Key events that shaped law and society:

• The mountain South’s reaction to war was the nation’s reaction in microcosm.  Two states (Missouri and Kentucky) decided by the narrowest of margins that union was more important than preserving a way of life based on slavery, but they waged their own internal civil wars between 1861 and 1865 and Union forces maintained a strong presence in both states to make sure that Confederate forces did not get the upper hand.  Radical Republicans gained control of Missouri’s government and enacted a new constitution abolishing slavery in early 1865.  Kentucky clung to slavery and chafed at federal control throughout the war.

• Tennessee and Arkansas, like Virginia, seceded despite strong opposition from residents of their mountain areas (east Tennessee and northwest Arkansas.  After Union forces occupied western Virginia (1861) and gained control of most of Tennessee and Arkansas (1862-63), local Unionists established “restored” governments in each state.  War, combined with long-standing sectional divisions, enabled western Virginians to form their own state in 1863 with the consent of Virginia’s “restored” government.