Hey everyone, welcome to the 81st episode of our Civil War podcast. I'm Rich. And I'm Tracy.

Hello y'all, welcome to the podcast. We spent the last couple of episodes bringing you Lissie's S. Grant's

life story up to speed with the podcast timeline and where we are on the podcast timeline is November 7th,

1861 and the Battle of Belmont. As we said before, Belmont, Missouri was right across the Mississippi River from the

important fortified Confederate position at Columbus, Kentucky. And to understand just why the

Confederates were at Columbus, Kentucky, we need to talk about what all was going on with the Bluegrass State at the

beginning of the Civil War. So that's what we're going to do now with this episode and we'll work our way forward to the

Battle of Belmont, which we'll get to next week. But and this doesn't have anything to do with the Civil War, but I think most of you

probably know by now that I'm from Pennsylvania and Tracy is from Arkansas and then we actually met at school

in Kentucky right in the heart of the Bluegrass. So Kentucky, I think, will always be a bit special for us. And that's where we

dated and we're engaged and where we were right up until we got married. And we haven't been back since. And we haven't been back since then.

Nope. All right. So anyway, back to Civil War stuff. We've already mentioned on the podcast about how in the early months of the war,

the border states of Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland, which remember were all slave states, but in the early months of the Civil War,

both the Union and Confederacy hoped that the border states of Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland would side with them.

And the situation in Maryland was rather quickly settled by its occupation by federal troops.

And y'all already know from past episodes about how the situation in Missouri remained so unsettled and how the state turned into a battleground,

but that the federal's managed for the most part to retain control of Missouri. Kentucky, however, provided no small amount of suspense and drama early in the Civil War

by teetering between secession and remaining in the Union. And here, as we do every so often,

Richard, I want to suggest you actually pull out or pull up a map and find Kentucky. And you'll be able to see right away its key position as a border state between north and south.

When war broke out, Kentucky governor, Bariah McGuffin felt certain that if the bluegrass state declared allegiance to either bligerent,

then it would become a bitterly contested battleground, much like what actually happened to another border state, Missouri.

And seeking to avoid that fate, he declared that his state would remain neutral in the conflict.

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