| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Brian D. McKnight. Contested Borderland: The Civil War in Appalachian Kentucky and Virginia. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. 2006. Pp. ix, 312. $40.00.
The Civil War in southern Appalachia has received considerable scholarly analysis over the past few years, but until now there has been surprisingly little attention directed toward central Appalachia, which was fully as significant militarily and suffered just as great a social and economic upheaval as did any part of the mountain South. Brian D. McKnight does much to fill that gap with his comprehensive new study of the war as experienced along the border of southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky, a region particularly vulnerable due to its status as what he calls "the quintessential no-man's-land" (p. 2).	1
The power of place is central to McKnight's analysis of how and why the war was waged with such intensity in this region. The fifteen Kentucky and eight Virginia counties on which he focuses included some of the most rugged and remote mountain areas in Appalachia. Despite demographic differences—the Kentucky counties were far more sparsely settled and had far fewer slaves—the region as a whole became politically and strategically important when what was once merely a state line became an international border, with Virginia's secession from the Union. Because both areas remained marginalized sections of their respective states, national allegiances hardly adhered to such boundaries. Local loyalties remained divided on both sides of that border—strong Unionist sentiment in southwest Virginia and pockets of pro-Confederate sympathy in the Kentucky highlands—which compounded the violence and harassment imposed on and by residents of both.	. . .

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