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 American Commont»ealt]^0* 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 HORACE E. SCUDDER. 
 
Stmerican Comniontocaltl^^ 
 
 KENTUCKY 
 
 A PIONEER COMMONWEALTH 
 
 N. S. SHALER 
 
 )EC 10 10^- ^^ 
 
 
 BOSTON 
 HOUGHTON, MUTFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street 
 1885 
 

 Copyright, 1884, 
 By N. S. SIIALER. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
 Electrotyped mx^ Printed by II. 0. Houghton & Co, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The following account of the Commonwealth of 
 Kentucky is designed to give the general reader a short 
 story of the development of that State. The reader 
 will kindly observe that it is not entitled a history ; 
 the writer desires to disclaim the intention of writing 
 anything that could be fairly termed a history of his 
 native State. Such a work would, when properly done, 
 require the space of several such volumes and a large 
 amount of special research, which it has not been in 
 the power of the present writer to give to his task ; 
 it is the main aim of this little book to set forth the 
 history of the motives that have led the people in the 
 shaping of their Commonwealth, using only so much of 
 the incidents of their life as seemed necessary to make 
 these motives clear. 
 
 Fortunately for this work, previous writers have 
 made extensive and generally careful compilations, 
 which give fuller annals of the Commonwealth than 
 have been secured for any other State, except, per- 
 haps, for Massachusetts. Chief among these is Col- 
 lins's Historical Sketches of Kentucky, entitled " His- 
 
yi PREFACE. 
 
 tory of Kentucky, by the late Lewis Collins. Revised, 
 enlarged fourfold, and brought down to the year 1874, 
 by his son Richard H. Collins, A. M., LL. B.," two 
 volumes, large 8vo, pp. 683 and 804. Covington, Ky., 
 1874. This remarkable work embodies as much pa- 
 tient labor as has ever been given to the history of 
 any American State, but the multitude and variety of 
 the facts brought together make it rather a store-house 
 of information than a feast that invites the reader. 
 
 The present writer has made very extensive use of 
 the material gathered by Collins. Credit is generally 
 given in the foot-notes for the points presented by this 
 history ; but it is due to the writers of that work to 
 say that this account of Kentucky could not have 
 been written but for their admirable labors. 
 
 Besides this extensive series of annals there are at 
 least a dozen other works that have a varied value to 
 the student of Kentucky history. Of these the follow- 
 ing may be noted for the guidance of students who 
 desire to go further into the subject : — 
 
 1. John Filson : "Discovery, Settlement, and Pres- 
 ent State of Kentucke." Wilmington, Del., 1784. Re- 
 printed in England in 1792, 1793, and 1797. Trans- 
 lated into French and published at Paris in 1785. 
 Filson was killed by the Indians near the mouth of the 
 Miami River in 1788. The book is principally inter- 
 esting on account of its map and for the personal re- 
 miniscences of Daniel Boone. It laid the foundations 
 of Boone's enduring reputation as a hero of western 
 life. 
 
PREFACE. VU 
 
 2. William Littell : " Political Transactions in and 
 concerning Kentucky." 12mo, p. 147. Frankfort, Ky., 
 1806. Is only known to the present writer by title. 
 It is an excessively rare book.^ 
 
 3. Humphrey Marshall : "The History of Kentucky, 
 including an Account of the Discovery, Settlement, Pro- 
 gressive Improvement, Political and Military Events, 
 and Present State of the Country." 2 vols. 8vo, pp. 
 522 and 524. Frankfort, Ky. First volume in 1812 ; 
 second volume in 1824. This is an excellent history 
 in many respects, but is extremely Federalistic in tone, 
 and exceedingly unjust to those who differed from the 
 author in politics. 
 
 4. Mann Butler : " History of Kentucky from its Ex- 
 ploration and Settlement by the Whites to the close of 
 the Southwestern Campaign of 1813." 12mo, pp. 396. 
 Louisville, 1834. Second edition, Cincinnati, 1836. 
 
 The reader may advantageously consult the following 
 works : " History of the First Kentucky Brigade (Con- 
 federate), by Ed. Porter Thompson." Cincinnati, 1868 ; 
 "History of Morgan's Cavalry, by Basil W. Duke." 
 Cincinnati, 1867. 
 
 There are several other works of less importance, an 
 account of which may be found in Collins's " History," 
 vol. i. p. 639, where also will be found a fuller account 
 of the aforementioned works, with sketches of the lives 
 of their authors. 
 
 The writer has to acknowledge his great obligation 
 1 See Collins, vol. i. p. 640. 
 
Ylll PREFACE. 
 
 to many Kentucky friends for their aid and counsel in 
 the preparation of this work. He is especially indebted 
 to General William Preston, Colonel J. Stoddard John- 
 ston, Colonel W. C. P. Breckinridge, Colonel John 
 Mason Brown, and Hon. W. C. Goodloe, formerly offi- 
 cers of the Confederate and Federal armies ; to Captain 
 L. R. Hawthorne, formerly of the Eighteenth Kentucky 
 Infantry; to R. T. Durrett, Esq., and Thomas Speed, 
 Esq., Louisville; to S. I. M. Major, Esq., of Frankfort; 
 to Grant Green, Esq., and to the Hon. Fayette Hewitt, 
 auditor of the Commonwealth. It should be said, how- 
 ever, that none of these gentlemen are in any way re- 
 sponsible for the opinions set forth in this book. 
 
 It is fit that the reader should know that the writer, 
 a native of Kentucky, was a Unionist during the war. 
 But while his opinions have the color given by his 
 political position, he believes that he has in most cases 
 done substantial justice to his friends, the enemy of 
 that unhappy yet glorious time. If injustice has been 
 done, he can only plead in extenuation that he sin- 
 cerely feels that the honor won by the Confederate 
 heroes is as dear to him as the fame of those who were 
 on his own side. No one can write a thoroughly un- 
 biased account of a civil war in which he took any 
 part whatever. The trials of such days stamp them- 
 selves indelibly on the mind. We shall have to wait 
 until the generation which fought the war has entirely 
 passed away before even-handed justice can be done 
 to the men who were engaged in it. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 FACE 
 
 Introduction 1 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 TnE Planting of Virginia 6 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Government of the Virginia People . . . .13 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 The Physical Conditions of Kentucky ... 24 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Geology of Kentucky 35 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 The First Kentuckians 45 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 First Explorations of Kentucky . . . .53 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Early Settlements 67 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Separation from Virginia 93 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 The Commonwealth and its Problems . . .121 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Kentucky and the Federal Government . . . 131 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 The Beginning o^'^the Century .... 147 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 The War of 1812 158 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 From the War of 1812 to the War with Mexico . 172 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 From the Beginning of the Mexican War to the 
 Beginning of the Rebellion 200 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Beginning of the Civil War . . . .231 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 From the Abandonment of Neutrality to the Fall 
 OF Fort Donelson 257 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 From the Evacuation of Kentucky in February, 
 
 1862, TO THE Battle of Perry ville . . . 282 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 The Closing Stages of the Civil War . . .331 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 The End op the War 345 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 The Struggle for Civil Government . . . 358 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 The New Commonwealth 392 
 
 Appendix 409 
 
 Index 429 
 
KENTUCKY: 
 
 A PIONEER COMMONWEALTH. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The States of this Federal Union are, by the coti^ 
 ditions of their origin, divided into three groups : first, 
 those that were directly colonized from the Old World ; 
 next, those that were immediate outgrowths from par- 
 ticular colonies, deriving their blood and institutions ex- 
 clusively from one of the original colonies ; and, lastly, 
 the States that are the product of a miscellaneous im- 
 migration, and do not owe their existence to any one 
 of the original sources of population. The second class 
 of Commonwealths is the least numerous among our 
 States. Circumstances rarely favored the settlement of 
 a new territory, great enough to become a separate 
 State, from the surplus population of one district alone. 
 In a fashion, Maine and New Hampshire are the chil- 
 dren of Massachusetts, but each of these States has had 
 its independent colonization from abroad, and a large 
 mixture of blood from other regions. Kentucky alone 
 is fairly to be called the child of another Common- 
 wealth. She owes to Virginia the most of the people she 
 received during the half century when her society was 
 taking shape ; her institutions, be they good or evil, her 
 1 
 
2 KENTUCKY. 
 
 ideals of life, her place in the nation's history, are all 
 as immediately derived from her great mother Virginia 
 as are an individual man's from the mother who bore 
 him. 
 
 The population that came to Kentucky from other 
 States, and the institutions of other States in the way 
 of laws, customs, etc., had an introduction after the 
 formative period of the Commonwealth, so that they 
 have remained as foreign elements compared with the 
 deep-rooted qualities derived from the Virginian an- 
 cestry. 
 
 This singleness of origin of the Kentucky population 
 makes it easier and more profitable to trace its history 
 than that of any other Commonwealth, except those 
 originally planted on the sea-board. Its history goes 
 back to that of the parent State even more directly than 
 that of America to Britain. It will therefore be neces- 
 sary, in order to find the foundations of Kentucky's 
 life, for us to trace in outline the history of the Vir- 
 ginia people, so far, at least, as it may serve to show us 
 the source of the nature and motives of the folk that 
 founded the Commonwealth of Kentucky. 
 
 It is not an easy matter to see in the history of any 
 people the forces that have made them what they are. 
 The natural operations of a wholesome society imper- 
 fectly reveal themselves to the observer ; like the func- 
 tions of the well- conditioned individual body, they lie 
 hidden beneath the surface. It is rather the diseased 
 states of the body politic, the perturbations of function 
 marked in the maladies of a Commonwealth, that be- 
 come matters of history. 
 
 In the one hundred and fifty years that elapsed be^ 
 tween the first settlement of Virginia and the settlement 
 
INTRODUCTION. o 
 
 of Keiituckj', the English folk of the Elizabethan colony 
 underwent many important changes, most of which are 
 known to us only by their results. The organic history 
 of this body of people during that time is mo^ imper- 
 fectly known to us. What we know of their formative 
 processes is trifling compared with our knowledge of 
 those actions in the New England States. In New 
 England the historic sense was from the first much 
 stronger, and the methods of life were far more favor- 
 able to the preservation of historic materials. These 
 States were founded with intellectual purposes and by 
 educated men, who brought a definite theory of life 
 with them, and from the first set up a strong social sys- 
 tem that differed widely from that of the mother coun- 
 try. These founders represented the extremest notions 
 of the Protestant reformation, and they sacrificed all of 
 their inheritance that it was possible for men to sacri- 
 fice, in order to give their new plan of life control of 
 all their actions. Never have colonies so deliberately 
 tried to separate themselves from the past of their race. 
 Starting with a most definite theory of their church 
 state, they proceeded to bend all their energies to the 
 preservation of their ideals. For a century immigra- 
 tion was limited as far as possible to their own sort of 
 people. In this rigid world there was little chance of 
 free development of the spontaneous growth of the race 
 qualities. The result was a truly wonderful society, 
 but one that shows a wide divergence from the parent 
 stem. We shall do well to compare these conditions of 
 the typical New England colony with those of Virginia 
 and North .Carolina. 
 
 First let us notice the broad distinction between the 
 initial motives that led to these two diverse kinds of 
 
4 KENTUCKY. 
 
 settlements. While New England was, in a way, the off- 
 spring of the Protestant revolution, — the greatest and 
 most beneficent intellectual movement that Europe has 
 ever known, — the Virginia settlement and that of the 
 colonies were, at the outset, purely commercial enter- 
 prises. What there was of faith in the inception of 
 their history was accidental and of a transitory nature. 
 The commercial element of the ^Elizabethan period is 
 oversliadowed in history by the more attractive features 
 of its intellectual and moral development. It is easy 
 to see, however, that commercialism was then as intense 
 an element in the national life of England as it has 
 ever been in any other time or place. Gold hunger 
 and land hunger seem to have been at the root of all 
 the national achievements. Glory was more an inci- 
 dent to gain than it is now. From the plays of Shake- 
 speare to the buccaneer exploits of Raleigh, money gain 
 was the leading motive of the national life. 
 
 The dawning splendors of success won by the East 
 India Company awoke the quick imaginations of that 
 time. All the new-found shadowy world of the west 
 seemed full of such possible gains as the Indian Com- 
 pany was securing. Merchants and nobles made haste 
 to organize companies to win a like gain out of these 
 vast unexplored lands. A large share of the scanty 
 capital of that time was embarked in adventurous 
 schemes of colonization and conquest, and to one of 
 these fell the region which took its name from Eng- 
 land's manly queen. 
 
 As the conditions of the Virginia settlement and its 
 subsequent history were profoundly affected by the 
 scheme of its colonization, it will be necessary for us 
 to glance at these initial stages of its growth. We shall 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 then see, in brief, the history of its subsequent develop- 
 ment up to the time when the Kentucky people left 
 this region to begin their new life. It will not be nec- 
 essary to burden ourselves with any details of the 
 Virginia life that have not served to give to its cliil- 
 dren their peculiar qualities ; nor can we hope to see 
 these formative influences except in merest outline. 
 As before remarked, it is at best difficult to trace the 
 organic history of a people ; nowhere in America is 
 the task so difficult as in Virginia, a region of scanty 
 and neo^lected records, where men were more ffiven to 
 action than to recording their deeds, and where the 
 historic sense has never been developed as it has been 
 in Massachusetts, where it is and long has been pecu- 
 liarly active. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA. 
 
 The first Virgiuia company was organized in 1606, 
 seven years after and upon the same model as the or- 
 ganization of the trading association that grew to be 
 the East India Company. This Virginia company, 
 though its strength lay in its merchant element, had 
 its share of heroes of the large, bold, adventurous sort 
 of the Elizabethan type. Sir George Somers, one of 
 the commanders in the capture of San Jago de Leon, 
 and Hakluyt, the liistorian of northern adventure and 
 a man full of the heroism of his time, were among its 
 influential men. The patent of this company gave all 
 needed commercial powers with a free hand. If 
 parchments could make a State, Virginia would have 
 sprung at once into a vigorous life under the control 
 of these enthusiastic adventurers. But while giving 
 much, the crafty King James withheld from the cor- 
 poration the sovereign power which came by circum- 
 stances to the East Indian Company, and which was 
 most necessary to the maintenance of any distant col- 
 on}'" in those times. 
 
 This purely business venture of the first Virginia 
 company was a chronic failure from the beginning, 
 though it had a precarious life of eighteen years. Mis- 
 government in the colony, dissensions in the company, 
 the generally worthless character of the settlers, and 
 
THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA. 7 
 
 the effort to create something like a feudal land ten- 
 ure brought this experiment to an end. For our pur- 
 pose we have only to note that its results on the Vir- 
 ginia character were essentially negative, but for all 
 that valuable ; they made it clear that a good class of 
 settlers was necessary to found a prosperous colony, 
 but such could be obtained only by a fee simple land 
 tenure, and that such a settlement could not be governed 
 by a corporation resident in London, but must have a 
 share of self-government. These were lessons fruitful 
 of good results for the future of the colony. 
 
 With the final dissolution of the company in 1624, 
 Virgmia entered on the truly formative period of its 
 growth. This change from the control of a corporation 
 to the government of the crown took place before any 
 considerable part of the Virginia blood was yet upon 
 the soil. After the expulsion of the company, settle- 
 ment went on more rapidly. The early expectations of 
 wealth from gold mines and from commerce with the 
 Indians had been dispelled. Never an ounce of gold 
 was found (at least until after the colonial period), and 
 the district was too far south for the more valuable furs. 
 It was soon seen that the only resources were from 
 agriculture and the shipment of timber, for which Eng- 
 land then, as now, offered a large market. It is princi- 
 pally to the introduction of tobacco into the markets 
 of Europe that Virginia owes its place in history. This 
 plant began to be tilled during the government by the 
 company, but during the period when Virginia was a 
 crown colony its importance increased by leaps and 
 bounds so that it soon became the foundation of her 
 prosperity. The rapid development of the habit of 
 using tobacco, — America's most welcomed gift to the 
 
8 KENTUCKY, 
 
 Old World, — the large jirofits that it offered to the 
 tillers of the soil, led, in the first place, to a large im- 
 migration from England ; and, in the second place, to 
 the wide scattering of the population along the tide- 
 water district of the colony, and inland as far as the 
 eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge. 
 
 The character of these new-comers has long been a 
 matter of discussion. With a natural pride, some Vir- 
 ginia enthusiasts have claimed that the population con- 
 sisted very largely of gentlemen, while some calumnia- 
 tors of this people have striven to prove that it was 
 mainly composed of the more worthless folk of the 
 mother country. There is, unfortunately, no such clear 
 evidence concerning the nature of the people that 
 founded this State as we have concerning the people 
 of the New England colonies. Putting together the 
 stores of information that are at hand, we find good 
 proof that the strength of the immigration consisted of 
 the yeoman and squire class ; next in numbers were 
 the destitute and semi-criminal class, who were sold into 
 temporary service to pay their fines and the costs of 
 their transportation to the colony ; and for a while, 
 least in numbers, the Africans, who were sold into per- 
 manent slavery : of this class we shall learn more when 
 we come to consider their share in the development and 
 in the retardation of development in Virginia and of 
 Kentucky. At this moment we may only note that the 
 presence of persons held to service should not be re- 
 garded as characteiistic of Virginia, implying a pecu- 
 liar tone of social life in this colony. The institution 
 of African slaveiy v/as common at this time to all the 
 colonies, and did not differ essentially from the con- 
 ditions of enforced service in Europe. African slavery 
 
THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA. 9 
 
 was in no essential way different from the other slavery 
 so common in the earlier days. Even down to 1830 
 England tamely submitted to the enslavement of her 
 own citizens by the Barbary j^owers. 
 
 The geographical conditions of Virginia were sin- 
 gularly favorable for the rapid extension of population 
 over a large area. A glance at any sufficient map of 
 this region will show the reader that the colonial part 
 consists in the main of a very broad shore plain, with 
 a nearly flat surface, extending from the coast of the 
 Chesapeake to the higher land at the eastern slope of 
 the Blue Ridge. This plain averages about one hun- 
 dred miles in width, and includes an area of several 
 thousand square miles, — equal to at least one fourth 
 of the surface of England. This region is singularly 
 intersected by deep tide-water inlets, which afford navi- 
 gable waters with many thousand miles of shore line. 
 The lands near these tide waters are fairly fertile, 
 though somewhat malarious. They were easily cleared 
 with the axe and fire, and were then ready for the 
 plough. There was no coating of boulders which served 
 to retard, and still retards, the development of New 
 England agriculture. These water-ways dispensed with 
 the cost of an extensive road system, one of the cardinal 
 difficulties in every new State. The Piedmont district, 
 on the table-land at the eastern face of the Blue Ridge, 
 was everywhere within convenient reach of these fiord- 
 like inlets, so that even there there was less trouble 
 with road-making than has been encountered in any 
 other American State. 
 
 In the century from 1625 to 1725 there was a steady 
 but not o;reat immiorration from Eno:land and southern 
 Scotland : little other blood was introduced into the col- 
 
10 KENTUCKY. 
 
 ony. Then came a few Hugueuot French, after the 
 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes ; but the numbers of 
 this people who settled in Viigiuia were less than came 
 to Massachusetts, to New York, or to South Carolina. 
 After 1725 the stream of new-comers grew less ; the 
 best lands were possessed, and the chances for colonists 
 was less good than before. There was only one notable 
 immigration from abroad after the last-named date. This 
 came with the remarkable exodus of Scotch after the 
 rebellion of 1745. A large part of this folk went to 
 South Carolina, but Virginia received an immigration 
 of several thousand of these wanderers, who took up 
 land in and beyond the Blue Ridge, principally in Am- 
 herst, Augusta, and Rockbridire counties. 
 
 This was, in all respects, the most important contri- 
 bution ever made to the Virginia population. Exiles 
 for opinion's sake, principally of Calvinist belief, they 
 brought to the Old Dominion something of the spirit 
 that glorified, even while it darkened, the early history 
 of New England. We may find the spirit of this peo- 
 ple in every signal event in the history of the Viiginia 
 populations. They were a strength to Virginia in the 
 Revolution, and their children gave character to the 
 army of Jackson in the Civil War. They have fur- 
 nished many of the prominent business men of the State. 
 
 From the palatinate German settlements in Pennsyl- 
 vania there was, in the last part of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury and the first years of this, a certain amount of 
 immigration into Virginia. These people were mainly 
 settled in the lower part of the Shenandoah Valley, 
 and were never numerous enough to constitute any im- 
 portant element in the Virginia population.^ 
 
 1 A small portion of the settlers in the Shenandoah Valley wore 
 
THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA. 11 
 
 This glance at the sources of population in Vir<^inia 
 is sufficient to show that, with the exception of the 
 slaves, they came almost entirely from the truly British 
 people. This character it essentially retains to the pres- 
 ent day. At the time of the Kentucky settlement it 
 retained it almost altogether. 
 
 We shall have to consider one point concerning the 
 character of this Virginia blood. Although coming from 
 the British mother country, its origin was in many ways 
 different from that of the people who settled the Massa- 
 chusetts colonies. The settlers of Massachusetts were, 
 in the main, from the towns of Britain : they were mucli 
 more generally trained to the arts, and less to agricul- 
 ture, than the Virginia settlers ; a larger portion of them 
 were educated men. They were by habit a more social 
 or perhaps a more gregarious people. This is shown 
 in their settlements, which took the shape of villages, 
 and did not lead to the settling of the folk in isolated 
 farm-houses, as was already the custom of the rural 
 English. In Virginia the colonists were principally 
 from the country districts of England. Their absorbing 
 passion was not for religious discussions ; it w^as for the 
 possession of land, for the occupations and diversions 
 of rural life. When their interests were involved they 
 tended not to religious disputations, but to politics. This 
 appetite for land seems never to have been a part of 
 the New England desires ; in Virginia and Kentucky 
 it was the ruling passion. We find the early laws of 
 
 the descendants of the Hessian soldiers who were left in this country 
 at the end of the Revolution. It is reported that Washington, who 
 had large holdings of lands in this valley, induced a number of the?e 
 forlorn folk to settle there, furnishing them means for their start in 
 life and to bring their families to this country. I have this impor- 
 tant statement from Major Hotchkiss, of StauiUon, Vir^^inia. 
 
12 KENTUCKY. 
 
 Virginia formed to keep the people m close communi- 
 ties, for the purpose of better defense against the In- 
 dians; but the danger from the savages, though always 
 imminent, was not enough to deter the scattering of the 
 immigrants in their search for large landed possessions. 
 There is no element in the social differences of these 
 two populations so prominent or so instructive as this. 
 
 There can be no question that these Virginia colo- 
 nists were a fair representation of the people of the 
 mother country. Though perhaps less intellectual, less 
 thrifty, less actiye-minded, than the settlers of New 
 Enoland, they were from the strenoth of the English 
 soil, a folk bred in the open fields from all time, rich 
 in the noblest instincts of their strong race ; perhaps 
 too much without the culture of towns, too little leav- 
 ened with scholars, too little stimulated by religious dis- 
 putations for their best intellectual life, but none the 
 less good seed for the State. 
 
 In the next chapter we shall consider some of the 
 circumstances of the development of this people during 
 the century and a half preceding that migration to the 
 west which founded Kentucky and several other States 
 in tlie Mississippi Valley. We are limited to the merest 
 outlines, but though the development of a people is 
 always a diilicult matter to set forth, it is simpler 
 here than usual. 
 
CHAPTER TI. 
 
 GOVERNMENT OF THE VIRGINIA PEOPLE. 
 
 Colonial Virginia may be divided into two areas. 
 We have first the vast obscurely-bounded domain em- 
 braced in the original grant, and continued by the royal 
 charters. This included not only the whole of Virginia 
 as it is now shown on the map, but all of West Vir- 
 ginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and in the terms of the charter 
 everything westward to the Mississippi, and as much 
 further as the colony had a mind to claim. Those were 
 the plenteous days when empires were to be had for the 
 askino^. The Virojinia that became the mother of States 
 was a little part of this vast domain between the Alle- 
 ghany Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay. Taking it 
 for all in all, it was probably the most fortunate posi- 
 tion for a colony that the continent afforded : a soil easily 
 subdued ; of fair productiveness, well suited to a wide 
 range of crops ; a good milk and grain country ; a cli- 
 mate that invites to rural and to an open-air life. The 
 seat of no climatic diseases, it was the most favorable 
 cradle for a vigorous race that existed near the Atlantic 
 sea-board. It has been remarkably free from famines 
 and pestilences. It had the mingled good and ill for- 
 tune to develop the peculiar agriculture of the tobacco 
 crop, which secured a means of gaining a degree of 
 wealth that was obtainable in no other way, though in 
 return it gave a permanence to the institution of slavery 
 
14 KENTUCKY. 
 
 that was not found in the region to the northward. The 
 relations of the settlers with tlie Indian tribes were, on 
 the whole, rather better than in the more northern re- 
 gions of the Atlantic coast, although there were several 
 massacres and the usual border warfare with the indige- 
 nous people. These were not so desperate or so long 
 continued as in the settlements north of the Delaware. 
 The Indians in this district were probably even fewer in 
 number than in New England, and less warlike. 
 
 The mountain range of the Alleghanies on the west 
 protected colonial Virginia from the fiercer tribes of the 
 Ohio Valley, and the danger from the savages was never 
 great enough to prevent the development of the rural 
 spirit, the scattering of the population in the separated 
 plantations, which is the characteristic of Virginia coun- 
 try life. The introduction and swift development of 
 slavery quickly brought about an important distinction 
 in the elements of the whole population. The caste of 
 slave-owners became strongly separated from that of 
 the poor whites. The wealth and power of the popu- 
 lation rapidly accumulated in the hands of those who 
 amassed or inherited capital, while the poor whites sank 
 into an inferior position, became in a way dependent on 
 the slave-holding caste, or were pushed on to the lands 
 that were not adapted to the plantation system. This 
 process was, in a way, gradual, and has left no marks 
 of its operation ; but before the Revolution of 1776 it is 
 evident that it was extensively accomplished. 
 
 A society organized on this basis has some elements 
 of strength and many of weakness. Combined with the 
 principle of primogeniture, which gives the real estate 
 to the eldest son, it tended quickly to create on this soil 
 the system of strong families controlling the life about 
 
GOVERNMENT OF THE VIRGINIA PEOPLE. 15 
 
 them, and thus gave a more truly British shape to the 
 life of Virginia than was given to the society of any 
 other English colony that has been founded in America. 
 This system of strong families, where power goes by 
 inheritance, makes a rigid society, but it is very favor- 
 able to the rapid development of those qualities which 
 secure the dominance of a State. No time is lost in 
 trying to sort out in each generation the men of ca- 
 pacity from those without power ; inheritance deter- 
 mines where the power shall lie. Imperfect as is this 
 method of selecting tliose who are to rule, it works 
 well in a new society. 
 
 Under this system there grew up in Virginia a ter- 
 ritorial aristocracy, which, in a small way, closely imi- 
 tated its English archetype in all but title. From a 
 few hundred homes came, generation after generation, 
 the people who shaped the State. These controlling 
 families were not necessarily rich ; they were, in most 
 cases, wealthy only in a relative sense, but they were 
 by birth persons of a certain distinction. They natu- 
 rally looked upon the whites who belonged to the lower 
 caste as of another race. In this they in no wise dif- 
 fered from their English ancestry, or from all other 
 Europeans of their time. The New England system 
 tended towards a pure, an ideal democracy ; town gov- 
 ernment, church government, all the forces of their 
 semi-religious commonwealths, were essentially demo- 
 cratic in their tendencies. In Virginia all conspired to 
 maintain the social habits of the England, or the Europe, 
 of the seventeenth century. 
 
 The wealth acquired by these families was spent in 
 the ordinary luxuries of the time. A certain manner of 
 fast living was here, as in the mother country, thought 
 
16 KENTUCKY. 
 
 to be tlie mark of geutlemen, jet politics and literature 
 were cultivated ; in general, society had a polish that it 
 wanted in the thriftier and better schooled colonies of 
 the North. 
 
 The clergy of this day had little control over the 
 13ul)lic mind. Religion was, to a great degree, imported 
 with their wines and silk stuffs. Although there were 
 doubtless worthy clergymen to be found, the colony was 
 looked upon as a place of deposit for uusatisfactory 
 priests from the mother country. Without perhaps sink- 
 ing any lower than the church of the mother country 
 in the time of its decay, the church in Virginia still fell 
 far below the level of an ideal Christianity. We look 
 in vain to colonial Virginia for any distinct religious 
 movements until the period of the Wesleyan revival. 
 The influence of this second reformation of the English 
 church, in itself far higher and purer than that of Henry 
 VIII. 's time, was very great, and profoundly affected 
 the Virginia people. It is doubtful if any American 
 community was ever so changed in spirit by a religious 
 movement as was Virginia by this quickening of the re- 
 ligious spirit. A very large part of the population, and 
 these the leaders of its society, were swept away from 
 their old listless creed by this revival. The dullness in 
 the religious life of the colony was doubtless due to the 
 fact that the control of their church system was in for- 
 eign hands. It disappeared with the change in this re- 
 lation ; still it remains one of the striking differences 
 between the life of Virginia and that of the more north> 
 ern colonies. 
 
 The educational system in colonial Virginia was de- 
 fective ; no general method of public education was 
 provided. The sons of the planters were educated by 
 
GOVERNMENT OF THE VIRGIN/ A PEOPLE. 17 
 
 British tutors, or were sent to the schools of the north- 
 ern colonies or to Europe ; the children of the poorer 
 whites remained, as their ancestors before them liad 
 always been, generally unlettered. The culture of the 
 better scholars was probably broader than that of the 
 same class in Massacliusetts in the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries ; but this culture came to but few 
 of the citizens. The college of William and Mary, 
 though a worthy school and of much profit to the col- 
 ony, never played the large part in the life of Virginia 
 which Harvard and Yale did in their commonwealths.^ 
 The education of the yeoman class was what it always 
 had been, a training in the active duties of life. To 
 this, hedgerow schools in some cases added a little train- 
 ing in reading and writing, and perhaps the elements of 
 arithmetic. These are but imperfect data for a study 
 of the education problem among these people, but the 
 fact that a large part of the legal papers of that day are 
 signed by the cross is proof enough of the extreme illit- 
 eracy of the lower part of the white population. 
 
 The political life of the colonial period is not a mat- 
 ter that gives much satisfaction to any one who shares 
 the pride of this people. Until we come down to the 
 period of disturbances that ushered in the Revolution 
 of 1776, there is little sign of political skill or of a 
 high sense of political liberty. Little resistance was 
 made to the general misgovernment that came from 
 the crown. Once or twice there were little flashes of 
 rage, such as the ignoble revolt of Nathaniel Bacon ; 
 
 1 Hansard College was so influential in the State of Massachusetts 
 that it was thought well to have a provision in the state constitution 
 forbidding any officer of the school to have any other official position 
 in the State. 
 
18 KENTUCKY. 
 
 but the colony showed in the first one hundred and fifty 
 years of its life little or no promise of the statesman- 
 ship, the valor, the intellectual and moral power, that 
 were to bloom so richly in the last quarter of the eigh- 
 teenth century. There is probably no transition so un- 
 expected, so unf ore told by previous history, as the awak- 
 ening of Virginia after 1760. If we had been able to 
 look over the world of that day, Virginia was perhaps 
 the last place where we would have expected to find the 
 power that the Revolution showed to be waiting there 
 for the call to life. 
 
 The fact seems to have been that the original set- 
 tlement brought to this soil a well-chosen representa- 
 tion of the English people. A life of few incidents, 
 of simple activities, left them as if fallow for over a 
 century. There was nothing to awaken their powers 
 to full life. At last the accumulated dissatisfactions of 
 the colonists over the stupidities rather than the op- 
 pressions of the mother country supplied the needed 
 stimulus to action. 
 
 The system of society fostered by slavery did not 
 favor the critical spirit in politics which marked the 
 New England colonies, but it made action even more 
 intense when the time for it came. Virginia in 1776, 
 as in 1861, was led into rebellion by the action of its 
 leading families rather than by the spontaneous out- 
 burst which characterized the outbreak in Massachu- 
 setts. Its yeoman class followed where their natural 
 leaders showed the way in the former as in the later 
 revolt. This subordination to leaders has always been 
 • a distinguishing feature of all southern societies, ex- 
 cept, as we shall hereafter see, in Kentucky. Wliile 
 there is a very large element of individuality among 
 
GOVERNMENT OF THE VIRGINIA PEOPLE. 19 
 
 the chosen few, the mass remained in the silent con- 
 dition that belonged to it in the mother country. 
 
 At the time of the Revolution Virginia was the most 
 populous, and in many ways the richest, of all the col- 
 onies. Her population was less dependent on the other 
 world than any other of the American settlements. She 
 never was a maritime State, despite the fact that she 
 had a longer shore line than any of the colonies except 
 Massachusetts, and had been an exporter of ship sup- 
 plies for a century and a half. Her population was 
 nearly all agricultural, and the institution of slavery 
 made her able to send a large part of her white men 
 into the field when they were called to arms. This 
 population was in excellent condition for military duty. 
 Her considerable service in the French wars, together 
 with various combats with the Indians in her own do- 
 minion and in North Carolina, had kept her people ac- 
 customed to arms ; moreover, their well-maintained hab- 
 its of field sports contributed to the same result. Not 
 reckoning the negro population, Virginia furnished a 
 larger share of soldiers than any other of the colonies 
 during the Revolution. Nearly all of her loyal, able- 
 bodied folk saw some service during this war, both in 
 the field and in the more difficult paths of legislation. 
 She sprang at once into a marvelous activity. Men 
 who had not exhibited any ability in the petty and 
 hampered politics of the colony showed at once an 
 amazing capacity for broad-minded statesmanship and 
 the higher work of the soldier. After a political and 
 intellectual night of a century came this brilliant dawn 
 of power. The seven years of the war sufficed to 
 awaken the long-dormant energies of the peopl*^. Every 
 hour of the strusjirle was fertile in intellectual ijrowth. 
 
20 KENTUCKY. 
 
 At its end the sleepy and luxurious people had given 
 a larger share of able and vigorous men than had 
 perhaps ever before sprung from any equal population 
 of the race. This remarkable development of character 
 makes us regret that we cannot see more clearly the 
 condition of nurture that had made it possible. It 
 seems likely that it can be in part accounted for by 
 the inheritance of culture, the united life of a homo- 
 geneous people, and the strong control that natural 
 leaders had upon the society in which they dwelt. Still 
 it remains a very inexplicable phenomenon, — one that 
 has never received the attention that its singularity de- 
 serves. 
 
 At the close of the Revolutionary War, Virginia found 
 herself with a large population that had been long 
 separated from the ordinary pursuits of life. Their 
 places had closed behind them ; life in the Old Do- 
 minion was stagnant. The only chance open to her 
 was in the broad fields of her great western domain. 
 The conditions of a community at the close of a long 
 and successful war are peculiarly favorable for the mak- 
 ing of new colonies ; and it is natural that at this time 
 Virginia, no longer herself a colony but a State, where 
 the best lands were much worn by a shiftless agricul- 
 ture, should have been strongly affected by the col- 
 onizing spirit. These circumstances led to a very large 
 exodus of her population to the westward. The re- 
 cently founded settlements in Kentucky, begun ten 
 years or so before, had gone far enough to prove that 
 land in abundance and of excellent quality could be 
 had for the trouble of possessing it. Every ambitious 
 spirit, every man who had within him the sense of 
 power necessary for the arduous work of facing the 
 
GOVERNMENT OF THE VIRGINIA PEOPLE. 21 
 
 dangers of a wilderness where he would have to bat- 
 tle for everything, with nature and the savage, sought 
 these new fields. It is to these conditions that the 
 new settlements beyond the Alleghanies owed the most 
 of the population that came to them in the years im- 
 mediately following the Revolution. A small portion 
 of the Kentucky settlers came from southern Mary- 
 land and from central North Carolina, societies essen- 
 tially like that of Virginia in their general aspect. 
 
 By far the most important element of the Kentucky 
 colonists came from the soldiers who were disbanded 
 at the close of the war with Great Britain. The num- 
 ber of Revolutionary soldiers who emigrated to Ken- 
 tucky may be judged by the fact that in 1840, nearly 
 sixty years after the termination of that struggle, the 
 pension returns showed that there were about nine hun- 
 dred of these veterans still living in the State ; their 
 ages, according to the record, varying from seventy to 
 one hundred and nine years. 
 
 This, of course, was but a small part of the host who 
 had found a dwelling-place within the State. Probably 
 at least ten times this number had gone to their graves. 
 Such men were, by their native strength and their 
 deeds, the natural leaders in the new settlements, both 
 in peace and war. Thus the Kentucky spirit was the 
 offspring of the Revolution. The combative spirit left 
 by the Revolutionary war was elsewhere overwhelmed 
 by the tide of commercial life ; here it lived on, fed 
 by tradition and by a nearly continuous combat down 
 to the time of the Rebellion. 
 
 We have now traced, in brief outline, the conditions 
 of the people who made the Commonwealth of Ken- 
 tucky from the time of their settlement in this country 
 
22 KENTUCKY. 
 
 to the exodus into Kentucky. We have seen that in 
 the beginning they were mainly rural Englishmen, 
 who came voluntarily to America, not generally under 
 the influence of political or religious persecution, but 
 with a view to bettering their condition as tillers of 
 the soil.-^ It was doubtless, on the whole, a selection 
 of the best of the country blood of the mother land. 
 !None but the vigorous, the enterprising, the hopeful- 
 minded, undertook such changes of life in those days. 
 The people sold to service were relatively a small part 
 of this population, and these were in their very prime, 
 for none others would bring a price. From this picked 
 people, after a century or more of development in Vir- 
 ginia, a second selection was made to found the new 
 Virginia of the west. 
 
 As noted on the first page of this work, such a bud- 
 ding of a new State from an old colony has hardly 
 a precedent in the history of America. All the Western 
 States, as well as those of the South, have been settled 
 by immigrants from several older States, generally with 
 more or less admixture of people drawn directly from 
 foreign sources. Their composite blood has made them 
 perplexing subjects of study, from the diversity of mo- 
 tives that has come from the differences in their origin. 
 Ohio, for instance, has in its people a mingling of New 
 Englanders, New Yorkers, English and German Penn- 
 sylvanians, Virginians, Kentuckians, Germans, and Irish. 
 
 1 Although this statement that the Virginia colonists were not fugi- 
 tives for opinions' sake is true in a general way, it must be remem- 
 bered that a certain small but important part of the Virginia people 
 came to the colony when the success of the Cromwellian party made 
 their old homes untenable ; and that another and more important 
 part came after the Restoratioa had made the position of the Puritans 
 extremely uncomfortable. 
 
GOVERNMENT OF THE VIRGINIA PEOPLE. 23 
 
 It is not possible to determine how far its qualities are 
 due to this, that, or the other part of its population. In 
 Kentucky, on the other hand, we shall find nearly pure 
 English blood, mainly derived through the Old Do- 
 minion, and altogether from districts that shared the 
 Virginian conditions. It is, moreover, the largest body 
 of pure English folli that has, speaking generally, been 
 separated from the mother country for two hundred 
 years. We see, therefore, how interesting is the problem 
 of this Kentucky population. It has been seriously 
 maintained that the European blood tends to enfeeble- 
 ment in American conditions ; that it requires the ad- 
 mixture of new blood from the Old World in order to 
 keep its quality unimpaired. There is an experiment 
 provided that will give a full disproval to this hypoth- 
 esis. The reader will do well to bear it in mind while 
 he follows the history of the Kentucky people in the 
 century of their life as it is sketched in the following 
 pages. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF KENTUCKY. 
 
 Before beginning the historic account of Kentucky 
 it will be necessary to examine the physical constitution 
 of the State. This we shall be compelled to do in a 
 somewhat extended way, for here even more than in 
 Virginia has this physical character been effective in 
 determining the history of its people. 
 
 The area of Kentucky is about forty thousand square 
 miles. Of this surface all but about five thousand 
 square miles lie entirely to the westward of the Alle- 
 ghany Mountain system, and consists of a set of table- 
 lands, deeply indented by the southern tributaries of the 
 Ohio River. Except along the main streams and their 
 longer branches, where there are narrow strips of allu- 
 vial land which lie from three hundred to five hundred 
 feet above the sea, the surface of Kentucky east of the 
 Alleghanies ranges from five hundred to fifteen hundred 
 
 ' feet above tide-water. The elevation of the surface in- 
 creases from the district near the Mississippi on the 
 
 ! west, in a gradual way, up to the foot of the Alleghany 
 chain of mountains on the east. The principal area of 
 Kentucky is thus a great much-furrowed plain, sloping 
 very gently to the west, and declining also toward the 
 Ohio River. On its northern and northwestern face it is 
 bordered by this river for a length, measured along the 
 windings of that stream, of about seven hundred miles; 
 
THE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF KENTUCKY. ZO 
 
 on the west it is bordered by the Mississippi for about 
 fifty miles ; on the south it is separated from Tennes- 
 see by a conventional line ; on the east, where its bor- 
 ders march with those of Virginia, the line is the crest 
 of the Cumberland and Pine mountains ; and from 
 West Virginia it is parted by the eastern branch of the 
 Chatterawa, or Big Sandy River. It will thus be seen 
 that about three quarters of the periphery of the State 
 consists of natural boundaries. 
 
 As is shown by the map, the area of Kentucky is 
 much extended on an east and west line. It lies across 
 nearly the whole of the eastern versant of the Missis- 
 sippi Valley. While its eastern and western axis is 
 over five hundred miles in length, its northern and 
 southern is not over one hundred and eighty miles in 
 extent. This great east and west extension of Kentucky 
 is better understood when we notice that the southern 
 borders of the three States, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois^ ^^h/^ 
 march with its northern border. As we shall see when l^iy 
 we come to the period of the civil war, this peculiarity A)/" . 
 of its form caused Kentucky to have an especial polit- 
 ical importance during that struggle. 
 
 Much as Virginia is favored by the wide-reaching 
 tidal streams, so Kentucky is blessed by its river system. 
 The Ohio, the most navigable branch of the Mississippi 
 waters, gives convenient access to its six hundred miles 
 of northern front. The Chatterawa, or Big Sandy, the 
 Nepepernine, or Licking, the Kentucky, the Salt, the 
 Green, the Tradewater, the Cumberland, and the Ten- 
 nessee give a greater frontage on wholly or partly navi- 
 gable rivers than is found in any other State of the 
 Union. The total length of streams that have been 
 more or less used for navio-ation exceeds two thousand 
 
26 KENTUCKY. 
 
 five hundred miles. These streams are rarely inter- 
 rupted by falls or impassable rapids. 
 
 The surface of the table-land district, which includes 
 about thirty-five thousand square miles, is very favora- 
 ble for the construction of wheelways. The general 
 surface is not very rough, the streams abound in good 
 fords, the forests are generally so devoid of underbrush 
 that wagons can often be drawn through them for 
 miles. The limited area of the lowlands and alluvial 
 plains has so far prevented the formation of swamps 
 that not over two hundred square miles of this area is 
 morass, and this confined to the extreme western part 
 of the State. The districts subject to overflow by river 
 floods do not exceed one thousand square miles, or one 
 fortieth the surface of the State. So the region is sin- 
 gularly free from the evils that attend low-lying coun- 
 tries. 
 
 The part of Kentucky that lies within the small 
 mountainous region of the State contains a surface of 
 about three thousand miles. It is altogether contained 
 between the ridges of Pine Mountain, a sharp, wall- 
 like ridge on the west, and Cumberland Mountain on 
 the east. It is thus a single mountain valley, lying 
 between the two westernmost ridges of the Alleghany 
 system. This trough which forms the valley through 
 which flows the upper Cumberland, is one of the most 
 beautiful of the many lovely vales of that chain. The 
 strong outlines of the bordering mountains have given 
 it a singular isolation. This mountain system of the 
 Cumberland, with its nearly inaccessible hills, in good 
 part walled out Kentucky from the eastward. These 
 ridges were, fortunately for the needs of immigrants, 
 broken by two deep gaps, — one, Cumberland Gap, in 
 
THE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF KENTUCKY. 27 
 
 the mountain of that name; the other, Pine Gap, in 
 Pine Mountain, — through which the Cumberland 
 River finds its way out into the table-land region to the 
 westward. No other part of Kentucky save this single 
 mountain trough has a truly mountainous character. 
 All the rest is, strictly speaking, table-land, more or 
 less deeply cut down into valleys by the streams, but 
 the loftiest ridges do not exceed one thousand feet above 
 the neinfhboring river-beds. 
 
