Black Mountain, Kentucky |
 My first visit to Kentucky was extremely brief: I was a passenger on a bus going from Carbondale, Illinois, to Nashville, Tennessee, and for about three-quarters of an hour the bus passed through western Kentucky. It didn’t stop and I didn’t get off, so that visit doesn’t really count. The first time I literally set foot in the state was on Monday morning, 2 November 2015, when I visited Black Mountain, Kentucky’s highpoint. Although the state’s motto, “United We Stand, Divided We Fall”, stems from a revolutionary war song, it’s also a reminder of bitter divisions in the state during the Civil War, when the loyalties of Kentucky’s citizens were deeply divided. |