Our next meeting is this Thursday, May 19, at 7:00 pm at Cherry Hall in room 125. This is the location of our first meeting and will be our regular meeting room. Please arrive 15 minutes early to ensure that the meeting begins on time. There will be no meeting in June or July. Regular meetings will resume the third Thursday in August. Cherry Hall is on top of the hill on the campus of Western KY University. Parking is on the streets alongside the building.

SPEAKER: For May 2011, our speaker will be Nicky Hughes. The presentation title will be “Border State Capital-Frankfort, Kentucky, in the Civil War.”

The study of Frankfort, Kentucky, in the Civil War offers unique perspectives. Frankfort was a small town, but yet the capital of what was then one of the most influential states in the Union. Here, some of the most important events of the war in Kentucky occurred - notably the General Assembly's decision not to take Kentucky out of the Union. During the secession crisis, most of the town's residents - the whites, anyway - wanted to preserve the Union and keep Kentucky in it, but most were at least as dedicated to the preservation of slavery in Kentucky. Frankfort enjoyed the unwanted distinction of being the only pro-Union state capital occupied by the Confederate Army. In 1864, the town actually became a battlefield as local militiamen fought off a detachment of John Hunt Morgan's raiders - with long-lasting consequences for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Postwar Frankfort saw the triumph of the Bourbon Democrats who capitalized upon Kentuckians' resentment toward the Lincoln administration's late-war policies toward slavery.