 Let us now consider the nature of the surface when 
 the whites first came to it. In the beginning of the 
 white occupation the surface of Kentucky, except about 
 six thousand square miles in the central and western 
 part of its area, was a primeval forest. As there had 
 been no Indian settlements in that part of Kentucky 
 east of the Tennessee for many years, this forest terri- 
 tory was singularly unbroken, having a continuity of 
 woods unknown in the other States, for the reason that 
 no other part of the United States not a desert was 
 ever found uninhabited by the savages and uninter- 
 rupted with their villages and clearings. This forest 
 was principally of the broad-leaved trees ; no great ex- 
 tent of coniferous woods existing then in the eastern 
 part of the district. Fortunately for these settlers, the 
 broad-leaved woods were of old growth and singularly 
 open beneath, so that the early track-ways and wagon- 
 roads were easily made through them. 
 
 The attraction which Kentucky presented to its first 
 settlers lay in the abundance of the good lands that 
 were to be had in its area. Its mineral wealth was 
 never taken into account ; the charms of gold, which 
 had lured the first settlers to Virginia, had no place in 
 the motives that led to the second migration of its 
 
28 * KENTUCKY. 
 
 people. It was soon found that these lands were very 
 varied in quality. West of the Pine Mountain range 
 there was a region, about fifty miles in width, where 
 the soil was lean and of little worth for the uses of the 
 pioneers. In the middle section of the State, stretch- 
 ing from the Ohio River to the escarpment of Mul- 
 drougli Hill, lay the rich clay lands since known as the 
 " Blue Grass " district ; yet west of them the unwooded 
 district, known as the Barrens, which were at first sup- 
 posed, from their treeless condition, to be worthless 
 lands; and still further west a tract of sandy country 
 like that of the easternmost district, — good lands, it 
 is true, but not rich enough to attract tlie first settlers. 
 It was this Blue Grass ^ land that was the incentive to 
 immigration. The soil has a degree of fertility un- 
 known in any equal area of Virginia, and unapproached 
 there save in the Shenandoah Valley, which was already 
 pretty well possessed by settlers before the Kentucky 
 migration began. After the Blue Grass district was 
 occupied, the population began to move on to the less 
 attractive lands. 
 
 In the northern 2:)art of the State, lying adjacent to 
 the present line of the Louisville and Nashville Rail- 
 way, there was a considerable territory afterwards called 
 the " Barrens," where the forest growth had been de- 
 stroyed, except along the borders of the streams. This 
 destruction of the timber was brought about by the 
 
 1 The so-called bine graps consists of two species of plants, the Poa 
 compressa and Poa pratense. These grasses are not peculiar to Ken- 
 tucky ; they are among the most widely distributed grasses; baton 
 the best limestone lands of Kentuck}^ they attain a singularly luxu- 
 riant growth. The " blue " of the name is given it on account of the 
 peculiar hue of its seed vessels, a conspicuous feature during its time 
 of fruiting. 
 
THE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF KENTUCKY. 29 
 
 custom, common to the Western Indians, of burning the 
 grass of open grounds and the undergrowth of the 
 woods, in order to give a more vigorous pasturage to 
 the buffalo and other large game. To this custom we 
 may fairly attribute the deforesting of the prairie lands 
 in Indiana and Illinois, and perhaps of more westerly 
 regions. The annual firing of the low-growth plants led 
 to the killing of all the young trees. The Indians ap- 
 parently began their burning of the woods on the line 
 of the great trail from the Ohio Falls to Nashville, 
 Tennessee. When the whites came to this country this 
 savage custom had deforested an area of at least five 
 thousand square miles. In another two hundred years 
 the Indians would probably have reduced the larger 
 part of the surface of Kentucky to the condition of 
 prairies. 
 
 At first the white immigrants conceived a strong 
 prejudice to this untimbered ground, deeming the ab- 
 sence of trees an evidence of poverty of soil. But as 
 soon as the incursions of the Indians were stopped 
 they saw that the forests speedily repossessed the sur- 
 face. Although they then made haste to occupy it, 
 the swift return of the forests after the Indian fires 
 were stopped caused a large part of this prairie coun- 
 try to be rewooded before it could be subjected to the 
 plough. The late Senator Underwood, a very ob- 
 servant person, told the writer that when he came to 
 this region, in the first years of this century, the whole 
 surface was covered by a dense growth of young for- 
 est trees, which had sprung into life in the preceding 
 twenty years, or since the Indians had ceased to hunt 
 within the State. 
 
 In woods of beech and ash it takes some centuries 
 
30 KENTUCKY. 
 
 of repeated firing of the undergrowth to reduce the 
 area to treelessness, but in the barren district this pro- 
 cess had gone on long enough to bring five or six thoU' 
 sand square miles to an essentially treeless condition, 
 while around the border of the long-fired region there 
 was a broad fringe of forest, where the fire-scarred 
 trunks of old yet living trees stood as an open forest 
 that would have been added to the open land when 
 the time came for the old trees to die. This was a 
 process of forest-killing that had doubtless been car- 
 ried on over the territory of the southwest, only there 
 the extermination of the woods was more complete 
 and the history of its process less traceable than in 
 Kentucky. 
 
 As already noted, when the regular hunting expedi- 
 tions of the Indians into Kentucky were arrested, as 
 they were in about 1790, this region, relieved from 
 further firing, began to spring up in forest again. The 
 germs of the small-seeded trees, maples, etc., were rap- 
 idly transported by the wind from the nearest remaining 
 trees which clung about the entrances to the caiions 
 that abound in this district and other damp places, and 
 quickly repossessed the ground in forest ; so that before 
 settlements had made any great headway the region 
 had been covered by a new but very dense and vigorous 
 forest, which was harder to clear away than the older 
 primeval woods. 
 
 The area of very fertile soil in the State — that 
 which may be called of the first order — is about ten 
 thousand square miles. This is equal in fertility to the 
 best English, Belgian, or Lombardian lands, and sur- 
 passes any other region in this country or in Europe 
 for its fitness for pasturage land. It lies on a lime- 
 
THE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF KENTUCKY. 31 
 
 stone rock, which by its rapid decay constantly restores 
 to the soil the elements removed by cultivation, so that 
 there are fields in Kentucky which have been steadily 
 cropped, with no attention to fallow or fertilizing, for 
 about one hundred years without apparent damage to 
 the soil. No other land of the world is so fitted to with- 
 stand the evils of the utterly unscientific agriculture to 
 which it has been submitted in former daj^s. The area 
 of second-class soils, those less fertile than the preced- 
 ing, easily worn by careless tillage, still affording a good 
 basis for agriculture, may safely be estimated at about 
 twenty-two thousand square miles ; the distinctly inferior 
 soils, those not well suited for any grains without fertil- 
 izing, or for other agricultural use save as low-grade 
 pasture lands, and for timber, include about seven thou- 
 sand square miles. There are not over two hundred 
 square miles of irreclaimable swamps and arid rocky 
 fields ; and not more than eight hundred square miles 
 unfit for pasturage. Nearly the whole of the latter 
 is forest clad, and with a little care could be made to 
 produce good timber. It is doubtful if an equally good 
 showing can be made for any other State in the Missis- 
 sippi Valley, and there are few regions in the world 
 where so large an area with so little waste land can be 
 found. 
 
 The position of Kentucky brings it between the par- 
 allels of 36.30 and 39° north latitude. The height of 
 the surface, being an average of about seven hundred 
 and fifty feet above the sea, gives it an average temper- 
 ature about three degrees colder than belongs to its po- 
 sition with reference to the tropics. The climate shares 
 in the peculiarities of the Mississippi Valley ; it is of 
 the continental nature. The seasonal range of tempera- 
 
32 KENTUCKY. 
 
 ture is large, but less than that of any other of the Ohio 
 group of States. The extremes of summer heat are not 
 greater than about 100° Fahr., and of winter cold 
 about —10° Fahr., the winter cold being somewhat less 
 than in the States that border it on the north. The 
 rainfall is rather larger than the average for the Mis- 
 sissippi Valley, the amount being about forty-eight 
 inches. It is less liable to droughts than the States to 
 the north of the Ohio. This is due to its larger share 
 of the rainfall derived from the Mexican Gulf and to 
 its more generally forested surface. 
 
 This region, owing perhaps to its excellent natural 
 drainage and its forest covering has been singularly free 
 from the malarious and other fevers that have proved a 
 scourge in many of the Western and Southern States. 
 Yellow fever has never attacked but one part of the 
 State, namely, the town and neighborhood of Hickman, 
 on the Mississippi River. The ordinary miasmatic fever 
 does not occur except along the principal rivers, and 
 there is exceptional. The climate and soil permits a 
 considerable range of products. All the elements of 
 our ordinary American agriculture, the principal grains, 
 roots, fruits, etc., find favorable conditions here. Cot- 
 ton is cultivated in the region adjacent to the Missis- 
 sippi, and the vine has been successful in many parts of 
 the State. The original settlers brought the industry 
 of tobacco culture with them, and this has always been 
 one of the staple crops ; at the present time nearly one 
 third of the American production of this plant being 
 from Kentucky. The varied capacities of its agricul- 
 ture may be judged from the fact that in each of the 
 several censuses of the government the State has been 
 first in some one agricultural product, and in each dec- 
 
THE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF KENTUCKY. 33 
 
 ade has changed the element in which it has held the 
 first place.'^ 
 
 Although this presentation necessarily omits many im- 
 portant facts concerning the surface conditions, it gives 
 some idea of the goodness of the inheritance which fell 
 to the adventurous spirits from Virginia, North Caro- 
 lina, and Maryland, who came to it in the latter days 
 of the last century. It is only necessary to add that 
 the soil was very easily brought to the uses of man. 
 Lying almost altogether south of the region in which 
 the glaciers acted, these lands were not covered with the 
 accumulation of bowlders which have been so serious an 
 obstacle to the subjugation of the lands in more north- 
 ern regions. They are, on the other hand, as a whole, 
 more open to the process of impoverishment by careless 
 agriculture than the soils in glaciated countries, which, 
 though stubborn and of limited original fertility, have 
 the advantage that they are less quickly exhausted by 
 careless tillage. The result is that Kentucky now con- 
 tains considerable areas of exhausted land, though little 
 that is irretrievably ruined. 
 
 Although, as a whole, the natural scenery of Ken- 
 tucky is not very picturesque, it makes an agreeable 
 impression on the mind. The surface is never perfectly 
 level, but is cast in the broad, gentle curves that give 
 an ever-varying grace to a country. In the richer por- 
 tions the exceedingly fertile soil and the consequent lux- 
 uriance of vegetation confer a singular brilliancy on the 
 landscape. The entire absence of grinding poverty, the 
 vigorous growth and physical beauty of men and women, 
 the sleek herds in the fat pastures, — all together serve 
 
 1 The tables in the Appendix will show this fact with greater 
 clearness. 
 
 3 
 
34 KENTUCKY. 
 
 to give the traveler through this land a sense of abiding 
 prosperity such as comes to him in no other country. 
 He feels that here, for once at least, the man, the soil, 
 and the climate have fitted so well to each other that dis- 
 ease and poverty have but little place in life. 
 
 Statistical inquiries will serve to support this impres- 
 sion of the eye. The death-rate is lower than in any 
 other State from which goes forth each year a great tide 
 of the younger people, and pauperism is almost un- 
 known. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY. 
 
 This sketch of those resources of Kentucky which 
 have had or may have an influence on its history re- 
 quires some discussion of the geological structure of the 
 area of the State. The following account aims only at 
 the presentation of those facts which are required for an 
 understanding of the mere outlines of this structure. 
 Little is given that has not some bearing on the ques- 
 tion of common resources. 
 
 All the important geological features of Kentucky it 
 has in common with the adjacent districts of the Mis- 
 sissippi Valley. The bed rocks shown to the eye within 
 its borders belong to the lowest formation commonly 
 known in this country as the Trenton series of rocks, 
 from the fact that beds of this age were first described 
 from that part of New York. These rocks, which are 
 but scantily exposed in Kentucky, though they appear 
 in East Tennessee and Virginia, were mainly deposited 
 in a deep, open sea. They consist of limestone and 
 clay shales, and furnish fairly fertile soils, over which 
 lie several other formations, known successively up- 
 wards as the Hudson River, Medina, Clinton, Niagara, 
 mingled limestones, shales, and sandstones, deposited, 
 as the others, in the old seas. Above these lie a great 
 thickness of very black shales, known as the Ohio 
 shales ; still above them a great thickness of limestones. 
 
86 KENTUCKY. 
 
 shales, sandstones, winch are commonly called the sub- 
 carboniferous rocks, because they immediately underlie 
 the coal. While all these vast deposits were forming, 
 this region remained beneath the surface of the ocean, 
 as is shown by the numerous marine fossils that they 
 all contain ; but with the last of the sub-carboniferous 
 beds we find all at once evidence that this part of the 
 world had been suddenly lifted above the sea, and had 
 become overspread by forests. This proof is given by 
 certain other seams of coal containing land plants. 
 
 It is tolerably certain that from the time of this first 
 elevation above the sea to the present day the whole of 
 this I'egion has never been, for any length of time, if at 
 all, beneath the ocean. Occasionally during the long 
 ages of the coal period portions of it were deeply buried, 
 as is shown by the marine animals found in the lime- 
 stones that were then formed, and at many times the 
 surface was buried beneath far-extending areas of fresh 
 or brackish shallow waters ; but never since the begin- 
 ning of the coal measures has it been given over to the 
 deep. The beds of rock beneath the surface of Ken- 
 tucky, that are mainly marine limestones and shales, 
 have probably a total thickness of nearly ten thousand 
 feet, of which about two thousand feet are exposed to 
 view in the central part of the State along their some- 
 what upturned edges. This great section is mainly com- 
 posed of the remains of animals and plants that have 
 died in the sea and been cemented together on its floor. 
 This life-born series of rocks rests upon the old gra- 
 nitic and other crystalline rocks that are seen to consti- 
 tute the deeper part of the earth's crust, wherever we 
 find our way to it. Above these mariqe rocks we find 
 the great series of coal measures, where only the coal 
 
THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY. 37 
 
 beds and a few thin limestones owe their origin to or- 
 ganic life ; all the rest of the rocks being made up al- 
 together of the waste of old lands in the shape of mud, 
 sand, and gravel. This coal-measure series is about 
 thirty-five hundred feet deep at its thickest point, which 
 is near Cumberland Gap, in the southeast corner of the 
 State. 
 
 This account of the rocks found in Kentucky must be 
 supplemented by some statement of their distribution. 
 Through the middle of the State, extending in a north 
 and south line from near Nashville, Tennessee, to 
 Cincinnati, Ohio, and beyond, rises a very broad, low 
 geological ridge ; not that the surface is higher, but the 
 beds are bent upwards, as we may observe the leveled 
 layers of v/ood carved over a knot on the surface of a 
 planed board. It is here that the lowest beds of rock 
 are exposed by the Chazy and Trenton limestone. This 
 ridge is not of equal height in all its parts ; it sags down 
 like a broken ridgepole in the region between Lexing- 
 ton and the line that separates Kentucky from Tennes- 
 see, so that newer rocks, the Devonian and carbonifer- 
 ous strata, lie on its middle part than we find near Lex- 
 ington or the Tennessee Hdc. It is this wide geolog- 
 ical ridge that brings to the surface the rocks which by 
 their decay form the Blue Grass soil in the middle of 
 the State. But for its ample uplifted back Kentucky 
 would have had no soil to tempt the early settlers to 
 their new home. 
 
 On either side of this principal central field of lime- 
 stone and other marine rocks we have the great coal- 
 measure districts of Eastern and Western Kentucky. 
 That on the west is but a fragment of the great western 
 coal field of the Ohio Valley, which extends into In- 
 
38 KENTUCKY. 
 
 diana and Illinois. That on the east is likewise a part 
 of the great Appalachian coal field which occupies a 
 large part of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, 
 Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. These two coal fields 
 were once united over Central Kentucky, but have been 
 worn away, leaving their waste upon the hill - tops : 
 they have together an area of about twelve thousand 
 square miles, of which the eastern is by far the larger 
 and better of the two. This coal district is somewhat 
 less valuable than that of Pennsylvania, but is ex- 
 ceeded in value by that of no other State. All the 
 Kentucky coals are of the bituminous species, varying 
 a good deal in their quality, which is generally ex- 
 tremely good. They are easily mined, and the total 
 supply of this buried solar force is about equal to that 
 of Great Britain. 
 
 Next after the coal beds the iron-ore deposits are 
 the principal sources of underground wealth in this re- 
 gion. They are much less extensive and varied than 
 those of Virginia, Alabama, Pennsylvania, Michigan, or 
 North Carolina, but are probably exceeded by those of 
 no other States. Owing to their close proximity to the 
 coal beds, where the smelting fuel may be found, they 
 are better disposed for working than any other ores, 
 except, perhaps, those of Alabama and Virginia. The 
 first iron smelting done in the Mississippi Valley was 
 begun in Bath County, Kentucky, in 1790, at a time 
 when it was deemed necessary to guard against Indian 
 incursions against the furnace. The industry has had a 
 considerable importance ever since this early day. 
 
 The other mineral resources of Kentucky are very 
 limited, there being no strata exposed within the area 
 that belong to the group of metamorphic rocks ; no gran- 
 
THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY. 39 
 
 ite, gneiss, or mica schists; no very metamorphosed 
 limestones, with a single exception, no specimen of dike 
 stones. There are none of the precious metals to be 
 found within its borders. There are some veins of lead 
 in the limestone districts, but they are not worth the 
 working, for they are generally narrow and belong to 
 the type of gash veins, which have no certainty of ex- 
 tension in any direction. The very circumstances that 
 have given so much good land and such an easily ac- 
 cessible surface have not favored the formation of the 
 vein deposits of any kind. There are some deposits of 
 petroleum, but they have never been worked to much 
 profit, for they do not give flowing or free-pumping 
 wells, and cannot compete with the richer deposits of 
 the Pennsylvania or West Virginia districts. 
 
 Kentucky is richly provided with easily quarried and 
 excellent building stones. The several limestone series 
 all yield good coarse marbles, and several of the sand- 
 stones are among the best for their uses. Cement 
 rocks are abundant and widely distributed, and fine 
 clays abound in the coal measures. The oolitic beds 
 from the sub-carboniferous limestone afford the best 
 architectural material of this country : a massive but 
 easily quarried rock that may be readily carved when 
 taken from the quarry, but which hardens after expos- 
 ure, and is proof against fire, retaining a warm cream 
 color under the difficult conditions of our smoky towns. 
 
 As a whole, Kentucky is not so favored in the under- 
 ground resources as it is in its soil and climate, yet in 
 those more important resources of power derived from 
 coal beds and iron ores it is one of the most favored 
 areas in the country. It is naturally fitted for agri- 
 culture, in itself the best of resources, and it has a lib- 
 
40 KENTUCKY. 
 
 eral proportion of the most imiDortant of the earth's 
 products, — cheap fuel, cheap iron, and good construct- 
 ive stones. 
 
 Although the geological structure of Kentucky is of 
 a very simple nature, it gives rise to some interesting 
 local features that have had their effect on the history 
 of the State. Among these we may mention the salt 
 licks and the caverns, to which latter class belongs the 
 Mammoth and other great caves of the State. The 
 principal salt licks, in number a hundred or more, are 
 scattered over the central or Blue Grass district of the 
 State. They consist generally of saline springs, that 
 bubble up from the strata of Trenton age, which have 
 impregnated the soil about their basins with common 
 salt. To these springs the large herbivora of the coun- 
 try once resorted to obtain the annual supply of saline 
 matter that was necessary for their life. When the 
 whites first came to this country, the buffalo, the elk, 
 and the deer frequented these salt springs in great 
 numbers. For many years these species of large game 
 shot at the licks aiforded the pioneers an important 
 source of supply of food and hides. The licks were also 
 valuable to them, as by boiling down the waters they 
 were able to secure an abundant provision of salt, which, 
 next after gunpowder, was the most necessary article of 
 common use and the one most difficult to procure. To the 
 geologist these salt licks have a very peculiar interest. 
 In the first place, they have a remarkable origin. When 
 the rocks whence they flow were formed on the silurian 
 sea-floors, a good deal of the sea-water was imprisoned 
 in the strata, between the grains of sand or mud and in 
 the cavities of the shells that make up a large part of 
 these rocks. This confined sea-water is gradually being 
 
THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY. 41 
 
 displaced by the downward sinking of the rain-water 
 through the rifts of the strata, and thus finds its way to 
 the surface : so that these springs offer to us a share 
 of the ancient seas, in which perhaps a hundred million 
 of years ago the rocks of Kentucky were laid down.^ 
 
 About these springs there is generally a bit of 
 swamp ground, due to the slow down-sinking of the 
 underlying rocks as they are deprived of a part of 
 their solid matter by the ascending springs. These 
 swamps contain a wonderful collection of the bones of 
 the large herbivora, which for ages resorted to these 
 springs. Not only do we find the bones of the animals 
 which occupied the country when the whites first came 
 to it, — the buffalo, the elk, the deer, etc., — but, also, 
 deeper in the mire, or in portions that indicate a greater 
 antiquity, great quantities of the bones of the fossil ele- 
 phant, his lesser kinsman the mastodon, the musk-ox, 
 an extinct long-legged buffalo, the caribou, or Ameri- 
 can reindeer, and various other creatures which dwelt 
 here in the time when the last glacial period covered 
 the more northern regions with a mantle of ice. The 
 largest, and to the geologist the most interesting, of 
 these swamp-bordered springs is known as Big Bone 
 Lick. This is situated in Boone County, about twenty 
 miles southwest of Cincinnati, Ohio. At this point 
 there is a swampy lowland around the salt springs that 
 contains a wonderful mass of elephant, mastodon, bison, 
 and other bones. Of the mammoth alone there are 
 probably hundreds of skeletons, which were engulfed 
 in the soft mud about the spring mouth, when, in the 
 olden days, these great creatures resorted to this place 
 
 1 For a detailed account of these licks see vol. i., part ii., p. 232, 
 Memoirs of the Kentucky Geological Survey, by N. S. Shaler, 1876. 
 
42 KENTUCKY. 
 
 for their annual salting. When the whites first came 
 to the district the ground was thickly strewn with 
 skeletons. The early settlers used them for supporting 
 their camp kettles and for seats by the fireside. 
 
 The caverns of Kentucky, especially the Mammoth 
 Cave, have obtained a deserved celebrity. These cav- 
 erns lie in the limestone rocks, which are found just 
 under the coal -bearing series. As these limestones 
 are better developed in Kentucky than in any other 
 States, they afford a more extensive series of under- 
 ground galleries than are found elsewhere. A region 
 of at least five thousand square miles of area has the 
 limestone rocks within two hundred feet of the surface 
 penetrated by these channels, after the fashion of a piece 
 of worm-eaten wood. These galleries are of very varied 
 sizes : from a crevice scarcely bigger than a mole hole 
 to those as great as the aisle of the noblest cathedral. 
 In this area there are doubtless a hundred thousand 
 miles of ways large enough to permit the easy passage 
 of man. These channels are excavated by the streams 
 that, gathering on the surface, quickly pour through 
 " sink holes " into their subterranean ways. They are 
 from time to time abandoned by the free-running wa- 
 ters, and are then slowly filled in by stalactitic incrus- 
 tations, deposited by the water that trickles drop by 
 drop through the roof. 
 
 This underground world of Kentucky is full of in- 
 terest to the intelligent observer. In the vast, deep- 
 buried chambers of these caverns he finds a still air, of 
 perfect purity and of unchanging temperature. The 
 scenery is often singularly majestic ; again of a weird 
 and marvelous beauty. A strange life, consisting in the 
 main of species that never emerge from the caverns. 
 
THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY. 43 
 
 adds to the strangeness of this world. These species 
 are generally blind, often quite without eyes, affording 
 a striking illustration of the relation of the animal or- 
 ganism to its environment. 
 
 On the floor of the drier parts of these caverns lies 
 a deep coating of dust, in which can often be seen the 
 prints of the moccasins of Indians, made a century or 
 more ago by savages who sought refuge in these caves 
 from their enemies. In some caves this dust was used 
 by the aborigines as a burial-place, and in these caves 
 the bodies are preserved by the dry, pure air in a mum- 
 mified condition.^ In this dust the early settlers found 
 a source of supply of nitre, which is the most essential 
 ingredient of gunpowder. The earth was leached with 
 water, which dissolved the nitre ; the solution was then 
 boiled down, and the residuum was the " villainous salt- 
 petre," which was so necessary to the pioneers' life. 
 This use of the common earth — " petre-dirt," in the na- 
 tive parlance — was introduced by Dr. Samuel Brown, 
 who was the first professor of medicine in the West. 
 He was chosen to be professor of that art in the Uni- 
 versity of Pennsylvania in 1799. To him the State 
 owes much help in its early industry. Among other 
 things he introduced there the newly-discovered art of 
 lithography.^ 
 
 Last among the interesting geological features of 
 Kentucky we may notice the singular convulsion known 
 
 1 See, for a more complete account of these caverns, Memoirs of 
 the Kentucky Geological Survey, by N. S. Shaler, vol. i., part i. 
 1876. 
 
 2 The art of gunpowder-making was early carried on in Kentucky, 
 and a large part of the powder used in the campaigns of 1812 was 
 made in the State. It is said that the negroes were the principal 
 adepts in the art 
 
44 KENTUCKY. 
 
 as the New Madrid earthquake of 1811-13. In Novem- 
 ber of that year- the whole valley of the Mississippi was 
 rudely shaken by a strong movement of the earth. This 
 disturbance was most severe in the region near the junc- 
 tion of the Ohio and the Mississippi, and in its energy 
 is to be compared with the greatest shocks that the 
 world has undergone. A large area of the Mississippi 
 shores sank down, and a tract of several hundred square 
 miles of good soil was permanently depressed beneath 
 the water. 
 
 After the first few appalling shocks the convulsions 
 became less violent, but at more frequent intervals, 
 until aii the end of two years there was a nearly constant 
 slight oscillation of the earth, which only perturbed a 
 small region. Gradually the movements ceased, and 
 since that day there has been no notable shock in tlie 
 Mississippi Valley. It was fortunate that this great dis- 
 turbance came at a time when the country was scantily 
 peopled, for in the present condition of the country it 
 would cause a fearful loss of life and property. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE FIRST KENTUCKIANS. 
 
 It has already been noticed that when Kentucky was 
 first settled by the whites there were no aborigines 
 resident within its bounds except some of the Chicka- 
 saw Indians, who held a narrow strip along the borders 
 of the Mississippi River, and a small settlement on the 
 Ohio, opposite where Portsmouth, Ohio, now stands. 
 The absence of resident Indians in this very fertile coun- 
 try, abounding in game, constitutes one of the most 
 interesting problems of the country. It is evident that 
 it was a recent condition, for there is abundant proof 
 of the extensive occupation of this district by an agri- 
 cultural people at a period not many centuries anterior 
 to the time when it first became known to Europeans. 
 The whole surface of the State, except the easternmost 
 part, abounds in mounds, ditched and walled fortifica- 
 tions, and other evidences of extensive and permanent 
 occupancy by a considerable population. 
 
 A good deal of unnecessary mystery has been woven 
 around the history of this ancient folk termed the 
 mound-builders. It has been supposed that they wero 
 a much more civilized people than any of our Indians ; 
 that they mark the presence of another and peculiar 
 race on this continent. Further researches have shown 
 tliat this is not the case; that these mound-builders 
 were in fact of the same race, of the same tribes, as 
 
46 KENTUCKY. 
 
 our ordinary aborigines, who have by various chances 
 become somewhat changed in their habits.^ 
 
 In brief, the history of the earliest settlers of Ken- 
 tucky seems to be this. There is no evidence yet found 
 to show that there were any human beings in this dis- 
 trict more than one or two thousand years ago. None 
 of the remains in Kentucky can by any reasonable sort 
 of inference be carried further into the past than this. 
 The first settlers known to us were, as far as all the 
 evidence goes, essentially like our ordinary Indians, ex- 
 cept that they were perhaps more given to agriculture 
 and trusted less for their support to the chase. That 
 they were largely agricultural is shown by the fact that 
 their remains are most plentiful in regions of good soil, 
 and least so in the more sterile country, though there 
 was no great difference in the amount of game which 
 the regions afforded. They were, it is true, mound-build- 
 ers, but so were the Indians of our Southern States to 
 within the historic period. Their only peculiarity lay in 
 the circumstance that the buffalo was as yet unknown 
 in this country ; so that this great incentive to a wild 
 life, this abundant resource of the chase, was not af^ 
 forded them. They were, therefore, necessarily soil- 
 tillers, looking to regular labor for their subsistence. 
 About a thousand years or so ago, perhaps less, the buf- 
 falo, a creature of the plain lands, began to appear in 
 this part of the country. It is the present writer's be- 
 lief that the way of the creature to the eastward had 
 been favored by the deforesting of the level lauds of Il- 
 linois and Indiana in the same way as the " Barrens " 
 
 1 See the Memoir on the Mound-Builders, by Mr. L. Carr, in vol. 
 ii., Memoir of the Kentucky Geological Survey, N. S. Shaler, director, 
 Frankfort, 1883, for a full discussion of this subject. 
 
THE FIRST KENTUCKIANS. 47 
 
 of Kentucky had been made treeless. At any rate, the 
 comintjj of this creature coincided with the chancre of 
 these peoples to a more barbarous condition ; agricul- 
 ture became less necessary, for the chase would supply 
 immediate needs at all seasons. This plentitude of 
 meat appears to have had a debasing effect on all the 
 peoples of the Ohio Valley. They no longer tilled as 
 much ; their settlements,, with their mounds and forts, 
 were abandoned as far as this epoch-making beast ex- 
 tended his march. 
 
 The Indians of the South, where the dense forests 
 and the swamp-margined streams presented a barrier 
 to the migration of the buffalo, remained principally 
 soil-tillers, as did the Indians of New York, while other 
 western tribes became nomadic. Extensive warfares 
 were waged between these diversified peoples, and Ken- 
 tucky became one of the principal seats of their com- 
 bats, — a sort of border-land such as separated the Scots 
 and English in their days of combat. 
 
 In Kentucky the Chickasaws alone held their ground, 
 being the most northern of the sedentary Southern In- 
 dians. Their strongholds on the bluffs of the Missis- 
 sippi and the inaccessibility of this country on account 
 of its deep, sluggish, mud-bordered streams, seem to 
 have given them a sufficient measure of protection 
 against their enemies, but elsewhere in the State the In- 
 dians were rooted out by their wars. 
 
 The last tenants of the State, east of the Tennessee 
 River, were the Shawnees, — that combative folk who 
 ravaged this country with their ceaseless wars from the 
 head-waters of the Tennessee to the Mississippi, and 
 from the Lakes to Alabama. 
 
 It was no small advantage to the early settlers of 
 
48 KENTUCKY. 
 
 Kentucky that they found this region without a resi- 
 dent Indian population, for, bitter as was the struggle 
 with the claimants of the soil, it never had the danger 
 that would have come from a contest with the natives 
 in closer proximity to their homes. As it was, they 
 had not to wage a perpetual w^arfare with a fierce 
 enemy, near its base of supplies, but only to deal with 
 raiding parties, who soon exhausted their stock of pro- 
 visions, which could not be supplied from the game, 
 diminished as it was by the effective hunting of the 
 whites. When they came to carry the war north of 
 the Ohio, the whites found that even great military ex- 
 peditions, such as that of St. Clair, might receive crush- 
 ing defeats from their enemy. Any such army of In- 
 dians as were met in several of the campaigns north 
 of the Ohio, would, for half a century after the settle- 
 ment of Kentucky began, easily have made an end of 
 this feeble colony. 
 
 It was very fortunate for this first English settlement 
 north of the Alleghanies that it found this open ground, 
 made difficult of access on the north by a great river, 
 and remote from the centres of the native population. 
 In their relatively safe place the infant colony grew 
 strong, and from its vantage ground, which constituted 
 a great salient into the Mississippi Valley, they were 
 able in time to make overwhelming assaults upon the 
 flank of the Indians north of the Ohio. 
 
 It is interesting to note that the French colonists 
 never made the least effort to explore, much less to 
 possess, Kentucky. They occupied, and in a way con- 
 trolled, much of Indiana, Illinois, and a part of Ohio, 
 but it is doubtful if they ever sent an explorer into 
 the interior of Kentucky. This was due to the fact 
 
THE FIRST KENTUCKFANS. 49 
 
 that the French theory of occupation in America was 
 utterly different from the English. The French en- 
 deavored to bend the Indians to their purpose, and 
 made no distinct effort to colonize the Ohio Valley 
 either from the Canadas or from Louisiana. As Ken- 
 tucky was unoccupied by the Indians, it was neglected 
 by the French. There is a little but rather untrust- 
 worthy evidence that they made a feeble effort to de- 
 velop some of the lead mines near the Ohio, but noth- 
 ing came of it. 
 
 Thus the first settlers found themselves, in the main, 
 free from these dangers due to the savages and their 
 Gallic allies. The land lay more open to their occu- 
 pancy than any other part of this country ever did to 
 its first European comers. The Southern Indians had 
 no interest in it ; in fact, the coming of the white man 
 must have been, on the whole, advantageous to them, as 
 it served to make an end to the raids of the Northern 
 Indians. None of the tribes north of the Ohio had a 
 very good title to the ground, or were williug deter- 
 minedly to fight for it, as they did for the land about 
 their villages. What resistance they made was soon 
 overcome by the valor of the first of Virginia colonists 
 that came to this region. 
 
 There is yet another circumstance concerning the 
 condition affecting the early settlement of Kentucky 
 that deserves mention : this is the pe'culiar law concern- 
 ing the allotment of the public domain, which has been 
 in use both in this State and in Virginia since their 
 foundations were laid. 
 
 When Virginia was settled it was under a charter, 
 or patent, that gave the control of the unoccupied 
 country into the hands of its authorities. Although 
 
50 KENTUCKY. 
 
 during the British period there was a semblance of con- 
 trol by the home government over these allotments, 
 they were practically managed by the colonial govern- 
 ment alone. Grants were, after the first days of the 
 colony, made on the payment of various fees, for sur- 
 veying, etc., and a small tax per acre for the land 
 " taken up." This is substantially the same method 
 as that followed by the Federal government, with the 
 important difference that Virginia, and several other 
 Southern colonies, never made any preliminary survey 
 of the land before it was sold to settlers. Each claim- 
 ant was required to have his own survey made, desig- 
 nating thereon the bounds of the land occupied. This 
 was then recorded in the land-ofBce of the State, and 
 gave the basis for the issue of the land- warrants. This 
 system had advantages and disadvantages of great mo- 
 ment. It allowed the rapid settlement of the country 
 and the establishment of titles long in advance of any 
 possible map - making. With a compass and a chain 
 a surveyor, with a few hours' work, would give the 
 bounds of a tract of a thousand acres, so that they 
 could be held or sold with safety. While the settle- 
 ments of the Northwest have had to follow in the wake 
 of the government surveyors, the settler in Kentucky 
 became his own surveyor. 
 
 The disadvantages of this method were, however, 
 very great. There being little or no limitation of size 
 to these surveys, they were of all areas and shapes. 
 The poor man was content with his patch of one hun- 
 dred acres ; the speculative capitalist of the day would, 
 perhaps, " run out " a hundred thousand acres or more. 
 In time half a dozen patents would be laid over the 
 same laud. Areas of unpatented land, of all shapes and 
 
THE FIRST KENTUCKIANS. 61 
 
 sizes, lay between the patents. As land grew dearer 
 the would-be " blanket " patents were put over exten- 
 sive districts, in the hope of capturing these unappropri- 
 ated lots. Of all these conflicts the Virginia, and, fol- 
 lowing it, the Kentucky land-office took no note. To 
 this day one can, if he please to pay the costs, " pa- 
 tent " any laud that lies in Kentucky, and repeat the 
 process on the same area each year. The State only 
 guarantees the entry if the land is unpossessed under 
 previous title of valid kind. In time a vast amount of 
 litigation and no end of trouble came out of this scheme. 
 At this moment, owing to the absence of records, there 
 are hundreds of thousands of acres in Kentucky over 
 which no sort of ownership has ever been exercised. 
 No taxes are collected on them. If they have ever 
 been surveyed, no one knows under what patents they 
 are claimed. While this primitive and imperfect sys- 
 tem of distributing the public lands was the best possible 
 for this early day, — was, indeed, a condition precedent 
 to any settlement at all, — it left a train of doubtful 
 titles that has to this day proved harmful to the best 
 interests of the State. This evil is, however, rapidly 
 passing away, for possessive titles have, in almost all 
 cases, remedied any flaw in the original claim. This 
 system of allotting land is a good specimen of the 
 American capacity for simplicity in matters which else- 
 where would have been arranged in a more complicated 
 but less adequate fashion. It should be said that this 
 description of the method of titles does not apply to the 
 district west of the Tennessee River ; that was pur- 
 chased from the Indians long after the settlement of 
 Kentucky. This small part of the State was divided 
 into rectansular areas, as in the Northwestern States. 
 
62 KENTUCKY. 
 
 The imperfection of the early land system of Ken- 
 tncky may serve to show the difficulties that came to 
 this lone Commonwealth from the absence of all gov- 
 ernmental care in its founding. All the other new 
 States of this Union have had their early stages of de- 
 velopment guarded by the Federal government. They 
 were provided with an effective land system, a system 
 of laws suited to their needs, and the protection of 
 government troops. The Kentucky settlements had to 
 do without these important aids. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 FIRST EXPLORATIONS OF KENTUCKY. 
 
 We have now noticed the principal features in the 
 history of the folk that furnished the greater part of the 
 early colonists of Kentucky, as well as the physical 
 conditions of the land itself. We may next proceed 
 to consider the history of the earliest explorations and 
 the first steps toward the settlement of the State. 
 
 Although Virginia had a just claim to all the re- 
 gion of the Ohio Valley north of the parallel of 36° 30', 
 that is, if there were any justice in the colonial grants at 
 all, this empire of the unknown was little esteemed in 
 the early days of that colony. They knew only that it 
 lay far beyond rugged mountains, peopled by their new- 
 found enemies the red men, and claimed by their hered- 
 itary enemies the French. Some knowledge of it they 
 had from their expeditions against the French, and the 
 chance reports of the few travelers who ventured near 
 it, but it was not until there began to be a need of find- 
 ing place for the growing population of the colony 
 that they turned their minds toward this country. At 
 this time the settlements were well up to the borders 
 of the Alleghany Mountains, — indeed, all the richer 
 valleys of the eastern part of that chain were pretty 
 thoroughly taken up by settlers. The greater part of 
 this region was of a nature to be extremely repellent 
 to the Virginia farmer. The price of grain and cattle 
 
54 KENTUCKY. 
 
 was exceedingly low ; he was accustomed to feel that 
 he must either have ground well fitted to tobacco, or 
 else soil that would give a large return for his labor in 
 the less exportable crops. Therefore the fairly good 
 lands of the Alleghanies seemed, and indeed were, to 
 him worthless. 'It is a simple application of the theory 
 of rent taught by political economy. 
 
 The Alleghanies were, however, an extremely diffi- 
 cult — indeed, at first a nearly impassable — barrier to 
 western movement. They consisted of a number of long 
 ridges, set in rank behind rank ; their slopes were steep, 
 their forests dense, and where they were cut by streams 
 these flowed in caiion-like gorges generally unfitted for 
 roadways. No other than a forest-bred peojDle would 
 have dared this wilderness in search of cheap and good 
 land. It is difficult to picture to ourselves the hazard- 
 ous nature of this movement. We must believe that 
 the first adventurers had slow imaginations or a rare 
 valor, else the evident risks of their project would 
 surely have sufficed to deter even the bravest men, 
 spurred by no sense of duty to this enterprise of con- 
 quering a far-away and mythical land. 
 
 The colonial charters of Virginia gave to that col- 
 ony a claim upon all the lands of the Mississippi Valley 
 that lay to the west of the boundaries of Pennsylvania 
 and New York, as well as of the colony itself. At the 
 time when these grants were made, and for generations 
 afterward, this western domain was to Virginia a very 
 intangible property, if indeed it deserved the name of a 
 possession. The little that was known about it came 
 mostly through the French authorities, or from a few ad- 
 venturous traders who had visited that country. To the 
 Virginians of the seventeenth and the first decades of 
 
FIRST EXPLORATIONS OF KENTUCKY. 55 
 
 the eighteenth century, charter rights in a country from 
 which came recurrent dangers in the shape of Frencli 
 or Indian wars seemed of no value whatever. When, 
 however, the fall of Louisburg and Quebec and other 
 events in the warfare with the French in Canada began 
 to show that the English were likely to win control of 
 the continent, when the fear of the savages was some- 
 what diminished by a long and generally successful 
 struggle with them, the minds of the Virginia people 
 began to dwell upon the possibilities of that broad and 
 fertile country which lay beyond the barren ridges of 
 the Alleghanies. 
 
 The history of Virginia shows us that there were sev- 
 eral reasons which led its people to desire western pos- 
 sessions long before the more northern colonies began 
 to look to the Mississippi Valley for new homes. In 
 the first place, the Virginia people' came from the more 
 rural population of England and Scotland, and from 
 the beginning were ever in their mode of living a less 
 urban people than the more northern colonists of Amer- 
 ica. Within the tobacco belt agriculture was a much 
 more profitable occupation than it ever became within 
 the northern colonies during the colonial times. This 
 and the other crops produced by slave labor were won 
 by a careless tillage, that rapidly reduced the fertility 
 of the land, and made it desirable to seek fresh fields 
 for the devastating ploughs.^ 
 
 1 It would not be possible to contrive a more perfect means of rap- 
 idly exhausting the soil than the method of tillage commonly in use 
 in the old days in this Virginian country. The " tilth," or depth of 
 the ploughing, rarely exceeded six inches, and oftener was less ; 
 ploughs Avere run year after year at the same depth, until there was 
 a hard pan formed by the action of the plough heel, which shut the 
 roots of the crops out of the sub-soil. Manuring was never under- 
 
56 KENTUCKY. 
 
 The use of slave labor in agriculture demands exceed- 
 ingly rich soils ; even with so exportable an article as 
 tobacco, tillage cannot profitably be carried on by means 
 of slaves on lands that are not excellent in quality. 
 Tliis is plainly shown by the fact that the hill regions 
 of the South did not become occupied by slaveholders. 
 In all the vast expanse of the AUeghanies, where the 
 soils are relatively poor, there is scarcely more negro 
 blood than there is in New York or New England, and 
 those negroes who are now found there are mostly waifs 
 recently brought by the railways and other modern en- 
 terprises. Here and there, where the AUeghanies in- 
 close small areas of limestone rock, which by its clay 
 produces soils of the first order, the slaveholder planted 
 himself and for a time tilled his crops ; but as a whole 
 the institution did not fit mountain regions, however 
 fertile the valleys might be, for the tracts of arable 
 land were not large enough to permit the plantation 
 system to be applied to their tillage, so that they fell 
 to the non-slaveholding class. The student of genei-al 
 history will find interest in the fact that this unfitness 
 of the Appalachian system of mountains for tillage by 
 slaves became a very important element in the civil 
 war. The people of this district during the conflict 
 were either armed Union men or lukewarm adherents 
 of the Confederacy. The Appalachian district formed 
 a great salient of anti-slavery people that cut the South 
 nearly in twain. 
 
 taken ; not uncommonly the stables were allowed to fill with unre- 
 moved dung until the beasts could no longer enter them. When the 
 exhaustion of the abused soil was so complete that it could no longer 
 be profitably cultivated, the place was "turned out," the healing for- 
 ests again possessed it, while the proprietor Avent "over the divide " 
 and set about his devastating work on another farm. 
 
FIRST EXPLORATIONS OF KENTUCKY. 57 
 
 In the middle of the last century the lands fitted for 
 the use of slaves in Virginia, at least in that part of the 
 State east of the Blue Ridge, were fully occupied. The 
 Shenandoah Valley was in good part settled, and the 
 whole of its fertile parts was possessed either by active 
 tillers or by large owners like Lord Fairfax, who re- 
 tained them for speculation. The farming class found 
 themselves faced by the long parallel ridges of the Al- 
 leghanies, which stretch in an almost continuous wall 
 from the border of New York State to the country of 
 the Gulf slope, a region unfit for tillage. 
 
 The compulsion to westward migration then acting 
 upon the Virginia people was something like that which 
 in the olden days drove their remote ancestry from Cen- 
 tral Asia over the lands of Europe to the Atlantic. In 
 neither case were the people crowded in the sense that 
 the Belgium or the Massachusetts people are now 
 crowded together, but they were in each case aggre- 
 gated beyond the limits of their conditions. With herds- 
 men there can only be a very few people to the square 
 mile; with slave agriculture the number may be 
 greater, but still far below the number that may advan- 
 tageously inhabit the same district under conditions of 
 freedom. 
 
