil War history, William A. Penn draws on dozens of period newspapers as well as personal journals, memoirs, and correspondence from citizens, slaves, soldiers, and witnesses to provide a vivid account of the war's impact on the region.