I have looked at Kentucky's situation over the past several years and have reached a couple of conclusions. The eastern part of the state along the upper Big Sandy River, Floyd, Pike and Lecher counties, as well as Johnson to a certain extent, basically waited until the Mother State made a move for secession. Pike County's State Guard unit was not formed until a week or two following Virginia's vote to secede. As for the counties along the Ohio River, remaining with the Union was probably a practical decision. Somewhere in Coulter's "Civil War and Reconstruction in Kentucky" there is a line telling the number of railroads which terminated within a given distance north of the Ohio (10 or 12, I think). When Kentucky's lawmakers considered this fact, and recognized the implications of the government in Washington City being able to have thousands of well-fed and well-armed soldiers on the state's northern border within a short time, their decision to stay with the Union was a no-brainer. The L&N was the state's only rail line with outside connections.
As for Kentucky's strategic importance, just put the above in the historical mirror. The federal government saw a threat of invasion from Virginia, but so long as the Confederates from the lower tip of the Shenandoah Valley northeastward were kept busy, invasions by such forces as Humphrey Marshall's Army of Eastern Kentucky with fewer than 2,000 able-bodied men and a half dozen pieces of near useless artillery were of little concern. Matter of fact, after early '63 it was no concern whatsoever and the region was left to fight the war on its own terms. Command of the Ohio and Big Sandy rivers was a blessing to such Union commanders as James A. Garfield who countered the threat of Humphrey Marshall at the end of 1861 and put it to final rest on January 10, 1862. Garfield on several occasions confirmed the importance of the rivers in supplying his men, who had warm blankets, cozy greatcoats and plentiful rations while their Rebel counterparts left bloody tracks in the snow, depended upon the largess of country folk for quilts and blankets, and had to pick, shuck and grind their own corn in local gristmills.
Kentucky did not have the railroads to move and supply large armies, the Confederate invasion of '62 being the shining example. Both armies marched their shoe leather into the Bluegrass soil without ever stepping onto a railroad car. With the exception of her border rivers, Kentucky had no streams sufficient to make up for its lack of modern rail transportation.
I think, sir, that Kentucky was possessed of great strategic importance at the beginning of the war, much of which was the product of fear and imagination. Little or nothing to fear from the east, even less from upper East Tennessee via Cumberland Gap, with the exception of Kirby Smith, and when the Mississippi River came under full Union control the western portion was just as useless to the Confederates.
All in all, Kentucky was simply an insulator, a buffer for the Union, to protect the more industrialized northern cities of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. Its only serious breach was Morgan's Great Raid of '63. Consider the number of men Morgan led north of the Ohio, then look at the number of civilian claims filed as a result of that raid, then factor that by whatever number would satisfy the imaginations of Union politicians as comprising a sizable Rebel army. Had the Confederacy controlled the Ohio, or the territory immediately south, it would have been a disaster.
Comments?
Randall Osborne