USA Guide
The South
Kentucky
Two hundred years after it was wrested from Native Americans, Kentucky still hasn't quite decided whether it belongs in the North or the South. Both of the rival presidents during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, were born here, and divisions were acute between slave-owning farmers and the merchants who depended on trade with the nearby cities of the industrial North. While the state remained officially neutral, more Kentuckians joined the Union army than the Confederates. After the war, Kentucky sided with the South in its hostility to Reconstruction, and has tended to follow southern political trends.
Kentucky's rugged beauty is at its most appealing in the mountainous east and the small historic towns of the Bluegrass Downs, where visits can be enlivened by the varied attractions of bourbon whiskey, thoroughbred horses, and bluegrass music. Most of these are within easy reach of reserved Lexington, a major horse-breeding market, while hipper Louisville, home of the Kentucky Derby, lies eighty miles west and is a busy manufacturing and arts center.
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