Benjamin Forsythe Buckner (1836–1901) faced a dire choice as the flames of Civil War threatened his native Kentucky. As an ambitious Bluegrass aristocrat, he was sympathetic to fellow slave owners, but was also convinced that the Peculiar Institution could not survive a war for southern independence. Defying the wishes of his Rebel fiancée and her powerful family―yet still hoping to impress them with his resolve, independence, and courage―Buckner joined the 20th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry in 1861 as a Union soldier. President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation ultimately destroyed Buckner's faith in his cause, however, and he resigned his commission. In this groundbreaking biography, author Patrick A. Lewis uses Buckner's story to illuminate the origins and perspectives of Kentucky's conservative proslavery Unionists and explain why this group became a key force in repressing social and political change during the Reconstruction era and beyond. While other studies have explored how this former Union state cultivated a Confederate identity after the Civil War, For Slavery and Union is the first major work to personify this transformation. Lewis's book provides a deeply nuanced look at the history of the Commonwealth in the nineteenth century and the development of the New South. "Benjamin Forsythe Buckner was a conservative proslavery Unionist who was for the Union because he thought slavery would be safest in the Union, and who never accepted emancipation as a Union war aim. This insightful book positions Patrick Lewis among the cutting-edge scholars who have punctured the mythology about Kentucky's benign slave system, harmonious social order, and enlightened political leadership."―Daniel W. Crofts, author of Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis "Patrick Lewis paints a splendid picture of pro-slavery Unionism in the form of Major Benjamin Buckner. His portrayal of the Kentucky planter gives texture, depth and nuance to an ideological position that has confounded historians for many years. This may be the first biography we have seen to capture the cultural and political center of Civil War-era Kentucky, including the state's embrace of a conservative Union in 1861 and its rejection of a transformed Union in 1865."―Aaron Astor, Maryville College, author of Rebels on the Border: Civil War, Emancipation and the Reconstruction of Kentucky and Missouri "Patrick Lewis's splendid For Slavery and Union is a most welcome contribution to Civil War, Kentucky, and border state historical scholarship. Deeply researched and gracefully crafted, Lewis's book provides the best insights available into the conflicted ideological and social worlds of Benjamin Forsythe Buckner and like-minded proslavery unionists during the Civil War era. Better than any previous scholar, Lewis untangles the conundrum conservative and upwardly mobile white southerners confronted as the nation dissolved. They believed not only that unionism and slavery went hand and hand, but envisioned that secession signaled the death knell not only of the 'peculiar institution' but also of white southerners' much-boasted 'way of life,' a Weltanschauung predicated on white supremacy. Lewis's mature, richly interpretive study places Buckner's postwar life in the whirligig world of Jim Crow/New South Kentucky, a world he quietly embraced."―John David Smith, author of Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops "On a fellow historian's tip, as part of a recent book project, I researched the letters of Benjamin Forsythe Buckner written to his fiancée. This revealing collection of Civil War documents offers the perspective of a Kentucky Union officer who resigned his military commission in 1863 specifically to protest the Emancipation Proclamation, long before his home state saw its slaves freed by wartime realities. Patrick A. Lewis has turned this small set of letters into a larger, more troubling story―the postwar transformation of the former loyal Bluegrass State into an unreconstructed southern state, accomplished by the defiant politics of racial hatred, war allegiance, and fictive memory."―Christopher Phillips, University of Cincinnati, author of The Civil War in the Border South "Well-researched, well-argued, and well-written, For Slavery and Union is an exemplary study. Benjamin Buckner of Kentucky personifies the dilemma of the Upper South proslavery unionist, during and after the Civil War. Author Patrick Lewis ably portrays the trials, contradictions, and struggles of those who favored the union, but who also saw it as the best way to protect slavery. Once the conflict became one to end slavery, Buckner zealously joined blue and gray allies in protecting whiteness. By placing Buckner fully in the context of his times, Dr. Lewis reveals that the old unionist did not change, but rather the circumstances in the world around him did. To Benjamin Buckner, the best way to protect slavery was to keep the uni