Mr. Editor:

Abraham Lincoln is famously (and perhaps correctly) quoted as saying, "I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky," and "have Kentucky" he did -- by dint of military police force -- for the better part of the war. (In mid-1864, Lincoln appointed Brigadier General Stephen Burbridge as military governor de facto if not de jure; over the next several months, "Butcher" Burbridge on no fewer than three occasions effected the arrest of Mexican War and Civil War hero Frank Lane Wolford.)

It occurs to this wayfaring stranger that the arrival of the Civil War history-to-go panels in Columbia so soon after the celebration both of Dr. Martin Luther King day and Lincoln's birth date should give one pause for thought: Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which went into effect on January 1, 1863, freed only those men, women, and children enslaved in the Confederate-held states. Since Kentucky was under Union control, human bondage in the Bluegrass State did not end until the cessation of hostilities and the ensuing ratification of the 13th amendment in 1865. --The Wayfaring Stranger