...The Purchase, squeezed between a Union army at Cairo, Illinois, and Confederate forces just below the border in Tennessee, looked like the place where neutrality was most likely to be violated. Both sides coveted Columbus, where the local secessionist majority feared the Yankees might beat...

... of times for most citizens of Hickman and Columbus and other Rebel-run territory in the region. They were overjoyed with the advent of soldiers they saw as their salvation from the “abolitionist” army at Cairo. On the other hand, the secessionist majority in Paducah and its environs endured what...

... Charles F Twenty second Mississippi Infantry Regiment yellow fever Beauregard Monument Association of Louisiana Fuller Lizzie Lowe guerrilla warfare Hickman County Mayfield United Daughters of the Confederacy “abolitionist invaders ” disloyalty Purchase Rebels secessionist majority smuggling...

... be lost sooner or later. Yet the Purchase stayed Confederate, its secessionist majority perhaps hoping for a miracle. Forrest's cavalry raided Paducah in March 1864, boosting secessionist spirits. But like Polk's army in 1862, these latter-day “deliverers” also departed, leaving the rebellious citizenry...