“I hope to have God on my side,” Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said early in the war, “but I must have Kentucky.” Unlike most of his contemporaries, Lincoln hesitated to invoke divine sanction of human causes, but his wry comment unerringly acknowledged the critical importance of the border states to the Union cause. Following the attack on Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for troops in April 1861, public opinion in Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri was sharply divided and these states’ ultimate allegiance uncertain. The residents of the border were torn between their close cultural ties with the South, on the one hand, and their long tradition of Unionism and political moderation on the other. At the same time, the expansion of the railroad network in the 1850s had disrupted these states’ traditional trade patterns with the South by directing a growing amount of commerce, including farmstuffs, northward, so economically they looked in both directions. With popular emotions running high, there was a very real possibility that they would follow the Upper South out of the Union and join the Confederacy.

Together Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri had a white population of almost 2,600,000, nearly half that of the population of the eleven states of the Confederacy. [1] In none of the border states did slavery approach the importance it had in the Deep South, but only in Delaware, with fewer than 2,000 slaves out of a total population of about 112,000, was it insignificant (Table 1). Delaware stood alone among the border states in not containing a serious movement for secession. [2] Page [End Page 13]

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Table 1. Number of Slaves and Total Population in 1860RegionSlavePopulationProportion (%)Border States[3]Delaware1,798112,2121.6Maryland87,189687,04912.7Kentucky225,4831,155,65119.5Missouri114,9311,181,9129.7Upper South[4]1,208,7584,168,72329.0Deep South[5]2,312,3524,868,44947.5Source: James M. McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1965), Appendix A.

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Smaller and less heavily populated than either Kentucky or Missouri, Maryland nevertheless occupied a key strategic position, for it bordered the District of Columbia on three sides. In addition, Washington’s telegraph and rail links to the north and west traversed its territory. Loss of Maryland would force the federal government to abandon Washington, a humiliating development that would entail a potentially fatal loss of prestige and possibly lead to diplomatic recognition by Europe of the Confederacy.

Kentucky was much more heavily populated, had richer mineral resources, and was a major grain and livestock producing state. Yet Kentucky’s primary importance was strategic. Bordered by the Ohio River to the north and the Mississippi River to the west, it stood as a buffer between the states of the Old Northwest and Confederate Tennessee and provided the main line of defense for the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Kentucky also controlled access to several major river systems, including the Tennessee and the Cumberland that pointed south toward the heart of the Confederacy.

Missouri was also a major agricultural state producing vast quantities of grains and livestock. It also contained the major city of St. Louis, an important commercial center, and was the most populous of the border states. Strategically, Missouri protected the Union’s western flank and guarded the western shore of the Mississippi River beyond the Confederacy’s northern border. If allied with the Confederacy, it would threaten Iowa, Kansas, and especially Illinois, but Page [End Page 14] more crucially, it would make Union control of both Kentucky and the Mississippi River much more difficult.

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Rich in mineral and agricultural resources, containing a large white population, and controlling key transportation and communication networks, the border states were of vital importance. Had the border states seceded, the Union’s resources would have been significantly reduced and the Confederacy’s strategic advantages correspondingly increased. Lincoln himself questioned whether the Confederacy could be subdued militarily if the border states left the Union. “I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game,” he commented in justifying his cautious policy in that state. “Kentucky gone, we can not hold Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland. These all against us, and the job on our hands is too large for us. We would as well consent to separation at once, including the surrender of this capitol.” [6]

With such momentous consequences hanging in the balance, historians understandably have pointed to Lincoln’s skillful handling of the border states as a notable example of his presidential leadership. “It was fortunate for the United States in the critical year 1861,” Edward Smith wrote in praising his statesmanship, “that Abraham Lincoln understood perfectly the people of the Borderland…. [This knowledge] enabled him to frame surely the policies upon which the fate of the country depended.” [7] Likewise, James Rawley began his book Turning Points of the Civil War with an analysis of the decision of the border states to remain in the Union. Speculating that the secession of the border states might well have changed the course of the war, Rawley carried his discussion only to the end of 1861, for by then, he argued, any possibility that the border states would join the Confederacy had ended.

This interpretation, however, does not analyze fully Lincoln’s policies with respect to the border states. In examining the problem of the border states, historians generally have lost interest once these states unequivocally cast their lot with the Union. They have concentrated on the opening months of the struggle, from the call for troops to Lincoln’s first annual message in December, and except Page [End Page 15] for his efforts to get them to adopt a program of gradual emancipation have given only limited attention to Lincoln’s policies concerning the border states during the remainder of the war.[8] Lincoln’s policy goals, however, extended beyond preventing these states from seceding, and his purposes had not been completely achieved by the end of 1861.

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