 Even before 1750 adventurers seeking trade with the 
 Indians had been exploring the Alleghanies for ways 
 into the West. It had already been found that the 
 most practicable route was by following to the south- 
 ward the great mountain trough that separates the Blue 
 Ridge from the Alleghany range of mountains. The 
 course of this valley is nearly to the southwest, and its 
 high-lying fertile limestone plains are drained in turn 
 by the Shenandoah and the Roanoke, that send their 
 
68 KENTUCKY. 
 
 waters to the Atlantic, and the Kanawaha, or New 
 River, and the Tennessee, tributaries of the Ohio. In 
 this trough, that separates the eastern and western 
 ranges of the Appalachian Mountains, the traveler can 
 journey through a length of many hundred miles with- 
 out having to pass over any difficult ways. 
 
 From this valley there are two natural ways to the 
 Ohio : at the crossing of the New River, or from the 
 mouth of the Greenbrier River, it is possible to turn 
 sharply to the north down that stream, and then along 
 its banks to follow a tolerably direct line to the Ohio, 
 the stream itself beiusf unnavis^able for much of its 
 length ; or, better still, the mountain valley may be fol- 
 lowed about a hundred miles further to the southwest 
 to a point where for a considerable distance the Cum- 
 berland River and the Powell branch of the great Ten- 
 nessee run for some distance parallel to each other, sep- 
 arated only by the narrow wall of the Cumberland 
 Mountain. At this point the Cumberland Mountain is a 
 single ridge, generally too steep even for horse-paths, 
 but at several points it breaks down into traversable 
 passes. Crossing this mountain over any of these 
 passes, the westward farer had only to follow the Cum- 
 berland, as it cuts its way through the Fine Mountain 
 and the irregular hills still farther to the west, to find a 
 difficult but practicable way into Eastern Kentucky, one 
 possible to pack animals, which could find foothold on 
 the Indian paths or buffalo trails, and easily made pos- 
 sible to that ship of the wilderness, the admirable 
 American wagon.-^ 
 
 1 At the time when Kentucky was settled the European pack-sad- 
 dle was still in general use in this country. It was almost the only 
 means of conveying burdens employed down to the end of the six- 
 
FIRST EXPLORATIONS OF KENTUCKY. 59 
 
 From the time of the settlement of the Shenandoah 
 Valley this southward extension of its fertile lands was 
 well known to the Virginians. As early as the seven- 
 teenth century one of the frontier forts was placed in 
 the southern part of the valley. These ways to the 
 West were traversed even in the seventeenth century 
 by many of those hardy spirits who skirmish beyond 
 the advancing lines of civilization.^ 
 
 The first authentic report of a deliberate journey be- 
 yond the line of the Alleghauies is that of Doctor 
 Thomas AValker, who in 1750 traveled to the central 
 parts of the region afterwards called Kentucky, and re- 
 turned with a good report of the country. This journal 
 still exists in manuscript. He seems to have been a re- 
 markably intelligent explorer, for he noticed the east- 
 ernmost outcrop of the Appalachian coal-field, which so 
 far is probably the first mention of any fact of a geo- 
 
 teenth century. It held on in Virginia for more than a century after* 
 it had generally passed out of service in the Old "World. Remnants 
 of its use may still be found in some of the sequestered corners of the 
 Southern Appalachians. But for this simple instrument the settle- 
 ment of Kentucky would hardly have been possible, for it was many 
 years before a wagon road was constructed. 
 
 1 Even as early as 1654 a certain Colonel Wood was in Kentucky 
 as an explorer, but of his route we know little or nothing. Rafii- 
 nesque, in his most untrustworthy annals of Kentucky, says that a 
 Captain Bolt came from Virginia to Kentucky in 1660. In 1730 John 
 Sailing, a Virginian, was taken prisoner by the Cherokee Indians and 
 carried to Tennessee, thence to the salt licks of Kentucky ; a second 
 capture by Illinois Indians led to his traveling as far as Kaskaskia ; 
 escaping from his second captivity by ransom, he finally reached Vir- 
 ginia again. He was probably the first Virginian to tread the way 
 leading to Kentucky by Cumberland Gap, which so many of his fel- 
 lows were to follow, but as his journey was not voluntary he cannot 
 claim real credit as an explorer. There is also a tradition that in 
 1742 a man named John Howard crossed the mountains and went 
 down the Ohio, but the fact is doubtful. (See Collins, i., p. 15.) 
 
60 KENTUCKY. 
 
 logical nature concerning any part of the Virginia 
 mountains. Walker named the principal features of 
 the country he traversed : the Waseoto mountains, 
 which he called Cumberland ; the Shawnee River, to 
 which he gave the same name ; the Chatterawah, which, 
 with the Virginian dislike of Indian names, he called 
 the Big Sandy. There is some excuse for his calling 
 the finest of the Alleghany Mountains and the most 
 beautiful of its rivers after the very unsavory George, 
 Duke of Cumberland, and the beautiful Chatterawah 
 the Big Sandy ; for the fact is Kentucky had been re- 
 cently in good part abandoned by the Shawnee Indians 
 as a place of residence, and had become a border fight- 
 ing-ground between the Indians north of the Ohio and 
 the Cherokees and other tribes of the Tennessee Val- 
 ley and the country to the south and east of it, so that 
 the traveler had no chance to get the aboriginal names 
 of its geographical features from natives. 
 
 In 1751 Christopher Gist, an agent of the Ohio Com- 
 pany, a corporation having from Virginia an unplaced 
 grant of 500,000 acres of land, visited Shawnee town, 
 at the mouth of the Scioto River, where Portsmouth, 
 Ohio, now stands. Here he found a settlement con- 
 taining about three hundred Indians : one part of their 
 lodges on the southern, or Kentucky side of the Ohio, 
 but the most on the northern, or Ohio, border of the 
 stream. So entirely was Kentucky at this time aban- 
 doned by the Indians that this was probably the only 
 settlement within the limits of the State, except some 
 Indian towns along the Mississippi River. There were 
 many Indian traders residing at this settlement, show- 
 ing that the country had already been extensively pen- 
 etrated by those adventurous men. Gist's explorations 
 
FIRST EXPLORATIONS OF KENTUCKY. 61 
 
 were extended as far as Big Bone Lick, whence he 
 obtained some of the fossil elephant remains.-^ Thence 
 he followed an Indian trail up the Kentucky and across 
 the mountains to the Kanawha.^ 
 
 In 1752 Lewis Evans issued the first map of the re- 
 gion, including Kentucky.^ It is probable that few 
 copies of this map remain in existence. In 1756 a white 
 woman, a Mrs. Mary Inglis, was taken prisoner in 
 Southwestern Virginia and conveyed to Central Ken- 
 tucky, where she escaped and made her way home afoot 
 after a journey of appalling difficulty. 
 
 The narrative of her adventures is thus given in Col- 
 lins's " History of Kentucky : " — 
 
 " The first white woman in Kentuck}^ was Mrs. Mary 
 Inglis, nee Draper, who in 1756, with her two little 
 boys, her sister-in-law, Mrs. Draper, and others, was 
 taken prisoner by the Shawanee Indians from her home 
 on the top of the great Alleghany ridge, in now Mont- 
 gomery County, West Virginia. The captives were 
 taken down the Kanawha to the salt region, and, after 
 a few days spent in making salt, to the Indian village 
 at the mouth of the Scioto River, where Portsmouth, 
 
 1 Big Bone Lick was early looked upon as the principal curiosity of 
 the countr}'. Many of the expeditions encamped there. When first 
 visited by the -n-hites the bones of the tnamnioth and the mastodon 
 were plentifully scattered over the ground about the salt springs. 
 The camping parties used the ribs of the fossil elephants for tent poles 
 and the vertebrse for seats and as rests for their camp kettles. At a 
 later time Jefferson had a valuable collection of these remains brought 
 to Washington and deposited in the government buildings, along with 
 other geological material that this many -minded man brought to- 
 gether. These specimens remained in the patent-office imtil at length, 
 it is on tradition reported, they were sent to the bone mill by one of 
 the ignorant servants of that office. 
 
 2 See Collins, i. 15. 3 See Collins, i. 15. 
 
62 KENTUCKY. 
 
 Ohio, now is. Here, although spared the pain and dan- 
 ger of running the gauntlet, to which Mrs. Draper was 
 subjected, she was, in the division of the prisoners, sep- 
 arated from her little sons. Some French traders from 
 Detroit visiting the village with their goods, Mrs. In- 
 glis made some shirts out of the checked fabrics. As 
 fast as one was finished, a Frenchman -would take it 
 and run through the village, swinging it on a staff, 
 praising it as an ornament and Mrs. Inglis as a very 
 fine squaw ; and then make the Indians pay her from 
 their store at least twice its value. This profitable 
 employment continued about three weeks, and Mrs. 
 Inglis was more than ever admired and kindly treated 
 by her captors. 
 
 " A party setting off for Big Bone Licks, on the 
 south side of the Ohio River, about one hundred and 
 forty miles below, to make salt, took her along, together 
 with an elderly Dutch woman, who had been a long 
 time prisoner. The separation from her children de- 
 termined her to escape, and she prevailed upon the old 
 woman to accompany her. They obtained leave to 
 gather grapes. Securing a blanket, tomahawk, and 
 knife, they left the Licks in the afternoon, and to pre- 
 vent suspicion took neither additional clothing nor pro- 
 visions. When about to depart, Mrs. Inglis exchanged 
 her tomahawk with one of the three Frenchmen in the 
 company, as he was sitting on one of the big bones 
 cracking walnuts. They hastened to the Ohio River, 
 and proceeded unmolested up the stream, — in about 
 five days coming opposite the village their captors and 
 they had lived at, at the mouth of the Scioto. There 
 they found aa empty cabin, and remained for the night. 
 In the morning they loaded a horse, browsing near by, 
 
FIRST EXPLORATIONS OF KENTUCKY. 63 
 
 with corn, and proceeded up the river, escaping obser- 
 vation, although iu sight of the Indian village and In- 
 dians for several hours. 
 
 " Although the season was dry and the rivers low, 
 the Big Sandy was too deep to cross at its mouth ; so 
 they followed up its banks until they found a crossing 
 on the driftwood. The horse fell among the logs, and 
 could not be extricated. The women carried what 
 corn they could, but it was exhausted long before they 
 reached the Kanawha, and they lived upon grapes, 
 black walnuts, pawpaws, and sometimes roots. These 
 did not long satisfy the old Dutch woman, and, frantic 
 with hunger and exposure, she threatened, and several 
 days after at twilight actually attempted, the life of her 
 companion. Mrs. Inglis escaped from the grasp of the 
 desperate woman, outran her, and concealed herself 
 awhile under the river-bank. Proceeding along by the 
 light of the moon, she found a canoe — the identical 
 one in which the Indians had taken her across the river 
 five months before — half filled with dirt and leaves, 
 without a paddle or a pole near. Using a broad splin- 
 ter of a fallen tree, she cleared the canoe, and con- 
 trived to paddle it to the other side. In the morning 
 the old woman discovered her, and with strong prom- 
 ises of good behavior begged her to cross over and keep 
 her company ; but she thought they were more likely 
 to remain friends with the river between them. Thoui^h 
 approaching her former home, her condition was grow- 
 ing hopeless : her strength almost wasted away, and 
 her limbs had begun to swell from wading cold streams, 
 frost, and fatigue. The weather was growing cold, and 
 a light snow fell. At length, after forty days and a 
 half of remarkable endurance, during which she trav-. 
 
64 KENTUCKY. 
 
 eled not less than twenty miles a day, she reached a 
 clearing and the residence of a friendly family, by 
 whose kind and judicious treatment she was strong 
 enough in a few days to proceed to a fort near by, and 
 the next day she was restored to her husband. Help 
 was sent to the Dutch woman, and she, too, recovered. 
 One of the little boys died in captivity, not long after 
 the forced separation ; the other remained thirteen years 
 with the Indians before his father could trace him up 
 and secure his ransom. Mrs. Inglis died in 1813, aged 
 eighty-four. Her family was one of the best, and her 
 daughters married men who became distinguished." ^ 
 
 In 1765 Colonel George Croghan, who had pre- 
 viously visited the Ohio with Gist, made a surveying 
 journey down that stream from Pittsburg to the Mis- 
 sissippi. The survey was of the I'udest sort ; he made 
 an error of ninety-seven miles in his estimate of the 
 distance from Pittsburg to the junction of the Ohio 
 and Mississippi, and similar errors in all his determina- 
 tions, but his work deserves to be remembered as the 
 first effort to do surveying in this basin. In 1766 a 
 party of five persons, including a mulatto slave, under 
 the command of Captain James Smith, explored a large 
 part of what is now Tennessee, and probably extended 
 their journey through Southern Kentucky. 
 
 Journeys to Kentucky now became frequent. Every 
 year sent one or more parties of pioneers to one part 
 or another of the country. In 1769 Daniel Boone 
 and five companions, all from the Yadkin settlements 
 in North Carolina, came to Eastern Kentucky. One 
 of the party was killed, but Boone remained, while 
 his companions returned to their homes. Thus it will 
 1 Collins, ii. p. 53. 
 
FIRST EXPLORATIONS OF KENTUCKY. 65 
 
 be seen that Boone's first visit was relatively late in 
 the history of Kentucky explorations. Almost every 
 part of its surface had been traversed by other ex- 
 plorers before this man, who passes in history as the 
 typical pioneer, set foot upon its ground. In the time 
 between 1770 and 1772 George Washington, then a 
 land-surveyor, made two surveys in the region which 
 is now the northeast corner of Kentucky, included in 
 the present counties of Greenup, Boyd, and Lawrence. 
 
 The reader should bear in mind the fact that these 
 movements were made in the face of grave dangers 
 from the Southern Indians. The Shawnees, the most 
 warlike of the Western tribes, had, it is true, been driven 
 from their settlements in Kentucky, but the land was 
 claimed by the Cherokees, a numerous and combative 
 association of tribes. In 1756 the Earl of Loudon, 
 then commander of the British troops in America and 
 Governor of Vii-giuia, built a fort on the Tennessee 
 River, about thirty miles from where Knoxville now 
 stands. In 1758 the celebrated Colonel Bird erected 
 another fort. These forts held garrisons of several hun- 
 dred men, and were mounted with cannon. Despite 
 the strength of these outposts they were overwhelmed 
 by the Indians, and their garrisons destroyed or forced 
 into disgraceful retreat. The influence of the French 
 made it impossible to effect any permanent agreement 
 with the savages. Thus the early settlers who moved 
 into Kentucky were compelled to face the dangers of 
 combat with warlike tribes, emboldened by success in 
 their combats with the whites. 
 
 The singular feature about all these early wander- 
 ings in Kentucky is, that although they had been going 
 on for thirty years or more, many of the explorers 
 5 
 
66 KENTUCKY. 
 
 returning two or three times to the ground, they wero 
 moved more by the spirit of adventure than by any dis- 
 tinct love of gain or idea of permanent settlement. To 
 make a perilous journey into the dark and bloody bat- 
 tle-ground of the Indians, and then to return with many 
 stories of hair -breadth escapes and a scalp or two, 
 seems to have been the motive and the end of these 
 numerous expeditions. It is noteworthy that there is 
 no trace of a search for precious metals in all these ex- 
 peditions. That greed of gold, which was so prominent 
 a feature in the early explorations of Virginia, was 
 wanting in the colonization of Kentucky. This desire, 
 never so strong in the English as in the Spanish set- 
 tlers of America, appears to have been quite dead in 
 the latter part of the seventeenth century in the colo- 
 nies of the former people. About 1770 the favorable 
 reports of these explorers began to move the minds of 
 a more agricultural class, and from that time onward 
 the idea of colonization and j^ossession became more 
 common. The system of the Virginia land-office, which 
 permitted people to " locate " on any unoccupied land, 
 making their own surveys and marking their own boun- 
 daries, favored this first staire of settlement. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 EARLY SETTLEMENTS. 
 
 The first distinct efFort to found a colony was made 
 by James Harrod and about forty companions, who 
 found their way down the Ohio near to where Louis- 
 ville now stands, and thence by land to what is now 
 Mercer County, in Central Kentucky, where they estab- 
 lished, on June 16, 1774, a village which they called, in 
 honor of their leader, Harrodsburg. Earlier attempts 
 at settlement were made at Louisville, but the fear of 
 Indians caused the speedy abandonment of this post. 
 At other points the explorers occasionally made tempo- 
 rary habitations, tilled a crop of maize for subsistence, 
 and then continued their wanderings. But Harrodsburg 
 was the first deliberate settlement of importance, and 
 the first that was intended to be permanent.^ In 1775 
 other and stronger footholds were gained. Boone built 
 a fort in what is now Madison County, and Logan an- 
 other at St. Asaphs, in Lincoln County. 
 
 The settlement of Kentucky was greatly favored by 
 the decisive victory gained by Lord Dunmore's troops 
 over the Indians from the north of the Ohio, at the 
 mouth of the Kanawha. This battle, known as Point 
 Pleasant, was the first pitched battle between the Ohio 
 Indians and the whites, in which the savages had no 
 aid from the French. Although the Indians fought 
 1 See Collins, ii. p. 517. 
 
68 KENTUCKY. 
 
 with great bravery, prolonging the combat for a whole 
 day, they were in the end comi%letely routed, with great 
 loss, and signed a treaty abandoning the whole country 
 south of the Ohio to the whites. The signal nature of 
 their defeat, even more than their treaty, caused the 
 principal Ohio tribes for several years to be wary of 
 venturing into Kentucky, where they knew they would 
 encounter men of the same quality. This victory, though 
 bought with a loss of about one hundred of the colonial 
 troops, was of priceless value to the Kentucky settle- 
 ments. It not only diminished the fear of the Ohio 
 Indians in this colony, but for a time, at least, it opened 
 the road to Kentucky by way of the Ohio. Moreover, 
 as many of the heroes of Point Pleasant afterward 
 settled in Kentucky, it gave confidence to its settlers in 
 their subsequent combats with tlie aborigines. 
 
 That the process of possessing the land was going 
 on with speed may be seen from the fact that Hender- 
 son and Company, land-agents at Boonesborough, issued 
 from their office in the new-built fort entry certificates 
 of surveys for five hundred and sixty thousand acres of 
 land. The process of survey was of the rudest kind, 
 but it served the purpose of momentary definition of the 
 areas made it possible to deal with the land as a com- 
 modity, and left the tribulations concerning boundaries 
 to the next generation. These land deeds were given 
 as of the " colony of Transylvania," which was in fact 
 the first appellation of Kentucky, a name by which it 
 was known for several years before it received its pres- 
 ent appellation. 
 
 At this time, the last year that the work of settling 
 Kentucky was done under the authority of his majesty 
 King George the Third, there were probably about one 
 
EARLY SETTLEMENTS. 69 
 
 huDdred and fifty men who had placed themselves in 
 settlements that were intended to be permanent within 
 the bomids of what is now the Commonwealth of Ken- 
 tucky. There may have been as many more doing the 
 endless exploring work which preceded the choice of a 
 site for their future homes. The men at Boone's Sta- 
 tion claimed, and seem to have been awarded, a sort of 
 hegemony among the settlements. On the 23d of May, 
 at the call of Colonel Henderson, the land-agent of the 
 proprietors, delegates from these settlements met at 
 Boonesborough, and drew up a brief code of nine laws 
 for the government of the young Commonwealth. This, 
 the first legislative body ever assembled in the region 
 west of the Alleghanies, met with all the important 
 forms of a colonial government. The speech of the act- 
 ing governor. Colonel Henderson, reads like the address 
 of a British sovereign from the throne, with a slight 
 addition of frontier flourishes. The chairman of the 
 convention answered him in equally formal phrase, 
 and, after a day or two of preamble, the unhoused par- 
 liament proceeded to business, passing the following 
 laws ■'■ : — 
 
 1. An act to establish courts of judicature and regu- 
 lating the practice therein. 
 
 2. An act for resjulatinof the militia. 
 
 3. An act for the punishment of criminals. 
 
 4. An act to prevent profane swearing and Sabbath- 
 breaking. 
 
 5. An act for writs of attachment. 
 
 6. An act for ascertaining clerks' and sheriffs' fees. 
 
 7. An act to preserve the range (that is, the right 
 of public pasture). 
 
 1 See Collins's Ktntucky, vol. ii. p. 508. 
 
70 KENTUCKY. 
 
 8. An act for preserving tlie breed of horses. 
 
 9. An act for preserving game. 
 
 Tlie foregoing laws have not come down to us in 
 detail ; we have only their titles, two of which merit 
 notice. The Puritanic quality of the fourth of thesG 
 commandments is balanced by the livelier quality ot 
 the eighth.^ 
 
 The Boonesborough parliament adjourned to meet 
 in September, but it never reassembled. The venture 
 which led to its institution fell altogether to ruin, and 
 the name of Transylvania has been almost entirely for- 
 gotten. We cannot afford the space to give more than 
 an outline of this curious fragment of Western history. 
 
 The colony of Transylvania rested on a purchase of 
 about seventeen million acres, or about one half the 
 present area of Kentucky, which was made by some 
 people of North Carolina from the Overhill Cherokee 
 Indians, a part of the great tribe that dwelt on tlie 
 Holston River. For this land the unfortunate adven- 
 turers paid the sum of £10,000 of English money. 
 This was a form of land-grabbing by purchase from the 
 Indians peculiar to the eighteenth century ; it not hav, 
 ing been at that time well affirmed that while States 
 could cheat Indians out of their possessions the privi- 
 lege was denied the private citizen. The Cherokees 
 knew full well that in fact they had no title in this 
 land to sell ; the land had probably never been in their 
 possession ; it was more of the nature of unowned land 
 than any other fertile district in the Mississippi Val- 
 
 1 The first race track in Kentucky was laid out about 1775, at 
 Shallow Ford Station. A man engaged in trying the paces of his 
 horse upon' this track was shot by an Indian secreted in a neighbor- 
 ing cane-brake. See Collins, ii. p. 521. 
 
EARLY SETTLEMENTS. 71 
 
 ley ; it was, in fact, a lot of common ground where 
 there was no lord of the manor. 
 
 Immediately after the Boonesborough parliament the 
 position of the Transylvania company became very In- 
 secure ; its own people began to doubt the validity of 
 the titles they had obtained from the company, because, 
 after a time, they learned from various sources that 
 the lands of this region of Kentucky had been pre- 
 viously ceded to the English government by the Six 
 Nations, and were included in the Virginia charter. In 
 the latter part of 1775 eighty men of the Transylvania 
 settlement signed a memorial asking to be taken under 
 the protection of Virginia ; or, if that colony thought it 
 best, that their petition might be referred to the Gen- 
 eral Congress. This protest is a remarkably sober and 
 well-written document, which gives us a high opinion 
 of the character of the men who prepared it.-^ 
 
 The proprietors of the colony made their answer to 
 this rebellion by sending a delegate to the Federal 
 Congress at Philadelphia, who was to request that the 
 colony of Transylvania be added to the number of the 
 American colonies. Their petition set forth that " the 
 memorialists, having made this purchase from the abo- 
 rigines and immemorial possessors, the sole and uncon- 
 tested owners of the country, in a free and open treaty, 
 and without the violation of any British or American 
 law whatever, are determined to give it up only with 
 their lives." ^ Nothing came of this protest. Congress 
 refused to seat their delegate, Patrick Henry and Jef- 
 ferson, then representing Virginia, opposing the efforts 
 of the proprietors. The Governor of North Carolina 
 
 1 See Hall's Sketches of History in the West, vol. ii. pp. 23G-239. 
 
 2 Collins, ii. p. 512. 
 
72 KENTUCKY. 
 
 issued a proclamation declaring their purchase illegal. 
 The colony gradually fell to pieces, though the State 
 of Virginia took no decided action with reference to it 
 until in 1778 that Commonwealth declared the acts of 
 the company void, but, in a generous spirit, offered com- 
 pensation to Colonel Henderson and the other adven- 
 turers. The Transylvania company received two hun- 
 dred thousand acres of valuable lands, and their sales to 
 actual settlers were confirmed by an act of the Virginia 
 Assembly. 
 
 Thus the strongest, though not the first, colony of 
 Kentucky, was a misadventure and quickly fell to 
 pieces, but during its short life it did more to affirm the 
 position of the whites on this ground than all the other 
 settlements put together. That at Harrodsburg and 
 other ventures beyond the Transylvania company's con- 
 trol were made without any moral support from beyond 
 the mountains. Although the men who founded them 
 were doubtless personally brave, they had not the cour- 
 age to face at once the toils of the wilderness and the 
 assaults of the savage foe. The Boonesborough settle- 
 ments were planted by men of peculiar vigor, and were 
 supported by a set of very resolute people, acting as a 
 corporation, who had means and courage to meet emer- 
 gencies. Moreover, they were in a position to exercise 
 some choice in the character of their colonists ; they saw 
 to it that only men of character and courage were per- 
 mitted in the district. 
 
 As the Indians did not occupy Kentucky, but only 
 used it as an occasional hunting-ground, it was not diffi- 
 cult for the wary explorer to journey all over the land 
 without encountering their parties ; nor were the sav- 
 ages likely to become excited by the temporary pres- 
 
EARLY SETTLEMENTS. 73 
 
 ence in this country of small bands of the whites, 
 who sought to exercise no possession. When, how- 
 ever, these wandering parties began to establish them- 
 selves on the ground the matter seemed more serious to 
 them. No sooner had the Harrodsburg settlement 
 been founded than the Indians assaulted its people. Al- 
 though the loss from this assault amounted to but one 
 man killed, his companions were so frightened that for 
 a time they deserted their home ; some of the panio 
 stricken folk escaping through the woods to the Mis- 
 sissippi, and thence to New Orleans, while the others 
 returned to Virginia by the way they came. A portion 
 of these people returned the next year after the vigor- 
 ous colony of Boonesborough was founded, and re- 
 founded their village under the shadow of its protection. 
 It will not do to impute cowardice to these lonely pio- 
 neers. We can conceive their position in this vast and 
 unexplored forest land, without even a road to bind 
 them to their far-off mother country ; where at any 
 moment an overwhelming force of fierce enemies might 
 spring from the dark woods. The greatest difficulty 
 was to bring these little bands to a sense that they 
 could by determination meet and make an end of these 
 dangers ; that all alone in the wilderness they could 
 deal with this savage foe who had so recently beaten 
 the armies of Braddock and of Washington. This les- 
 son of patient, enduring courage was taught by the 
 Transylvania company ; it could not well have been 
 gained except through such strength as this vigorous 
 and determined company gave to its settlements. 
 
 The history of the assaults on the Boonesborough 
 station is much like a host of other histories of West- 
 ern settlements, but it has for us a special interest for 
 
74 KENTUCKY. 
 
 the reason that the attacks took place in the very be- 
 ginning of the struggle of outlying settlements with the 
 Indians of the Mississippi Valley, and that they were 
 met by small parties of isolated men, who could hope 
 for no aid of state or national government, and who 
 had no resource except what they found in themselves, 
 or might obtain from the proprietors of the colony. 
 
 The first task of the Transylvania company was to 
 cut a " trail " or horse-way from the Holston Valley to 
 Central Kentucky ; this work was done under the com- 
 mand of Daniel Boone, then a servant of the company. 
 It was an undertaking of no great difficulty, as the only 
 aim was to make a way passable to pack-horses, but it 
 was a work which required some time. The party con- 
 structing this road was observed by the hunting parties 
 of the Indians, and their undertaking was seen to be a 
 more serious matter than the previous desultory inva- 
 sions of their land.^ The first engagement between the 
 whites and Indians on Kentucky soil came at the end of 
 this task of road-making. Boone and his men were 
 sleeping without guards, when just before day the In- 
 dians rushed into the camp. A portion of the company 
 was put to flight, which did not end until they were safe 
 in Virginia, but the remainder rallied and held their 
 ground. A negro servant was killed ; Captain Twetty, 
 one of the leaders of the party, was killed ; and a young 
 man, Felix Walker, wounded. The success of the 
 whites in beating off the Indians, their courage in wait- 
 ing under arms by the side of their wounded man for 
 twelve days until they could carry him to the site of the 
 fort which they intended to build, were fortunate for 
 the future Commonwealth, for they thereby gained a 
 1 See Collins, ii. p. 497. 
 
EARLY SETTLEMENTS. 75 
 
 confidence which enabled the little 'band to meet yet 
 more serious perils. Two days later the same party 
 of Indians assailed another camp and killed two men. 
 Boone's letter to Colonel Henderson gives us the first 
 clear view of that cool_, intrepid man, who was to do so 
 much for the early settlement of Kentucky.^ Collins, 
 in his History of Kentucky, gives extracts from the 
 very interesting diary of Colonel Henderson. This man 
 was one of the heroes of his time. Born in Eastern 
 Virginia, of poor parents, ignorant of the alphabet until 
 he came to man's estate, he forced himself by sheer 
 strength to a high position as a leader of men. After 
 the dissolution of his colony he settled in the great do- 
 main which Virginia granted to himself and his asso- 
 ciates in compensation for their efforts in founding the 
 Transylvania colony. His diary shows that he was one 
 of the few frontiersmen who could admire the beauties 
 of the world about him even amid the cares that beset 
 the colonist." 
 
 Bringing their wounded man with them, Boone has- 
 tened to the point on the Kentucky River which he had 
 chosen for his stronghold. The position was well 
 taken. It was on the south side of the principal river 
 of the State, sufficiently advanced to protect a large 
 tract of country by receiving the blow of invasions, and 
 not too remote to hope to maintain its connections with 
 the base of supplies in Virginia and North Carolina. 
 The settlements in East Tennessee defended this part 
 of Kentucky from the Southern Indians. 
 
 The Virginia experience with Indian warfare had al- 
 ready shown the best method of making a simple fortifi- 
 cation that would serve well both for shelter and for de- 
 1 Collins, ii. p. 498. 2 Collins, ii. p. 500. 
 
76 KENTUCKY, 
 
 fense against savage warfare. The Boonesborough fort 
 is a type of all these early fortifications, aucl as the first 
 Kentucky stronghold merits a brief description. The 
 fort was laid out as a parallelogram, about two hundred 
 and fifty feet long and one hundred and twenty-five feet 
 wide ; at the four corners log-houses, each two stories 
 high, were built ; the part of the walls of those block- 
 houses that lay beyond the fort were without windows, 
 but pierced with loopholes, from which a clearing fire 
 could be delivered along the curtains of the fort. The 
 sides were formed in part by the outer walls of cabins, 
 and in part by lines of stockade, made by placing 
 squared timbers vertically in the ground and binding 
 them together by a horizontal stringer or stay-piece on 
 the inside near the top. The steep roofs of the houses 
 were covered with thick slabs of riven beams, held in 
 their places by means of horizontal bars of wood laid 
 upon them and tied by withes to the rafters. Iron was 
 little used in these early constructions of the wilderness, 
 and to this day houses are built in the mountain dis- 
 tricts of Kentucky which do not contain a pound of the 
 metal. Two gates of stout framed wood in the middle 
 of the longer side, commanded on the inside by the 
 small windows on the inside faces of the houses, and on 
 the outside by the loopholes of the block-houses, com- 
 pleted the outlines of this primitive castle. As long as 
 artillery was not used — and in the early fights it usu- 
 ally had no place — such defenses were all that could be 
 desired. The central square gave a large space for herd- 
 ing cattle. Each cabin was separately defensible, and 
 the tolerably complete separation of the several houses 
 made them safe from conflagrations ; one cabin could be 
 burned without involving the destruction of the others. 
 
EARLY SETTLEMENTS. 11 
 
 This system of a defensive village differs in certain 
 ways from anything known in other countries. I have 
 been unable to find that it had been used at an earlier 
 period in other parts of America outside of the Southern 
 colonies : it probably never was used in Europe. It is 
 likely that it is a modification of the Indian stockade, al- 
 ready known to the early settlers. It is an admirable 
 adaptation of the defensive quality of the log-house to 
 the modern rifle ; when defended by a score or two of 
 deliberate and determined men, such a fort cannot be 
 taken by escalade, for each block-house is a keep that 
 has to be taken by a special assault. The only risk is 
 from an enemy being able to fire the houses, but with a 
 sufficient supply of water a fire can readily be extin- 
 guished from the inside. Although there was no care 
 in providing these structures with a moat or ditch, they 
 proved remarkably successful forts, and were never car- 
 ried against a reasonably good resistance. This pattern 
 of stronghold became the type of all stations constructed 
 in Kentucky and elsewhere. 
 
 The weapon of these pioneers, the small-bored, long, 
 heavy-barreled rifle, was the best gun that has ever 
 been used by the frontiersman in the forest. Its small 
 charge made the supply of lead and powder less diffi- 
 cult than it would otherwise have been, and up to one 
 hundred and fifty yards (the ordinary limit of forest 
 ranges) it was an exceedingly accurate weapon. With 
 one hundred sturdy men for a garrison it would be very 
 difficult to take such a fortification, even with well-dis- 
 ciplined troops ; against Indian attacks it never failed 
 to prove a sufficient defense. 
 
 The contest with the Indians went on in a desultory 
 way while the Boonesborough fort was building ; but it 
 
78 KENTUCKY. 
 
 was not until two years after its construction, when the 
 Revolutionary War had begun and Point Pleasant had 
 been forgotten, that the Indians assailed it in force. 
 On the 15th of April, 1777, a fierce assault was made 
 upon it by a small party of savages ; but the Indians 
 were beaten off with considerable loss, while that of the 
 whites was trifling. On the 4th of July of the same 
 year another attack was made, in which the Indians 
 again lost so heavily that they hurriedly left the coun- 
 try. 
 
 On the 8th of August, 1778, they returned in much 
 larger force. The attack which they now made was 
 not like the others, a mere raid of wandering parties ; 
 the Revolutionary War was now so far advanced that 
 the savages were under the lead of British officers, and 
 under their direction acted with far more skill than 
 they could do alone. In this last great attack the fort 
 was summoned by a British officer acting under his own 
 flag, so that this capital little event deserves a place 
 among the actions of the Revolutionary War. When 
 summoned to surrender, Boone obtained two days for 
 deliberation, which appears to have been granted under 
 singular conditions, for it is stated that he used the 
 time in getting the cattle into the fort, and in other 
 preparations for resistance. He then, with the unani- 
 mous approval of his garrison, resolved to withstand a 
 siege. After this well-contrived beginning, Boone, who 
 seems to have had a rather unsuspicious nature, .ac- 
 cepted an invitation to go with eight of his men be- 
 yond the walls of the fort for further treaty. After 
 some parleying the enemy attempted to capture the 
 party, but they escaped to the fort under a fire that 
 wounded only one man. The active siege of several 
 
EAIiLY SETTLEMENTS. 79 
 
 days proved fatal to a large number of the assailants. 
 The British commander then endeavored to drive a tun- 
 nel from the river bank into the fort ; but this was dis- 
 covered in time, and effectually countermined by the 
 defenders. On the next day the siege was raised, the 
 Indians having sustained a loss, it is said, of thirty- 
 seven killed, while the loss of the garrison was only 
 two killed and four wounded. 
 
 After this, the last siege of Boonesborough, the forti- 
 fied posts of Kentucky were rapidly pushed into the 
 fertile and attractive Blue Grass region of Central Ken- 
 tucky, and soon became so numerous that Boone's Sta- 
 tion was no longer of importance, and other posts re- 
 ceived the blows which the Indians delivered against 
 the increasing settlements. 
 
 In December, 1776, Kentftcky County was divided 
 from the County of Fincastle in Virginia, Harrodsburg 
 being designated as a county seat. This was the first 
 legislative recognition on the part of the mother colony 
 of the individuality of the western settlements. Hith- 
 erto Kentucky had been legally only the western fringe 
 of the outermost Virginia county. 
 
 The pressure of the Revolutionary War upon the re- 
 sources of Virginia was so serious that we find no rec- 
 ognition of the Kentucky settlements during the year 
 1777. But in 1778, the raids of the Indians in Ken- 
 tucky having evidently been instigated by the British, 
 Colonel George Rogers Clark, who was afterward to 
 play a large part in Western affairs, was sent with an 
 expedition against the posts in Illinois. With one hun- 
 dred and thirty-five men, mostly persons who had been 
 trained in Indian warfare, he made a very remarkable 
 forced march throuirh the wilderness from the Ohio 
 
80 KENTUCKY, 
 
 River to Kaskaskia, and captured the place by surprise. 
 In swift succession he took Cahokia and Vincennes. 
 Coming in the same summer with the great failure of 
 the British aud Indians in the third siege of Boones- 
 borough, these important events did much to affirm the 
 position of the Kentucky settlements. The pioneers 
 were yet to endure severe tests, but their achievements 
 gave them a measure of their strength aud a gauge of 
 valorous actions, so that henceforth they felt strong 
 enough to maintain their place. Their victories made 
 the ground seem their own. 
 
 At the end of his campaign Clark built a fort at the 
 falls of the Ohio, the first stronghold on this stream. 
 By one of his swift movements he repossessed himself 
 in February, 1779, of Vincennes, which the British 
 from Detroit, under Governor Hamilton, had recaptured 
 in December. In the next year, inspired by the suc- 
 cess of his campaigns, another movement was carried 
 north from the Ohio against the Indians at Chillicothe. 
 This expedition was beaten back to Kentucky, but the 
 Indian town was burned and two chiefs killed. 
 
 ^j the end of this year that part of Kentucky which 
 lies north of the Kentucky River had been occupied 
 by several small stations. Notwithstanding the Revo- 
 lutionary War, perhaps in part on account of the dis- 
 turbances which it brought about in Eastern Virginia, a 
 heavy immigration into Kentucky began in 1780. The 
 annual tide of immigration in this and the following 
 years mu^t have amounted to at least five thousand 
 souls per annum. Three hundred boats, containing at 
 least three thousand people, descended the Ohio to 
 Louisville this year. Monette estimates that the popu- 
 lation in 1783 amounted to about 12,000. In 1784 it is 
 
EARLY SETTLEAfENTS. 81 
 
 estimated that it amounted to 30,000. In this and 
 many following years the work of war and settlement 
 went on together. A column of British and Indians 
 about six hundred strong, with two pieces of artillery, 
 penetrated Eastern Kentucky and captured two stations 
 near where Paris now stands. They did not remain to 
 try conclusions with the settlers, who swiftly gathered 
 to meet them, but escaped in safety to Detroit, whence 
 they came. The blow was revenged by a counter 
 stroke from the ever ready Clark, who first built a 
 block-house fort at Cincinnati, where the British had 
 crossed the stream, to guard against future raids up the 
 Licking Valley, and then went northwards to ravage 
 the towns of Piqua and Chillicothe. 
 
 Settlements now began to spring up all over the area 
 of good lands. The Virginia government erected a fort 
 on the Mississippi, a few miles below the junction of the 
 Ohio, thus marking the westernmost limits of the col- 
 ony. The original county of Kentucky was divided 
 into three : Jefferson, Lincoln, and Fayette, each with a 
 military commander having the rank of colonel, who 
 had under him a surveyor-general of lands. 
 
 The year 1781 was an uneventful one, the only seri- 
 ous action being an assault on the garrison of the Mis- 
 sissippi fort by the Chickasaws and Cherokees, which, 
 though repulsed, was ominous of trouble to come, for it 
 brought those tribes, which had previously given little 
 trouble to the whites, into the list of their numerous 
 enemies. 
 
 The establishment of this fort was the work of Gov- 
 ernor Jefferson. It was an unnecessary demonstration 
 of energy, such as is apt to happen when an effort is 
 made to manage the difficult business of governing a 
 
82 KENTUCKY. 
 
 colony with a long arm. Against this blunder we may 
 set the general sagacity and liberality of Virginia's man- 
 agement of KentuckJ^ affairs. Even in the distress 
 of the Revolution, she had always something to spare 
 for her more sorely tried children of the western hills, 
 and no Virginian ever had a warmer heart towards 
 Kentucky than Jefferson. He had a keen imagination, 
 and a singular power of projecting his sympathies afar. 
 In the preceding year he had secured a large gift of 
 lands for the work of education in Kentucky. Virginia 
 had nothing else to give, and the gift was an easy one 
 to make ; but it deserves to be remembered that in the 
 time of severest trial the mother colony bethought her- 
 self of the intellectual interests of these far-away chil- 
 dren. 
 
 In 1782, the struggle with the British and Indians 
 was even more fierce and sanguinary than in the pre- 
 ceding years. In March, a party of about seventy-five 
 Wyandot Indians crossed the Kentucky River above 
 Boonesborough ; their presence in tlie country was made 
 known by the fact that a raft which they had used 
 in crossing the river, and then turned adrift, floated by 
 the fort. The commander of the fort, who with the 
 sagacity of the frontiersman correctly interpreted this 
 sign, sent runners to warn the neighboring stations. 
 The men of Estill's Station went in search of the enemy, 
 but in the chances of the forest did not come upon the 
 savages until they had been to the station and killed a 
 young woman within sight of the fort. Near Mount 
 Sterling the pursuing whites caught up with the enemy 
 and at once assailed them. At first the Indians were 
 driven back, but their chief being sorely wounded they 
 rallied about him. The whites followed their usual 
 
EARLY SETTLEMENTS. 83 
 
 tactics, and detached six of their tweuty-five men to 
 turn the Indian flank and deprive them of the protec- 
 tion that the timber afforded them. These men of the 
 flanking party were seized with a panic and fled ; the 
 remaining Indians rushed upon the diminished force of 
 the whites, and after a fierce hand-to-hand struggle 
 drove them from the ground. Estill, the commander, 
 was killed, and six of his men met their death from the 
 tomahawk. Measured by the forces engaged or the loss 
 in killed, the affair was a trifling one ; but it showed in 
 the Indians a quality of determination which indicated 
 that they were becoming better skilled and steadier in 
 warfare, and that they were, numbers for numbers, quite 
 the equal of the whites. 
 
 In August of this year, a party of whites, under Cap- 
 tain Holder, attacked a party of Indians at the upper 
 Blue Licks, and was worsted, with a loss of four men. 
 In the same month a force of six hundred Indians be- 
 longing to various tribes, and commanded by the famous 
 Simon Girty, moved unseen across the northern part 
 of the State and surprised Bryan's Station, situated at 
 a point about five miles north of Lexington. Fortu- 
 nately, the fifty men of the station were engaged in night 
 preparations for an expedition to avenge Holder's de- 
 feat. This deterred Girty from his purpose of carrying 
 the neglected and weak fortification by storm, for the 
 notes of preparation within it satisfied him that his 
 movement was discovered. But it was not until the 
 gate was thrown open to permit the marching forth 
 of the command on their way to the Blue Licks that 
 a volley from the savages showed the whites that they 
 had a foe at their doors. They were in no condition 
 for effective defense ; their palisades needed repair, and 
 
84 KENTUCKY. 
 
 the fort was destitute of water, the spring being at a 
 considerable distance from the gates. This want of 
 water was a common difficulty in these stations, and in 
 several sieges led to great suffering. At first sight it 
 seems a very stupid neglect of the most ordinary pre- 
 cautions, yet, like the other stupidities of a clear-headed 
 and generally prudent people, it admits of explanation. 
 The first necessity of a station was that it should have 
 a salubrious site, and this is never obtainable at points 
 where a spring breaks forth. The fact that at almost 
 any point in Kentucky a well will procure water was 
 as yet unknown, and was against the prevailing opinion 
 of the time, which was that the water all ran in special 
 underground streams. Some notice of invasions was 
 always hoped for, giving time for water enough to be 
 stored in the fort to meet the needs of a siege. 
 
 The garrison of the station acted quickly and effect- 
 ually. Two mounted messengers at once broke through 
 the Indian lines to carry warning to other stations. 
 Everything depended on these runners getting away, 
 and many of the most valorous acts of this border war- 
 fare centre around these sallies. Thtn the women were 
 told that the safety of the fort demanded that they un- 
 dertake to bring a supply of water from the spring, the 
 leaders judging that the Indians would not fire on them, 
 as thereby they would unmask their place of assault. 
 The event showed that they estimated their foe rightly. 
 These brave creatures went in a body to the spring, and 
 returned with a supply large enough to meet all needs. 
 It is probable that the reader will not altogether like 
 this episode. It seems an ungallant thing for men be- 
 hind barricades to send women into the open before the 
 guns of an enemy. Yet as we cannot question the 
 
EARLY SETTLEMENTS. 85 
 
 valor of these men, we are forced to believe that it cost 
 them more to send the women on such an errand than 
 to have charged upon the hidden foe ; we must, how- 
 ever unwillingly, admire the clear-sighted craft that 
 remedied their otherwise fatal deficiency. 
 
