Other states had debated the matter of slavery and had gone either free or slave. Kentucky had fought over the question for fifty years and finally tried to go both ways, tearing itself in two. The division and bitterness outlived the war. In the end Kentucky stuck with the Union and sent almost three times as many men to the North as to the South. But the postwar conduct of federal military commanders, who tended to treat all Kentuckians as though they had been in rebellion, outraged people. Many who had stayed loyal to the Union now became hotly pro-Southern, leading one historian to declare that Kentucky was the only state in history to join the loser after the loss. So deep was the resentment against federal orders and officers that Democrats became overnight the majority party, and it would be thirty years before a Republican could be elected governor. Returning Rebel and Yankee soldiers clashed. Duels were fought, homes burned. Freed slaves found themselves at loose ends, with no food, no money, and no place to live unless they were permitted to stay with their former owners, many of whom despised them or hated them for their role in bringing about the ruinous war.
