This unique Civil War history chronicles the hard-fought battles and divided loyalties of a pro-Southern county in Union Kentucky. When the Civil War broke out, Kentucky was officially neutral—but the people of Harrison County felt differently. Volunteers lined up at the train depot in Cynthiana to join the Confederate Army, cheered on by pro-Southern local officials. After the state fell under Union Army control, this “pestilential little nest of treason” became a battlefield during some of the most dramatic military engagements in the state. Because of its political leanings and strategic position along the Kentucky Central Railroad, Harrison County became the target of multiple raids by Confederate general John Hunt Morgan. Conflict in the area culminated in the Second Battle of Cynthiana, in which Morgan's men clashed with Union troops led by Major General Stephen G. Burbridge—known as the “Butcher of Kentucky”—resulting in the destruction of much of the town by fire. In this fascinating Civil War history, William A. Penn draws on dozens of period newspapers as well as personal journals, memoirs, and correspondence from citizens, slaves, soldiers, and witnesses to provide a vivid account of the war's impact on the region.

Historians have published countless studies of the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865 and the era of Reconstruction that followed those four years of brutally destructive conflict. Most of these works focus on events and developments at the national or state level, explaining and analyzing the causes of disunion, the course of the war, and the bitter disputes that arose during restoration of the Union. Much less attention has been given to studying how ordinary people experienced the years from 1861 to 1876. What did secession, civil war, emancipation, victory for the United States, and Reconstruction mean at the local level in Texas? Exactly how much change—economic, social, and political—did the era bring to the focus of the study, Harrison County: a cotton-growing, planter-dominated community with the largest slave population of any county in the state? Providing an answer to that question is the basic purpose of A Southern Community in Crisis: Harrison County, Texas, 1850–1880. First published by the Texas State Historical Association in 1983, the book is now available in paperback, with a foreword by Andrew J. Torget, one of the Lone Star State’s top young historians.