 As soon as the fort was supplied with w^ater, the 
 leader, Captain Craig, made another shrewd move. A 
 detachment of thirteen of the younger men was sent 
 out to attack the savages, who had made a feint against 
 the side of the fort away from the spring. They were 
 to fire as fast as possible and make a great din, in order 
 that the force presumably in ambush on the spring side, 
 supposing that the whole garrison was engaged in the 
 sally, might make their contemplated assault on the 
 point which they expected to find undefended. The plan 
 succeeded as it deserved. The principal body of the 
 enemy believed that the whole garrison had been in- 
 veigled into a battle beyond the walls. The party of 
 Indians making the feint rapidly fell back, as they were 
 instructed to do, and as soon as the sound of firing 
 showed that their pursuers were far from the fort, the 
 main body of Indians, several hundred in number, 
 sprang from their hiding-places and rushed upon the 
 seemingly unmanned wall. They met the steady fire 
 of forty well-aimed rifles, and, after a courageous as- 
 sault, were beaten back with great loss. While the foe 
 was endeavoring to carry this wall, the party that had 
 made the sally, informed by the firing that their work 
 was done, returned through the opposite gateway, before 
 the foe, baffled in their assault, had closed around the 
 fort for a regular siege. 
 
 The mounted men who broke through the Indian 
 lines at dawn found the Lexington garrison on its way 
 
86 KENTUCKY. 
 
 to Blue Licks. By hard marching, these men, a part 
 on horseback and a part on foot, hastened to the fort. 
 Girty, knowing that messengers had broken out, laid an 
 ambush for the returning forces near the station, where 
 the narrow road was bordered on one side by high corn 
 and on the other by a dense wood. The eager rescuers 
 fell into the trap, but the horsemen knew that to turn 
 about would be fatal, since it would give the foe time 
 for aiming ; so they spurred through the fire and won 
 the fort, their speed and the cloud of dust making the 
 aim of the excited savages so poor that none of them 
 were killed. Scurrying horsemen are bad targets, and 
 the western rifle, on account of its length and weight, is 
 the worst possible arm for use on moving objects ; more- 
 over the Indian appears always to have been less steady 
 under the strain of excitement than the white man. 
 The footmen who were creeping to the fort through the 
 maize came to the rescue of the horsemen, to be scat- 
 tered before the tenfold force of their enemy ; but most 
 of them, owing to the shelter of the high-growing In- 
 dian corn, escaped ; only six were killed. When night 
 came Girty was discouraged. His force had lost heav- 
 ily, the beleaguered garrison had received a daring re- 
 enforcement, and he knew that overwhelming forces 
 would soon be upon him from neighboring stations. 
 Whatever was to be done must be done at once. There- 
 fore, sheltering himself in the darkness, he crept to a 
 place behind a stump, whence he hailed the garrison 
 and demanded their surrender. The colloquy is so pic- 
 turesque that we give it as Collins tells it : ^ — 
 
 " He highly commended their courage, but assured 
 them that further resistance would be madness, as he 
 1 See CoUius, ii. p. 190. 
 
EARLY SETTLEMENTS. 87 
 
 had six hundred warriors with him, and was in hourly 
 expectation of reenforcements with artillery, which 
 would instantly blow their cabins into the air ; that if 
 the fort was taken by storm, as it certainly would be 
 when their cannon arrived, it would be impossible for 
 him to save their lives ; but if they surrendered at once, 
 he gave them his word that not a hair of their heads 
 should be injured. He told them his name, inquired 
 whether they knew him, and assured them that they 
 might safely trust to his honor. 
 
 " The garrison listened in silence to his speech, and 
 many of them looked very blank at the mention of the 
 artillery, as the Indians had^ on one occasion, brought 
 cannon with them and destroyed two stations. But a 
 young man by the name of Reynolds, highly distin- 
 guished for courage, energy, and a frolicsome gayety 
 of temper, perceiving the effect of Girty's speech, took 
 upon himself to reply to it. , 
 
 " To Girty's inquiry, ' whether the garrison knew 
 him,' Reynolds replied, ' that he was very well known ; 
 that he himself had a worthless dog, to which he had 
 given the name of " Simon Girty," in consequence of 
 his striking resemblance to the man of that name ; that 
 if he had either artillery or reenforcements, he might 
 bring them and be d — d ; that if either himself or any 
 of the naked rascals with him found their way into the 
 fort, they would disdain to use their guns against them, 
 but would drive them out again with switches, of which 
 they had collected a great number for that purpose 
 alone ; and finally, he declared that they also expected 
 reenforcements ; that the whole country was marching 
 to their assistance, and that if Girty and his gang of 
 murderers remained twenty -four hours longer before 
 
88 KENTUCKY. 
 
 the fort, their scalps would be found drying in the sun 
 upon the roofs of their cabins.' 
 
 " Girty took great offense at the tone and language 
 of the young Kentuckian, and retired with an expres- 
 sion of sorrow for the inevitable destruction which 
 awaited them on the following morning. He quickly 
 rejoined the chiefs, and instant preparations were made 
 for raising the siege. The night passed away in un- 
 interrupted tranquillity, and at daylight in the morning 
 the Indian camp was found deserted. Fires were still 
 burning brightly, and several pieces of meat were left 
 upon their roasting-sticks, from which it was inferred 
 that they had retreated a short time before daylight." 
 
 Not long after the Indians decamped, forces from 
 other stations began to arrive ; by noon there was a 
 party of one hundred and sixty men together. As the 
 Indian force was estimated at six hundred, and as ex- 
 perience had proved that this race was as formidable 
 after defeat as after victory, prudent advisers counseled 
 waiting. until a larger force was gathered. Such a delay 
 was likely, however, to give the Indians a chance to 
 escape altogether ; so, although Boone, Todd, Trigg, and 
 forty-five other commissioned ofiicers were in the coun- 
 cil of war, immediate pursuit was undertaken. It will 
 be observed that even in this early day the proportion 
 of titled men to the untitled was about one in three, 
 but they deserved their brevets. Late on the morning 
 of the 19 th of August the speedy march brought the 
 pioneers upon Girty's force. It was evident to Boone 
 and the other more deliberate soldiers that the Indians 
 were loitering with the expectation of pursuit ; and to 
 any men disposed to take counsel of their fears the sit- 
 uation of the whites was at least a very grave one. 
 
EARLY SETTLEMENTS. 89 
 
 They were in face of thrice their number, from whom 
 even to receive an attack would have been extremely 
 perilous. To give such an overwhelming foe the im- 
 mense advantage which in forest contests belongs to the 
 defender is madness to any but these wild spirits thirst- 
 ing for vengeance. The true military policy would 
 have been to fall back towards the oncoming force of 
 three hundred men under Logan of Lincoln. After 
 that the best thing would have been to fortify them- 
 selves where they were, and await the attack which the 
 Indians would probably deliver. Boone was the natural 
 leader of the force, and though a cool-headed man was 
 too diffident to assert his opinions. 
 
 Todd was actually in command, if any one could 
 have been deemed in command of such an undisciplined 
 body. Boone advised either that they await the coming 
 of Logan, or that if an immediate attack were resolved 
 upon their party be divided and a portion used for a 
 flank attack, so as to deprive the savages of the full 
 measure of protection which the timber would afford 
 against an assault in front. He knew the country well, 
 and while a thoroughly brave man, he was disposed to 
 fight with foresight and an eye to the shifts of the wary 
 race he had been combating for the previous ten years. 
 While the deliberation was going on, a certain Major 
 McGary swung his hat in the air and cried, " Let all 
 who are not cowards follow me." This was a challenge 
 that made an end of deliberation. Among the men of 
 that day a banter to any act of daring was a thing not 
 to be considered, but to be accepted without debate. 
 
 The whole party, horse and foot commingled, rushed 
 into the Licking River and struggled to the opposite 
 shore. Before them was a slope, worn bare by the 
 
90 KENTUCKY. 
 
 trampling of the buffalo on the way to the salt springs 
 which lay a little beyond. Pursuing this path of the 
 wild cattle, they went pell-mell for the distance of a 
 mile before they encountered the enemy. Wearied and 
 disordered by their long charge they came at last to a 
 point where the ridge they were traversing was cut by 
 bush-clad ravines on either side. Then at once from 
 the dense, brushy wood there came upon them a with- 
 ering fire from the Indian rifles, which quickly brought 
 them to a stand. When the advance of the whites was 
 arrested, the Indians skillfully began to extend their 
 lines so as to enfold the thinned ranks of the whites as 
 in a net. As soon as this object became plain, a panic 
 as wild as their late confidence seized on these men, 
 and they rushed back towards the river with the In- 
 dians in furious pursuit. There was a fierce struggle 
 at the ford, where the tide of flight and chase plunged 
 together into the stream. A score or so of the horse- 
 men succeeded in crossing the stream before the mass 
 of the fugitives were overwhelmed by their pursuers. 
 One of their number, by the name of Netherland, who 
 had previously been regarded as cowardly, succeeded 
 in rallying some of his comrades, so that he brought a 
 well-directed fire upon the advancing enemy, arresting 
 for a moment the pursuit. But for this action few of 
 the footmen would have escaped. As it was, the respite 
 was brief. The Indians crossed the river above and 
 below the ford, and sought to surround the fugitives. 
 The beaten Kentuckians dispersed through the forest, 
 finding their way by circuitous routes to their homes. 
 
 In this action the loss of the whites was about sixty- 
 seven killed and seven made prisoners, or near one half 
 the men engaged. It amounted to about one tenth of 
 
EARLY SETTLEMENTS. 91 
 
 the fighting men in Central Kentucky, and unhappily 
 included a very large number of the natural leaders of 
 the settlements. Colonels Todd and Trigg, Majors 
 Harlan and Bulger, and Captains Gordon, Bulger, Mc- 
 Bride, and Lindsey, were among the slain. Boone's 
 son Israel was mortally wounded in the fight ; his fa- 
 ther succeeded in bearing him from the field and into 
 the forest, beyond the line of the struggle, where, alone, 
 he watched him until he died. 
 
 This terrible defeat seemed for a moment to cow 
 the spirit of the settlers. Even Boone, in a letter to 
 the Governor of Virginia, said that unless five hundred 
 troops were sent to aid in the defense, the country could 
 hardly be held. This feeling was, however, but mo- 
 mentary. When Colonel Clarke called for troops to 
 avenge this raid of the Indians by a foray into Ohio, 
 nearly a thousand men answered his summons, and ren- 
 dezvoused at the mouth of the Licking River, where 
 Covington now stands. This force ravaged a number 
 of large Indian settlements on the upper waters of the 
 Great Miami, destroying a large area of corn-fields and 
 burning the dwellinors. 
 
 The principle that appears to have underlaid the 
 white warfare in these years was to abstain from inva- 
 sions north of the Ohio, except in retaliation for Indian 
 raids, and then to make them much more destructive 
 than the blows they avenged. Thus, in time, the prin- 
 ciple of profit and loss led the red men to be less will- 
 ing to rouse a hornet's nest about their ears by their 
 forays. In fact, the vengeance taken for Girty's raid 
 was so severe that no other large concerted invasions 
 of Kentucky were undertaken, though for many years 
 small bands of Indians in search of plunder often crossed 
 
92 KENTUCKY. 
 
 the Ohio. The treaty of peace between Great Britain 
 and the United States, the news of which came to this 
 district in the spring of 1783, also did much to end the 
 larije and deliberate contests between the Indians and 
 whites. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SEPARATION FROM VIRGINIA. 
 
 The years 1783 and 1784 were years of cousolida- 
 tion and growth. The i3opulation was still so scattered 
 that there was no commerce. It is on record that the 
 second store of the colony was opened in 1783, and the 
 third in the following year. As the white population, 
 within the bounds of the present State, was now some- 
 where about thirty thousand souls, the primitive condi- 
 tion of supply is indicated by these facts. In these 
 years the first distilleries were started. From all we 
 can learn, it appears that the first decade of Kentucky 
 life must have been lived without any considerable 
 amount of alcoholic stimulus. The art of brewing, 
 which the colonists brought from England, was lost in 
 Virsfinia, where beer was never a common drink, and 
 the still was a contrivance too costly to find a place in 
 the life of a people who had returned to very primitive 
 ways of living, and had nothing to spare for luxuries. 
 
 The rapid gain in confidence which came from the 
 natural growth of these years and the diminution of In- 
 dian raids shows itself in the political movements which 
 now began to stir among the people. The pioneers 
 having secured the beginnings of the State, desired to 
 have their future life in their own hands. On every 
 side arose a demand for a parting from Virginia and 
 for separate life. There was no clamor or ill-will in the 
 
94 KENTUCKY. 
 
 movement, and no suggestion of enmity toward the 
 beloved mother colony, who had never sought to make 
 any profit from her western dependency. Virginia was 
 held in deserved affection ; she had never failed to give 
 help when it was called for, even in the most trying 
 years of the Revolution, and had never sought any rec- 
 ompense for her gifts. 
 
 This request for independence was received in the 
 best possible spirit by Virginia. In 1786 the General 
 Assembly of that State passed the first act for the sep- 
 aration of Kentucky, setting certain conditions on which 
 the colony might go free. The conditions were as fol- 
 lows : The free white male inhabitants were to choose 
 five representatives from each county. These were to 
 determine whether the people demanded independence. 
 If so, they were to fix a date later than September 1, 
 1787, for the separation, the parting to take effect only 
 on condition that, prior to June 1, 1787, Congress 
 should assent to the admission of Kentucky into the 
 Federal Union. 
 
 The processes that led to this act of partition have 
 for us a special interest, inasmuch as they throw some 
 light on the conditions of society at that time. The 
 difficulties arising from the remote position of Kentucky 
 and the slowness of communication with Virginia be- 
 came evident during the struggle with the Indians. The 
 colony had in effect little more than the sympathy of 
 Virginia, for the aid in troops, though willingly given, 
 always came too late for defensive action. The danger 
 arising from savage invasion was sudden, and had to be 
 dealt with quite independent of the Virginia govern- 
 ment. It is likely that the demand for independence 
 would have originated even earlier than it did, but for 
 
SEPARATION FROM VIRGINIA. 95 
 
 the doubts and fears that the Revolutionary War brought 
 upon the country. Whatever may have been the desire 
 for a more effective government, which could only be 
 secured by independence, it could not take shape until 
 that momentous question was settled. The first conven- 
 tion intended to consider the matter of independence 
 was held in Danville on December 27, 1784. It was 
 called by General Logan and some other citizens, who 
 met in their private capacity in the preceding February. 
 They advised that each militia company in Kentucky 
 should elect one delegate to the convention. Thus, the 
 first general convention rested naturally and fitly on a 
 military basis. The question of parting from Virginia 
 was gravely debated. Despite the diversity of opinion, 
 there was an overwhelming majority in favor of asking 
 the mother government for an act of separation ; yet, 
 with a conservative instinct, the convention did not deem 
 it well to act on its own responsibility, but limited itself 
 to advising the citizens to choose at their annual elec- 
 tion a convention of twenty-five delegates, who should 
 determine the matter in a final way. There was every 
 sign of an extreme care in the way in which this ques- 
 tion was approached. 
 
 The patience with which the problem of separation 
 from Virginia was treated, both by the mother State and 
 by the people of the Kentucky settlements, was prob- 
 ably in part to be attributed to the unhappy results of 
 a similar experiment that was then going on in the val- 
 ley of the Tennessee. In 1784 North Carolina, grow- 
 ing impatient of the burden that her western settle- 
 ments imposed upon her treasury, and irritated by the 
 complaints of the people in those districts, passed an 
 act conveying to the Federal government all the lands 
 
96 KENTUCKY. 
 
 that now constitute the State of Tennessee. The peo- 
 ple of the country that is now Eastern Tennessee feel- 
 ing themselves left without a government, made haste 
 to organize themselves into an independent common- 
 wealth, which they called, as a tribute of respect to the 
 illustrious philosopher, the State of Franklin. These 
 people ajiplied for admission into the Union, but the 
 Federal government being slow and unwilling to act, 
 and North Carolina having repealed the act of cession 
 of her western provinces to the Union, the State of 
 Franklin came into very troubled waters for some years. 
 There was a conflict of authority in this region which 
 led to a premature decadence of the Tennessee settle- 
 ments, and in time to violent misrule of the country. 
 Some efforts were made to persuade the Kentuckians 
 to join themselves to the State of Franklin, a provision 
 having been made for such cooperation in the constitu- 
 tion of the experiment, but they came to nothing. The 
 new State gradually fell to pieces, and in 1787 its bril- 
 liant and able Governor, John Sevier, was put on trial 
 for high treason. He was released by a daring rescue, 
 and subsequently pardoned and restored in name to the 
 leadership, which he never lost in the affections of his 
 people. These very picturesque incidents were exceed- 
 ingly unprofitable to the Tennesseans. They served, 
 however, to deter a part of the Kentucky people from 
 any rash experiments with their government.^ 
 
 The second convention assembled in May, 1785, and 
 after deliberation decided that a separation was desira- 
 ble ; but, continuing their cautious course, they asked 
 the people to review the circumstances, which the con- 
 
 1 For a further history of the State of Franklin, see the excellent 
 account given by Eamsey, in his Annals of Tennessee, pp. 282 et seq. 
 
SEPARATION FROM VIRGINIA. 97 
 
 vention presented in the form of an address, and finally 
 determine the question of their political future. By the 
 time the third convention assembled, in the following 
 August, the threat of a new Indian outbreak and the 
 evident inefficiency of the Virginia government had in- 
 creased the desire to make good the independence of 
 the settlements, so that a rather vigorous petition for 
 separation was drawn up and forwarded by a committee 
 to the Virginia Assembly. 
 
 The Virginia Assembly promptly agreed to the 
 proposition, annexing thereto certain reasonable condi- 
 tions, the most important of which was that a fourth 
 convention should affirm it to be the will of the people 
 that they should separate, and that the Federal Con- 
 gress should, in advance, consent to the admission of 
 Kentucky into the Federal Union. 
 
 Now began a political conflict of a very curious 
 kind. The Federal Union was a new, and as yet un- 
 proven, experiment in government; the two years of 
 its trial had not served to show its usefulness ; on the 
 contrary, it seemed to be utterly without power to en- 
 force its authority in the West. The peace between 
 the United States and the British had enfeebled but 
 not ended the desultory war between the savages and 
 British on the one hand, and the Kentuckians on the 
 other. The British still held their fortified posts within 
 the American territory : the new-made peace seemed at 
 most a half-regarded armistice. The provisions of the 
 treaty which were of most importance to the Ken- 
 tuckians, namely, the surrender of the British posts in 
 the Northwest, were not carried into effect for several 
 years. There was a general fear that a great Indian 
 invasion was imminent ; small conflicts were of fre- 
 7 
 
98 KENTUCKY. 
 
 quent occurrence. The fault, it must be confessed, was 
 in good part with the whites. Wandering bands of 
 whites, rough fellows, who had come to look upon the 
 Indians as natural enemies, were constantly committing 
 outrages on the Indians both north and south of Ken- 
 tucky. It was natural that the savages should avenge 
 the assaults by raids on the white settlements. The set- 
 tlers, knowing little of the circumstances that led to 
 these acts of war, were convinced that nothing but the 
 extermination of all the neighboring Indian tribes would 
 bring a permanent peace. 
 
 The United States made treaty after treaty with the 
 Indians, but the Federal government was as a military 
 power weaker than many of the separate States, and 
 did nothing to chastise the savages when they broke 
 their treaties of peace. Therefore it was natural that 
 the Kentucky people, who knew little about the great 
 difficulties in the way of the Federal government, and 
 who as men accustomed to vigorous action were disposed 
 to despise its inefficiency, should have chafed at the 
 limitation placed by Virginia on the consent to their 
 independence, which required them to sue for and gain 
 the consent of the Federal government before they 
 could have the freedom of action which seemed to them 
 so vitally necessary. At this point, General Wilkinson, 
 of Fayette County, a man well fitted for leadership, but 
 a conspirer by nature, as was shown by his subsequent 
 behavior in the Spanish intrigues, undertook to form a 
 party for the immediate and unconditional separation of 
 the settlements from Virginia. Wilkinson, for a time a 
 soldier in the Revolutionary Army, was a trader who 
 did a good deal to develop the early commerce of the 
 country. It appears likely that the cultivation of to- 
 
SEPAEA TION FROM VIRGINIA. 99 
 
 bacco, which furnished the first agricultural export of 
 the State, the first export of any kind except a few pel- 
 tries, was due to him. We shall have in the sequel to 
 trace in some detail the career of this singular man. 
 
 This scheme of secession found much approval among 
 the military class of the community. The natural course 
 of events had led to the creation of a military caste in 
 the settlements. The only strong organizations were 
 the military companies, and their commanders held a 
 position of peculiar honor, and naturally felt their im- 
 portance. In a separate state that would be sure of a 
 rapid development, they could expect to retain and 
 magnify their offices; while under the United States 
 government, which had already forbidden their little 
 wars with the Indians beyond the Ohio, they would of 
 course sink into insignificance. Thus out of a milita- 
 rism came the first political danger of this young State. 
 
 Wilkinson succeeded by despicable tricks in securing 
 his election as a member of the convention that it was 
 hoped would finally determine the political position of 
 the Commonwealth. By the time the election was over, 
 a new political notion began to take shape in his schem- 
 ing brain. The treaty of peace with Great Britain 
 had left the question of the navigation of the Missis- 
 sippi in a peculiar position. The Spaniards were now 
 in possession of all the country on both sides of the 
 river below the parallel of thirty-one degrees. Holding 
 the banks of the Mississippi, that power had undoubted 
 right to control the navigation of the river below that 
 point to the sea. The Kentuckians, foreseeing that the 
 right to navigate this stream to its mouth would soon 
 be of the utmost importance to their development, im- 
 mediately began to discuss the matter of this right. It 
 
100 KENTUCKY. 
 
 was hard for them to believe that the water which flowed 
 by their door could not freely bear their boats on to the 
 Gulf of Mexico. From the propriety and commercial 
 necessity of their being able to pass by it to the high 
 seas, they quickly proceeded to the assumption that the 
 right was theirs, and that only the feeble action of the 
 Federal government deprived them of it. This grudge 
 against the new central government was intensified by 
 the fact that, soon after the Virginia Assembly had me- 
 morialized Congress to the effect that the free naviga- 
 tion of the Mississippi should be insisted on, John Jay, 
 then Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and also commis- 
 sioner to treat with the Spanish envoy, offered to sus- 
 pend the claim to this free navigation for a period of 
 twenty-five years, in consideration of certain other con- 
 cessions to American commerce that in no way inter- 
 ested the people of the Ohio Valley. At this time Con- 
 gress sat in New York ; it was a far cry to Kentucky ; 
 news came slowly and mostly by rumor. Wilkinson's 
 party — we must believe with fraudulent intent — spread 
 the report that it was Congress that was making this 
 arrangement with the Spaniards ; when in fact it was 
 only a matter of discussion between Mr. Jay and the 
 Spanish envoy, and never was presented to Congress. 
 
 Since it was evident from the turn taken in the local 
 debates that the people could not easily be led into a 
 resolution to try separation from the Federal govern- 
 ment, Wilkinson's party bethought themselves of an- 
 other device, which was that the people of the settle- 
 ments should see what terms could be made directly with 
 the Spaniards, to insure the future of the State on this 
 important matter of an outlet to the sea. It is evident 
 that there was a clear and momentous object in their 
 
SEPARATION FROM VIRGINIA. 101 
 
 minds ; for although Wilkinson had been elected at the 
 cost of many diverse expedients to the exceedingly im- 
 portant convention in which his presence was neces- 
 sary for all the plans of his cabal, he started on a jour- 
 ney to New Orleans, where he remained several montlis. 
 On his return to Kentucky, he brought a curious private 
 trading treaty, which permitted him to import " free of 
 duty all the productions of Kentucky." It allowed him 
 to furnish tobacco to the Spanish government at about 
 ten cents per pound, or five times the price then paid 
 for it in Kentucky. 
 
 Wilkinson's return was made in great state. It is 
 said that he came back in a chariot drawn by four 
 horses, with a retinue of slaves ; but this must apply to 
 the last part of his journey, as there was at that time 
 no wa^on road to the south. His friends received him 
 as an ambassador who had won ffreat concessions from a 
 foreign sovereign, claiming that he had secured by his 
 personal negotiation that which the Federal government 
 had offered to barter away. The results of his work 
 were used as evidence that the Kentucky community 
 could do very well with its interests if the impotent Fed- 
 eral government no longer had a hold upon them. 
 John Brown, an educated gentleman who had repre- 
 sented Kentucky in the Virginia Assembly, and had 
 been appointed by that government as one of the dele- 
 gates to Congress, became convinced that the opposition 
 on the part of the Northern States to the admission of 
 Kentucky was very strong; and it is asserted that by 
 private letters he advised the abandonment of the proj- 
 ect of union, and that the Kentucky people set up as an 
 independent State. He gave it as the result of his con- 
 ferences with the Spanish minister that the State of 
 
102 KENTUCKY. 
 
 Kentucky would, if independent, be able to make terms 
 with tliat government which would not be granted to 
 the United States. It seems most likely that Brown 
 did not really intend to oppose the entrance of Ken- 
 tucky into the Union, but only desired to coerce the 
 Federal government into the admission of Kentucky by 
 the threat of independent action. 
 
 All these circumstances tended to give great strength 
 to the separatist party. To make matters worse, the 
 convention, called to meet at Danville, hung fire on ac- 
 count of the absence of many of its members on the 
 fruitless expedition of General Clark against the No- 
 bosh Indians ; and when, after months of waiting, it got 
 a quorum together, the question of the time of parting 
 from Virginia and of admission into the Union seemed 
 so difficult that no advance was made toward the de- 
 sired end. One convention followed another, each put- 
 ting forth the call of its successor, or being summoned 
 to meet by the Virginia Assembly ; but it was not until 
 the third act for separation had been passed by Vir- 
 ginia, and the seventh convention had met in Kentucky, 
 that the parting was effected. Six years elapsed during 
 this period of disordered relations. It would be very 
 interesting to trace in detail the progress of the nego- 
 tiations with Virginia and the United States govern- 
 ment ; but though it forms one of the most important 
 chapters in the history of the State, it cannot be told 
 without taking too much of the limited space of this 
 volume. The matter may be briefly summed up as 
 follows. 
 
 Virginia was from the first willing that Kentucky 
 should go on tliev independent path which she had so 
 valiantly opened while a dependency, but was unwilling 
 
SEPARATION FROM VIRGINIA. 103 
 
 that the event should take place until the Federal Con- 
 gress was ready to accept Kentucky as a new State. 
 At this time Congress was wrestling with the problem 
 of the new constitution. The success in forming and 
 affirming this constitution seemed a very doubtful and 
 certainly was a very difficult problem. The admission 
 of a new State containing people known to be disaf- 
 fected toward the Union appeared likely further to com- 
 plicate the sufficiently estranged relations of the jarring 
 units of the government. It was perfectly natural that 
 the old Congress should feel it important for the admis- 
 sion of Kentucky to follow rather than to precede the 
 ratification of the new constitution. 
 
 Despite the uuhapp}'- results of the Franklin experi- 
 ment, which were now becoming evident, these delays 
 greatly favored the development of the disunion party ; 
 BO that when the citizens of Virginia voted on the ques- 
 tion of the new constitution, although Virginia as a 
 whole ratified that instrument by a vote of eighty-eight 
 to seventy- eight, the Kentucky representatives cast but 
 three votes for it to eleven against it. This gives a fair 
 measure of the state of mind of a large part, but proba- 
 bly not the majority, of the people at that time. The 
 greater part of the political leaders of Kentucky were 
 incensed at the refusal of the Federal government to 
 receive them. They desired that the constitution should 
 not be adopted, so that they might, by the breaking up 
 of the confederation, be left free to deal with their 
 problems in their own way, without any obligation to 
 the inefficient Federal authority that controlled them 
 without proper representation. It was a renewal of the 
 motives of the Revolution of 1776, with the Federal 
 government iu place of the British power. There can 
 
104 KENTUCKY. 
 
 be no doubt that an extensive correspondence with the 
 Spanish authorities was going on in these years, and that 
 many leading men of the State were concerned in it, 
 among them Mr. Henry Innis, then attorney-general for 
 the district of Kentucky. But it seems probable, from 
 facts that will appear hereafter, that the mass of the 
 population was far from being in sympathy with them. 
 
 In the convention which met on the 3d of November, 
 1788, Wilkinson and his followers, then known as the 
 Court party, on account of the official position of its 
 principal followers, developed their plans and urged im- 
 mediate separation from Virginia by an act of revolu- 
 tion and the setting up of a sejDarate government. 
 They kept the relations that were to be established 
 with Spain for subsequent consideration, but left it to 
 be inferred that these were to be by treaty alone. 
 There is no clear evidence that any of the members of 
 the party seeking independence desired to effect a union 
 with Spain on any terms whatever. Marshall and other 
 writers are of the contrary opinion, but it is likely 
 that their opinions were colored by prejudices. When 
 it came to a decisive vote on the scheme of Wilkin- 
 son's party, it was clear that they had not a majority in 
 the convention in favor of a violent separation from 
 Virginia, though it is possible that a majority favored 
 an independent government after the State had been 
 separated in a legal way. An address was voted to 
 the Federal Congress, which renewed the prayer of the 
 people for sympathy and protection. It is a curious 
 document, the more curious when we remember that it 
 was drawn up by Wilkinson himself.^ His enemies 
 assert that he expected that the Federal Congress 
 1 Marshall, ii. 331. 
 
SEPARATION FROM VIRGINIA. 105 
 
 would be quite unable to grant the requests of the 
 petition, and that their failure to do so would enable 
 him to further his original plan. 
 
 With this action, the shadowy history of the Spanish 
 intrigues comes practically to an end. The convention 
 memorialized the Virginians once again concerning sep- 
 aration. The convention which considered this measure 
 found it unsatisfactory, because Virginia named certain 
 rights concerning lands which seemed to limit the sov- 
 ereignty of Kentucky. Two years went by in further 
 debate with the mother State concerning the details of 
 land administration, division of debt, and other neces- 
 sary preparations for admission into the Union. Dur- 
 ing this time the Wilkinson party seems gradually to 
 have abandoned their scheme for relations with Spain. 
 While Wilkinson went on with his trading ventures, the 
 others appear to have lost all interest in the matter. 
 
 There is an element of mystery in these Spanish ne- 
 gotiations which will probably never be cleared away. 
 In reviewing the evidence, it seems likely that there 
 were two distinct classes of men in the conspiracy. 
 Wilkinson and his party probably at one time desired 
 entire separation, and treaty relations with Spain. 
 There is evidence enough to make this position clear. 
 We cannot say the same of Brown and many other 
 more deliberate men. On their part it was probably a 
 piece of political manoeuvring that had for its object, 
 not a union with Spain, but the forcing of action on 
 the part of Virginia and the Federal government. 
 
 There is no doubt that Brown saw a real indisposi- 
 tion on the part of the more northern States to admit 
 the partition of Virginia, and also, perhaps, a certain 
 risk, that as Kentucky grew to be a more valuable pos- 
 
106 KENTUCKY. 
 
 session, Virginia might be more unwilling to relinquish 
 her hold upon its territory. By this feint, — which, 
 under the circumstances, was justifiable, — Brown and 
 his associates managed to urge the act of separation to 
 completion, and so ended a ten-years' struggle for in- 
 dependence. In no other way can we reconcile the 
 sudden subsidence of the intrigue with Spain so soon 
 as it became clear that the separation from Virginia 
 could be accomplished, that the Federal government was 
 willing to admit them without further delay, and that 
 this government was likely to have strength to aid in 
 their development. The action of their party is not 
 reconcilable with the supposition that Brown aftd the 
 other men of character intended to use the separatist 
 movement for anything more than a threat. 
 
 Granting, however, that the object had been separa- 
 tion from Virginia and actual independence, there is no 
 real basis for accusing the Court party of anything like 
 treasonable intents. We must remember that the Fed- 
 eral Union hardly existed when the intrigues began. 
 The confederation of the colonists proved itself too 
 weak for its purposes. Virginia had given her quali- 
 fied assent to a separation that was universally desired 
 by the Kentucky people. There was as yet no place 
 for a true allegiance to the shadowy Federal Union in 
 the history of this people. 
 
 The spirit of local independence in governmental 
 affairs had just secured its approval in the separation of 
 the mother colonies from Great Britain. These colo- 
 nies had fought their battles with the motive of local 
 and not national interest. The sense of national inter- 
 est was a thing yet to be created. If these men desired 
 to stand in name, as they had stood in fact, amid the 
 
SEPARATION FROM VIRGINIA. 107 
 
 greatest trials that can befall a community, alone and 
 self-reliant, there was no shadow of a moral objection 
 to their so doing. They as yet owed absolutely nothing 
 to the nascent Federal government. 
 
 History has shown that they would have made a great 
 mistake if they had succeeded in accomplishing their 
 apparent aim. For that verdict of time they are not 
 responsible. 
 
 There is a remarkable likeness between the incidents 
 of the separatists' struggle of 1784-90, and those of the 
 secession movement in 1860-61. In both cases the 
 greater part of the leaders were for violent action, and 
 in both cases they made the fatal error of supposing 
 that the people were v/ith them. The obstinate unwill- 
 ingness of the masses to be hurried in their political 
 action saved this people from the blunder of secession 
 in the critical moment of both centuries. Twice they 
 escaped from danger through the exercise of this sin- 
 gular political caution that has ever characterized their 
 action. The acumen of their decision in their first trial 
 deserves more credit than the second ; in the former, 
 the proposition was for a separation from a government 
 that hardly existed, and against which many valid ob- 
 jections could be urged. Such a separation would have 
 violated no pledges whatever. 
 
 In February, 17i>l, Congress passed an act admitting 
 Kentucky, to date from the 1st of June, 1792, and on 
 April of the following year a convention assembled at 
 Danville to form a State constitution. In these first 
 steps towards a union with the Federal government there 
 is no trace of hesitation or repining. There was no 
 party opposing the union ; at the time it was effected, 
 Wilkinson's cabal was silent, if not forgotten. The 
 
108 KENTUCKY. 
 
 just inference is, that the only strength that this abor- 
 tive project had among the people was due to the fact 
 that they believed themselves denied admission to the 
 Union. 
 
 During this time, while Kentucky was pleasantly oc- 
 cupied with the matter of national politics, an occupation 
 in which they always have found the keenest interest, 
 there was a busy local life and a steady inflow of immi- 
 gration. A rough census showed that in 1790 there 
 were 61,133 whites, 12,430 slaves, and 114 free blacks, 
 or a total of 73,677. At the time of separation from 
 Virginia, the population had probably increased to about 
 100,000, for with each year there was an increase of 
 the tide of immigration from Virginia and Central North 
 Carolina. 
 
 At this time, when the settlements along the Ohio 
 had taken firm root, there came into Kentucky a con- 
 siderable immigration from the northern States of the 
 Union. A large number of settlers from Pennsylvania, 
 New Jersey, and New England found homes here. Es- 
 pecially was this the case with immigrants from Con- 
 necticut. Many families from that thrifty State settled 
 in Mason and the adjoining counties. The effect of 
 their presence was seen in the rapid development of 
 education in this section. Mason County became the 
 best schooled county in the State, and from it came a 
 remarkably large number of teachers, editors, and other 
 scholarly men. The distinguished family of Johnston, 
 from whom descended General Albert Sidney John- 
 ston and many other talented men of the name ; the 
 family of Wadsworth, and others are of this blood. 
 The total immigration of New England people proba- 
 bly did not amount to over fifty families, but it was an 
 important contribution to the life of the colony. 
 
SEPARATION FROM VIRGINIA. 109 
 
 Although there were no longer large invasions of the 
 savages from beyond the Ohio, there was still a constant 
 succession of small Indian raids, to the last degree har- 
 assing to the settlers. The greater part of the State 
 was still densely wooded, and through these coverts the 
 savages crept, searching for unprotected farm-houses 
 and wayfarers. Every stroke was an act of butchery. 
 In the early days the Indian warfare was singularly 
 humane ; they never outraged their women prisoners, 
 and rarely butchered their captives. They had now 
 learned a more brutal warfare from the whites. There 
 can be no question that the Indian customs of war were 
 debased by the example of their enemies. 
 
 For many years the Ohio River had been a favorite 
 means of transit from Virginia, for it was now the 
 northern part of Kentucky that was receiving the most 
 settlers, and the route by the Ohio was the best way to 
 it. The voyagers were frequently waylaid by piratical 
 bands of Indians, who assailed them in their canoes. 
 Volumes could be written about the combats and butch- 
 eries that took place on the river. The effective way 
 of remedying this evil would have been to have placed 
 these boats under some convoy system, but to the Ken- 
 tuckians the proper means seemed to be to crush the 
 savage in his lair. 
 
 In November, 1791, the Federal government sent a 
 force of regulars under St. Clair against the Indians on 
 the Miami. The Kentucky militia refused to volun- 
 teer under a commander whom they deemed with good 
 reason an imbecile, but clamored to be allowed to wage 
 the war in their own way. A thousand men were, how- 
 ever, drafted into the service, and ordered to march with 
 St. Clair. The most of these deserted; so that when 
 
110 KENTUCKY. 
 
 on the gray morning of November 4tli the Indians as- 
 saulted St. Clair, he had only about one thousand men 
 with him, the greater part of whom were regulars. St. 
 Clair was tied to his tent by a fit of the gout. The In- 
 dians entirely surprised this force. At first it seemed as 
 if, despite the confusion arising from the fierce rush of 
 the enemy, they might hold their ground ; but there was 
 no reasonable effort made to follow up the temporary 
 success that came from the valor of certain parts of the 
 command, so, after some hours of brave fighting, a re- 
 treat was ordered that soon became a wild rout. Eight 
 hundred and ninety enlisted men and sixteen officers 
 were killed and wounded. General Richard Butler, one 
 of the most valuable officers of the army, was among 
 the slain. Only two years earlier in the history of these 
 settlements this catastrophe, much the most serious that 
 ever befell any expedition in which the Kentucky peo- 
 ple had been engaged, would have carried consternation 
 into the hearts of the Keutuckians, but the State was 
 now too populous to feel the loss of men as a disas- 
 trous blow. Despite St. Clair's defeat, the Indian raids 
 were henceforth reduced to small parties creeping under 
 the cover of the forests. The defense of the State 
 was henceforth mainly intrusted to the Federal author- 
 ities, and the heroic time of Kentucky was ended. 
 
 It will be profitable to consider, in a general way, 
 the progress of events in Kentucky from the beginning 
 of its settlement to this time of admission into the 
 Union, which practically ends the pioneer epoch of its 
 life. The period of wild though noble development is 
 now to give place to a more orderly life, and to a de- 
 pendence on a strong Federal authority. 
 
 From the settlement of Harrodsburg in May, 1774, 
 
SEPARATION FROM VIRGINIA. Ill 
 
 to the admission of Kentucky into the Union in June, 
 1792, was seventeen years. In these crowded years, 
 full of an incessant battle with the wilderness and its 
 tenants, a struggle in which thousands of brave men 
 fell, a State had been created. For nearly one half the 
 time during which this great work was a -doing, the 
 parent colony of Virginia was engaged in a war that 
 drained her energies to utter exhaustion. 
 
 There is no similar spectacle in history that is so 
 curious as this swarming of men into the wilderness 
 during a time when their mother country was engaged 
 in a life-and-death struggle. We can only explain it 
 throuofh the intense land hung^er that marks the Saxon 
 people. The thirst for land, which we find so strongly 
 developed in the Elizabethan English, seems to have 
 been transmitted to Virginia in an intenser form. 
 Knowing that free lands were to be won by giving 
 life for it, the Virginia and North Carolina people were 
 driven to desert their comfortable dwelling-places in 
 the colonies for the battle in the West. There is no 
 other case where this land-winning motive is so clearly 
 seen as here. All our other western immigration has 
 been fostered by the protection of the government. 
 These people could look to no protection but what they 
 gave themselves. 
 
 Twenty years of such life developed a particular sort 
 of man, — a kind that was never known before or since 
 in such numbers in any one country. It is the writ- 
 er's fortune to have spent his early years in a society 
 that still contained some few of the men who took their 
 shape from the life that was lived in the first three de- 
 cades of Kentucky civilization. They had a very pe- 
 culiar quality of^ mind. Its most characteristic feature 
 
112 KENTUCKY. 
 
 was a certain dauntlessness, a habit of asserting the in- 
 dependence of all control except that of the written 
 law. Their speech was rude and often exaggerated. 
 As a class, thej were much like the men of to-day in 
 the Rocky Mountains, except that they had not the eager 
 desire for gain that takes away from the charm of that 
 people. This advantage made the frontiersman of Ken- 
 tucky a much more agreeable fellow than his money- 
 seeking modern kinsman of the far West. He was far 
 more sympathetic, more externalized, than the miner of 
 Colorado to-day. We may infer some of the peculiar 
 qualities of this people from certain features in their 
 history. First we may notice their curious respect for 
 the written law. Courts of justice were at the outset 
 established in Kentucky, and the life was at once ad- 
 justed to the usages of the civil law. There was far 
 less government by the mob than in the settlements of 
 to-day in the far West. The patience of the people 
 with the obstacles which legislation put to their will is 
 admirably shown in the long quest of independence of 
 the Virginia government. Year after year, though suf- 
 fering from serious and galling evils connected with this 
 system of control, they patiently petitioned for redress, 
 keeping not only within the limits of the Virginia law, 
 but retaining always a courteous, though firm attitude 
 in their demands. This attitude was even more char- 
 acteristic of the mass of the people than of the leaders. 
 Even when the Court party, containing the larger part 
 of the natural leaders of society, endeavored to lead 
 the State to illegal, though not altogether unjustifiable, 
 activities, the sense of obedience to the law led the mass 
 of men to stick to the true way of government. 
 
 The fact is, there was a great solidity to this people. 
 
SEPARATION FROM VIRGINIA. 113 
 
 None but people of character could withstand the strain 
 in which they lived. They were not burdened by the 
 weak, incompetent men who led other societies into 
 political debasement. The criminals, the weaklings, 
 and the other rejecta of society had no place in this 
 embattled colony. There was a large proportion of 
 the population composed of what may be fairly called 
 educated, as distinguished from instructed men. They 
 had far less learning than fell to the share of the orig- 
 inal colonies at the time of colonization, but as a rule 
 they were much more perfect material for citizens in a 
 pioneer State than fell to the lot of any of the original 
 settlements. They were bred in a frontier life to hab- 
 its of independence and self-control. 
 
 The early records of Kentucky life are too imper- 
 fect to afford any clear insight into the condition of 
 education or the intellectual motives of the pioneers. 
 Recently, however, Thomas Speed, Esq., of Louisville, 
 has disinterred a quantity of papers giving the record 
 of apolitical club that existed at Danville from 1786 
 to 1790. This association was composed of about thirty 
 of the brightest spirits of the time, who were resident 
 in and about this little town. On its roll we find the 
 names of many of those who had already or were after- 
 wards to lead the State in the paths of peace or war.^ 
 The larger part of the members belong to families that 
 
 1 The following are the names of the members : Ifenry Innos, 
 Christopher Greenup, John Brown, Robert Craddock, Thomas Todd, 
 John Belli, G. J. Johnson, George Muter, Peyton Short, Stephen 
 Ormsby, William McDowell, Thomas Allen, Thomas Speed, James 
 Speed, Abe Buford, Samuel McDowell, Benjamin Sebastian, Baker 
 Ewing, P. Tardeveau, William Kennedy, Willis Green, Matthew Wal- 
 ton, William McClung, James Brown, John Overton, Robert Dougher- 
 ty, Joshua Barbee. 
 
114 KENTUCKY. 
 
 are still among the leaders of the State, showing, as 
 many other facts do, that this colony, like the other 
 strongly individualized States of America, owe their 
 quality to the influence of strong continuous house- 
 holds. The notes of this club give a very fair idea of 
 the intellectual quality of its meetings.-^ For several 
 years, or until the changes of the shifting popidation 
 removed its leaders far from their original abodes, this 
 club industriously debated the questions of polity that 
 concerned the settlements. The record of the debates 
 is given in a simple and excellent English, that would 
 hardly find a parallel in a debating club in any western 
 settlement of this day. 
 
 Among the many questions discussed by the club 
 were the following : First, we have the great question 
 as to the propriety of separating from Virginia. This 
 was decided in the affirmative, after a long and careful 
 debate. Next in importance was the question " whether 
 the emission of a paper currency would be an advan- 
 tage to the inhabitants of this district." Some of the 
 remarks of this debate are very interesting, showing 
 that these men had a firm grip on the problem. Chris- 
 topher Greenup well summed up the main considera- 
 tions by saying, " Money is the sign of wealth, and 
 paper the sign of that sign." Mr. Muter claimed that 
 " to make paper currenej'' a legal tender is fatal to it ; 
 specie has an intrinsic value." The culture of tobacco 
 was debated, and it was voted that it was not desirable 
 that the district should enter on this industry. Another 
 
 1 I am indebted to Mr. Speed for an opportuiiit}' to examine the 
 original records. They are mostl}'- on small slips of paper, showing 
 the value of that article in the early western days. They give a very 
 clear idea of all its debates. 
 
