On President Lincoln’s 200 birthday earlier this month, I posted a map showing that most states who fought for General Lee and the Rebs voted for John McCain, while most states that supported President Lincoln and the Feds chose Barack Obama. Most people know that this is an axiom of modern American politics. But I decided to go one step further, and find out which states actually named counties after their respective Civil War leaders.

I found that 17 states named a county after Abraham Lincoln (One state, Nebraska, even named its capital city after him). Of those 17 states, only five – Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Wisconsin and West Virginia – sent young men to defend the Union. Kansas, though sparsely settled at the time, definitely saw plenty of blood. And Maine contributed its fair share – It was Col. Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine who defended Little Round Top at Gettysburg and defended the Feds from being flanked.

Two states that fought for the Confederacy named a county after Abraham Lincoln – Arkansas and Mississippi – and I wonder if this was an act of Reconstruction officials. Five more slave states have a county named Lincoln – Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee – but these were all named after Revolutionary War hero Benjamin Lincoln.

On the flip side, nine states have a county named after Robert E. Lee. All were slaves states and all but Kentucky fought for the Marble Man. You may be wondering why Tennessee and Louisiana never named a county after General Lee. It’s because Tennessee named one after General James Longstreet, a leader of the Army of the Tennessee, and Louisiana named one after creole General Pierre Beauregard, a native of St. Bernard’s Perish.