page_title: History of Louisville, Kentucky
section_title: Civil War
hierarchical_section_title: History of Louisville, Kentucky / City development (1803–1900) / Civil War
caption_attribution_description: Gen. Jefferson C. Davis shooting gen. William "Bull" Nelson Original description: Depiction of shooting of William "Bull" Nelson by Jefferson C. Davis. This was published in 1862, and is thus public domain.
context_page_description: The geology of the Ohio River, with a but a single series of rapids halfway in its length from the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers to its union with the Mississippi, made it inevitable that a town would grow on the site. Louisville, Kentucky was chartered in the late 18th century. From its early days on the frontier, it quickly grew to be a major trading and distribution center in the mid 19th century, important industrial city in the early 20th, declined in the mid 20th century, before revitalizing in the late 20th century as a culturally-focused mid-sized American city.
  The history of Louisville, Kentucky spans a bit over two centuries since the latter part of the 18th century. Prior to arrival of Europeans, the region was depopulated from the Beaver Wars of the 17th century, and no permanent Native American settlements existed in the area. It was used as hunting grounds by northern Shawnee and southern Cherokee. The area's geography and location on the Ohio River attracted people from the earliest times. The city is located at the Falls of the Ohio River, then a part of Kentucky County, Virginia.
context_section_description: During the Civil War, Louisville was a major stronghold of Union forces, which kept Kentucky firmly in the Union. It was the center of planning, supplies, recruiting and transportation for numerous campaigns, especially in the Western Theater. While the state of Kentucky officially declared its neutrality early in the war, prominent Louisville attorney James Speed, brother of President Abraham Lincoln's close friend Joshua Fry Speed, strongly advocated keeping the state in the Union. Seeing Louisville's strategic importance in the freight industry, General William Tecumseh Sherman formed an army base in the city in the event that the Confederacy advanced.
  In September 1862, Confederate General Braxton Bragg decided to take Louisville, but changed his mind. There was lack of backup from General Edmund Kirby Smith's forces. In addition, the decision to install Confederate Governor Richard Hawes in the alternative government in Frankfort made people think the state might change. In the summer of 1863, Confederate cavalry under John Hunt Morgan invaded Kentucky from Tennessee and briefly threatened Louisville, before swinging around the city into Indiana during Morgan's Raid. In March 1864, Generals Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant met at the Galt House to plan the spring campaign, which included the capture of Atlanta, Georgia. (As of 2014, that this meeting actually occurred has fallen into dispute.)
  By the end of the war, Louisville itself had not been attacked once, although it was surrounded by skirmishes and battles, including the Battle of Perryville and the Battle of Corydon. The Unionists—most of whose leaders owned slaves—felt betrayed by the abolitionist position of the Republican Party. After 1865 returning Confederate veterans largely took political control of the city, leading to the jibe that it joined the Confederacy after the war was over.
  During the postwar years, the Freedmen's Bureau opened a school, led by W. H. Gibson, and a bank in the city to serve the now free and growing African American population. Confederate women organized in associations to ensure the dead were buried in cemeteries, to identify missing men, and to build memorials to the war and their losses. By the 1890s, the memorial movement came under the control of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and United Confederate Veterans (UCV), who promoted the "Lost Cause". Making meaning after the war was another way of writing its history. In 1895, in one of their successes, a Confederate monument was erected near the University of Louisville campus.
caption: Union Gen. Jefferson C. Davis shoots Union Gen. William "Bull" Nelson on the steps of the Galt House
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