SEPARATION FROM VIRGINIA. 115 
 
 question was, " Is the exclusive right of the Indian 
 tribes to the territory claimed by them provided in the 
 laws of nature and of nations, and can they consis- 
 tently with such laws be divested of such rights with- 
 out their assent ? " After a debate the first part of this 
 proposition was affirmed and the second part negatived, 
 a remarkable decision under the circumstances. 
 
 The most considerable task of the club was their 
 debate on the proposed Constitution of the United 
 States. Among the records is what appears to be a 
 proclamation of this constitution, in a preliminary form, 
 bearing date 1787; appended thereto is a letter of 
 Washington, noting the fact that it is submitted to the 
 people of the United States. This constitution was 
 carefully debated by the club. The changes that they 
 voted are very interesting. They proposed that the 
 speaker of the Senate should be chosen by that body ; 
 that the members of that body should be ineligible for 
 reelection for seven years, and the President ineligible 
 for four years after the close of his term. After bills 
 had been passed by the two houses, they were to be 
 submitted to the Supreme Court, and approved by it, 
 before receiving the signature of the President. The 
 clause which provides for the support of the militia in 
 the execution of the laws was amended so as to read 
 " to enforce obedience to the laws of the Union." Their 
 discussion shows a clear perception of the important 
 difference between executing the laws in the ordinary 
 sense, and the enforcement of obedience thereto in case 
 of resistance. 
 
 The draft of the constitution provided that Congress 
 should not prevent the importation of slaves until 1808. 
 The club voted to strike out this limitation. It will be 
 
116 KENTUCKY. 
 
 seen by this action that the same motive of opposition 
 to the slave-trade, which is embodied in the first con- 
 stitution of the State, existed in this political club. It 
 is worth while to dwell to this extent upon the work of 
 this interesting society, for the reason that it is the only 
 source of such history that has come down to us.^ 
 
 Up to the time of their separation from Virginia, the 
 life of Kentucky's pioneers was in a certain way ex- 
 ceedingly rude ; the greater part of the population was 
 packed into the rustic castles, termed stations, of which 
 there were two or three hundred within the State. 
 Each of these places contained one or more dwelling- 
 houses and a " corral," so arranged with stockades and 
 loopholes as to make a stronghold good against Indian 
 assaults. There were usually from ten to fifty men at 
 each station, — enough to make good a defense until 
 succor could arrive. This rendered a certain crowding 
 of the population necessary, which endured until it he- 
 came safe to trust to the separate farm-house, so dear to 
 the English heart. It is surprising that the fortified sta- 
 tion did not lead to some desire for village life such as 
 I we find in Europe; but as soon as the Indian depreda- 
 I tions became even a little slackened, the people isolated 
 / themselves, as it had been their wont in Virginia. A 
 j lonely house in the middle of a great farm M^as their 
 I ideal, and they attained it even before it could be had 
 V with safety. 
 
 In these early settlements there was an immense 
 amount of physical labor that fell upon men and women 
 alike. In the first twenty years there were very few 
 
 1 I have availed myself, in preparing the foregoing statement, of 
 the excellent account of the Political Club, given by Mr. Speed in 
 the Louisville Covimercial of September 29, 1878. 
 
SEPARATION FROM VIRGINIA, 117 
 
 slaves. They did not begin to be a considerable ele- 
 ment in the population until about the time of the sep- 
 aration from Virginia, when, the Revolutionary War 
 having ended, there was a richer class among the im- 
 migrants. Even in that year there was only one sixth 
 of the population held in bondage. The lot of men 
 and women was ceaseless labor, only interrupted by com- 
 bat with the savages. To create a civilization in the 
 unbroken forests that occupied all the region which 
 was settled in the first two decades, called for some- 
 thing like twice the amount of labor that is necessary to 
 accomplish the making of a home in a prairie country. 
 One lightening of the ordinary pioneer's lot these peo- 
 ple had. The climate was admirable, and there were 
 no indigenous maladies. They were generally exempt 
 from the malarial fevers that have cursed the early days 
 of the other Western States. Their life was almost al- 
 together in the open air. The unglazed windows of the 
 houses and their creviced walls made them almost as 
 free from house-poisoning as the open air. 
 
 The people were for some years almost without do- 
 mesticated animals ; even horses were, at first, but little 
 used. In consequence of this, the men developed a re- 
 markable capacity for swift and long marches. They 
 readily outmarched the Indians, or rather outran them, 
 for the regular pace when on an Indian trail seems to 
 have been a jog trot. They were accustomed to make 
 great distances on scant provision of food. A little 
 parched corn, munched as' they ran, would maintain 
 their strength. In a few years, however, the settlers 
 were able to own horses, and very soon the foot-march- 
 ing became less common, and the people entered on 
 the stage of their development in which they used the 
 
118 KENTUCKY. 
 
 horse in all their journej's. Afterwards, in hunting In- 
 dians or in pursuing lesser game, they generally were 
 mounted. 
 
 We have little concerning education in these early 
 days. There were no organized schools, and the mass 
 of the people received only a little household teaching. 
 Still it is doubtful if the percentage of illiterates among 
 the children at this time was as numerous as it is at 
 present in the mountain counties of the State. It must 
 be remembered that the excess of adult males in these 
 early days was very great. Though women and chil- 
 dren were with the first settlers, they were relatively 
 much less numerous than in a normal society. This di- 
 minished the need of the school-master. 
 
 The religious condition of the people was, from the 
 first, tolerably satisfactory. The first ministers of the 
 gospel were the Baptists, who, with their usual valor, 
 entered the State with the earliest settlers. The Rev. 
 John Hickman seems to have been the first to begin 
 the work in 1776. In 1780 a vigorous immigration of 
 people of this faith took place. One church — that 
 headed by the Rev. Lewis Craig — moved en masse 
 from SjDottsylvania County, in Virginia. When the 
 Revolution was over, and the tide of immigration was 
 at its flood, it brought a host of Baptist preachers with 
 it. The Methodists at first made but little headway in 
 Kentucky. In 1787 they claimed but ninety members 
 in the State. The first Presbyterian clergyman began 
 his work in 1783. The Baptists were tho religious 
 pioneers of Kentucky, and to this day they hold the 
 first place in its churches. 
 
 The Roman Catholics were represented among the 
 very first settlers in Kentucky. Dr. Hart and Wil- 
 
SEPARATION FROM VIRGINIA. 119 
 
 liam Coomes, who settled at Harrod's Station in 1775, 
 — the one a physician and the wife of the other a 
 school-teacher, — were both Maryland Catholics ; so, 
 as Collins remarks, " the first practicing physician and 
 the first teacher in Kentucky were Roman Catholics." 
 They were both valiant and valuable men. They were 
 followed by many other families, who founded the large 
 Catholic community that still exists near Bardstown, in 
 Nelson County. Their first church was founded in 
 1787. These people were all of the Maryland stock, 
 and were a most important contribution to the blood of 
 Kentucky, though they have maintained a peculiar iso- 
 lation, having had but a small share in the political life 
 of the State. 
 
 The first twenty years of the history of Kentucky 
 brought about a more considerable gain of the English 
 population in the interior of the continent than had 
 been accomplished in all the preceding century. The 
 barrier of the Alleghanies was crossed, and a great bas- 
 tion of Anglo-Saxon people built out into the wilder- 
 ness of the Mississippi Valley, separating the Indians 
 of the north from those of the southern country. It 
 is easily seen that the possibility of doing thus much 
 depended on the temporary withdrawal of the Indian 
 tribes from residence in Kentucky. If they had been 
 in force on the ground, it is to be questioned whether 
 the pioneers could have made their occupation good 
 until the Virginian or the national government had 
 broken the Indian power. As it was, they found a gap 
 in the enemies' lines, of which they took swift advan- 
 tage, pouring through it like a flood and intrenching 
 themselves in their new position. 
 
 Account for it as we may, this spontaneous, unaided 
 
120 KENTUCKY. 
 
 movement of people into Kentucky, and their swift or- 
 ganization of a State under such appalling difficulties, 
 must always remain as one of the most surprising 
 achievements -of the English race. We know of no 
 other series of events that so well exhibits the singular 
 prepotency of that people as their swift mastering of 
 this part of the earth. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE COMMONWEALTH AND ITS PROBLEMS. 
 
 The next chapter ia the account of the development 
 of Kentucky very fairly begins with the adoption of the 
 first Constitution of the Commonwealth. 
 
 In 1792, after more than ten years of patient, lawful 
 endeavor, this people found themselves free to express 
 their ideas of government in their own way. Danville, 
 a town that was from the first the centre of the State 
 life, was the seat of the convention for adopting the 
 constitution. The people entered into this work of 
 framing an organic law with great satisfaction, for it 
 was a work they had long desired to be about. The 
 constitution which they framed affords a capital index 
 of the state of public feeling at the time as to many 
 important matters. It was adopted by the convention 
 and promulgated without the test of approval by popu- 
 lar vote, but the evidence goes to show that the people 
 ratified this instrument with a very general approval. 
 
 In its general form this constitution is clearly mod- 
 eled on that of the United States.-^ This has been 
 properly attributed to the commanding influence of Colo- 
 nel George Nicholas, who, as delegate from Virginia, 
 had taken an important part in the formation of that 
 instrument. Next, we notice that this document shows 
 throughout an effort rather to adapt the framework of 
 1 See Appendix A. 
 
122 KENTUCKY. 
 
 the law to the existing needs of the commnnity than to 
 
 seek any ideal perfections. The conservative historian, 
 
 Humphrey Marshall, notes the absence of sufficient 
 
 checks on the popular will ; in a word, that the scheme 
 
 was that of a democracy rather than that of a republic. 
 
 It was certainly open to this objection, if indeed it be 
 
 /an objection. The people were democratic in their po- 
 
 j litical spirit. Their society was a pure democracy. It 
 
 ^ was to be expected that their law should conform to 
 
 their motives and conditions. 
 
 The following points in this constitution deserve es- 
 pecial attention : — 
 
 First. The suffrage was given to all male citizens of 
 proper age who had not been disfranchised by convic- 
 tion of crime. This is probably the first experiment of 
 manhood suffrage in any modern State. Second. The 
 whole body of the judiciary was constituted by appoint- 
 ment without specified term of office. This follows the 
 universal custom of the time. Third. Ministers of the 
 gospel were excluded from office as legislators. It is a 
 curious survival of an English prejudice. It is espe- 
 cially remarkable from the fact that it is almost the 
 only trace of the limitation of the citizens' rights that 
 is not connected with the local needs of the people. 
 Their Baptist j^arsons were clearly no element of dan- 
 ger to the State. Fourth. The article concerning slav- 
 ery is also important, as it distinctly shows a decided 
 prejudice against the commerce in slaves. They are 
 not to be brought into the State as merchandise, and 
 none are to be brought that were imported into Amer- 
 ica since 1789.^ It also recommended the legislature to 
 pass laws permitting the emancipation of slaves under 
 
 1 See, also, the debates of the Political Club. 
 
THE COMMONWEALTH AND ITS PROBLEMS. 123 
 
 the limitation that they shall not become a charge on 
 the county in which they reside. This article shows 
 that the difficulties of the slavery problem were already 
 before the minds of this people, busy as they were with 
 their immediate needs. 
 
 The most important omission of this constitution is 
 the absence of any reference to a public school system. 
 In this it differs noticeably from most of the constitu- 
 tions of the Northern States. The neglect of this need 
 has been from the first, as it now is, a weak feature 
 in the Kentucky system of society. 
 
 There is yet another feature that deserves notice. 
 The Supreme Court of the State is made the court of 
 first instance in the determination of all questions con- 
 cerning the ownership of lands under the Virginia pa- 
 tent system. This provision was introduced by Colonel 
 Nicholas. On proposing it, as it had not been an ele- 
 ment in his canvass, he took the good way of resigning 
 his seat in the convention and asking for a reelection, 
 which was immediately given him without contest. This 
 uncontested return of the proposer was taken as evi- 
 dence that the people desired the arrangement. The 
 object of this provision was to prevent the action of 
 local prejudice in the settlement of legislation concern- 
 ing land titles. This prejudice is always sure to be 
 strong in the case of such laud titles as were growing 
 up under the rough system of " location " that the laws 
 permitted. Boundaries being unfixed, there was already 
 a disposition to disregard the rights of original patentees 
 and to use the unoccupied land as common property. 
 Any jury drawn from the neighborhood in which the 
 disputed land lay was likely to contain men who had 
 a sinister interest against the establishment of patent 
 
124 KENTUCKY. 
 
 claims. Thus the State at the outset found itself in 
 clanger, through defective titles, of losing a pai-t of the 
 value of the soil which had inspired the people to its 
 conquest. The remedy was unusual, but fully warranted 
 by the needs of the case, though in experience it was 
 found impracticable. 
 
 Immediately after the adoption of this constitution, 
 General Isaac Shelby was elected governor. In him 
 the State secured an admirable chief magistrate. They 
 could not have chosen better. He was a Marylander, 
 who became, in his early manhood, a citizen of what is 
 now North Carolina. He did brilliant service in the 
 battle of Point Pleasant, in October, 1774, an action 
 that by its cons})icuous success did much to relieve Ken- 
 tucky from the danger of overwhelming pressure from 
 the Indian tribes. Afterwards in North Carolina he 
 played a most gallant part in many small expeditions, 
 but especially in remedying the ruin that the defeat of 
 Gates at Camden brought upon the Continental cause. 
 When others were appalled by the magnitude of this 
 disaster, Shelby seemed to have awakened to a full 
 sense of his really great military power. He saved a 
 little army he then commanded, and secured a large 
 number of prisoners in his hands by a swift march to 
 the west into the recesses of the Blue Ridge Moun- 
 tains. Then, when he had disposed of his captives, he 
 turned upon the famous Ferguson, and by the well 
 conceived and admirably executed move on King's 
 Mountain, destroyed the force of that able commander 
 at a single blow. Although Shelby was not in name 
 the chief in this action, there is no reason to doubt that 
 the conception of the campaign and the vigor of its 
 execution were his alone. His also was the scheme of 
 
THE COMMONWEALTH AND ITS PROBLEMS. 125 
 
 attack which led to the battle of Cowpens. After va- 
 rious other admirable feats of partisan warfare, he ob- 
 tained leave to absent hioiself from the field in order 
 to take his seat in the Generid Assembly of North Car- 
 olina. Thence he went to Kentucky in 1783, where 
 he married, and afterwards remained, taking a part in 
 the early struggles for emancipation from Virginias con- 
 trol. As brave in action as he was wise in council, his 
 choice as the first governor was an honor and a blessing 
 to the young Commonwealth. 
 
 The people of Kentucky were now again in face of 
 the two problems which had troubled them from the 
 beginning. The Indian outrages were still flagrant, for 
 though no large parties dared make regular expeditions 
 into the State, small forays made through the byways 
 of the forests were of constant occurrence. On April 
 1, 1793, Morgan's Station, on Slate Creek, seven miles 
 east of Mount Sterling, was captured, and nineteen 
 women and children taken into captivity. The boats 
 of immigrants on the Ohio were subjected to constant 
 assaults. The Federal government refused to authorize 
 any independent action of Kentucky troops, but in- 
 sisted that they should act with the regulars and under 
 regular officers. This concession the Kentucky militia 
 were unwilling to make after their unhappy experience 
 with Clark's last expedition and St. Clair's imbecile 
 effort. Finally, a draft of men was sent to General 
 Wayne, but the season being late his expedition was 
 abandoned. So once more the people had reason to 
 be disappointed with the Federal system of Indian war- 
 fare. 
 
 At the same time, while the people were irritated by 
 the neglect of the Federal government, the question 
 
126 KENTUCKY. 
 
 of the navigation of the Mississippi came again into the 
 public mind. On this occasion it was a French and not 
 a Spanish party that led to the excitement. The Span- 
 ish intrigue was a sufficiently curious bit of politics, 
 but the French scheme was even more singular in its 
 motives. The beginning of this trouble is first distinctly 
 seen in the organization of several so-called Democratic 
 clubs in Central Kentucky. These clubs were fashioned 
 on, and in affiliation with, the famous Philadelphia club 
 which was moulded on the Jacobin clubs of Europe. 
 There can be no doubt that these Democratic clubs 
 were designed to resist the increasing encroachments of 
 the Federal authority on the province of the local gov- 
 ernments. It is equally clear that they drew their in- 
 spiration from the great Americo-European movement 
 we misname the P^rench Revolution. There was little 
 reason to fear that these affiliated societies which were 
 springing up all over the country would be more than 
 a wholesome check upon the Federal power, properly 
 regarded at the outset as involving an element of dan- 
 ger to the individual States. But these societies called 
 Democratic were destined to receive their overthrow 
 from the source that gave them birth. As is well 
 known, the colonies, when treating with France for as- 
 sistance in the extremity of their need during the war 
 with the mother country, consented to make war on 
 England whenever the French government did. When 
 after twenty years we were called on to act in accord- 
 ance with this'dangerous stipulation, the Federal govern- 
 ment very properly refused to keep the contract which 
 its predecessor had made. This refusal was clearly an 
 act of bad faith, but any other action would have been 
 even more iniquitous. The fathers of the American 
 
THE COMMONWEALTH AND ITS PROBLEMS. 127 
 
 State had bargained to give more than they had a right 
 to promise. 
 
 That extremely active bit of the French Revolution 
 known as Citizen Genet, the French ambassador to the 
 United States, was not disposed to regard the proc- 
 lamation of neutrality issued by the Federal authori- 
 ties, but immediately on his landing at Charleston set 
 about the process of commissioning cruisers against Eng- 
 lish ships even before he presented himself at Wash- 
 ington. At this distance of time there is something 
 very interesting in the performance of this " infuriated 
 foreigner," as Marshall well calls him. He seemed to 
 feel as his countrymen felt in that age, that he owned 
 the earth, and that there were no rights of other coun- 
 tries to be respected. In his journey to the seat of 
 government he was constantly engaged in arraying the 
 malcontents of the country against the Federal admin- 
 istration, and in preparing to levy war on Britain from 
 the soil of the United States. The Jacobin clubs were, 
 doubtless, to a certain extent, in sympathy with his mad 
 course. The French outbreak in 1793 was still in its 
 nascent state, and had not yet set all decent men against 
 it by the brutal excesses of its later time. 
 
 The Democrats, fearing with what at the time seemed 
 good reason that the Federal government was working 
 towards an aristocracy, naturally felt a lively sympathy 
 with a people in combat with the British, who seemed 
 to have attained to a livelier sense of the equality of 
 men than the ruling party in the United States. More- 
 over, there was a tie of blood, — blood shed on the bat- 
 tle-fields of the Revolution by French and Americans 
 together, — that made the appeal of France very strong 
 to many hearts. At this time Louisiana was still under 
 
128 KENTUCKY. 
 
 the control of Spair», which government was the ally 
 of Great Britain. 
 
 Foiled by the vigor of Washington's government, in 
 his effort to levy war from the eastern States, Genet 
 and his followers conceived the plan of using the long- 
 ing of Kentucky for the free navigation of tlie Mis- 
 sissippi for the furtherance of his plans. In October, 
 1793, the Lexington Club resolved, " That the right of 
 the people on the waters of the Mississippi to the nav- 
 igation was undeniable, and that it ought to be peremp- 
 torily demanded of Spain by the government of the 
 United States." ^ Genet employed several Frenchmen 
 
 — the principal of whom, a certain Charles Depau, is 
 said to have been at this time a resident in Kentucky 
 
 — to organize an expedition against Louisiana. Gen- 
 eral George Kogers Clarke, now in his decay, accepted 
 the commission of "major-general in the armies of 
 France and commander-in-chief of the revolutionary le- 
 gions on the Mississippi." 
 
 The ultra-Federalists of Kentucky believed that Gov- 
 ernor Shelby was conniving with the French party, but 
 it appears to the present writer, after a careful reading 
 of the evidence, that his action was only the proper 
 caution of a man who had very limited power to act 
 under the circumstances of the situation. The matter 
 was really one that concerned the Federal government 
 alone. The laws that appeared likely to be violated 
 were Federal and not State laws ; it would not have 
 been fit that the Governor of Kentucky should have 
 strained his limited powers to meddle with the business. 
 As an individual he doubtless sympathized with the 
 project of opening the Mississippi to free navigation ; 
 1 Marshall, ii. p. 92. 
 
THE COMMONWEALTH AND ITS PROBLEMS. 129 
 
 yet he held himself ready not only to enforce the laws 
 of Kentucky, but " to perform whatever may be consti- 
 tutionally required of me as Governor by the President 
 of the United States." His letter to Washington is 
 admirable in its tone, and exhibits more submission to 
 the Federal authority than would now be shown by 
 most governors. 
 
 The silencing of Genet and the prompt action of the 
 Federal government arrested this expedition against 
 a friendly power. The Genet incident was now ex- 
 hausted, but it showed that the mind of the people was 
 still very excited on this question of the Mississippi 
 navigation. The violent language of the Jacobin clubs 
 of Kentucky, and the disgrace that came upon all the 
 sympathizers with France from the excesses into which 
 that revolution fell, had in time a good effect on the 
 politics of Kentucky. It was to these incidents that we 
 owe the first considerable strengthening of the pro- 
 nounced Federal party in the State. It is a singular 
 fact that matters as remote as the revolution in France 
 should have greatly affected the political motives of this 
 young Commonwealth. 
 
 An important incident in the Indian wars served to 
 divide the public interest with the French scheme, and 
 in time to turn their attention away from that fiasco. 
 General Wayne had projected an invasion into the In- 
 dian country in the autumn of 1793. A thousand Ken- 
 tuckians had been drafted for the expedition, and joined 
 it most unwillingly. They were returned, because the 
 expedition was abandoned. Their experience with 
 " Mad Anthony," though brief and only in the camp 
 and march, for there was no fighting, was such as to 
 give them confidence in his qualities as a commander. 
 
130 KENTUCKY. 
 
 Therefore, in the following spring there was no diffi- 
 culty in securing sixteen hundred volunteers for the de- 
 layed expedition. The battle which he won on August 
 20, 1794, at Fallen Timbers, on the Miami, was bril- 
 liantly successful. 
 
 The fight was almost under the walls of one of the 
 forts which the British continued to occupy in this re- 
 gion, and the flushed troops could hardly be kept from 
 assaulting this stronghold of men whom they still be- 
 lieved to be their enemies. An attack on the fort would 
 have been morally justified, for these posts, retained by 
 the British in contravention of the treaty of peace, were 
 in fact points of supply for the Indians. The presence 
 of these foreign stations on their border was in part the 
 cause of the continued irritation against the Federal 
 government, which was still felt by the Kentuckians. 
 This victory, in which the Kentuckians were in com- 
 mand of a Federal general, and in which they fought 
 side by side with the regular companies of the United 
 States army^ did more than anything else to quiet this 
 opposition to the General government. The heretofore 
 despised regulars opened the battle by a brilliant charge 
 with the bayonet on the Indian line, — a charge that 
 scattered the foe. It is quite natural that this should 
 have entirely changed the feeling of men who rested all 
 other judgments of their fellows on their behavior in 
 battle. 
 
 This battle practically made an end of the Indian 
 troubles in Kentucky. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 KENTUCKY AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 In August of this year came the news of the condi- 
 tional treaty with Great Britain, that finally ended the 
 hopes of those who looked for a union with France in 
 the war with the ancient enemy. Although this treaty 
 made for the time an end of the Indian hostilities, it 
 was received with great indignation by the partisans of 
 France, who now numbered far more than a majority 
 of the Kentucky people. It is difficult to analyze the 
 motives that caused this outbreak of discontent. The 
 people were, however, intensely disgusted with the ac- 
 tion of the authorities in Washington, and turned with 
 the bitterest hatred against their worthy senator, Hum- 
 phrey Marshall, who had voted for the treaty. We 
 cannot determine how numerous was this party, but it 
 clearly included a majority of the leaders. It should 
 be noticed, however, that this action in no way involved 
 a revolt against the government, but only a verbal re- 
 sistance to the party that was in power. 
 
 It was practically nothing more than an intense dis- 
 gust at the action of the Federal government, such as 
 people may entertain against a control which they have 
 no idea of throwing off. The failure of the Federal gov- 
 ernment to keep a contract to make war in a given 
 contingency was naturally exasperating to a people 
 with whom war had long been the principal business, 
 as well as the only luxury, of life. 
 
132 KENTUCKY. 
 
 In the year 1795 the Federal government effected a 
 treaty with Spain, by which the right of navigation was 
 accorded to the American settlements on all the waters 
 of the Mississippi. Just before this treaty was con- 
 cluded Spain made a last effort to detach Kentucky from 
 her allegiance. This effort was entirely unavailing. It 
 was conducted with such secrecy that even the imper- 
 fect account of it did not become public until ten years 
 afterwards. Politically if was entirely abortive, but it 
 serves to throw a clear light on the way in which the 
 Kentucky people now stood affected to the Federal Gov- 
 ernment. It is especially important for the light it 
 throws on the motives of the resolutions of 1798, which 
 we shall soon have to examine. In July, 1795, a com- 
 missioner named Thomas Power was sent by the Gov- 
 ernor of New Orleans to reopen communications with 
 the leaders of the negotiations of former years. One 
 of these, Benjamin Sebastian, was now a judge of the 
 Supreme Court of Kentucky. From Sebastian the com- 
 missioner went to Innis, Nicholas, and Murray, who 
 had been in the old intrigue, and then to General Wil- 
 kinson, once again, after his interlude of trading and 
 conspiring, a federal officer stationed at Detroit. The 
 proposal was in effect that his Catholic majesty, the 
 King of Spain, would give to these gentlemen $100,000 
 for their services in inciting the people of Kentucky 
 to revolt against the United States. That when the 
 revolt was proposed he would furnish abundant muni- 
 tions of war for their use, and give their rebellion the 
 military support of the Spanish government ; further- 
 more, that when independence had been secured, Spain 
 would give Kentucky and the other western communi- 
 ties the benefit of her alliance. 
 
KENTUCKY AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 133 
 
 We cannot determine how far these men felt these 
 propositions to be attractive, but it is clear that one and 
 all they deemed them entirely impracticable, and that 
 they not only absolutely refused the offer, but kept the 
 proposition from the knowledge of the people. Their 
 statements make it clear that they did not think that at 
 this time it would be possible to form any party in Ken- 
 tucky to advocate secession. There can be no doubt 
 that the Spanish governor chose his confederates with 
 discretion, and that his offer of immediate money, 
 amounting in value to about the equivalent of half a 
 million dollars in our day, and of place and power be- 
 yond, was tempting to these men, who were poor and 
 of an adventurous type of mind. Its unhesitating re- 
 jection shows clearly that it was not a thing that they 
 deemed in any way possible. The essentially loose na- 
 ture of Sebastian is proyen by the fact that he had re- 
 ceived a pension of two thousand dollars per annum 
 from Spain during the years from 1795 to 1806. This 
 is perhaps the darkest incident in the history of Ken- 
 tucky. Sebastian's relation to the Spanish government, 
 and the whole matter of this last intrigue, was kept so 
 secret, that nothing was known of it until it was by 
 chance disclosed in 1806. 
 
 Sebastian was then, and had for many years been, 
 one of the judges of the Court of Appeals of Kentucky. 
 A committee of the legislature found Sebastian guilty 
 of receiving a pension from Spain. There was no pro- 
 vision in the law for his punishment, so he was allowed 
 to resign and take himself away.^ The conspiracy, if 
 
 1 Sebastian's history is very curious. British by birth, it is said 
 that he began life as an Episcopalian clergj-man. Drifting to this 
 country, he became a lawyer, and tinally a jurist of excellent ability. 
 
134 KENTUCKY. 
 
 it may receive this name, was then ten years gone. 
 The other gentlemen who had been concerned in it, 
 Messrs. Innis, Nicholas, and Murray, appear to have 
 known nothing of Sebastian's position as a hireling of 
 the Spanish government. They can only be blamed 
 for their failure to make this act of hostility to the 
 United States known to the Federal authorities. This 
 omission was more serious from the fact that one of 
 these gentlemen, Judge Innis, was then the circuit 
 judge of the United States for Kentucky, and bound by 
 the sacred obligations of his office to guard the govern- 
 ment from such machinations of a foreign power. To 
 this criticism of his conduct Judge Innis made a very 
 lame answer. He says, in the evidence before the com- 
 mittee of the legislature, " the reasons why himself and 
 Colonel Nicholas did not communicate the subject to 
 the executive of the United States were these : 1st. It 
 was known that neither of us approved of Mr. Adams's 
 administration, and that we believed that he kept a 
 watchful eye over our actions ; that the communication 
 must depend upon his opinion of our veracity, and that 
 it would have the appearance of courting his favor. 2d. 
 We both had reason and did believe, that the then ad- 
 ministration were disposed upon the slightest pretext 
 to send an army into this State, which we considered 
 would be a grievance upon the people, and therefore 
 declined making any communication on the subject, as 
 we apprehended no trouble from the Spanish govern- 
 ment." 
 
 Despite his great talents, he seems to have been a man always in 
 straits for money. This led to his fall. It should be remembered, 
 however, that the position of a foreign pensioner was not regarded 
 with the same abhorrence in the last century that it is in this, and 
 that the beginning of his relations with the Spanish government dates 
 from a time when he was a private citizen. 
 
KENTUCKY AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 135 
 
 It is impossible, within the limits of this volume, to 
 give a careful analysis of these Spanish intrigues, but 
 a careful study of the circumstances will convince the 
 student that in the singular character of Wilkinson he 
 may find a clue to this remarkable chapter of American 
 history. It will be necessary to trace this character by 
 a sketch of the life of this remarkable man. Wilkin- 
 son was born in Eastern Maryland, and was, for the 
 times, very well educated. He became a physician ; at 
 the outbreak of the Revolutionary War he entered the 
 army, and soon developed very considerable capacities 
 as a soldier. He was in the siege of Boston, having 
 arrived soon after the battle of Bunker Hill. His ac- 
 count of the incidents of that siege is very interest- 
 ing. He was with Arnold as aid-de-camp in Canada ; 
 was with the army through the campaign that ended 
 at Saratoga. The incidents of his campaign in the 
 Kevolution are told in the first volume of his Memoirs, 
 a tediously voluminous work of three volumes, contain- 
 ing nearly three thousand pages of matter, principally 
 his defenses before the two courts-martial to which he 
 was subjected.^ 
 
 Wilkinson was obscurely involved in the curious diffi- 
 culty between Generals Washington and Gates. Gates 
 made him deputy adjutant of his army a few days be- 
 fore he was removed from his command. In time he 
 received the rank of brevet brigadier - general. He 
 quarreled with Gates, whom he accused of treachery 
 and falsehood, and resigned his brevet rank, retaining 
 his commission as colonel. Congress, approving his 
 action in his quarrel with Gates, made him, in 1779, 
 
 1 The Memoirs of my own Times, by General James Wilkinson. In. 
 three volumes. Philadelphia, 181G. Printed by Abraliam Small. 
 
136 KENTUCKY. 
 
 clothier-general of the army. In this capacity he served 
 to the end of the Revolutionary War. In this period 
 of trial Wilkinson appears to have been a patriotic and 
 devoted officer. 
 
 At the end of the Revolution he left the army, and 
 became, in some obscure way, concerned with some 
 capitalists in a scheme of trade in the Mississippi Val- 
 ley. From 1793 to 1806 he is singularly silent as to 
 his occupations. His Memoirs, infinitely detailed for the 
 other part of his life, do not directly mention any of his 
 acts from 1779 to 1806. All we know of him is from 
 the imperfect record of his performances in Kentucky. 
 His great energy, fertility of resources, and singular 
 business tact, gave him a large place in the develop- 
 ment of the commerce between Kentucky and the Span- 
 ish possessions in Louisiana. He, in fact, created this 
 traffic by way of the Mississippi to the sea, and was 
 indeed the pioneer of commerce in this valley. His 
 facile, cultivated ways, his lavish expenditure of money, 
 and general largeness of nature, undoubtedly did much 
 to ingratiate him with the Spanish authorities. 
 
 It was natural that the Spaniards, with the thirst for 
 territory common to the Spanish mind, should desire to 
 win larger control over the Mississippi Valley than they 
 then had. It would be a triumph if Kentucky could 
 be detached from the Federal government and brought 
 under her control. Wilkinson doubtless seemed to the 
 Spanish authorities an apt instrument for this work. 
 It is likely that he in some way engaged himself to abet 
 this project, and that the extremely liberal concession 
 of trade which he brought to Kentucky in 1787 was a 
 compensation for this work. The concession was es- 
 teemed extremely valuable, and there is no other assign- 
 
KENTUCKY AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 137 
 
 able reason for the grant. That there was an element 
 of treason in his projects is made clear by his subsequent 
 course. This traffic, which continued for many years, 
 put him in the power of the Spanish government, by 
 the fact that they withheld a large part of the money 
 due him for tobacco furnished to the Louisiana agents. 
 It seems likely that whatever designs Wilkinson may 
 have formed, looking to the separation of Kentucky and 
 its alliance with Spain, they did not long commend 
 themselves to his judgment. He apparently abandoned 
 all decided efforts after his first failure to secure action 
 in this direction. Still, as he had money to the amount 
 of one hundred thousand dollars in Spanish hands, he 
 bad to keep up the semblance of devotion to their pur- 
 poses. 
 
 In 1801 we find Wilkinson once again in the Federal 
 army, with the rank of brigadier-general. He gives no 
 explanation of his reestablishment in the army, and his 
 reappearance there in high command, after his well 
 known relations to the previous Spanish intrigues, is 
 one of the mysterious incidents of American history. 
 What is still more curious is that he was placed in com- 
 mand of the very department where he could have the 
 most to do with the Spaniards. He remained in com- 
 munication with the Spanish authorities after he entered 
 on this responsible position. 
 
 In the term of President Madison, Wilkinson at last 
 fell under suspicion. Charges of official misconduct in 
 many different events were brought against him, and it 
 appears from the official records that he was ill used by 
 the Federal authorities, who appeared inclined to pre- 
 judge his case and not to give him a fair trial. His 
 first trial was in the National House of Representa- 
 
138 KENTUCKY. 
 
 tives, which seems to have beea unfair in its methods. 
 The next was before a court-martial, which appears to 
 have given his case a most exhaustive consideration. 
 Although in this trial his judges seemed to have been 
 prejudiced against him at the outset, the verdict was 
 distinctly in his favor. It was clearly proven that the 
 several " mule loads " of silver which he had received 
 from the Spanish authorities were in payment of debts 
 due him on account of tobacco furnished before he re- 
 joined the army, though the charge that he had been 
 a pensioner of Spain during his period of civil life was 
 not disproved. 
 
 The court-martial reported that in his negotiations 
 with the Spaniards he was actuated by a desire to re- 
 ceive the money justly due him, and that any excess 
 of attention given by him to the Spanish authority was 
 to be explained by this fact. It was clearly shown that 
 when Thomas Power came with the last proposition of 
 the Spaniards, that which afterwards brought trouble 
 to Messrs. Nicholas, Innis, and Murray, he went from 
 Kentucky to Detroit, where Wilkinson was then sta- 
 tioned. The latter received him coldly, and without 
 heeding his propositions sent him back under guard to 
 the frontier, with orders not to return under any cir- 
 cumstances. The last " mule load " of silver had been 
 received, and it was no longer necessary for him to 
 keep any communications with the Spaniards. 
 
 Although acquitted by a jury of his peers, Wilkinson 
 was still the subject of constant watchfulness and covert 
 hostility on the part of Secretary of War Armstrong, 
 and apparently also on the part of President Madison. 
 After the War of 1812-1815, in which he evidently 
 did faithful though hampered service, he was once more 
 
KENTUCKY AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 139 
 
 court-martialed. Again the prosecution was singularly 
 vindictive, and again did General AVilkinson receive a 
 complete exoneration from very grave but evidently un- 
 supported charges brought against him. It is impossi- 
 ble to give him too much credit for the signal ability 
 with which he conducted his defense in both these trials. 
 His speeches in his own defense, though affected and 
 stilted, are capital specimens of pleading. In the closing 
 appeal which he made to the court in his last trial he 
 rises to the height of true eloquence. 
 
 No one can go patiently over the records of these 
 trials without feeling a keen sympathy with this able 
 man. Whatever his error of judgment in the Spanish 
 negotiations may have been, though it was probably 
 grave, it was atoned for by long and devoted services 
 in the midst of a constant hostility from his superiors. 
 Soon after the last trial Wilkinson left the army and 
 went to Mexico, where he died in 1825. There is no 
 more enigmatical or more pathetic figure in American 
 history. 
 
 In the following two years the State, relieved of its 
 anxieties of Indian warfare, and with its desires con- 
 cerning the navigation of the Mississippi gratified, pur- 
 sued a course of peaceful development. This period of 
 repose is naturally marked by an increased interest in 
 educational matters. The institution known as the Ken- 
 tucky Academy was established by subscriptions amount- 
 ing to $10,000, which came in the main from the East- 
 ern States. The State supplemented this sum by a gift 
 of six thousand acres of land, while an equal amount 
 was given to four other academies. 
 
 This attention to local affairs must not be taken as 
 evidence that the State had in any way relaxed its close 
 
140 KENTUCKY. 
 
 watch on the behavior of the much suspected Federal 
 government. It now repaid, with interest, the suspicion 
 which the Federal government had long given to its 
 own actions. On the passage by Congress of the famous 
 alien and sedition laws a storm of protest broke out 
 against the centralizing tendencies of the Federal gov- 
 ernment. As is well known, those laws were provoked 
 by the behavior of Genet and his partisans. They pro- 
 vided the government with power to expel foreigners 
 for certain causes, and also made it a felony to libel the 
 President of the United States or either house of Con- 
 gress. 
 
 To a people disposed to find in each successive step 
 of the Federalist party an intent of changing the repub- 
 lic to some form of a monarchy, these additions to the 
 central power might well seem dangerous. That which 
 concerned the expulsion of foreigners was of no par- 
 ticular account, but the sedition clause would even now 
 be regarded as an intolerable piece of legislation, for 
 the reason that, however great the evil that comes from 
 reckless political abuse, it would be a thousand times 
 worse to grant the central government power to limit 
 discussion of its acts. 
 
 So far from regarding the outbreak of passion that 
 these laws provoked as an evidence of seditious discon- 
 tent, we should rather look upon it as evidence of a 
 proper sensitiveness to the danger of over-government. 
 We have seen that those who were working in the inter- 
 est of the Spanish government, and who had a "sinister 
 interest " in discovering a treasonable party in Ken- 
 tucky, had failed to see any chance for the creating of 
 such a party. This must be taken as prima facie evi- 
 dence that there was no material for rebellion in Ken- 
 
KENTUCKY AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 141 
 
 tucky ; indeed, it goes far as an auswer to the assertion 
 that the State was in a seditious mood. But let us now 
 look at the other evidence of a secession spirit, which 
 some students think they find in the resolutions of 1798. 
 These resolutions were adopted in November of that 
 year. They were offered by John Breckinridge, one 
 of a long line of distinguished men, but they undoubt- 
 edly were approved by Jefferson, if they were not ac- 
 tually from his hand.-^ 
 
 The greater part of these resolutions is now so well ac- 
 cepted that even the most federally minded would hardly 
 be willing to question them. The statement, however, 
 that " each party has an equal right to judge for itself, 
 as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of re- 
 dress," contains the element of political heresy that de- 
 serves attention. There can be no reasonable question 
 that this statement expressed the nearly unanimous 
 opinion of the people of Kentucky. There was but one 
 dissenting voice in the two houses. This was given by 
 William Murray, who had been one of the persons se- 
 lected by the Spanish Governor Carondelet as likely to 
 favor the secession of the State. It appears possible 
 that his dissenting vote was given in order to balance 
 his as yet unpublished relation to that intrigue ; it cer- 
 tainly was a favorable occasion for him to purge himself 
 of that iniquity. 
 
 At this time the legislature contained a very fair 
 representation of all the elements in the State, Feder- 
 alists as well as Separatists. We cannot believe that a 
 reference to the people would have changed the result. 
 In considering this vote we must bear in mind the fact 
 that, less than three years before, bold and well iii- 
 1 See Appendix B. 
 
142 KENTUCKY. 
 
 formed men had deemed it chimerical to try to sep- 
 arate the State from the Federal Union. There had 
 been nothing in the mean time to change the temper of 
 the people. On the contrary, everything conspired to 
 bind them more firmly to the Federal government. 
 
 The Indian difficulties were suppressed and the navi- 
 gation of the Mississippi was in a fairly satisfactory 
 position. With these matters settled, there was no. 
 longer any basis for rebellion. 
 
 The victory of Wayne had certainly done much to 
 insure the respect for the Federal government, as it 
 made an end of the charges of incompetency, so often 
 and with such good reason brought against it. 
 
 We must find the explanation of this nullification doc- 
 trine, however, in the general conditions of the public 
 mind as to the nature of the Federal relations. At the 
 outset of this inquiry we should notice that it is difficult 
 for us to see in this day the way in which people looked 
 on the Federal government during the tenth decade of 
 the last century. The several colonies had fought their 
 war of separation from Britain as separate political 
 units, each with its own motive, and none with any 
 distinct idea of what the future government was to be. 
 Each had fought for its local rights, for its own hand. 
 These local rights were all that there were to fight for. 
 The essence of their struggle was for local, as distin- 
 guished from external, government. The long political 
 struggle of Kentucky for separation from Virginia is 
 in itself a capital instance of the feeling of this time. 
 The better known debates in the convention that adopted 
 the Constitution of the United States show that at 
 ■BVery point the States fought zealously, even furiously, 
 for their separate rights. No candid person can read 
 
KENTUCKY AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 143 
 
 these debates without rising from his task with the con- 
 viction that tlie delegates of this constitutional conven- 
 tion failed to determine the precise relation between 
 the States and the Federal government. They were 
 driven farther than the people had gone, or were then 
 prepared to go, in the direction of consolidation by the 
 logic of facts that they only could perceive in their 
 full meaning. If there had been an effort to put the 
 sedition act in the constitution, no one can doubt that 
 it would have been overwhelmingly defeated in the con- 
 vention. The fate of the Adams party in the next 
 coming election shows plainly that even in the States 
 that inclined most strongly to Federalism, these laws 
 were generally disapproved. 
 
 Since the one distinct object of the American Revolu- 
 tion had been to secure local government, it is not to be 
 wondered at that a people who more than any other in 
 the United States were by their history devoted to this 
 end, should have revolted against the alien and sedition 
 laws, which clearly were very dangerous advances in the 
 direction of that consolidation against which they had 
 effectively protested in the convention. In the extrem- 
 ity of their conceived need they naturally turned to the 
 patent omissions in the contract by which they were 
 bound to the Federal government. The convention had 
 studiously refrained from providing any means whereby 
 the States should be coerced into submission to the 
 Union, — differing in this regard in a very suggestive 
 fashion from similar constitutions in other countries ; * 
 and this was no accidental omission, but one that re- 
 sulted from a careful \iiscussion of the problem. That 
 
 1 As, for instance, Switzerland, which provides for a process of 
 federal execution. 
 
144 KENTUCKY. 
 
 patriotic men felt this doubt about the conditions of the 
 
 constitution is well shown by the subsequent proceed- 
 ings in other States, — notably in Virginia and Massa- 
 chusetts, — where ilien whose character cannot be im- 
 pugned without casting a shadow on a whole people, 
 took the same view of the relation between the several 
 States and the Federal government. 
 
 We must grant that the seeds of nullification and 
 secession were in these resolutions of '98, but these 
 germs of trouble were sown in the events that led to 
 the independence of the colonies, and were nourished 
 by the intentional omissions of the constitution itself. 
 The constitution as we know it, an instrument af- 
 firmed partly by assent of the greater part of the States, 
 then by the circumstances of the South Carolina nul- 
 lification in the fourth decade of this century, and finally 
 by the result of the civil war, did not then exist. All 
 that was before the minds of men was a new and very 
 debatable instrument, concerning whose meaning there 
 was naturally a great difference of opinion. The Ken- 
 tucky resolutions were the first proclamation of the 
 great discussion which was destined to continue for two 
 generations, to be in the end decided, as it could only be 
 decided, by a third, in the most famous civil struggle 
 of all time. 
 
 That the resolutions were intended only as the ex- 
 pression of a sentiment, and not as the basis for any 
 contemplated action, is shown by the previous and suc- 
 ceeding course of politics within the State. It would 
 be a distortion of history to look upon this action as if 
 it had been taken in 1860. It was, in fact, only a caveat 
 directed against the course of a party disposed to take 
 an even more unconstitutional view of the Union than 
 was held by those who voted for the resolutions. 
 
 
KENTUCKY AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 145 
 
 After having thus relieved its mind on this engross- 
 ing question of national politics, the Kentucky assembly 
 turned some of its attention to the difficulties of its own 
 organic law. During this period, as too often in the 
 subsequent history of the Commonwealth, the interest 
 in national politics had overshadowed the local needs. 
 The first step was to improve the local government by 
 calling a convention to revise the constitution. This 
 instrument, like all first instruments of the kind, was 
 found to be unserviceable in several respects. The peo- 
 ple did not like the system of choosing the governor 
 and the members of the upper house by the electoral 
 college plan, but desired to have a more immediate 
 power of election. The immediate jurisdiction of the 
 Supreme Court in land cases was also unsatisfactory to 
 the people ; the danger of land suits caused by the rude 
 methods of survey in use was being amply justified. 
 As the land was still of relatively slight value, and the 
 means of communication with the seat of the court lim- 
 ited, this method of procedure was troublesome. With 
 the action carried on in a local court the owner and 
 witnesses, even in case of appeal, would have no occa- 
 sion for resort to the State capital. Tliese matters were 
 changed by the constitutional convention of 1799 ; other 
 alterations were also introduced. The governor and 
 senators were made elective by the popular vote, and 
 the Supreme Court hereafter had only appellate juris- 
 diction. The spirit of revision had already led, in the 
 session of 1797-98, to considerable alterations of the 
 criminal code. This legislation limited the penalty of 
 death to the crime of deliberate murder, — thereby show- 
 ing an advance in the theory of punishments remarkable 
 in a primitive community. 
 
 10 
 
146 KENTUCKY. 
 
 The last political act of the century was an effort to 
 amend or repeal the resolutions of '98. The Common- 
 wealth had solicited the cooperation of the other States 
 of the Union ; but, except in the case of Virginia, she 
 had received no approval, and some of the answers 
 were bitter in their tone. This bitterness is particu- 
 larly noticeable in the reply which came from the Legis- 
 lature of Massachusetts, and was one of the sources of 
 the dislike that long existed towards that State among 
 the Kentucky people. The result of this effort was 
 that the reconsideration was denied and the resolutions 
 reaffirmed. This reaffirmation of the long debated res- 
 olutions shows clearly that they were based on the de- 
 liberate judgment of the people, and were not in any 
 way the result of hasty or inconsiderate action. 
 
 The Federal census of 1800 showed an astonishing 
 increase in the population of Kentucky. The total had 
 risen to 221,955 ; 179,873 were whites, 40,343 slaves, 
 and 737 free colored. Thus the whites had increased 
 about 200 per cent, and the slaves 224 per cent, in the 
 preceding decade.-^ 
 
 1 See Collins, i. p. 25. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY. 
 
 The first year of the new century was an eventful 
 one in Kentucky. The long pause in warfare had given 
 a chance for the minds of the people to turn into other 
 more peaceful channels. The first work of this social 
 chano-e was a great increase in the religious sentiment. 
 That form of religion known as Methodism, which long 
 ao-o had reached its heiojht in the Eastern States, now 
 began rapidly to develop in Kentucky. The excitement 
 was very great. One camp-meeting, near Paris, was 
 said to have been attended by twenty thousand people. 
 Thousands were thrown into the convulsive state that 
 was then believed to be a mark of the divine power. 
 Although such exhibitions are not pleasant to those who 
 take more sober views of religion, there is no doubt 
 that these violent revivals of the religious impulse, 
 which for years marked the history of Kentucky, were 
 very important elements in determining the quality of 
 the people. At one time or another, perhaps one half 
 the population was brought under the influence of an 
 enthusiasm that for a moment took them quite away 
 from material things. There are more refined ways of 
 awaking the altruistic sentiments than were followed 
 in the old Methodist revivals ; but in these rough-cast 
 folk, hardened by a life that was necessarily very ma- 
 terial, and with few influences that were calculated to 
 
148 KENTUCKY. 
 
 awaken the sympathies or the deeper thoughts of the 
 mind, these religious excitements had their value in 
 mental culture. Thousands who never otherwise would 
 have been taken from the life of the day obtained some 
 insight into the depths of the problem of existence, 
 which could come to them in no other way. 
 
 To a large part of the people who came under this 
 strong influence of religious fervor the result was mo- 
 mentary, but a larger part yet got from it effects ithat 
 lasted all their lives. No one, who remembers the peo- 
 ple who owed their conversion to this time, can doubt 
 that on the whole it was a blessed influence, and did 
 more than anything else to smooth away the rudeness 
 which the endless combats of thirty years had put upon 
 the people. 
 
 In the train of this " revival " came, naturally enough, 
 the development of the first distinct anti-slavery move- 
 ment in Kentucky. Even as early as 1799, Henry 
 Clay, who had recently settled in Kentucky, was an 
 advocate of emancipation, but nothing came of his pro- 
 ject until years afterwards. In 1804 a number of Bap- 
 tist ministers, six of whom are described as men of 
 note and others of no fame, started a crusade against 
 slavery.^ 
 
 " They called themselves," says Collins, " the friends 
 of humanity, but we know them in the record of these 
 times as emancipators." There is no mistaking their 
 object; none of the Abolitionists of later day could 
 have been stronger of speech. Their church pronounced 
 against them, saying " that it was improper for minis- 
 
 1 The six men of note were Carter Torrant, David Barrow, John 
 Sutton, Donald Holmes, Jacob Gregg, and George Smith. See Col- 
 lins, i. 419. 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY. 149 
 
 ters, churches, or associations to meddle with the eman- 
 cipation of slavery, or any other political subject ; " ad- 
 vising them to " have nothing to do with it in their 
 religious capacity." These protestants against slavery 
 unfortunately withdrew to a separate local association 
 known by the curious name of " the Baptist Licking 
 Locust Association Friends of Humanity," and in this 
 narrow field soon ceased to be heard of more. This 
 society marks the beginning of the outspoken opposi- 
 tion to slavery which was destined to a slow though a 
 sure growth in the years to come. We shall have oc- 
 casion in the sequel to examine into the history of this 
 opinion. 
 
 In 1802 the first banking system of Kentucky and 
 of the Mississippi Valley grew out of an accident of 
 legislation. The i^rowinof trade with the Lower Missis- 
 sippi, begun by Wilkinson and his associates, and now 
 of considerable importance, made some system of in- 
 surance necessary. This trade was conducted princi- 
 pally by small merchants, who could not well afford 
 themselves to take the risks of the little craft which 
 they floated down and " poled " up the stream. A com- 
 pany was therefore chartered to give them the protection 
 they required from total loss by accident. This char- 
 ter contained a provision which allowed the company to 
 issue transferable notes, and so the State came by a 
 banking system that served a good purpose for many 
 years. It was well it came by chance, for these peo- 
 ple had much the same objection against invested cap- 
 ital that marks the Granger movement of the present 
 day. The charter for a bank, as such, would certainly 
 have been refused. This fear of paper currency, which 
 long remained a permanent feature in Kentucky, rested 
 
150 KENTUCKY. 
 
 upon an unhappy experieoce with the Continental money, 
 through which the country had just passed. The lesson 
 was severe enough to be well remembered. 
 
 In this year the trade by the Mississippi, which now 
 was the life of the rapid commercial advance that was 
 going on in the State, was suddenly interrupted, the 
 treaty conceding it having expired without renewal. At 
 once the State was again in a flaming excitement over 
 the navigation question. Before the disturbance could 
 go far, a fortunate stroke of diplomacy ended the ques- 
 tion forever. By the treaty of St. Ildefonso, France 
 regained the territory of Louisiana, which years before 
 she had lost to Spain. It came back to her with its 
 bounds essentially unclianged. Bonaparte was then on 
 the eve of war with England, in which this fair colony 
 would most likely be wrested from him through the 
 command of the sea that Britain enjoyed. He there- 
 fore sold it for the sum of eighty million francs to the 
 United States. On December 20, 1803, the Americans 
 took possession. It is worth our notice that General Wil- 
 kinson received the possession for the Federal govern- 
 ment. Thus, by the chance of time, this intriguer came 
 in a legitimate way to enjoy authority in Louisiana. 
 
 Wilkinson and his followers reappear in the next 
 considerable incident in Kentucky history, namely, the 
 Burr conspiracy, which in its motives and its following 
 is the natural successor of the French and Spanish 
 movements. 
 
 There is great difficulty in telling the story of this 
 remarkable conspiracy. Burr, its leader, was a meas- 
 ureless liar. Several of the men arrested with him 
 were persons singularly skilled in intrigue, and remark- 
 ably able in holding their secrets. Burr was a man of 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY. 151 
 
 commanding intelligence, of marvelous self-possession, 
 and great foresight. Unhapi)ily these great abilities 
 were marred by an instinct for dangerous intrigue and 
 an infinite untrustvvorthiness. He was Vice-President 
 in the first term of Jefferson's administration, and seemed^ 
 then in a fair way of promotion to the highest hono^ 
 Failing to achieve this, he conceived a vast but histor- 
 ically obscure project of a south-western empire, which 
 was to be won from the territories lying to the south 
 and west of the United States. This project appears 
 to have taken shape in his mind while Louisiana was 
 still in the hands of Spain. His purpose at this time 
 probably was to use the desire of the people in the Mis- 
 sissippi Valley to gain a hold upon the outlet of that 
 stream for the advancement of his fortunes. The ces- 
 sion of Louisiana cut a portion of his ground away, but 
 did not altogether destroy his hopes of success. The 
 Spanish possession of Mexico, then including all of 
 Texas and the unknown region of the Rocky Moun- 
 tains, still afforded a wide field for action. It appears 
 likely, however, that he had some idea of separating 
 this region of the Mississippi from the control of the 
 United States, uniting it with the conquests that he 
 hoped to make in the area still claimed by Spain. The 
 project was a great and shadowy scheme, but more 
 captivating to the wild spirits of the time than if it had 
 been clearly defined. 
 
 In the summer of 1805 Burr journeyed through Ken- 
 tucky, and began the arrangements for the execution 
 of his project. Again, in the following summer, he 
 passed through the State on his way from New Orleans 
 to the island home of Blennerhasset, in the Ohio, where 
 he had his headquarters. Although his machinations 
 
152 KENTUCKY. 
 
 were quietly conducted, enough was known of their 
 purport to enable Mr. Daviess, the attorney for the 
 United States, to lay the outlines of the scheme before 
 the President. It was necessary to construct many 
 boats for the transportation of the several thousand 
 men who were to be engaged in the expedition, and 
 this work necessarily attracted attention. 
 
 In the summer of 1806 a letter from Burr to Gen- 
 eral Wilkinson, who was then territorial governor of 
 Missouri, became public. In this Burr made the largest 
 possible claims of support in his project from the Fed- 
 eral government as well as from England. He asserted 
 that the navy of the United States and the British squad- 
 ron at Jamaica were to cooperate with him, — a state- 
 ment that should have aroused suspicion of his sanity. 
 In this letter there is no announcement of a definite 
 plan, no statement of the end to be attained. There is 
 questionable testimony as to his conversations at this 
 time which goes to show that he had some idea of get- 
 ting control of the Mississippi Valley, and afterward of 
 changing the whole government of the United States. 
 If this testimony can be believed, it affords, as the histo- 
 rian Butler remarks, fair ground for believing that Burr 
 was insane.-^ In November, 1806, Daviess, as attorney 
 for the United States, made a presentation of the case 
 to the Federal court, and asked for process against 
 Burr. Although this application was denied by the 
 court in Burr's absence ns " unprecedented and illegal," 
 and Burr was under no obligation to answer further, 
 he chose to present himself before the court and demand 
 a trial, claiming an absolute innocence of the charges. 
 Owing to the absence of witnesses Daviess could not 
 
 1 Butler, History of Kentucky^ p. 312- 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY. 153 
 
 prove his allegations ; the grand jury failed to find a 
 bill of indictment, and Burr was discharged. The event 
 was of no particular consequence in the history of this 
 conspiracy save that it affords complete proof of Burr's 
 utter untrustworthiness. Henry Clay, who had begun 
 his great career in Kentucky, was one of Burr's coun- 
 sel. Before Clay took charge of the case he received 
 Burr's pledge of honor that he was in no way engaged 
 in such a project as his enemies charged.^ It is only 
 necessary to say that the letter to Wilkinson, which 
 afterward came to light, was written in the preceding 
 July. There can be no doubt that this declaration of 
 Burr to Clay had much to do with his immediate ac- 
 quittal. To the singular charm of person and manner 
 with which this man was blessed, and which overpow- 
 ered the hearts of men ajid women, we must attribute 
 the wild joy with which his acquittal was received. 
 Still the charm was not all Burr's alone. The people 
 of this State undoubtedly longed for adventure. The 
 old avenues of action were closed. The State was full 
 of men who had lived through the heroic age of the 
 country, and the rising generation caught from them 
 the love of conquest. These men inherited the spirit 
 of the Elizabethan English. For two centuries their 
 blood had been constantly stimulated by contests, and 
 was as yet untamed by the commercial life that has in 
 later days, in part, changed the motives of this people 
 and inclined them to the ways of peace. We cannot 
 deny that the mass of the Kentucky people were always 
 " fillibusterish," though they had at the same time a po- 
 litical sense which weighed down the natural hunger 
 for adventure. There is not a decade in which we do 
 1 See Collins, i. p. 293 
 
154 KENTUCKY. 
 
 not find some evidence of tbis motive, until the civil 
 war, with its* hard fighting, wore out the old humor, — 
 at least for a time. 
 
 Burr's bubble collapsed ; no force was necessary to 
 make an end of it. His ten thousand men dwindled 
 down to less than five hundj;:ed,~^\Vilkinson, on whom 
 Burr seems to have relied for material support, Jjmme- 
 diately divulged his plans to the government. Once 
 again it is difficult to say whether in this act Wilkinson 
 played a double part or not. The first court-martial 
 that tried him acquitted him of the charge of treasona- 
 ble correspondence with Burr ; but it is hardly to be 
 believed that Burr would have unfolded his plans to 
 him without some evidence of sympathy.- 
 
 The excitement concerning Burr's project led to an 
 investigation of the malfeasaiice of Judge Sebastian, 
 before referred to. This miserable man was found to 
 be a hireling of the Spanish government all the while 
 that he had been a member of the highest court of the 
 Commonwealth. It was in this legislative inquiry that 
 the history of the last effort of Spain to seduce Ken- 
 tucky from her allegiance became known. As before 
 noted, the oSer of Spain was rejected by all the parties 
 to whom it was addressed. Even Sebastian, though in 
 the pay of Spain, agreed with the others in this judg- 
 ment. The inquiry resulted in the resignation of Se- 
 bastian. As there was no violation of statutes in his 
 conduct, prosecution was impossible. With this incident 
 the long history of the Spanish intrigues was quite ex- 
 hausted. The materials for a full account of this curi- 
 ous effort on the part of Spain are not yet accessible. 
 There is probably no incident of American history that 
 would be so profitable a subject for careful study. 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY. 155 
 
 After this period of political disturbance there came 
 a terra of years in which the historian finds only ma- 
 terial growth to be recorded. This process of devel- 
 opment was going on with extreme rapidity, as will be 
 seen from the tables at the end of this volume. The 
 census of 1810 showed that the population had risen 
 to 406,511, of which the whites were 324,237, slaves 
 80,561, and free blacks 1,713. By comparing this record 
 with the census of 1800 it will be seen that the negro 
 population was now gaining on the white, the increase 
 of the former being at the rate of eighty-four per cent, 
 and of the latter ninety-nine per cent. There was also 
 a noticeable increase of the free colored people, which 
 now amounted to more than two per cent, of the total 
 population of African descent. The rate of increase of 
 the free blacks was about one hundred and fifty per cent. 
 This rapid increase of the free blacks is fairly to be 
 taken as an indication of the anti-slavery propaganda 
 that began with Henry Clay. Although there is little 
 in print about it, there is evidence enough to show that 
 the minds of the people were strongly directed to the 
 consideration of this grave question. 
 
 The long period of political quiet that marked the 
 first years of the century was broken first by the In- 
 dian wars in the northwest, and these campaigns gave 
 a last chance for many an old Indian fighter to renew 
 the memories of his youth. The battle of Tippecanoe 
 ended the struggle. It was a trifling action as regards 
 the number engaged or the number who fell, but for 
 the moment it roused a great enthusiasm among the 
 people. Kentucky lost in this battle two valuable citi- 
 zens in Colonels Daviess and Owen. 
 
 At this time the tide of people that hitherto had set 
 
156 KENTUCKY. 
 
 like a flood into Kentucky began to pour from its terri- 
 tory to the western and northern fields. There were 
 many who found the wrestle with the Indians and the 
 wilderiiess sweeter than all the satisfactions of civilized 
 life. Amono; those who went into the then Far West 
 was the now aged Boone, This singular, guileless man 
 had lost all his "land locations" in Kentucky through a 
 lack of capacity to care for his affairs. So he removed 
 to Missouri when near seventy years old, though yet a 
 vigorous man, hoping to make a new life in that wil- 
 derness. He there entered ten thousand acres of land, 
 but again lost it through some informality in the legal 
 conditions. In his extremity he besought the help of 
 Kentucky in a simple yet affecting memorial, stating 
 " that he had no spot he could call his own whereon to 
 lay his bones." ^ 
 
 The State begged a gift of ten thousand acres of land 
 for him, and Congress readily granted the petition ; but 
 this, too, was soon lost in some lawsuits, so that the 
 brave old man, who had helped to conquer an emjDire, 
 died landless at last. In dismissing this old heroic spirit 
 it is proper to state that the popular opinion that Boone 
 was the leading pioneer in Kentucky is a mistake. His 
 
 1 We may here notice the curious habit of burial on the land of the 
 deceased to which Boone alludes. As is well known, the English an- 
 cestors of this people had the usual habit of burs-ing in churchyards. 
 In the scattered population of Virginia churchyard burial in such 
 places became impossible. In its place grcAv up the habit of interring 
 the dead beside the homestead. This ground, consecrated by the dust 
 of the family, was the last possession parted with ; indeed, it almost 
 always remained in the possession of the kindred to the farthest gen- 
 eration. So it came about that for a decent man to own no acres that 
 might receive his dust was something that appealed strongly to his 
 fellows. It is a social instinct peculiar to the Southern States of this 
 Union. 
 
777^ BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY. 157 
 
 adventures were singularly picturesque, and at the out- 
 set his calm heroism was of g^reat value in jrivino: con- 
 es o o 
 
 fidence to the settlers ; but he did not have powers of 
 command. There was a certain silent diffidence in his 
 temperament, a lack of self-assertion, which hindered his 
 promotion among men of that time. In later years the 
 people seized upon him as a type of the pioneer. It 
 chose well, but his place in Kentucky life was never as 
 large as it is commonly supposed to have been. 
 
CHAPTER XTI. 
 
 THE WAR OF 1812. 
 
 The Indian disturbances that led to the Tippecanoe 
 campaign were stimulated by the controversies that pre- 
 saged the War of 1812. It was only after some years 
 of dispute that trouble came to blows, but the British 
 and Canadians doubtless aroused the spirit of depreda- 
 tion in their willing allies, the savages, long before war 
 actually began. The Kentucky people, through their 
 public meetings and their legislature, expressed their 
 desire for this struggle some years before it came. The 
 irritations of the Revolutionary AVar had never been al- 
 layed nor the combat entirely quelled. 
 
 In the levy of one hundred thousand men for this 
 war with Great Britain, Kentucky's quota was fixed at 
 fifty-five hundred. She was required to send at once 
 fifteen hundred of these to the aid of Hull at Detroit. 
 This call was answered by the very best men of Ken- 
 tucky. So eager were they for the service that the com- 
 mand was swelled by volunteers, who would not be re- 
 fused, to over two thousand men. As they crossed the 
 Ohio on their march they learned of the shameful sur- 
 render of Hull's army and the important forts at De- 
 troit. Unhappily these raw Kentucky troops were of a 
 less hardened nature than those of earlier years. The 
 pioneers were mostly gone. Those who remained were 
 generally beyond the military age, so the leading offi- 
 cers alone were war-tried men. 
 
THE WAR OF 1S12. 159 
 
 Circumstances pointed to General Harrison as the fit- 
 test man for the command of the army. Hull, who was 
 still in nominal command, was so universally contemned 
 that the militia-men refused to serve under him. In this 
 period it required about twenty days to make the jour- 
 ney to and from the seat of government. Allowing 
 time for action at Washington, a month would go by 
 before the evils of Hull's defeat would be remedied. 
 There was reason to fear that the elated British army 
 would push on at once to the Ohio, a movement that 
 they could easily have then made. In this condition 
 of affairs the Governor of Kentucky determined to com- 
 mission General Harrison, then a citizen of Ohio, as 
 major-general of Kentucky, and set him in command of 
 an expedition to retake Detroit, if possible, or at least 
 to stay the tide of invasion by a vigorous move in that 
 direction. This bold resolution is a capital proof of the 
 military energy of the Commonwealth. With this force 
 from Kentucky, together with militia from Cincinnati, 
 Harrison moved swiftly to the north, his army swelled 
 by continual additions of volunteers from both sides of 
 the Ohio River. Pie was soon upon the waters of the 
 great lakes. The Indians fled before him, their scouts 
 carrying the report that " Kentuc was coming as nu- 
 merous as the trees." He relieved Fort Wayne, on the 
 Maumee, from its siege without having to fight a battle. 
 Thus the first object of the movement was accomplished 
 without difficulty. The southward march of the British 
 was arrested, and time was given for the Federal gov- 
 ernment to act. 
 
 Further successful advance of Harrison's army was 
 hindered by many difficulties. The autumn weather was 
 exceedingly trying ; the men were compelled to march 
 
160 KENTUCKY. 
 
 knee deep in miles of swamps that covered this coun- 
 try in the rainy season. Taken at once from comfort- 
 able homes to this miserable life, without any of the 
 hardening experience of camps of training, with no fight- 
 ing, no excitement, except the work of burning aban- 
 doned Indian towns, the troops lost heart. One of the 
 Kentucky regiments revolted, though it was quickly 
 brought to its duty by the vigorous remonstrances of 
 its officers. With an army worn by vain marching, un- 
 provided with artillery, and poorly fed, Harrison's battle 
 was for a long time fought with the wilderness and 
 winter for his foes. In January, 1813, the western- 
 most part of the army found a chance to strike a blow 
 at the British and Indian force at the river Raisin. Al- 
 though these events were beyond the limits of Ken- 
 tucky, they are a part of Kentucky history, for nearly 
 all the men engaged were from this Commonwealth, and 
 the consequences of the action were far-reaching. 
 
 The immediate aim of the movement that led to the 
 battle of the Raisin was to overwhelm a body of about 
 four hundred Indians and British, who were fortified 
 at Frenchtown, on that river. This post was within 
 a day's march of the large British garrison at Maiden, 
 and two days' march from the fort at the rapids of the 
 Maumee. The opportunity was good, and a successful 
 attack followed by an immediate retreat upon the Fed- 
 eral base would have been a brilliant military stroke. 
 
 A detachment of about one thousand Kentucky 
 troops, under the command of Colonel Lewis, was sent 
 upon this errand. They were, iu the main, the regi- 
 ment of Allen, which had lately been guilty of insub- 
 ordination. The attack was successful ; the fortifica- 
 tions were carried by storm, and the garrison pursued 
 
THE WAR OF 1812. 
 
 161 
 
 a considerable distance. Then, in place of promptly re- 
 tiring, the captured fort was held and a report of the 
 success sent to Winchester, the commanding officer of 
 the brigade. Winchester, instead of ordering a re- 
 treat, came to the fort with two hundred and fifty 
 re<J-ulars under Colonel Mills. The circumstances de- 
 manded that these fresh troops should have been placed 
 within the stockade, but from some stupidity they were 
 quartered in the open ground at some distance from 
 the fortifications. 
 
 On the morning of the 22d the army, which had 
 slept without pickets, was suddenly assailed by a force 
 of two thousand British and Indians. The first charge 
 was directed against the stockade, but this, though 
 made by regular British troops, was easily repelled by 
 the Kentucky volunteers with great loss to the assail- 
 ants. Next the blow fell upon Mills' exposed men. 
 Overwhelmed by numbers, this force was quickly put to 
 rout. Colonels Allen and Lewis, with some of their 
 men, left the entrenchment they had so well defended, 
 and endeavored to turn the fugitives into the enclosure, 
 and so save them from utter destruction. Allen was 
 killed in his effort to bring some order out of the con- 
 fusion, and Lewis was taken prisoner. The militia- 
 men were now left without their commanders. Several 
 other of the bravest under officers had fallen beyond 
 the stockade in their effort to save a portion of the reg- 
 ular regiment from massacre. Although this sally of 
 the leaders into the rout they failed to stay, and in 
 which they fell, was ill-judged, it is one of the most 
 valiant incidents in Kentucky history. 
 
 The beleaguered men in the weak fort kept up their 
 resistance for several hours, but their stockade was 
 11 
 
162 KENTUCKY. 
 
 under fire from a battery of artillery which searched 
 every part of their slender defenses. Only when their 
 ammunition was almost exhausted did they" surrender, 
 under promise of honorable conditions. There is no 
 reason to doubt that General Proctor, the British com- 
 mander, intended to keep his promises, but the wounded 
 men were left on the ground without sufficient guard. 
 At night the Indians, wild with drink, broke in upon 
 them and butchered them all in a most atrocious man- 
 ner. This grave disaster carried sorrow throughout 
 Kentucky ; the loss, including the men massacred, was 
 not greater than had been met in other fields, but the 
 butchery of the wounded inspired a fury that was 
 marked in the later events of the war. To this day 
 the river Raisin is remembered in every old family in 
 Kentucky as a name of horror. 
 
 Occurring in midwinter it was months before there 
 was any chance to recover from this severe blow ; it 
 was the more discouraging, since it came at about the 
 same time as a much more disgraceful campaign that 
 had been undertaken against the Illinois Indians. A 
 force of two thousand Kentuckians, under the command 
 of General Hopkins, went upon this expedition. The 
 command crossed the Wabash River in October, and 
 went in search of a Kickapoo Indian village. They 
 expected to arrive there after a march of eighty-five 
 miles; this march was prolonged until the provisions 
 were exhausted without finding any Indians whatever. 
 The disgusted troops, convinced that they were on a wild 
 goose chase, refused the request of their commanders 
 to pursue the march one day longer, and sullenly re- 
 turned to Vincennes. They judged rightly, as it after- 
 ward turned out, for the town they were seeking was 
 
THE WAR OF 1812. 163 
 
 three or four days' march beyond the point where they 
 turned back, and it would, with their supply of food, 
 have been impossible to reach it; but no properly minded 
 man, certainly no one who has been a soldier, can ac- 
 quit these men of conduct that was disgraceful. 
 
 The behavior of these raw levies in the armies of 
 Hopkins and of Harrison, as well as all other experi- 
 ences with Kentucky troops, shows that they require 
 a long discipline before they are fit for the routine en- 
 durance of the soldier. Even when fresh from their 
 homes they can be trusted to take punishment and to 
 strike hard blows; but they have too much individ- 
 uality to stand the continued trials of the march. They 
 have been too much accustomed to be a law unto them- 
 selves to make them patient in the dull round of toil 
 which makes up the life of the soldier until they have 
 been well and carefully disciplined. Most officers will 
 agree, however, that they would rather have material 
 that was insubordinate at the outset, than men who 
 went at once with ox-like patience to the yoke that 
 every private soldier has to bear. This otherwise 
 minded and impatient population gave, in the next gen- 
 eration, the material that made such troops as the 1st 
 Kentucky Brigade in Johnston's Confederate army, and 
 a host of other commands that showed the perfection 
 of soldierly qualities. 
 
 Harrison's inaction left his army in a shape to be be- 
 sieged by the British. If they had not been so slow 
 they miglit, indeed, have driven him back to the Ohio. 
 As it was, his adversary. General Proctor, if anything 
 a worse soldier than old Tippecanoe, gave him ample 
 time to make for his defense a moderately strong fortifi- 
 cation at the falls of th^ Maumee, known in history as 
 
134 KENTUCKY. 
 
 Fort Meigs. After lie had received some reLiiforcements 
 and supplies from Kentucky, on about the first of May, 
 he found himself strongly besieged by the British forces. 
 He had little artillery, and this was so scantily provided 
 with ammunition, that the greater part of his shot were 
 with ammunition, that the greater part of his shot was 
 that which came to him from the enemy's bombard- 
 ment. 
 
 The troops from Kentucky and Southern Ohio, which 
 had been gathered for the relief of Fort Meigs, suc- 
 ceeded in getting an understanding with its commander 
 as to the steps to be taken in the effort to raise the 
 siege. This plan was too complicated for the class of 
 troops that were to execute it, for it involved several 
 delicate manoeuvres that demanded a hioh desrree of 
 discipline. The immediate assault succeeded; the en- 
 emy's batteries, taken in rear, were carried, but the 
 militia-men, their blood up, wildly pursued the fugitives 
 and were, by a judicious movement of the British com- 
 mander, cut off from the rest of the army and cap- 
 tured. They would probably all have been butchered 
 by the Indians but for the timely arrival of the brave 
 and honorable chief, Tecumseh, who stayed the work 
 of slaughter. Although the fight of the 5 th of May 
 was a decided defeat for the Americans, General Proc- 
 tor felt that his position was critical ; and believing 
 that the Kentucky reinforcements were much larger 
 than they really were, abandoned the movement, and 
 took up his position again in his strong fortifications at 
 Maiden. 
 
 Considering the fact that Proctor's force was prob- 
 ably much larger than the combined American troops, 
 the operations that ended the siege succeeded better 
 than they deserved to do, for which our forces had to 
 
THE WAR OF 1812. 165 
 
 thank the inefficiency of the British commander, since 
 their own movements were so badly managed as to in- 
 vite defeat. 
 
 The only brilliant episode in this extremely dull and 
 ineffective piece of campaigning was the defense of a 
 stockade called Fort Stephenson. This post was held 
 by Colonel George Croghan with one hundred and fifty 
 men ; on his way from the siege of Fort Meigs Gen- 
 eral Proctor endeavored to carry this post by assault. 
 Croghan ^ had been ordered to withdraw from it, but 
 before he could effect the movement the place was as- 
 sailed by the half of Proctor's army. When summoned 
 to surrender, Croghan defied his enemy to an assault ; 
 they, trusting to their tenfold superiority, tried an esca- 
 lade, but were easily beaten off with heavy loss. 
 
 In Perry's ship fight on Lake Erie a force of Ken- 
 tuckians served as musketeers, where they did good 
 service. This victory required Proctor to abandon De- 
 troit and withdraw his army to the north side of the 
 lakes. Here he was followed by Harrison. In a short 
 time, owing to his blundering ways of warfare, he was 
 forced into an action on the banks of the Thames. He 
 was considerably outnumbered by the American army, 
 but he had the choice of position, a fairly strong one, 
 and he had one regiment of British regulars in his com- 
 mand. His total force was about two thousand, while 
 the Americans had over three thousand men. This 
 action is properly a part of the history of Kentucky, as, 
 with the exception of a few regulars and some volun- 
 teers from near Cincinnati, also largely of Kentucky 
 blood, the whole force was from that State. 
 
 The greatest advantage of Proctor's army was that 
 
 1 Croghan (pronounced Crawn). 
 
166 KENTUCKY. 
 
 he had with him the great Indian chief, Tecumseh, and 
 the flower of his army, composed of savages who were 
 fairly disciplined and inured to war. This noble red 
 man had succeeded in giving the warriors of his race a 
 steadiness and a soldierly quality which they never pos- 
 sessed under any other commander, at least in the old 
 days. He had a great and elevating influence upon 
 them, restraining their brutalities, and lifting their 
 minds to a patriotic fury. He was one of the few In- 
 dians of whom we can say he had a great moral force. 
 
 The attack was begun by a simultaneous charge upon 
 the British and Indian forces ; against the weak British 
 line the assault was quickly and completely successful. 
 The force of regulars was broken almost at the first 
 blow, and pursued from the field. The Indians made 
 a far more effective resistance. The charge of the 
 mounted Kentuckians was repulsed, and the attack 
 quickly degenerated into the old-fashioned skirmish fir- 
 ing that marks the ordinary Indian fighting of these 
 days. The defeat and destruction of the British con- 
 tingent left the Indian antagonist in a position to be 
 easily enfolded by the superior force of the Kentuck- 
 ians. The death of Tecumseh, which occurred early in 
 the action, was an overwhelming blow, so that they 
 were soon driven from the field. 
 
 In this fight we can plainly see the rapid ripening of 
 , the Kentucky troops in the art of civilized warfare. In 
 la few months they had passed from a rabble, which 
 [could hardly be trusted to bear the fatigues of the 
 'march, to men who could be relied on to take the heav- 
 iest burdens of war. Their attack quickly overwhelmed 
 a line of regular British troops ; this is sufficient evi- 
 dence of their soldierly quality gained in a few months* 
 
TEE WAR OF 1812. 167 
 
 experience. The rest of the Canadian war did not in- 
 volve Kentucky troops, and m^j therefore be dismissed 
 from consideration. We therefore turn to the last and 
 most brilliant campaign of this war, that of thc: Lower 
 Mississippi, including the battle of New Orleans. The 
 abdication of Bonaparte had released a large British 
 army that could be used against the United States. 
 Their other campaigns in the northern and eastern coun- 
 try showed the British that they had little hope of con- 
 quests in that direction. There remained the chance of 
 striking a great and heavy blow at the country by occu- 
 pying the delta of the Mississippi. There is reason for 
 surprise that the British had not taken this chance at 
 an earlier stage of the war. The mouth of the Missis- 
 sippi was practically undefended. It was of slow and 
 difficult access from the centre of population in the 
 Northern States, and the native element was not to be 
 trusted to make much resistance against a vio-orous 
 attack ; a few light ships and a corps of three thousand 
 men might, if acting quickly and with a little address, 
 have gained a position from which it would have been 
 impossible for the American forces to dislodge them. 
 
 When Pakenham, with a force of ten thousand men, 
 was sent on this expedition, although he had the flower 
 of the British troops with him, and was himself an 
 ofTicer of excellent ability, he seems to have left all his 
 wits on the other side of the water. Plis error seems 
 to have been that he despised his enemy, and chose 
 rather the ways of a dress parade than the swift and 
 vigorous measures of war in dealing with his foe. This 
 state of mind was probably due to the recent cowardly 
 behavior of the American army at Bladensburg, when 
 they abandoned the Federal capital to destruction in 
 
168 KENTUCKY. 
 
 a disgraceful way. Pakenham, fresh from successes 
 over the best troops of Europe, assumed his success as 
 assured. He expected no serious fighting. 
 
 When it became certain that a blow was to fall on 
 the region about New Orleans, the Federal government 
 did the little that was possible in the way of making 
 preparations that had been all too long delayed. Gen- 
 eral Jackson, of Tennessee, who had made a measure 
 of fame in conflicts with the Indians of the South, and 
 whose energy in emergencies was well thought of, was 
 sent with seven hundred men to the post of New Or- 
 leans. When the British landed, his whole force con- 
 sisted of this handful of regulars and about three thou- 
 sand half armed and wholly undisciplined militia drawn 
 from the adjacent country. The British were obligingly 
 slow in their disembarkation and in their initial move- 
 ments, so that time was allowed for Tennessee militia 
 under General Coffee, and a brigade of Kentucky troops 
 under General Thomas, to arrive before the main attack 
 was prepared. When the Kentuckians arrived they were 
 without proper arms, and, like their brethren of the 
 northwest army, entirely without any other discipline 
 than that which they had received in their worthless 
 local musters. 
 
 Before the arrival of these reenforcements Jackson, 
 who was as vigorous as his enemy was dilatory, had 
 already delivered a serious blow to them as they ad- 
 vanced from their landing-place. With twenty -five 
 hundred men and an armed schooner he assaulted them 
 in the march. The attack was in the night, and led, 
 as such attacks are apt to do, to utter coiifusion on both 
 sides. Jackson's assault, though ineffective in check- 
 ing the British advance, made it more cautious, and 
 
THE WAR OF 1812. 169 
 
 gave him some days in which to receive further re- 
 euforcements and to complete his preparations. A por- 
 tion of his Kentucky troops were at last supplied with 
 arms, but at best not over one half of those present 
 were even able to do more than load the muskets of 
 those who occupied the actual line of battle. 
 
 The slowness of the British movements gave Jack- 
 son twelve days, after the time of his night attack, in 
 which to complete his preparations. At the end of this 
 time he had a very strong position on the east, or New 
 Orleans' side of the river, where the principal action 
 was evidently to be fought. The British made a feeble 
 reconnaissance on the 28th, that served only to show 
 Jackson the danger of having his left turned. After 
 that the enemy gave him eleven more days in which to 
 avail himself of this information. At the end of that 
 time his lines were too strong to be forced, even when 
 assaulted by the veterans of the Peninsula and defended 
 by raw militia, without a heavy preliminary treatment 
 with artillery, which the enemy did not try to apply to 
 them. 
 
 Finally the deliberate Pakenham arranged his plan 
 of assault. He sent fourteen hundred men to the west 
 bank of the river. The remainder of his infantry 
 troops, amounting to about fifty-five hundred men, were 
 to assail the main lines. Jackson's whole force amounted 
 to about the same as the British. There were seventeen 
 hundred men on the west bank and forty-nine hundred 
 opposed to Pakenham's main column. The Kentucky 
 troops were disposed as follows : One hundred and 
 eighty were with Morgan's line on the left or west 
 bank, and eleven hundred were placed with Adair in 
 the centre of the main line on the eastern side of the 
 river. 
 
170 KENTUCKY. 
 
 When the assault came it was made with all the pre- 
 cision of a parade. It fell at once upon the lines on 
 both sides of the river. On the west side the British 
 carried the ill-constructed fortifications in one charge. 
 The resistance was of the feeblest sort. The small force 
 of Kentuckians behaved like the rest of the outflanked 
 force. If the battle had depended on Morgan's men it 
 would have been a sorry day for the Americans. On 
 the eastern side of the principal attack it was, as we all 
 know, a very different story. There Jackson had massed 
 his most trustworthy men in a line several files deep. 
 Where he expected the heaviest assault, it is said that 
 the men were packed six ranks deep, — those in the 
 rear passing their loaded muskets to the front ranks, re- 
 ceiving from them the discharged guns, thus keeping 
 up a much more steady fire than was possible with the 
 ordinary formation of a line of battle. 
 
 Against such a fire, steady and coolly delivered, not 
 even Pakenham's veterans could stand. The British 
 never came into a position near enough to the fortifica- 
 tions to do any real fighting. It was a mere butchery, 
 such as was never seen before or since in modern war- 
 fare. The British charge was, like that of Balaklava, 
 magnificent, but it was not war. 
 
 It is small praise to say that the Kentucky troops, 
 in the centre of the line, stood well. They, like the 
 rest of the line, never came under a serious fire. But 
 the furious Jackson, deeming his success qualified by the 
 defeat of Morgan's men on the west shore, and un- 
 mindful of the fact that about one fourth of his vic- 
 torious troops were Kentuckians, dwells in his report on 
 the flight of the men from Kentucky who were on the 
 left bank of the river, as if that was the whole share 
 of its citizens in the battle. 
 
THE WAR OF 1812. 171 
 
 This hostility of the American commander to the 
 good name of Kentucky is easily explained. Jackson 
 was, by affiliation, a Tennesseean. Between that State 
 and Kentucky there was always a slight element of 
 jealousy. Tennesseeans of this time felt that they were 
 in the position of poor relations in their intercourse 
 with the somewhat arrogant people from Kentucky. 
 The disgraceful flight of the Federal troops on the west 
 bank gave Jackson's rough humor a chance to vent 
 itself, and although only one eighth of this force was 
 from Kentucky, he laid all the blame on them. 
 
 The campaign of New Orleans ended the important 
 features in the military history of Kentucky for many 
 years. The life of the people was mainly to be spent 
 in their arts and politics for a generation to come. To 
 those who find an interest in political history, this period 
 is not without incidents that will well repay attentive 
 study. A very large number of the citizens of Ken- 
 tucky — nearly all the more ardent spirits, in fact — 
 were hereafter to take themselves to the westward mov- 
 ing frontier. We find them all along the line from the 
 great lakes to the Gulf. They pass from the limits of 
 Kentucky history, yet their work should not be forgot- 
 ten when we are considering the national work of this 
 Commonwealth. We find them in every important In- 
 dian fight, in all the battles of the Texan war, as well 
 as in every legislative assembly of the Western States. 
 The first fifty years of Kentucky life was a good school 
 of those arts that serve to construct and maintain a 
 State, and the whole of the West felt the profit of its 
 teaching. 
 
CHAPTER XITI. 
 
 FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE WAR WITH MEXICO. 
 
 Among all peoples the intervals between wars afford 
 a series of natural divisions in their history. These 
 disturbances are like the critical illnesses of a man, 
 which mark stages in his history, though they may be 
 termed unnatural accidents in his development. The 
 period from 1812 to 1846 was occupied by the Ken- 
 tuckians in a wrestle with some grave problems, which 
 gave them even more serious trouble than their Indian 
 difficulties. The position of this new American State 
 in the fertile fields of the Mississippi Valley abounded 
 in difficulties ; rich in natural resources, but poor in the 
 profits of experience so necessary to the proper control 
 of communities. The place of this young Common- 
 wealth was like that of a young heir of good blood and 
 high mettle, who has just come by a great inheritance, 
 but whose education has not in the least degree fitted 
 him for such a care as he should give his affairs. 
 
 The life of the generation from 1815 to 1845 was 
 full of grave blunders, but it was full of profit as well. 
 No State has made more serious mistakes in govern- 
 mental affairs than Kentucky. We shall see that one 
 by one they exhausted the follies that it was possible 
 for a developing community to commit, but we shall 
 also see that they profited by their painful experiences. 
 
 The first difficulty concerned the monetary system of 
 
FROM WAR OF 1812 TO MEXICAN WAR. 173 
 
 the Commonwealth. The whole American experience 
 shows how well-nigh impossible it is to bring a majority 
 of the people of a State to a clear understanding of the 
 principles of exchange. Men in general can compre- 
 hend the simple barter of goods ; but as soon as barter 
 is further complicated by a selection of some standard of 
 exchange, the problem gets quite beyond their compre- 
 hension. At once these measured of value become the 
 subject of a curious delusion ; they are looked on as mys- 
 terious agents of almost superhuman power. Whether 
 they are cowries or coins, miraculous powers are soon 
 attached to them. When the real value of the coin be- 
 comes represented by a bank note, the money problem 
 escapes entirely from the comprehension of the people. 
 
 The first state of mind of the Kentucky people in 
 reference to the currency was very wholesome. They 
 had been through the severe experience of the Conti- 
 nental paper money. They had seen that currency go 
 down into the pit. For a time, up to about 1785, Ken- 
 tucky was practically without any form of money what- 
 ever. The first generation after that experience clung 
 to barter, or they used rude mediums of exchange, such 
 as a given weight of furs or of tobacco, in their trade. 
 The prejudice against paper money continued as long 
 as there were any to remember the woes of the Conti- 
 nental period. The first bank came by accident in the 
 charter of an insurance company.-^ The opening of a 
 trade with the Spanish at New Orleans brought some 
 Spanish silver into the State, and this was long the 
 principal currency. After the War of 1812-15 the com- 
 mercial growth of Kentucky was rapid ; it became the 
 main depot or supply station for all the country to the 
 1 See p. 149. 
 
174 KENTUCKY. 
 
 west and northwest. Its industrial and social organ- 
 ization was then far ahead of the conditions in the 
 other neighboring States and Territories, so that the 
 exchangeable supplies of the region were great, and the 
 force that before had gone towards war and politics 
 turned towards commerce. 
 
 At this time the general resumption of specie pay- 
 ments in Europe, after'the long suspension that attended 
 the wars with Bonaparte, diminished the metallic cur- 
 rency of the American world in a way that was very 
 destructive to its business interests. The conservative 
 policy that Kentucky had pursued left her in excellent 
 position at the close of the second war with Great Brit- 
 ain, She met the direct tax of the Federal government, 
 amounting to $169,000, promptly. The people, boFd in 
 their prosperity, were eager for new enterprises. The 
 trade spirit was as high as the war spirit of the preced- 
 ing generation. Tlie great stream of energy which had 
 been developed in the battle with the forest and its in- 
 habitants, now flowed into the pursuits of peaceful life. 
 
 The application of steam to navigation early inter- 
 ested this people. It was natural that it should, for their 
 experience in navigating against the swift currents of 
 the streams made it plain to them that they needed the 
 aid of this power. As early as 1794, Edward West 
 launched a small trial vessel in an artificial lake, made 
 by damming the waters of Elkhorn Creek where it 
 flowed through the town of Lexington. This is one of 
 the first, though not the very first, successful trials of 
 a river steamer in the United States.-^ The complete 
 
 1 Some of the old geographical dictionaries speak of Elkhorn Creek 
 as a stream navigable to Lexington. This attribution of navigability 
 to a trifling rivulet of water came from the above experiment. 
 
FROM WAR OF 1812 TO MEXICAN WAR. 175 
 
 possession of the more important Mississippi waters, 
 which was secured by the events of 1815, gave a great 
 impetus to steam navigation. In 1820 and thereabouts, 
 the greater number of the steamboats in the West were 
 owned in Kentucky. 
 
 The manufactures of the State, which were consider- 
 able in the last decade of the eighteenth and the first of 
 the nineteenth centuries, became very much extended.^ 
 
 1 " Kentucky was the home and burial-place of at least three of the 
 earliest inventors of steamboats — John Fitch, James Rumsey, and 
 Edward West. The latter was born in 1757 in Virginia, and removed 
 in 1788 (one account sa3's in 1785) to Lexington, where he died Au- 
 gust 23, 1827. He was the first watchmaker there, was a gunsmith by 
 trade, and a man of great inventive genius. He constructed a steam- 
 boat on a small scale, which in 1794, in the presence of hundreds of 
 citizeris, he had the proud satisfaction to see move through the water 
 with great velocity, in an experimental trial on the Town Fork of 
 Elkhorn, previously dammed up near the centre of Lexington for the 
 purpose. This miniature steamboat had no flywheels; but to overcome 
 the dead point, the piston-rod was made to strike metallic springs at 
 every return motion given by the steam. The identical engine, or 
 rather cylinder, piston-rod, framework, supply and escape pipe, were 
 preserved for more than fifty years in the Adelphi Society of Tran- 
 sylvania University, and have since been transferred to the Museum 
 of the Eastern Lunatic Asylum. On Juh' 6, 1802, Mr. West received 
 a United States patent for his steamboat invention. Why he delaj^ed 
 until then obtaining a patent, we have not learned. On the same day 
 he was awarded three other patents — for a gunlock, for a nail-cutting 
 machine, and for a nail-cutting and heading machine, the first ever 
 invented, and which the celebrated English traveler, F. A. Michaux, 
 in 1805, said cut in twelve hours 5,320 pounds of nails, and the 
 patent of which 'he sold at once for $10,000.' Lexington shortly 
 after actually exported nails of her own manufacture to Louisville, 
 to Cincinnati, and even to Pittsburg — which is now the most exten- 
 sive nail manufacturing point in the United States, if not in the 
 world. April 28, 1816 (only four and a half 3'ears after the first 
 steamboat in the West), a steamboat, made by Bosworth & West, on 
 Mr. West's model, left the mouth of Hickman Creek, on the Ken- 
 tucky River, in Jessamine County, for New Orleans. This boat, aa 
 editorial notice in the Kentucky Gazette saj's, M'as upon a plan dis- 
 
176 KENTUCKY. 
 
 The State at this time developed a considerable amount 
 of mechanical ingenuity among its people ; many of the 
 inventions of its mechanics were important contribu- 
 tions to the arts. As an instance of the manufacturing 
 development in Kentucky, we may take the business 
 conditions of Lexington in 1817. There were then 
 over sixty factories, employing a capital of £467,225,^ 
 or about two million dollars of modern money. A 
 number of other places were important manufacturing 
 centres during the second decade of the nineteenth 
 century. In 1819, Louisville had sixty-four mechan- 
 ical shops, and about the same number of other stores. 
 
 This rapid development of mechanical industry and 
 the great growth of agriculture required some better 
 system of currency than was in existence at this time. 
 There then existed but one banking institution, — the 
 Bank of Kentucky, with a capital of $1,000,000. After 
 a long resistance to the project of free banking, the 
 legislature in 1818 chartered at once forty-six separate 
 banks, having a total capital of $8,720,000. This ex- 
 periment was singularly unfortunate, for within the 
 year the demand for specie which came from the United 
 States Bank, brought about the suspension of payments 
 on the part of the only strong banking-house in the 
 State, — the old Bank of Kentucky, — and wrecked 
 nearly all the flimsy banks that had been organized 
 under these charters. They were mostly in the hands 
 
 tinct from any other steamboat then in use, and on a trial against 
 the current of tlie Kentucky River, at a high stage, more than an- 
 swered the sanguine expectations of her owners (a company of Lex- 
 ington gentlemen), and left no doubt that she could stem the current 
 of the Mississippi with rapidity and ease. She did not return." Col- 
 lins, ii. p. 174. 
 
 1 Collins, ii. p. 176. 
 
FROM WAR OF 1812 TO MEXICAN WAR. 177 
 
 of weak men, and had begun their operations by loaning 
 money on worthless securities. 
 
 Convinced by dearly bought experience that this 
 course was perilous, the legislature in 1820 annulled 
 these charters, and left the problem of banking where 
 it was before. So grievous was the burden of debt that 
 was caused by the collapse of speculations undertaken 
 in the previous years that the legislature was forced to 
 another wild scheme, which brought about one of the 
 most singular and instructive political struggles that had 
 ever been seen in an American State. The act in ques- 
 tion provided for the organization of the Bank of the 
 Commonwealth, with a capital stock of $2,000,000. 
 There was a long and fierce debate before this charter 
 was granted: on the one side were arrayed the few 
 who by native insight rather than by reading perceived 
 the true principles of money, — men like Christopher 
 Greenup and the other clear-headed members of the 
 Political Club of Danville ; on the other side was the 
 host of impetuous men who had been harder tried in 
 their speculative combats with the impossible in finance 
 than they ever had been in their struggle with the sav- 
 ages. They were ruined in pocket : they fancied that in 
 some way the State could, without injustice to any man, 
 make them whole again. If there was only a bank that 
 would advance a little money on securities they deemed 
 as safe as gold, all might be well. 
 
 History repeats itself more often in monetary than . 
 any other matters. It was now the innings of the soft 
 money men. This Bank of the Commonwealth was al- 
 lowed to issue notes, for which the holder could not 
 claim specie payment. It was to have twelve trustees, 
 and was allowed to put out $3,000,000 of circulating 
 12 
 
178 KENTUCKY. 
 
 paper. This paper was made a legal tender for all debts. 
 The next step of the mad party that led in the legis- 
 lature was to get possession of the excellent Bank of 
 Keutucky, — the only sound banking establishment in 
 the Commonwealth. The old directors of this institu- 
 tion were turned out, and their places taken by men 
 who represented fiat money. The plan was to use the 
 well earned credit of this bank to float the bills issued 
 by the new " wild cat " enterprise. The result was to 
 overthrow the credit of the only sound bank in the 
 country.^ 
 
 In the course of the year the paper of the new bank 
 fell to a fraction of its face value. Creditors properly 
 objected to payment in notes that represented no real 
 value, and when their property was seized, appealed to 
 the courts. Fortunately at that time the judiciary of 
 the State, still appointed by the governor, and holding 
 office during good behavior, was composed of able and 
 trustworthy men. The effort to defeat the " will of the 
 people '■ by process of law aroused an extraordinary ex- 
 citement throughout the State. The mad-cap element, 
 deprived of the profits of their majority, threatened the 
 judges with ejection from their seats, and even personal 
 violence, if they dared to decide against the constitu- 
 tionality of the law. The first decision came from the 
 
 1 It is worth while to notice that the legislature undertook to com- 
 mend this ill-advised project to the people by devoting one half the 
 profits of the Commonwealth Bank to what was known as the "Lit- 
 erary Fund." This money was to go for the purchase of books and 
 philosophical apparatus and other betterments of the Transylvania 
 University, Centre College, and to the Southern College of Kentucky. 
 This appropriation came to nothing, but it is an interesting evidence 
 of the desire for the increase of the usefulness of the State colleges, 
 and the sense of what might best reconcile the conservative people to 
 the new monetary scheme which they so stoutly opposed. 
 
FROM WAR OF 1812 TO MEXICAN WAR. 179 
 
 court of the Clarke County district. The sitting jus- 
 tice, Judge Clarke, decided that the clause in the act 
 which gave a retrospective effect to the action of re- 
 plevin was unconstitutional and void. 
 
 It is not worth while to go into the complicated 
 technicalities of this decision. The essence of it was 
 that the legislature had no power to take steps that in 
 any way impaired the obligation of contracts, as it did 
 by making the notes of the Commonwealth Bank a legal 
 tender. As is often the case," the decision touched only 
 a part of the laws that were in controversy, but it 
 clearly showed how the courts would deal with the 
 whole problem when it came fairly before them. 
 
 The State was already divided into two political par- 
 ties, known as the relief and anti-relief parties. The 
 former insisted that the will of the people should pre- 
 vail in the passage of the laws for the relief of debtors ; 
 the latter, that these laws were inconsistent with the 
 Federal Constitution, which forbids the passage of laws 
 that impair the obligation of contracts. As usual, the 
 more radical men won at the outset, the conservative 
 element being slow to array itself in determined op- 
 position to the overthrow of the organic law. The re- 
 lief party had an overwhelming majority in the legis- 
 lature, and the weak-minded Governor Adair was in 
 sympathy with them. An extra session of the legisla- 
 ture was called, and the just and fearless judge, who 
 had decided against the law, was cited before it in order 
 that steps might be taken summarily to remove him. 
 Judge Clarke made an able defense of his action, and 
 there was enough reason left in this legislature to con- 
 vince some of his antagonists and to make his removal 
 impossible, at least while the Court of Appeals had the 
 
180 KENTUCKY. 
 
 question of his decision under hearing. In 1823 the 
 Appellate Court consisted of three judges, — Boyle, 
 chief justice, Mills and Owsley, associates, — all men 
 of a strong type and unshakable by popular clamor. 
 Disgraceful efforts were made to frighten them into a 
 decision in favor of the relief party. It is infinitely to 
 their credit that the judgment they rendered was a clear 
 judicial verdict against the constitutionality of the law, 
 on the ground that it violated the clause in the Con- 
 stitution of the United States which forbids the States 
 to impair the obligations of contracts. 
 
 Their decision was received by the relief party with 
 a perfect tempest of rage. Efforts were at once made to 
 remove the judges by act of the legislature. The elec- 
 tion of 1824 was decided on this issue, and Governor 
 Joseph Desha, the relief candidate, received 38,378 
 votes, and his opponent, Christopher Thompson, 22,499. 
 This majority carried with it the control of both the 
 senate and house, but not sufficiently complete power 
 to enable the legislature to remove the offending jus- 
 tices by impeachment, which required a two third's 
 vote. So an indirect means of accomplishing this end 
 was devised. As soon as the legislature met a bill was 
 brought in and speedily passed, to break up the Su- 
 preme Court, by repealing all the laws that gave it ex- 
 istence. Then another court, under the name of the 
 Court of Appeals, was organized. The new places were 
 immediately filled by men who were known and earnest 
 supporters of the popular party. This revolutionary 
 act unfortunately had the support of some of the ablest 
 men in the State. William T. Barry, the chief jus- 
 tice of the new court, John Rowan, Joseph Desha, and 
 others who were the leaders in the relief party, were 
 
FROM WAR OF 1812 TO MEXICAN WAR, 181 
 
 men otherwise apparently of high character and dis- 
 tinguished ability. Their conduct in this matter is only 
 to be explained by the well-known difference that so 
 often exists between the public and the private conduct 
 of men.-^ 
 
 Fortunately for the State the justices of the old court 
 were men of calm strength, who felt that when the sub- 
 ject was fairly presented to the people they would be 
 supported. They did not accept this dismissal from 
 their high office. They made a judicious and complete 
 answer to the legislature in its effort to legislate them 
 out of office, and when their offices were vacated by en- 
 actment they took the strong ground that as their court 
 was created by the conditions of the Constitution of the 
 Commonwealth, nothing less than the amendment of that 
 instrument could remove them from their positions. Al- 
 though they were deprived of their records, which were 
 placed under a military guard that allowed only the 
 new court to have access to them, they continued to sit 
 and give judgments as before, leaving the final decision 
 of the matter to the people. The minority of the legis- 
 lature, though their protests against the illegal action 
 of their colleagues were refused even a place on the 
 records of both senate and house, took the question to 
 the people. Then came a bloodless campaign, which 
 for energy and bitterness has never been equaled in the 
 history of the State, if ever among English speaking 
 
 1 Space does not allow, nor perhaps would the reader be repaid, for 
 the careful review of this interesting struggle. Those who are curious 
 in such matters will find a full record of the debates outside of the 
 legislature in the two weekly journals which were created as organs 
 of the two parties, the Patriot and the Spirit of '76, published in 
 Frankfort, Ky., during the trial of this momentous issue before the 
 people. 
 

 182 KENTUCKY. 
 
 peoples. Not even the elections immediately preceding 
 the Civil War gave anything like the same fury to men's 
 minds as did the struggle between the old and new 
 court parties in the election of 1825. In the canvass 
 of 1860 every one felt that there was a great elemental 
 storm arising that might sweep the land to destruction. 
 This subdued the fury of partisanship. 
 
 The election of 1825 had, in its principal question, 
 one well suited to arouse the bitterest passions. On 
 one side was arrayed the " people's party," — that large 
 body of people who from the first had held to the notion 
 that the will of the populace should be the supreme law. 
 Something of these gross notions concerning the func- 
 tion of government was shown in the earlier history 
 of the Commonwealth. We see them in the actions 
 of the French party. They are marked in the frequent 
 cases of insubordination among Kentucky troops. But 
 now was the first time that this socialistic force was 
 arrayed against the best interests of the State itself. 
 The debate before the people was long and furious, but 
 the next election showed that the heart of the Common- 
 wealth was sound. They gave their hearty approval 
 to the anti-relief party, electing sixty of old court men 
 to thirty-five for the new court. Still the senate, which 
 was only partly renewed by this election, disregarding 
 the will of their constituents, which they pretended to 
 take as their guide, refused to concur with the house in 
 a bill to rescind the laws constituting the new court. 
 The question was kept open until the next year, when 
 the voters reaffirmed their decision in an election which 
 so changed the senate that the two bodies were able to 
 pass an act to annul this detestable legislation. In De- 
 cember, 1825, all the laws constituting the new court 
 
FROM WAR OF 1812 TO MEXICAN WAR. 183 
 
 were repealed, thus ending a contest that brouglit the 
 Commonwealth in the face of the gravest problems of 
 public morals. 
 
 During this long struggle the Commonwealth was 
 continually on the. verge of a civil war. The whole 
 machinery of law was out of joint; no legal steps could 
 be taken with any certainty that the action was properly 
 brought. The records of the Supreme Court were in 
 the possession of the newly constituted Court of Ap- 
 peals, and were under military guard, and the governor 
 was in complete sympathy with the new court party. 
 The good judgment of the people, together with the 
 dignity and patience of the court, enabled the State to 
 avoid the worst consequences of this great error, — to 
 give it no graver name. The act of 1824, repealing the 
 laws constituting the new court, was passed over the 
 governor's veto, so that the end was attained against 
 the resistance of the magistrate, who had sworn to de- 
 fend the Constitution that gave him his authority. 
 
 This struggle between the parties of old and new 
 courts had certain very important effects upon the po- 
 litical life of the Commonwealth. For the first time it 
 brought the motives of the radical element of the popu- 
 lation clearly into view, and arrayed against them the 
 conservative and law-abiding element of the people. 
 The question before the court, and in its legal aspect, 
 turned upon the clause of the Federal Constitution that 
 forbade the impairment of contracts, though the imme- 
 diate victory was gained on other and more special legal 
 grounds. But there was a nearer and simpler question, 
 one of honesty in the management of public affairs, 
 which was the part debated before the people and on 
 which they gave their decision in an unmistakable way. 
 
184 KENTUCKY. 
 
 We may fairly regard this debate as a turning-point 
 in the politics of the State. The election which gave 
 the relief party its overwhelming majority in the legis- 
 lature of 1824, and elected Desha by a vote of thirty- 
 eight thousand to twenty-two thousand for his opponent, 
 represents the uninformed and rash state of public opin- 
 ion. The reversal of this vote in the following year 
 shows an extraordinary revolution of sentinient. It 
 shows a moral awakening which was full of promise, 
 and one that time has justified. From this time onwards 
 the State has always inclined to conservative ways. 
 In its end the controversy between the old and new 
 courts was very wholesome, since it showed the people 
 the way in which grave dangers lay. That the people 
 of the Commonwealth met the emergency in a manly 
 fashion, promptly reconsidering their first hasty steps 
 when they had a chance to see whereto they led, and 
 in the end found a position on firm ground, is a matter 
 of satisfaction to all who hold the name of Kentucky 
 dear. 
 
 When the final overthrow of the new court came it 
 was acquiesced in by both parties, though with the nat- 
 ural inertia of politics for some time the party lines 
 stood near where they had been placed by this conflict. 
 With apparent satisfaction the people turned their at- 
 tention from their local affairs to the larger field of na- 
 tional questions. There was a matter which had been 
 in abeyance during the old and new court conflict that 
 was ready for use. In 1825 the election for President 
 having been thrown into the House of Representatives, 
 Clay, then a member from the Ashland district, had 
 cast his vote for Adams. It was fit that he should 
 have done so, for Adams fairly represented the party 
 
FROM WAR OF 1812 TO MEXICAN WAR. 185 
 
 with which he had acted for many years. The radical 
 element of Kentucky and elsewhere chose to take this 
 vote in high dudgeon. There was then, and for a long 
 time afterwards, a great dislike to New England, and 
 especially to Massachusetts, among the extremists of 
 Kentucky. This was, in the beginning, due to the fact 
 that the New England States opposed the admission of 
 Kentucky to the Federal Union ; even those who did 
 not desire to have that union effected were naturally 
 offended by this resistance. To this original cause of 
 hatred was added the anti-slavery propaganda which 
 came from that region, as well as the severe answer 
 that Massachusetts had made to the invitation sent her 
 by the young Commonwealth to concur in the resolu- 
 tions of 1798. 
 
 Clay and the cause of Adams, in the approaching 
 Federal election, were espoused by the old court party, 
 then known as the National Republican party. Jack- 
 son was the candidate of the new court party, then 
 known as the Democratic Republicans. In the State 
 election of 1825 it was evident that Adams was a bur- 
 den that even the strength of the old court party could 
 not carry, for, although this party elected Metcalf, their 
 candidate as governor, Jackson carried the State in 
 November by a majority of eight thousand. This vote 
 for Jackson should not be regarded as representing the 
 true position of the parties at this time. It is well 
 known that Adams had incurred a great burden of un- 
 popularity throughout the United States, as is shown by 
 his overwhelming defeat in the other States, while Jack- 
 son represented the greatest victory that had ever been 
 won by the national troops, an action in which nearly 
 one third of his men were Kentuckians. The people 
 
186 KENTUCKY. 
 
 had forgiven him his unjust criticism of their soldiers, 
 for which he in a fashion apologized, and only remem- 
 bered his really noble and soldierly qualities. The won- 
 der is that, under the circumstances, Jackson's majority 
 was so small. The vote stood for Jackson, 39,394; 
 for Adams, 31,460. 
 
 The defeat of Adams was a severe blow to Henry 
 Clay, and for a time promised to make an end of his 
 political life, but this fascinating and pliant man soon 
 recovered his place among his people. Jackson's course 
 as President, though not to the satisfaction of the more 
 conservative element, pleased the mass of the people. 
 For two years this approval was marked by the as- 
 cendancy of the Democrats. Even in 1832 this party 
 succeeded in electing their governor by a slender ma- 
 jority. But the nomination of Clay as a candidate of 
 the National Republican or Whig party, to contest a 
 second election with Jackson, finally determined the po- 
 litical complexion of Kentucky. The people were in a 
 state of wild enthusiasm for their illustrious citizen, and 
 in the November election the poll stood: Clay, 43,614; 
 Jackson, 36,290. 
 
 On the national arena Jackson defeated Clay by a 
 large majority, but the Kentuckian was now master of 
 his own Commonwealth, and long ruled it wisely. Al- 
 though his place in national statesmanship may be ques- 
 tioned, though it may be shown that his advocac}^ of a 
 tariff and of the Missouri Compromise were not founded 
 on sound principles of statesmanship, there can be no 
 question that within the limits of Kentucky his influence 
 was beneficial beyond that of any other citizen. With 
 little academic instruction, he was a man of a really 
 wide culture. His conservatism was not a narrow kind, 
 
FROM WAR OF 1812 TO MEXICAN WAR. 187 
 
 but came from a keen sense of the value of deliberate- 
 uess and fidelity in all public actions. We canoot in 
 this brief sketch trace his influence on Kentucky life, 
 nor even give the outlines of his work ; but it should 
 be remembered that while he was never keenly inter- 
 ested in State politics, and there is no important State 
 legislation that can be regarded as his work, yet ia 
 founding and strengthening the conservative spirit that 
 began to come with the greater wealth and culture of 
 the State, he assuredly did a very great work. From 
 the time of his local victory over Jackson to the present 
 day, the conservative element of Kentucky, — the party 
 that takes the tasks of government deliberately and 
 philosophically, that debates, before acting and after act- 
 ing, the questions of public duty as they should be con- 
 sidered, — has never lost its hold upon the State. Par- 
 ties have changed names, political issues have come and 
 gone, but the conservative power that came from the 
 bank question, and was affirmed by Clay, still holds the 
 old Commonwealth with a firm hold.^ 
 
 The course of Jackson in reference to the national 
 bank soon brought the Kentuckians back again to their 
 local needs. The winding-up of the Commonwealth 
 Bank was skillfully managed. The legislature ar- 
 ranged for the calling in and the cancellation of its 
 outstanding paper, so that the indecent neglect of the 
 public rights, shown in its founding, gave place to a 
 commendable honesty in its finish. 
 
 The notes of the United States Bank were now the 
 
 1 I shall hereafter discuss the present position of parties in Ken- 
 tucky, and believe that I shall show that the present so-called Demo- 
 cratic party of Kentucky is essentially the conservative party much 
 as it was left by Clay. 
 
188 KENTUCKY. 
 
 principal circulating medium of Kentucky. They served 
 their purpose well until Jackson began his assaults on 
 the bank. When it fell before the furious campaign 
 which Jackson waged against it, the State legislature 
 endeavored to replace its paper by creating three banks, 
 known as the Bank of Kentucky, the Bank of Louis- 
 ville, and the Northern Bank of Kentucky, the first 
 being the reconstitution of a bank that had long ex- 
 isted ; these banks had a total capital of ten million of 
 dollars. 
 
 If Jackson had been defeated at New Orleans, his 
 ruin could not have done the country as much dam- 
 age as his repeal of the charter of the United States 
 Bank, without any provision for its replacement in the 
 system of American commerce. The immediate result 
 was a general return to the " wild cat " money of ten 
 years before ; banks started up at every cross-roads' 
 town ; every speculative person found banks to lend him 
 money, for the more of the paper that these institutions 
 could set afloat the larger would be the measure of their 
 profits. The Kentucky banks were far more provident 
 than those of the neighboring States, but they could 
 not resist the tide of frauduleucy that came in the train 
 of this wild speculation. The commerce of Kentucky 
 was now involved with that of half a dozen other com- 
 munities, which were of a much less conservative humor 
 in the management of the banking question. The bub- 
 ble of speculation was soon blown up to the bursting 
 point, and in 1837 all the banks of the United States 
 were, by the resulting collapse, forced into a suspension 
 of payments. 
 
 Despite the hard lessons of the preceding decade, 
 Kentucky had been led into the full tide of speculation 
 
FROM WAR OF 1S12 TO MEXICAN WAR. 189 
 
 which affected not only individuals but the State itself. 
 The legislature had undertaken a vast system of pub- 
 lic improvements on its own credit. It was at work on 
 a costly system of canalizing the principal rivers, whose 
 whole water system lies in the State ; the Kentucky, 
 the Green, and the Licking were to be provided with 
 locks and dams, so that they might be navigated from 
 the Ohio to their head-waters. A great series of turn- 
 pikes also received the aid of the State. These im- 
 provements were well conceived. The State was suf- 
 fering under a grievous want of ways of communication. 
 Its centres of population and of industry were far from 
 the Ohio, then the only great pathway of commerce. 
 The clayey character of the soil in all the fertile dis- 
 tricts made unmacadamized roads impassable to any 
 heavy traffic during half the year. The State had 
 shown commendable enterprise in dealing with this car- 
 dinal difficulty of its civilization. It was a great mis- 
 fortune that the effort was made in a period of such 
 monetary uncertainty. But the very stimulus to enter- 
 prise that led to the undertaking of these improvements 
 was due to the speculation that caused commercial dis- 
 aster. 
 
 The financial hurricane of 1837 produced a universal 
 and enduring distress in Kentucky. Nearly every busi- 
 ness man in the State, and very many of the farmers, 
 were rendered bankrupt or burdened by debt to the 
 point of virtual insolvency. In this time of trial the 
 people showed the profit of the lessons of the preced- 
 ing ten years. There was a general effort to mitigate 
 the evils by mutual help rather than by legislation. 
 The State refused to forfeit the charters of the sus- 
 pended banks, or to compel them to resume specie pay- 
 
190 KENTUCKY. 
 
 meDts. The brief breathin:^ time of 1838, when for a 
 few months the banks tried to resume payment, revived 
 the hopes of the people ; but the burden of unliquidated 
 debt rested too heavily on them for an enduring revival 
 of business, so that the banks were compelled again to 
 suspend their proper functions. The years 1840, 1841, 
 and 1842 were the most hopeless that this people have 
 ever known. Not even the shadowed days of the Civil 
 War brought such despair to their firesides. War 
 brings the light of action and expectation, with its 
 swift movements, that is wanting in a time of universal 
 bankruptcies. 
 
 It is not surprising that this time of trial led to a 
 revival of the " relief party," which grew rapidly to 
 formidable dimensions. But the conservative element 
 was bold, and readily met their schemes. The legisla- 
 ture refused to take any unreasonable steps. The most 
 they did was to modify the system of the courts, so as 
 to give the creditor a little more time in which to meet 
 the actions brought against him. Gradually, through 
 infinite suffering that is recorded in the long dockets of 
 the courts and the cloud of judgments that fell upon all 
 forms of property, the people won their way back to 
 commercial prosperity. 
 
 This episode closes the remarkable events in the his- 
 tory of the financial development of the State. From 
 this time on the Commonwealth's banks were singularly 
 sound and efficient institutions. They were commonly 
 domestic in their system; they trusted for their strength 
 to a mixture of control exercised by the State through 
 its ownership of stock and the citizen stockholders.-^ 
 
 1 In many ways these bankb were singular!}'- domestic institutions. 
 Custom required the cashier to reside in the bank building, so that 
 
FROM WAR OF 1812 TO MEXICAN WAR. 191 
 
 They gave to the people a better currency than ex- 
 isted in any State west of the mountains. Even in the 
 trial of the Civil War they stood, as they still- stand, 
 unbroken. Their strength is so great that although 
 tlieir currency has been destroyed by the laws of the 
 United States, they remain the mainstays of the busi- 
 ness of the Kentucky people outside of one or two of 
 the larger cities. 
 
 ^/ It will be worth the reader's while to follow this pe- 
 culiar history of Kentucky banking beyond the limits 
 of this sketch. I know no other case in the history of 
 these American States where the problem of an ex- 
 change system has been so beautifully shown in all its 
 various workings. In the first period of the State's 
 history we had a long time in which the industry was 
 carried on in the main by barter. Then came the period 
 when the Spanish currency of the dollar was the main- 
 stay of commerce. It is likely that the singular philo- 
 Spanish party got some of its influence from the use of 
 this currency. A sense of kinship comes with a com- 
 mon money. Relations with Spain that now seem so 
 impracticable, probably looked more natural to a people 
 who used Spanish money in the most of their transac- 
 tions. When the want of small money became great, 
 as it did about the beginning of the century, the need 
 was met by cutting the Spanish dollar into four or eight 
 parts, called " quarters " or " bits." These angular 
 fragments of " cut money " passed current for thirty 
 years or so, and were the subject of several legislative 
 
 the bank affairs were in a way a part of the household of its execu- 
 tive arrangements. It may be that this domestication of the bank 
 aided in part to secure the peculiar honesty that marked their admin- 
 istration. 
 
192 KENTUCKY. 
 
 enactments. This plan of dividing coins into segments 
 was a singular if not unique device, and long served a 
 good purpose. ^ 
 
 When the commerce of this people came to the point 
 where a better system of money became necessary, we 
 find them learning the hard lesson of banking by the 
 dear way of experience, and profiting by that experience 
 in a singularly immediate fashion. Moreover, the ad- 
 vance of the Kentuckians in the methods of govern- 
 ment can, to a great degree, be attributed to the com- 
 plete discussion of the principle of public faith that they 
 had then to decide in the matter of the Commonwealth 
 Bank and the new court questions. It is impossible 
 in this 2:)lace to do more than furnish an outline of this 
 extremely interesting chapter in commercial history, but 
 it will be well for some student of political economy to 
 give especial attention to the instructive series of events. 
 In no other American State can the money problem be 
 found in such a good position for study. The careful 
 student will there find a wonderful catalogue of mone- 
 tary expedients. 
 
 From their trials in business the people more than 
 once turned, with their usual eagerness, to the questions 
 of national politics. The wide habit of thought bred in 
 their early wrestle with national problems, such as the 
 first forty years of the life of the Commonwealth opened 
 to them, made such matters always of paramount in- 
 terest. 
 
 The Harrison presidential campaign of 1840 was de- 
 cided, as was the first Jackson campaign, on the mem- 
 ories of the War of 1812. Van Buren received 32,616, 
 while Harrison's vote was 58,489, a majority of nearly 
 two to one, — and this despite the fact that Richard M. 
 
FROM WAR OF 1812 TO MEXICAN WAR. 193 
 
 Johnson, the candidate for Vice-President with Van 
 Buren, was a Kentuckian of Kentuckians, the man who, 
 it was believed, had killed the great Tecumseh in the 
 battle of the Thames, and who had otherwise deserved 
 well of his country. The Whig vote was doubtless re- 
 duced by the popularity of this illustrious citizen. 
 
 In 1844 Clay was the Whig candidate for the Pres- 
 idency. Although he was supported by his party with 
 a singular ardor, his majority in the State was only about 
 nine thousand, a great falling off from the majority 
 given to Harrison four years before. This marks a pe- 
 culiar set of politics in Kentucky, which we must now 
 explain. 
 
 In this election the Democratic party represented the 
 project for the annexation of Texas, which now was 
 becoming a burning question in American politics. The 
 attempt which Texas was then making for independence 
 of Mexico claimed and gained tha keenest sympathy 
 from Kentucky. Many of the leaders in that remark- 
 able conflict were from this Commonwealth, and they 
 all represented the motives of that western life which, 
 in time of trial, knows no State bounds.-'- There have 
 been few incidents in American history so calculated to 
 interest the Kentucky people. The struggle was ro- 
 mantic in its object and in its details. For years the 
 Kentucky people had been deprived of all share in the 
 excitement of war. War for political objects has always 
 had an absorbing interest to a people who have the out- 
 going type of mind combined with rude vigor. More- 
 over, the growing interest in the slavery problem led 
 
 1 Many hundred of the soldiers of the Texan army were from Ken- 
 tucky. General Albert Sydney Johnston, General Felix Huston, and 
 many other distinguished officers were her sons. 
 13 
 
194 KENTUCKY. 
 
 many strong advocates of that institution to desire an 
 extension of territory in the Southwest, into which the 
 slave population might find its way. These influences 
 led many persons temporarily to detach themselves from 
 the old Whig or conservative party, and to join the side 
 that advocated aiding Texas in her conflict with Mexico, 
 or her admission into the United States. The same 
 influences acted throughout the Union, but with more 
 energy in Kentucky than elsewhere, because the force 
 of sympathy with the Texan cause was stronger than in 
 any other Whig State. Nothing else could show so well 
 the gain in the conservatism in Kentucky as the fact 
 that, despite all these natural incentives to sympathy 
 with Texas, the State was held by a majority of over 
 nine thousand in resistance to the project of a war with 
 Mexico. The basis of Clay's opposition to the annexa- 
 tion of Texas was in the very tendency to the extension 
 of slavery that this annexation would bring about. A 
 majority of the people of Kentucky were no longer 
 friendly to the extension of slavery, though they were 
 even more heartily opposed to the abolition party. 
 
 The defeat of Clay was the final blow to his long de- 
 ferred hopes of occupying the chair of the President at 
 Washington. He still remained the foremost figure of 
 Kentucky politics, but his influence even there ends with 
 this defeat. This failure of their candidate was the 
 more exasperating because treachery in New York de- 
 termined the issue against him. The nation at large 
 abandoned the cautious policy that strangely enough had 
 come to be the motive of Kentucky, which in the pre- 
 ceding generation was the most radical State in the 
 Union. Had it been left to Kentucky, despite her nat- 
 ural sympathy with Texas and the pro-slavery South, 
 
FROM WAR OF 1812 TO MEXICAN WAR. 195 
 
 there would probably have been no annexation of new 
 territory for many years, and slavery might have been 
 hemmed within its old bounds. 
 
 "We leave the discussion of the events of the Mexican 
 War to the next chapter, and turn back to consider the 
 condition of the institution of slavery during this middle 
 period of the State's history. The tables in the Appen- 
 dix will give the reader a synopsis of the increase in 
 the African element of the population in the successive 
 decades since the first census. It will easily be seen 
 that the first settlers of Kentucky, 'though they came 
 from slave-holding colonies, brought few negroes into 
 the State. As soon as the pioneer life began to give 
 place to a commercial activity, and men took to plant- 
 ing for profit and not for subsistence, the negro popula- 
 tion rapidly increased. From 1790 to 1840 there was 
 a rapid gain of the African element of the population 
 represented in per cents, at the several decades as fol- 
 lows. The upper line gives the per cent, of increase in 
 the preceding decade in the black, the lower in the 
 white, population. 
 
 1830. 1840. 1850. 1860. 1870. 
 
 20 1-3 10 1-3 15 2-3 7 —6 
 22 13 1-3 26 17 14 
 
 Thus the African race increased more rapidly than 
 the white up to 1830. In 1840 the white population 
 shows a notable increase over the black. This gain is 
 more marked in 1850, it is extended in 1860, and in 
 1870 the black population shows an absolute decrease. 
 In a small way this actual decrease in 1870 may be due 
 to the emigration of the negroes during the war, but it 
 will be noticed that it very nearly agrees with the series 
 of changes belonging to the earlier decades. This will 
 
 1800. 
 
 1810. 
 
 1820. 
 
 Slaves 224 
 
 99 
 
 57 
 
 Whites 200 
 
 84 
 
 36 
 
196 KENTUCKY. 
 
 be more apparent to the reader from a consultation of 
 the tables in the Appendix, where also the notable total 
 increase of the blacks is shown. We may say that this 
 decrease would have come about in the natural succes- 
 sion of changes, even if the war had not been fought or 
 emancipation established. There is great difficulty in 
 analyzing the history of slavery in Kentucky. There 
 are no sufficient records on which to base the study of 
 the problem. In the following statement the writer has 
 had to rely on his long personal knowledge of the Com- 
 monwealth and on fair opportunities for insight into its 
 motives. 
 
 In the first place the reader should observe that only 
 a small part of the Commonwealth is fit for anything 
 like plantation life. The greater part of the area re- 
 quires the thrift and personal care of the owner to 
 make its cultivation remunerative. Even that part of 
 the land of Kentucky that may be used for tillage in a 
 large way is decidedly more profitable in the hands of 
 farmers who cultivate small areas. Next, it should be 
 noticed that the whole system of Kentucky life fell from 
 the first into something essentially like the yeomanry 
 system of England. The land came into the hands of 
 small landholders, who in the main worked with their 
 own hands. Each year increased this element of the 
 State at the expense of the large properties. The prin- 
 ciple of primogeniture, which in Virginia outlasted the 
 laws that supported it, never gained a place in Ken- 
 tucky. The result was that each generation saw the 
 lands more completely divided, and the area fit for slave 
 labor became constantly less occupied by large farmers. 
 There was also in this yeoman class, as well as among 
 the more educated men of fortune, a growing discontent 
 
FROM WAR OF 1812 TO MEXICAN WAR. 197 
 
 with the whole system of slave labor. Nor was this dis- 
 like to slavery based on economic considerations alone. 
 Already, in the first decades of Kentucky life, there was 
 a strong protest from many religious people against the 
 system. When Clay, about 1798, began to be a power 
 in the land, his plan of emancipation, with or without 
 colonization, became an article of faith with his party, 
 and was held by the larger part of the conservative 
 people. There came to be a prejudice against all forms 
 of commerce in slaves. This notion came to its height 
 in the decade between 1830 and 1840, and. is probably 
 responsible for a part of the rapid relative decrease of 
 slaves within those years. From the local histories the 
 deliberate student will easily become convinced that if 
 there had been no external pressure against slavery at 
 this time there would still have been a progressive elim- 
 ination of tlie slave element from the population by 
 emancipation on the soil, by the sale of the slaves to 
 the planters of the Southern States, and by their coloni- 
 zation in foreign parts. 
 
 In the decade from 1840 to 1850 the activity of the 
 abolition party in the North became very great ; all 
 along the Ohio River there were stations for the rescuing 
 of slaves and conveying them to safe places beyond the 
 border. The number of negroes who escaped in this way 
 was small, — it probably did not average more than one 
 hundred a year, but the effect upon the state of mind 
 of the people was very great. The truth is, the ne- 
 groes in Kentucky were not generally suffering from 
 any bonds that weighed heavily upon them. Slavery in 
 Kentucky was of the domestic sort ; that is, it was to 
 the most of their race not a grievous burden to bear. 
 This is well shown by the fact that thousands of them 
 
198 KENTUCKY. 
 
 quietly remained with their masters in the counties 
 along the Ohio River, when in any night they might 
 have escaped across the border. Their state was such 
 that if they had one and all been given six months to 
 wander, and at the same time a choice of returning to 
 their old homes, at least three quarters would, at the end 
 of this time, have been found again under the yoke in 
 their old places of abode. Still this underground railway 
 system, although it did not free many slaves, profoundly 
 irritated the minds of their owners, and even of the 
 class that did not own slaves. 
 
 Accompanied as was this work of rescuing slaves by 
 a violent abuse of slaveholding, it destroyed in good 
 part the desire to be rid of the institution which had 
 grown on the soil, and gave place to a natural though un- 
 reasonable determination to cling to the system against 
 all foreign interference. More than all, it roused anew 
 the hatred of New England, which had well-nigh dis- 
 appeared in the growing conservatism of the people. 
 John Quincy Adams's visit to Kentucky, and his noble 
 defense of Clay, had at one time made an end of this 
 old rancor, at least among the conservative Kentuck 
 ians. This visit of ex-President Adams was in 1844. 
 His speech in Maysville, in answer to the welcome of 
 General Richard Collins, deserves quotation here. Gen- 
 eral Collins said that Mr. Adams " has placed Kentucky 
 under deep and lasting obligations for his noble defense 
 of her great statesman, Henry Clay, in his letter to the 
 Whigs of New Jersey," to which Mr. Adams replied : 
 " I thank you, sir, for the opportunity you have given 
 me of speaking of the great statesman who was con- 
 nected with me in the administration of the general 
 government, at my earnest solicitation — who belongo 
 
FROM WAR OF 1812 TO MEXICAN WAR. 199 
 
 not to Kentucky alone, but to the whole Union, and is 
 not only an honor to his State and the nation, but to 
 mankind. The charges to which you refer, though after 
 my term of service had expired and it was proper for 
 me to speak, I denied before the whole country, and I 
 here reiterate and reaffirm that denial ; and as I expect 
 shortly to appear before my God, to answer for the con- 
 duct of my whole life, should these charges have found 
 their way to the throne of eternal justice, I will in the 
 presence of Omnipotence pronounce them false." ^ 
 
 From 1840 to 1860 the progress of thought in Ken- 
 tucky probably increased the number of actual aboli- 
 tionists at a rapid rate, but it diminished the number of 
 those who desired to see some deliberate and legal solu- 
 tion of the appalling difficulty. This separation of the 
 two parties was unfortunate but natural. Thus the 
 election of Polk may be taken as a critical point in the 
 history of slavery within the State. After that, the 
 emancipation party lost much ground that was only in 
 small part gained by the abolitionists. 
 1 See Collins, i. p. 50. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE MEXICAN WAR TO 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE REBELLION. 
 
 The Mexican War, with its long prelude in the vary- 
 ing scenes of the Texas struggle, had a great interest 
 for the people of Kentucky ; it brought back the mem- 
 ories of their own long combat in the first forty years 
 of their State life, much of which was still in the mem- 
 ory of the older men. The leaders in this Texas strug- 
 gle were men of heroic mould. Houston, Crockett, and 
 Johnston still command our sympathy, and in that day 
 tliey held a large place in the hearts of the western 
 people. Nothing so well shows the singular strength 
 of the conservative party in Kentucky as the fact that 
 after years of excitement they still held the State by an 
 overwhelming majority, and cast their votes against the 
 whole project of southern extension of the national 
 territory. Though not in direct terms a vote against 
 the extension of the area of slavery, the election of 
 1844 was in fact a vote of this nature. This political 
 position could be made plain did space permit us to 
 make a careful analysis of the motives of the time. 
 Bat the action speaks for itself. 
 
 The resolutions for the annexation of Texas were 
 passed in February, 1845, but it was not until the 
 8th of May, 1846, that the battle of Palo Alto brought 
 about the condition of war between the United States 
 
THE MEXICAN WAR TO THE REBELLION. 201 
 
 and Mexico. Kentucky was called on for a contin- 
 gent of twenty-four hundred men. Ten thousand men 
 at once were ready for the war, so that it became a 
 struggle for the chance of service. The force first sent 
 out consisted of the Louisville Legion, an independent 
 company under the command of John S. Williams, of 
 Clarke County ; the second regiment of infantry under 
 the command of Colonel W. R. McKee, of Lexington 
 with Lieutenant -Colonel Henry Clay, Jr., second in 
 command ; and the first regiment of cavalry, under com- 
 mand of Colonel Humphrey Marshall. 
 
 Three of the leading officers who were to take charge 
 of the operations of the war were chosen from citizens 
 of Kentucky. Zachary Taylor, major-general of the 
 regular army ; William O. Butler, of Carroll County, 
 major-general of volunteers ; and Thomas Marshall, of 
 Lewis County, brigadier-general of volunteers. 
 
 In this brief story it will only be possible to con- 
 sider the doings of the Kentucky troops during the 
 Mexican War, in so far as a history of that war will 
 throw light on the character of the men of the time, to- 
 gether with so much of the actions of particular men as 
 will show the training which in their youth fitted them 
 for their more important services in the Civil War. 
 Many of these soldiers of the Mexican War reappear in 
 the subsequent civil history of the State, and a number 
 of them remained to take a prominent part in the Fed- 
 eral and the Confederate armies. Their experience 
 and reputation acquired in this foreign war did much 
 to give them leadership. When we come to consider 
 the steps that led to the Civil War, and the conduct of 
 its campaigns, we shall constantly have to trace the im- 
 portant influence of these men. 
 
202 KENTUCKY. 
 
 So long a time had elapsed since the population of 
 Kentucky had been engaged in warfare, that there 
 were few of the volunteers for the war with Mexico, 
 officers or men, who had ever looked upon a line of bat- 
 tle. The long peace had brought the militia into the 
 contempt into which a citizen soldier unfortunately al- 
 ways falls as soon as the time of need is past. There 
 was probably no State in the Union where the neglect 
 of the military art was at this time so complete. The 
 militia consisted of extensive paper lists, and a few 
 small, half-drilled companies, unfamiliar with the evolu- 
 tions of the battalion, and without the discipline that 
 converts the citizen into the soldier. There remained 
 from the military life of the old days but two elements 
 of great value to the soldier, — an instinctive as well as 
 a trained ability in the use of fire-arms, and a strong 
 combative spirit. On these foundations, with such vig- 
 orous bodies as this soil breeds, the judicious discipli- 
 narian can soon build the soldier. 
 
 The United States troops were to act against a people 
 who possessed a large share of the qualities of the good 
 soldier. The Mexicans were hardy, brave, and patient ; 
 they were well trained in the simpler part of the art of 
 war, their frequent internal struggles having given them 
 recent and extensive experience in military affairs. 
 They furnished an excellent opportunity to test the 
 qurjlity of the Kentucky militia after their long desue- 
 tu<le of arms. 
 
 The first noticeable fact brought out by the Mexican 
 War is that these Kentucky troops showed little of the 
 rebellious spirit, or the unwillingness to endure hard- 
 ships and submit to command, that marked their ances- 
 tors in the War of 1812. The long training in civic life 
 
THE MEXICAN WAR TO THE REBELLION. 203 
 
 had finally subjugated the savage impulse of insubordi- 
 nation that was the opprobrium of the pioneer soldiero 
 Except for a little " larking," the troops went through 
 the trying preliminary work of changing from citizens 
 to soldiers in a very quiet way. Though abundant time 
 was afforded for the work, there was no effort to give 
 these forces a good camp training before they went into 
 service. Their officers were incompetent for this work. 
 
 The first campaign of the Mexican War was far ad- 
 vanced before the troops of the Commonwealth came 
 to the front. The first engagement involving any Ken- 
 tucky troops was the assault on Monterey. In this 
 action the Louisville Legion had a subordinate place ; 
 they garrisoned a mortar battery, where they were put 
 to the severest trial that can befall new troops, being 
 exposed for nearly twenty-four hours to an artillery 
 fire, to which they could make no reply. In this ac- 
 tion General Butler was severely wounded, and Major 
 Philipe N. Barbour of the regular army, a native of 
 Kentucky, was killed. Although there is nothing pic- 
 turesque in this action of the Louisville Legion, it is 
 important as showing a willingness to endure fire with- 
 out resistance, which is most praiseworthy in new sol- 
 diers. 
 
 The next considerable action, in fact the only one of 
 the Mexican War that was largely shared in by the 
 Kentucky troops, was the battle of Buena Vista. In 
 this action General Taylor had 4,759 men, of whom 
 about 900, or nearly one fifth, were Kentuckiaus. His 
 loss in killed and wounded amounted to 723 men, of 
 whom 162 were Kentuckians. Thus the Kentucky 
 troops lost considerably more, in proportion to their 
 numbers, than did the army considered as a whole. 
 
204 KENTUCKY. 
 
 The importance of the battle of Buena Vista as a 
 test of the Kentucky troops warrants us in taking the 
 space necessary to discuss the more important details 
 of its history. Next after the battle of New Orleans, 
 it was to Kentuckians a gauge of valor as a standard 
 of what men could do under the press of superior num- 
 bers through a long and desperate iight which often 
 seemed hopeless to the stoutest hearts ; in this way it 
 served in later times to affect the military conduct of 
 Kentuckians in other fields of battle. 
 
 The circumstances that led to the battle of Buena 
 Vista were peculiar. General Taylor found himself, 
 after the capture of Monterey, with far too few troops 
 to venture on the further prosecution of his campaign. 
 He had parted with the greater portion of his regular 
 battalions, which were taken by General Scott, the com- 
 mander-in-chief, for his expedition designed to pene- 
 trate to the City of Mexico by way of Vera Cruz. It 
 was necessary for Taylor to hold Monterey and Saltillo, 
 in order to give any protection whatever to his lines of 
 communication. His force was deemed sufficient for 
 this duty of holding what had been gained by the cap- 
 ture of these strongholds. By holding these places he 
 could avert the danger of a sudden invasion of Texas 
 while the blow to be delivered by Scott was preparing. 
 It clearly was not expected that Taylor should either 
 take the offensive, or that he would have to struggle 
 with any large body of the enemy. This, as it turned 
 out, was a rash miscalculation of the force and soldierly 
 sense of the enemy. No sooner had Taylor's troops 
 been depleted by the removal of his veteran regiments, 
 than Santa Anna prepared to overwhelm this Federal 
 army with a force of four or five times their numbers, 
 
THE MEXICAN WAR TO THE REBELLION. 205 
 
 before Scott's column could get into position to assail 
 him. Leaving garrisons in Monterey and Saltillo, Tay- 
 lor wisely resolved to gain some ground to the south on 
 which to find a suitable place to meet the attack which 
 he had reason to expect. Once penned within his forts, 
 he would soon be compelled to surrender. 
 
 A few miles south of Saltillo, the only practicable 
 way of approach to it from the southward is by passes 
 through the Sierra Nevada Mountains ; the road lies 
 in a valley two to three miles wide, in which stands the 
 Hacienda of Buena Vista. At a place called Angostura, 
 or the straightened pass, which is two or three miles 
 yet further south, the space between the mountains is 
 narrowed to a width of about a mile. Observhig the 
 advantages of this excellent position, Taylor pushed his 
 force a few miles further on, where he could have a 
 camping ground and a good water supply. He also 
 shrewdly remarked, that if he should fall back to this 
 chosen position at Buena Vista, the impetuosity of the 
 Mexicans in following up his retreat would be more 
 likely to lead them to attack him there than if they 
 found him in that position. This acumen was charac- 
 teristic of that admirable soldier. 
 
 While at his more advanced position of Agua Neuva, 
 diligent effort was made by Taylor to ascertain the 
 place and strength of Santa Anna's arm}^, but the Mexi- 
 cans were possessed of an abundant and highly efficient 
 cavalry, by which they so clouded their main force that 
 nothing certain was known of the enemy's numbers or in- 
 tentions. A reconnaissance of the celebrated Ben McCul- 
 lough, afterwards a famous Confederate general, brought 
 the news that the enemy were in great force, and not 
 far away. On the evening of February 21, Taylor de- 
 
206 KENTUCKY. 
 
 camped and made ready to take up his position in the 
 defile of Angostura, on ground that had been carefully 
 prepared by proper study for his action.-^ Still he did 
 not march from his comfortable camp until McCul- 
 lough himself confirmed the tale that his scouts had 
 brought in ; only then Taylor marched for the position 
 where he meant to have his fight. AVhen this position 
 was taken he sent a detachment of cavalry to recon- 
 noitre for the enemy to the southward. They were 
 scarcely out of camp on the morning of the 22d, when 
 they ran upon the advance of Santa Anna's troops, 
 already within a mile of the more advanced posts of 
 the Federal camp. 
 
 Santa Anna had taken up his line of march almost 
 at the moment when McCullough left his post, expect- 
 ing to make a night attack on Taylor's army in its 
 position at Agua Neuva. Finding that Taylor had re- 
 treated, he pushed on, driving before him the mule 
 teams and the other laggards of the army. These flee- 
 ing trains should have been a timely warning to Gen- 
 eral Wool, who commanded the outlying posts of the 
 little army ; but the stampede, if it was noticed, was not 
 acted on, and so the army was put in the utmost risk 
 of an attack before the necessary final preparations for 
 the combat had been made. In place of pressing on in 
 their attack, the Mexicans, finding the United States 
 forces in a strong position, and not knowing how they 
 had surprised . their enemy, halted and gave them 
 time to form. They, too, had not expected a battle at 
 this point ; their fair presumption was that Taylor had 
 
 1 See articles in Old and New for June and July, 1871, entitled 
 "Recollections of Mexico and the Battle of Buena Vista," probably 
 from the pen of the late General H. W. Benham. 
 
THE MEXICAN WAR TO THE REBELLION. 207 
 
 fallen back to Saltillo, where he had some fortifications 
 and a considerable garrison. Moreover, the ground on 
 which they found they had to give battle demanded a 
 very peculiar disposition of troops, which required time 
 to make. 
 
 The slopes which extended from the flanks of the 
 parallel mountains to the central part of the pass were 
 cut up by numerous deep gulches, which were worn out 
 by torrents in the short rainy season, but were now 
 quite without water. This made a formation in line of 
 battle very difficult. The Mexican troops were at the 
 end of a long and fatiguing march, for, besides the thirty 
 or more miles which they had made to the point where 
 they expected to find Taylor, they had rapidly marched 
 fifteen miles further before they beat up his quarters. 
 They did well as soldiers to rest before they gave 
 battle.^ 
 
 The American troops were in excellent heart ; their 
 only difficulty was that the great height of the position 
 (6,000 feet) made them breathless under exertion. The 
 troops of the enemy were carefully reconnoitred. There 
 were actually about six thousand cavalry and about 
 nineteen thousand of the other arms, but the reports of 
 McCullough led to even higher estimates on the part 
 of the Federal commanders. The greatest disadvantage 
 to the United States troops, if it is worth while to count 
 disadvantages where the numbers were so overwhelming 
 against the defense, was in the cavalry, for that of Tay- 
 lor was ill disciplined and generally mounted on mules. 
 Although the mule is a soldierly beast he does not 
 
 1 The following general account of the movements of the troops in 
 this action is mainly taken from the articles by General Benham in 
 Old and New, vide supra. 
 
208 KENTUCKY. 
 
 make a good war horse. The disposition of the ground 
 fortunately made the excellent Mexican cavalry of lit- 
 tle effective value. Their superiority in artillery was 
 of more importance. In guns they at least twice out- 
 numbered the Americans, and they were of much heavier 
 calibre and were well served. 
 
 On the first day the only attack of importance came 
 late in the afternoon, when a division of Mexicans en- 
 deavored, by climbing the ridges on the left flank of the 
 Americans, to get a flanking fire on their lines. As is 
 well known, a down hill fire of infantry is worthless, 
 while a fire up a slope is singularly effective ; so, after 
 losing about five hundred men, killed and wounded, to 
 half a dozen wounded of the Americans, this effort was 
 abandoned. In the evening Santa Anna summoned 
 Taylor to surrender; his answer was, " I have the honor 
 respectfully to decline your proposition." 
 
 On the morning of the 23d a little effort was made 
 to entrench one of the batteries, but the modern art of 
 creating fortifications on a line of battle was then un- 
 known, and these defenses were of little value. The 
 time was spent in patient expectation of the storm that 
 the morrow was to bring. 
 
 The first event on the second day was an effort of 
 the infantry columns against the centre of the American 
 line. This charge was led by the gallant Santa Anna 
 in person. The accurate fire of Washington's battery 
 broke it at the distance of five hundred yards of the 
 line without any aid of musketry. Santa Anna's horse 
 was killed under him in this charge, and several hun- 
 dred of his men put hors de combat. This signal re- 
 pulse gave the battle a pause of some hours.^ At this 
 
 ' At this point in the action came the daring reconnaissance of a 
 
THE MEXICAN WAR TO THE REBELLION. 209 
 
 time Taylor came upon the ground, having been prepar- 
 ing for the defense of Saltillo in case he met defeat in 
 the pass of Angostura. 
 
 The character of the ground was such as to make a 
 continuous line of battle attack from the enemy impos- 
 sible. The Mexican movements were reduced to a suc- 
 cession of isolated charges. Short as was the distance 
 from steep to steep across the valley, it was not possi- 
 ble, and fortunately not necessary, for Taylor completely 
 to occupy it with the scant force at his disposition. 
 Fortunately the ragged ground admitted of another dis- 
 position than a continuous line of battle, which could 
 not have been maintained by Taylor's force for an hour. 
 The several gulches and ridges served as natural lines 
 of defense, behind which the concealed troops could be 
 shifted from time to time to meet the successive attacks 
 without being under the fire of the enemy. 
 
 These successive charges at last succeeded in break- 
 ing the centre of the American line, where the 2d In- 
 diana gave way. The regiment was brave enough, but 
 the colonel who was supporting O'Bryan's battery, mis- 
 taking the order to " limber up " for an advance as 
 a movement of retreat, ordered his men to fall back. 
 This movement was at first made in a soldierly way, 
 but the men being raw and undisciplined, their retreat 
 soon passed into a rout, and they were not reformed 
 during the action. 
 
 In the afternoon a large force of Mexican cavalry 
 succeeded in making their way around the flank of the 
 American line, and threatened an attack on its rear. 
 This was met by a brilliant charge of cavalry, under the 
 
 solitan'- Mexican officer, which well shows the valor of their soldiers 
 Benham, p. 14. 
 
 14 
 
210 KENTUCKY. 
 
 command of Colonel Yell, of Arkansas, and by Colonel 
 Jeff Davis's Mississippi regiment. The Kentucky cav- 
 alry sent some men into this combat, but it did not act 
 as a body, their colonel, Marshall, refusing to move ; but 
 portions of the companies without orders took part in 
 the charge. This failure of Marshall to act in this mo- 
 ment of need is severely criticised by Benham, who was 
 there as staff officer with General Wool. It is explained 
 by the fact that Marshall had been placed as a guard 
 over the stores and trains at the ranch of Buena Vista. 
 Moreover, his men were badly mounted, and worse 
 armed. Humphrey Marshall was a dull, inert man in 
 action, but absolutely free from the vice of cowardice. 
 The famous Confederate general, John H. Morgan, was 
 a subaltern in this regiment. 
 
 At noon the action was interrupted by a severe storm 
 of rain and hail. After it had ceased Taylor made an 
 effort to break, by a charge, the Mexican line, which 
 seemed to him open to assault. Wood's and Burnett's 
 Illinois regiments and McKee's Kentucky regiment, in 
 all about fifteen hundred men, or nearly half his avail- 
 able force, were sent forward. 
 
 In their advance in open echelon order, this force 
 came suddenly upon a deep ravine, from which an un- 
 perceived force of about six thousand of the enemy 
 emerged in a counter charge. The American line was 
 rapidly broken and forced back. In this fierce action 
 Colonel McKee and Lieutenant-Colonel Clay were both 
 killed. Their men made a gallant effort to bear them 
 off the field, but the rescuing parties were all slain. 
 O'Bryan's pieces, which had advanced to support the 
 charge, were all taken. At this critical moment the 
 pieces under the command of Sherman and Bragg 
 
THE MEXICAN WAR TO THE REBELLION. 211 
 
 opened an admirable cross-fire on the advancing columns 
 of the enemy, which were compelled to move in close 
 order by the shape of the ground, and drove them back 
 with great slaughter. The loss of Taylor's army in this 
 disastrous movement was the most serious of the day. 
 If it had been followed up with vigor the Mexicans 
 could have overwhelmed the shattered remnants of the 
 American army. But the enemy were in no shape to 
 take further action. None of their movements were 
 sufficiently successful to give them heart ; their commis- 
 sariat was bad, and their men in dire want of food and 
 rest. Therefore, though they had won a substantial vic- 
 tory if they could have made avail of their successes, 
 they abandoned the field during the night, and hastened 
 with the shattered remnants of their army to reenforce 
 the troops that were gathering to resist the impending 
 advance of Scott by way of Vera Cruz. Santa Anna 
 judged correctly that Taylor's force was not likely to be 
 of further trouble to him, and did the best that could 
 have been done under the circumstances tljat.&i«Fi:att«ded 
 hitn. 
 
 With the exception of Colonel Marshall, whose con- 
 duct may perhaps be considered open to some criticism, 
 the behavior of the Kentucky troops was good.-^ Their 
 loss was proportionately considerably -greater than that 
 of the whole command, and they remained in as good 
 
 1 Beiiham's criticism on Marshall's conduct is ver}' severe. He 
 states tliat Marshall refused to obey the orders of General Taylor, and 
 kept himself out of the tight. The testimony of other observers, who 
 had a chance to know the facts, is, that Marshall was charged with 
 the protection of the trains in the rear of the army, and that he did 
 his duty in his appointed task. Moreover, General Benham had 
 among his brother soldiers the reputation of being a bitter and careless 
 critic. 
 
212 KENTUCKY. 
 
 heart as any part of Taylor's shattered army. They 
 have an even share in the credit that this action gave to 
 the American volunteer. This battle proved that Amer- 
 ican militia, properly commanded, could sustain a long 
 series of attacks from overwhelming numbers without 
 becoming demoralized by the many well delivered blows, 
 each of which struck their lines. Every credit should, 
 however, be given to the admirable regular artillery of 
 the army, the batteries of Bragg, O'Bryan, Washington, 
 and Sherman, which repeatedly served to turn the tide 
 of defeat when it seemed to be fatally strong. 
 
 The only other Kentucky troops that were engaged 
 in any severe action during the Mexican War was the 
 independent company of Captain Williams, — in later 
 days a general in the Confederate army, and now a sen- 
 ator from Kentucky. This company was with Scott's 
 army, and took a very meritorious part in the actions of 
 his campaign. Under its valiant leader it was engaged 
 in the assault of Cerro Gordo. Under the general com- 
 mand of Colonel Haskell it there took part in the most 
 brilliant charge of the war. Nothing could have been 
 better than its behavior. Some other regiments of Ken- 
 tucky troops were raised for this war, but its unex- 
 pected termination deprived them of a chance to show 
 their qualities. 
 
 The interest of the Kentucky people in the Mexican 
 War was intense. The affection for the memory of 
 its dead is marked by a peculiar circumstance. Some 
 time before the Commonwealth had instituted a State 
 burial place on the hills above the capitol at Frank- 
 fort, and honored some of its dead heroes with inter- 
 ment there. This tribute was extended to the dead of 
 the Mexican War. Their remains were brou^^ht from 
 
THE MEXICAN WAR TO THE REBELLION. 213 
 
 the distant battle-fields and committed to this garner of 
 heroic dust. Since that day it has been the custom of 
 the State to beg from the kindred of those who have 
 died in the service of their country the privilege of giv- 
 ing this distinction to their bodies. Thus in the pro- 
 cess of time there have been gathered into this cemetery 
 the remains of a multitude of distinguished men who 
 have served the State, not only on battle-fields but in 
 every walk of life in which men could gain honorable 
 fame. 
 
 The sympathy with the heroic aspects of the Mex- 
 ican War did not in the least change the political con- 
 ditions of the Commonwealth. In August, 1847, the 
 elections for the State legislature resulted in the choice 
 of twenty-seven Whigs to eleven Democrats for the sen- 
 ate, and of fifty-nine Whigs to forty-one Democrats in 
 the house. In the next year General Taylor, the Whig 
 candidate for the Presidency, had a majority of 17,524. 
 Thus even the excitement of a popular war was not 
 sufficient to diminish the strength of the conservative 
 party. It should be noticed that the Mexican War 
 first arrayed the national parties on the question of 
 slavery. The strong Whig attitude of Kentucky is a 
 fair index of the public mind at this time in regard to 
 the extension of the slave power. 
 
 After the close of the Mexican War the attention of 
 the people was again strongly directed to their State 
 constitution. This instrument was, by its own condi- 
 tions, so arranged as to make amendment difficult to 
 accomplish. After a number of efforts to secure a suf- 
 ficient vote of the people to bring the constitutional 
 convention together in August, 1848, 101,828, out of 
 141,620 suffrages in the State, were cast for a conven- 
 
214 KENTUCKY. 
 
 tion. There were two priucipal features in the con- 
 stitution of 1799 which were unsatisfactory to the peo- 
 ple. In the first place, there was a general objection 
 to the principle of the appointment of the judiciary by 
 the governor. Under the constitution of 1799 all the 
 judges, the clerks of the courts, justices of the peace, 
 all attorneys for the Commonwealth, were appointed by 
 the governor or by the courts. It seems impossible to 
 resist the conviction that this system of appointing the 
 judiciary machinery is, on the whole, the best that can 
 be contrived, yet it is perfectly clear that it does not 
 recommend itself to the mass of American citizens. 
 One by one the States have fallen away from it, until 
 at present there are but two that retain this feature 
 which they inherited from their British ancestors. The 
 complaints against it are that it separates the people too 
 much from a control of that part of the administration 
 with which they have the most to do ; that it gives the 
 governor, in times of political excitement, too much 
 power to express his views in the appointment of judges 
 and other officers. Something of this was certainly seen 
 in the old and new court controversy, and on other oc- 
 casions. We may doubt the wisdom or the conserva- 
 tism of this step, but it should be remembered that Ken- 
 tucky was not the first to take it. Their action came 
 after it had been adopted in the greater part of the ex- 
 isting States. 
 
 In an agricultural community, in the ordinary con- 
 dition of State affairs, the system of an elective judi- 
 ciary works moderately well. The result in Kentucky 
 has been more felt in the appellate court than in the 
 lower halls of the judiciary. This highest court has 
 lost in part its reputation as a law-giving body. The 
 
THE MEXICAN WAR TO THE REBELLION, 215 
 
 ablest jurists in the Commonwealth have felt unwilling 
 to take the scant pay and onerous duties of this position. 
 When this bench has been so fortunate as to secure able 
 men under the new system, they have generally been 
 unwilling to retain their offices for any length of time, 
 preferring the chances of active practice of their profes- 
 sion to the clamor and difficulties of repeated elections. 
 The circuit judges have, on the whole, been as satisfac- 
 tory as under the old system. 
 
 Another evil of considerable moment was the power 
 of the legislature to raise money on the credit of the 
 State. This had led to the imposition of a consider- 
 able burden upon the Commonwealth. The funded 
 debt amounted, in 1849, to four and a half millions of 
 dollars. The greater part of this had been incurred in 
 the various public improvements made in the specula- 
 tive years of the preceding decade. The people desired 
 to see this debt extinguished, and to have the constitu- 
 tion so arranged that it would not be possible to repeat 
 the process of giving drafts on the future to meet tem- 
 porary needs. From the beginning of their history, be 
 it said, the people of Kentucky have been slow to con- 
 tract and quick to pay their debts. 
 
 These two objects were accomplished by the amend- 
 ments to the constitution. The whole body of the ju- 
 diciary was made elective by the people, and the State 
 was practically secured against debt by some very pe- 
 culiar features in its constitution, the like of which 
 probably do not exist in any other State. This curious 
 protection against debt has proved of great value to 
 the best interests of the Commonwealth. Moreover, 
 the provisions for changing the constitution, before dif- 
 ficult, were now made so complicated that it has been 
 
216 KENTUCKY. 
 
 found practically impossible to secure any further changes 
 of that instrument, despite the considerable need that 
 now exists for substantial changes. The main aims of 
 the defenses that are about the costitution are com- 
 mendable. Experience in the old and new court con- 
 troversy had shown that party conflict might run very 
 high in the State, and for a moment an overwhelming 
 majority might be enabled to effect hasty changes in the 
 organic law. By shaping this law in such a way that 
 it would be necessary for the people to continue in one 
 mind about the necessity of a change for a decade or 
 more, they avoided the risk of hasty action. By requir- 
 ing a two thirds vote of all those holding suffrage in the 
 Commonwealth to call the revising convention into ex- 
 istence, they secured the instrument from the meddling 
 of a less considerable majority. The result is, as the 
 reader will perceive, that this constitution is one of the 
 most archaic in the world. It contains untouched, and 
 may retain for a generation to come, extensive provi- 
 sions for the maintenance of slavery. Along with these 
 evils, arising from excessive caution, there have been 
 very great advantages arising from the security against 
 the accumulation of debt. The considerable burden 
 which existed at the time the constitution was amended 
 has been gradually cleared away, until at present there 
 is no actual State debt. 
 
 With the change in the constitution the State en- 
 tered on a short decade of prosperity. From 1848 to 
 1857 the State saw its richest, and on the whole its 
 most quiet, years. The State debt was slowly disap- 
 pearing; the people had apparently abandoned the old 
 frenzy for speculation, nnd were given to conservatism 
 in their business operations. 
 
THE MEXICAN WAR TO THE REBELLION. 217 
 
 With all these elements of natural prosperity there 
 was a restless humor in the matter of slavery, a forebod- 
 ing sense that there was trouble to come on that ques- 
 tion. From 1850 to 1860 the anti-slavery party became 
 rapidly extended in Kentucky. In 1851 the party fa- 
 voring the abolition of slavery made their first political 
 campaign in the State. Their candidate for governor 
 had a vote of 3,621, being somewhat more than three 
 per cent, of the whole vote of the State. This vote 
 by no means represents the numbers of the anti-slavery 
 party at this time in the State. It was a well-known 
 fact that the Whig party was, as a whole, inclined to 
 some action that would limit the soil of slavery, and 
 bring about emancipation along with the deportation of 
 the blacks. This belief, along with the growing ex- 
 citement on the slavery question, gradually reduced the 
 majority of the Whig party, and sent many of its natural 
 supporters into the ranks of the Democrats. By a grad- 
 ual change of sentiments the Democratic, once the rad- 
 ical party of the State, became the advocate of things 
 as they were, opposing the notion of change in the sys- 
 tem of Southern society. This change first marks itself 
 distinctly in the elections of 1851, that which gave Cas- 
 sius M. Clay, the abolition candidate for governor, his 
 vote above referred to. In this election Lazarus W. 
 Powell, the Democratic candidate, had a plurality of 
 about one thousand votes, a portion of the more ad- 
 vanced Whigs having deserted Archibald Dixon, their 
 nominee, for the abolition candidate, while another frag- 
 ment of the party was inclined to support slavery, hav- 
 ing voted with the Democrats. The Whigs were now 
 in that attitude of indecision on the slavery question 
 which eventually made an end of their party. 
 
218 KENTUCKY. 
 
 Cassius M. Clay was the leader of the abolition 
 movement; for a number of years he had been the 
 most prominent member of that party in the Common- 
 wealth. This gentleman was long and almost alone 
 the advanced guard of abolitionism in the State, and 
 did more than all others to win from the Kentuckians 
 a respect for that valorous political faith. Of good 
 birth, excellent education, and endowed with the daunt- 
 less aggressive courage which everywhere captivates 
 men, he defied the pro-slavery extremists, at the same 
 time so winning their admiration that he never incurred 
 their hatred. 
 
 In 1845 Mr. Clay established an anti-slavery paper 
 in Lexington. A meeting of citizens ordered him to 
 discontinue its publication. At a time when he was 
 prostrated by a severe illness a number of citizens of 
 Lexington packed the contents of his printing-office 
 and sent it to Cincinnati. Shortly afterwards he re- 
 turned with it and quietly resumed the publication of 
 his paper.^ He then went to the Mexican War, where 
 he was captured and was long a prisoner. On his re- 
 turn his fellow-citizens presented him is^ a sword. 
 His intrepidity and eloquence gained him the respect 
 of his antagonists, and did much to take away the con- 
 tempt with which his party was first regarded by the 
 pro-slavery people. 
 
 All through the decade from 1850 to 1860 the ex- 
 citement concerning slavery steadfastly increased. It 
 is impossible to catalogue the small conflicts that arose 
 from the stampeding of negroes and the disturbances 
 at political meetings that gave fuel to the fire. The 
 progress of the debate served to divide the pro-slavery 
 1 See Collins, i. 51. 
 
THE MEXICAN WAR TO THE REBELLION. 219 
 
 from the anti-slavery parties with constantly increasing 
 distinction. Still, in 1852, the vote for Scott showed 
 that the Whig candidate for the Presidency was the 
 choice of Kentucky by a vote of 57,068 to 53,806 for 
 Pierce. 
 
 The sinsfular outbreak of anti-Catholic and foreiojn 
 feeling which marked American politics in 1853 to 
 1856 was very violent in Kentucky. This conflict was 
 the more curious from the fact that Kentucky had 
 hardly any foreign population, and the native Catholics 
 were excellent and respected citizens. The old parties 
 were much changed by this revolution, still the greater 
 part of the Whig party went with the Know Nothings, 
 and the Democrats generally sided with the party that 
 opposed them. For a while this curious excitement, 
 which in the hereafter will puzzle the student of politics 
 even more than it does those of our own day, completely y 
 overwhelmed the interest in the slavery qitestion. In 
 the election of 1855 the Know Nothing candidate for 
 governor received 4,400 majority over his competitor. 
 This election led to a very disgraceful riot in Louisville, 
 in which the roughs of the native American party at- 
 tacked the Catholic people. This riot led to the loss of 
 twenty-two lives, and to the destruction of a large 
 amount of property. This disgraceful affair brought the 
 Know Nothing party into much discredit, still the Whig 
 element was so strong that in the presidential election 
 for 1856 the Democratic ticket, though its candidate for 
 Vice-President was John C. Breckinridge, the most pop- 
 ular citizen of Kentucky, only received a majority of 
 6,118 over Millard Fillmore, the American party candi- 
 date ; the vote standing, Buchanan and Breckinridge, 
 69,509, Fillmore and Donelson, 63,391. 
 
220 KENTUCKY. 
 
 The speculative era from 1854 to 1857, which was 
 general throughout the United States, had led to a con- 
 siderable but hardly reprehensible enlargement of the 
 Kentucky banking system. When the crisis of 1857 
 came upon the country, the circulation of these banks 
 was very much extended, and several newly chartered 
 institutions went to the ground, but the old, well estab- 
 lished banking houses of the Commonwealth, on which 
 the business of the community depended for support, 
 weathered the storm. In a few months they called in 
 one half of their paper, and the remainder of their notes 
 became the standard for the circulation of the Ohio 
 Valley. They maintained specie payments through the 
 whole of this severe financial storm. The good credit 
 thus secured by these banks was of great profit to them. 
 It made their notes so popular that in 1859 their cir- 
 culation amounted to over $14,000,000, being an in- 
 crease of five millions of dollars within a year. 
 
 Thus we see that this population had at last acquired 
 that portion of the financial art which more than any 
 other measures the sagacity and fidelity of a people in 
 business affairs. When we remember that these bank- 
 ing establishments were, in the main, in the control of 
 men bred on the soil who were separated from the busi- 
 ness traditions of the world, who had developed their 
 methods out of their own experience, it gives Kentucky 
 merchants a good claim for eminent capacity in this dif- 
 ficult task of dealing with the monetary problems of 
 society. This claim was yet further established, as we 
 shall afterwards see, by the management of these banks 
 in the serious difficulties that beset them at the outset 
 of the Civil War. 
 
 As we must shortly pass to the consideration of the 
 
THE MEXICAN WAR TO THE REBELLION. 221 
 
 events that immeduitely preceded the Civil War which 
 made a new era in Kentucky history, it will be well to 
 make a brief survey of the political and social coudi- 
 tions of the Commonwealth iu the decade of 1850-60. 
 So far the life of Kentucky had been an indigenous 
 growth, a development from its own conditions singu- 
 larly uninfluenced by any external forces. With only 
 the germs of a society sown oh this ground, there had 
 sprung into existence a powerful Commonwealth, that 
 now, at the end of eighty years of time, felt strong 
 enough to stand alone in the straggles that were soon to 
 rage about her. No other State in the Mississippi Val- 
 ley — hardly any of the original Southern States — had 
 pursued its course with so little influence from exter- 
 nal conditions. There had been relatively little con- 
 tributions of population from other States, except from 
 Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, 
 and" but a small immigration from European countries 
 since 1800. This made an indigenous development not 
 only possible, but necessary. 
 
 From 1774 to 1860, eighty-five years had elapsed. 
 This period measures the whole course of Kentucky 
 history, from the first settlement at Harrodsburg to the 
 beginning of the great tragedy of the Civil War. As 
 before recounted, the original settlement and the subse- 
 quent increase of the Kentucky population were almost 
 entirely drawn from the Virginia, North Carolina, and 
 Maryland colonies ; at least ninety-five per cent, of the 
 population was from these districts. Probably more 
 than half of this blood was of Scotch and North Eng- 
 lish extraction, practically the whole of it was of British 
 stock. The larger part of it was from the frontier 
 region of Virginia, where the people had never had 
 much to do with slavery. 
 
222 KENTUCKY. 
 
 The total number of these white settlers who entered 
 Kentucky in the first eighty-five years cannot be deter- 
 mined with any approach to accuracy, but from a care- 
 ful consideration of the imperfect statistics that are 
 available, it seems reasonable to estimate the whole 
 number of white immigrants at not more than one hun- 
 dred and twenty thousand (it was probably somewhat 
 less), while the slave population that was brought into 
 the State probably did not amount to one third this 
 number. In 1860 the white population amounted to 
 919,484, and the slave population to 225,483. The 
 free black population to 10,684. Of the white popula- 
 tion at this census 59,799 were born beyond the limits 
 of the United States. This element of foreign folk was 
 in the main a very recent addition to the State ; it was 
 mainly due to the sudden development of manufactur- 
 ing interests along the Ohio border, principally in the 
 towns of Louisville, Covington, and Newport, and to 
 certain new settlements of agriculturist Germans in the 
 counties forming the northern border of the State.-^ 
 The foreign born people had not yet become to any 
 degree mingled with the native people either in the 
 industries or in blood. 
 
 Before we can estimate the fecundity of this popula- 
 tion we must note the fact that from 1820 or thereabouts 
 down to 1860 and later, there was a very great tide of 
 emigration from Kentucky to the States that were 
 settled in the other portions of the Mississippi Valley. 
 
 1 The region immediately along the Ohio River seems to have an 
 especial attraction for German settlers. They began to be an element 
 of some importance in the population of this region about 1850. The 
 attractions of this region above other parts of the State seem to have 
 been in the facts that the negroes were few in number, and the land 
 cheap and suitable for the growth of the grape. 
 
THE MEXICAN WAR TO TEE REBELLION. 223 
 
 The southern parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois re- 
 ceived a large part of their blood from Kentucky. Mis^ 
 souri was so far a Kentucky settlement that it may 
 be claimed as a child of the Commonwealth. Tennes- 
 see, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas also received a 
 large share of the Kentucky emigrants. The imperfect 
 nature of the earlier statistics of the United States cen- 
 sus makes it impossible to determiue with any accuracy 
 the number of persons of Kentucky blood who were in 
 1860 resident in other States, but the data given in the 
 Appendix make it tolerably clear that the total contri- 
 bution of Kentucky to the white population of the other 
 States amounted in 1860 to at least one million souls. 
 The increase in the black population was probably 
 rather less than that of the white, but there is no data 
 for its computation. 
 
 If this estimate is correct the fecundity of the Ken- 
 tucky population in the first eighty years of its life 
 exceeds that which is recorded for any other region in 
 the world. There are several reasons which may ac- 
 count for this rapid multiplication of this people. In 
 the first place the original settlers of Kentucky were of 
 vigorous constitution ; they were not brought upon the 
 soil by any solicitations whatever, nor were they forced 
 into immigration by the need of subsistence. Access 
 to the country was difficult, and for some decades the 
 region was exposed to dangers from which all weak- 
 bodied men would shrink. The employment of the 
 early population was principally in agriculture, upon a 
 soil that gave very free returns. There was plenty of 
 unoccupied land for the rising generations, so there were 
 no considerations of a prudential nature to restrain the 
 increase of population. For a long time children were 
 
224 KENTUCKY. 
 
 a source of advantage to the land-tiller, and apart from 
 pecuniary gain there was a curious patriarchal pride in a 
 plenteous offspring. The climate proved exceedingly 
 healthy. There were no low grade malarial fevers to 
 enfeeble the body, and the principal disease of the early 
 days, a high grade bilious fever, though rather deadly, 
 did not impoverish the life as the malarial troubles of 
 other regions in the Mississippi Valley have done. The 
 syphilitic poison does not seem to have been common 
 among the people, and its attendant, consumption, was 
 less prevalent than in most other countries. Thus tlie 
 first population of Kentucky was from the purest spring 
 that ever fertilized a country, and there was little to 
 defile its waters. The principal evils that beset the pop- 
 ulation were two : first, the excessive use of tobacco 
 and alcohol, which doubtless did something to lower the 
 vitality of the population ; second, the extremely defec- 
 tive system of education, which left the people essen- 
 tially without the means of getting a training propor- 
 tionate to their natural abilities. 
 
 The institution of slavery tended to keep the indus- 
 trial and the related social development confined within 
 narrow lines. At the beginning of the century the 
 State had an industrial spirit that was fit to compare 
 with that of New England and the other northern free 
 States, Many of the arts that were exercised by the 
 whites took on a rapid advance, but the negro is not 
 by nature a good general citizen, nor could he be ex- 
 pected to develop his capacities in the state of slavery. 
 Gradually manual labor, except in agriculture, became 
 in a way discreditable and distasteful to the mastering 
 race. The mechanical industries, except those of the 
 simpler domestic sort, were generally abandoned even 
 
TEE MEXICAN WAR TO THE REBELLION. 225 
 
 before northern and eastern competition came in, or 
 were transferred to the northern border of the State, 
 where they were carried on by foreign white labor, and 
 were no important part of the life of the State. Grad- 
 ually the occupation of men became more and more 
 limited to agriculture. The census returns show a con- 
 siderable list of factories, but they were principally of 
 the domestic sort, the manufacture of whiskey, of home- 
 spun cloth, tobacco, etc., employing relatively little cap- 
 ital, and not giving much diversity of employment to 
 the whites. This want of manufacturing life was by no 
 means an unmitigated evil, for it kept the people in 
 more wholesome occupation ; but it served to restrain 
 the growth of wealth, on which the progress of educa- 
 tion and the develo[)ment of capital much depends. 
 
 The development of slavery was also marked by the 
 progressive separation of society into a richer and a 
 poorer class, though, from the failure of the slave ele- 
 ment to increase with the rapidity normal in the more 
 Southern States, the effect was not as great as in these 
 districts. The middle class of farmers in Kentucky, — 
 those who though fairly well to do were not slave-own- 
 ers, — always remained a very strong, in fact a con- 
 trolling, element in the Kentucky population. Still, 
 men who were hand-laborers even on their own soil al- 
 ways felt that they occupied another caste than those 
 who owned slaves. Short of a great difference of race, 
 there is no basis of social distinction that man has in- 
 vented which is so trenchant as that which separates 
 the slave-owner from the non slave-owner. However 
 uniform the laws, social prejudices are sure to be en- 
 gendered by such a difference in estate. The greater 
 part of the tide of strong life that went from Kentucky 
 15 
 
226 KENTUCKY. 
 
 to Other States in the four decades that preceded the 
 Civil War was from this yeoman class, — the reddest, if 
 not the bluest, blood of the State. 
 
 Despite these hindrances to social development, the 
 commercial advance of Kentucky in the first eighty 
 years of her history was marvelously great, especially 
 as it was accomplished practically without the aid of 
 any foreign capital whatever. This absence of immi- 
 grant capital in Kentucky in the first sixty or eighty 
 years of its history is something that well deserves to 
 be considered in measuring the development of the 
 State. Until the close of the Civil War there was 
 scarcely an improvement in the Commonwealth that was 
 not the result of the capital won by the people. The 
 extracts from the United States census, given in the 
 Appendix, show some of the more important features 
 of this growth. An area of at least eighteen thousand 
 square miles had been cleared of its forests and brought 
 under plough tillage ; every portion of the more fertile 
 districts had been penetrated by turnpike roads, by rail- 
 ways, or made approachable by artificial navigation in 
 the rivers. In connection with this it should be remem- 
 bered that the expenditure of labor required to bring an 
 acre of Kentucky land under tillage is many times as 
 great as that required to subjugate prairie land. The 
 mere felling of the forest and grubbing of the roots re- 
 quire at least twenty days' labor to the acre of ground. 
 
 It requires a vivid imagination, or some personal ex- 
 perience, to conceive of the enormous amount of phys- 
 ical labor involved in the bringing of forest land into a 
 shape for the use of civilized man. In all the Northern 
 States the work of subjugation and construction, which 
 is necessary on new ground, was in good part accom- 
 
THE MEXICAN WAR TO THE REBELLION. 227 
 
 plished by the aid of capital that was brought into the 
 conntiy in its settlement. The first settlers in the North- 
 west generally brought a considerable amount of wealth 
 with them, and they were followed quickly by capital- 
 ists glad to take advantage of the new opportunities that 
 are offered for the investment of money in a new State. 
 This hastened the new States past the frontier, or pio- 
 neer, condition with extreme rapidity. None of these 
 outside aids were offered to Kentucky. The first set- 
 tlers had little capital beyond the price of their lands 
 and the few household effects that could be packed on 
 horses or wagoned over the mountains. All their wealth 
 they had to win from the soil and from their little fac- 
 tories. 
 
 Two circumstances greatly helped this people to es- 
 tablish the foundation of their wealth. The settlements 
 at the mouth of the Mississippi afforded, in a very early 
 day, a considerable market for certain products of the 
 soil, especially for tobacco. This plant, which had given 
 a basis for the early commerce of Virginia, helped in 
 turn the development of Kentucky. As early as 1790 
 there was a considerable shipment of this article. Gen- 
 eral Wilkinson, whose last shipments were in 1790, re- 
 ceived, as was found in his court-martial, as much as 
 $80,000 for a small part of his tobacco alone from the 
 Spanish agents, and he was only the pioneer in this 
 business, which afterwards grew to be a great commerce 
 even before the cession of the Louisiana Territory to 
 the United States. 
 
 This source of traffic was rapidly supplemented by 
 the use of Kentucky as a basis from which the settle- 
 ment and supply of the other Western States went on. 
 
228 KENTUCKY. 
 
 First the Virginian government, and afterwards, on a 
 far larger scale, the United States government, were 
 purchasers of the products of this region to be used in 
 their campaigns. When, after the War of 1812, the 
 valley of the Mississippi began rapidly to be settled, 
 Kentucky was the natural depot whence came for a time 
 not only the greater part of the settlers, but a large part 
 of the materials, necessary for the starting of new set- 
 tlements. This stimulus to trade made it easy to make 
 money from agriculture, especially when that agricul- 
 ture rested on a soil of admirable fertility and fair en- 
 durance as to tillage. Unfortunately it led to the rapid 
 wasting of the soil, especially in the tobacco husbandry. 
 This crop is a very rapid exhauster of the fields where 
 it is cultivated, and with a husbandry made reckless by 
 large profits and cheap land, a considerable part of the 
 soil was impoverished and left in a deplorable condition. 
 Fortunately the Kentucky soils are easily restored to 
 fertility by fallow and skillful tillage ; excepting some 
 hundred thousand acres where the earth was actually 
 washed away, it is already renewed or easily recovera- 
 ble to its primitive fertility. 
 
 In 1860 Kentuckians had already won nearly one half 
 of the State's surface to the plough. The remainder was 
 still in forests. At no time had there been any pressure 
 for means of subsistence upon the people. The soils of 
 the first quality were now actively under tillage or in 
 grass. Nearly one third of the State was still covered 
 with original forests, rich in the best timbers, and the 
 mineral wealth of the State was essentially untouched. 
 The preliminary geological survey of Dr. David Dale 
 Owen had shown, in its four volumes of reports, that 
 
THE MEXICAN WAR TO THE REBELLION. 229 
 
 this country was extraordinarily rich in coal beds and 
 iron ore dejjosits, but the State in the main drew its sup- 
 ply of timber, coal, and iron from beyond its borders. 
 All its principal industries were agricultural, and its ex- 
 ports were i"aw products and men, — exports, as has 
 been well remarked, that naturally go out together. 
 
 Its growth of population was now, in the ninth dec- 
 ade of its existence, relatively slow, not that the people 
 were less fecund than of old, but the trifling incoming 
 of settlers along its northern borders did not in any de- 
 gree replace the constant westward setting tide of emi- 
 gration. Slavery no longer profitable, already in fact 
 on its wane, condemned by its more intelligent people 
 as a source of serious evils, still served to deter immi- 
 gration and to stimulate the exodus of the yeoman 
 class. 
 
 Unhappy as the Civil War was in its immediate effects, 
 it undoubtedly made an end of conditions that were 
 sapping the strength of the Commonwealth. Another 
 twenty years of wrangle over the slavery question, and 
 of consequent emigration of the yeoman class, would 
 have brought about a total arrest of its development 
 and still further reduction of its manly strength. It 
 had to pay heavily for the change of conditions, but 
 dear as was the price, the new life was absolutely neces- 
 sary to the best future of its people. The State was, 
 by its conditions, unfit to profit by the presence of slav- 
 ery. That institution, no longer of economic value, w^as 
 dying apace, still its presence in name was enough to 
 keep down growth. Kentucky was about to fall be- 
 tween the two forms of life, when the war, and the de- 
 struction of slavery which it entailed, opened a new 
 future to its people. Although the separation from its 
 
230 KENTUCKY. 
 
 old conditions was only secured by a tremendous con- 
 flict that gave its whole manly strength to the work of 
 war, and sent the best life of a generation to the grave, 
 it was a less evil than the decay that now was bear- 
 ing her down. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 
 
 For ten years before the actual outbreak of the Civil 
 AVar the possibility of its coming was ever in the minds 
 of the people. Their long training in the most practi- 
 cal politics, that which comes with the making of a 
 Commonwealth, had served to bring out their sense of 
 political dangers, to give them a good degree of fore- 
 sio^ht in matters that concern the State. There was a 
 
 o 
 
 general desire to do something with slavery, but an 
 equally general sense of the enormous difficulties of the 
 problem. Nothing was done, but it is something to 
 have a whole people thinking of a problem. 
 
 In 1850 the State Emancipation Convention at Frank- 
 fort demanded that the new constitution should give the 
 legislature complete power to perfect a system of grad- 
 ual emancipation of slaves. In the same year the legis- 
 lature provided for the placing of a block of Kentucky 
 marble in the Washington monument, bearing the in- 
 scription that " Under the auspices of Heaven and the 
 precepts of Washington Kentucky will be the last to 
 give up the Union." These two selected incidents will 
 serve to mark the beginning of the conflict and the mo- 
 tives of the people in reference to it. 
 
 The elections of 1859, following on the great intensi- 
 fication of the debate between the abolitionists and the 
 pro-slavery party, gave the State to the Democrats by 
 
232 KENTUCKY. 
 
 a majority of 8,904. It should not, however, be con- 
 cluded that this by any means represented a majority 
 for the " Southern Rights " party. A large, perhaps 
 even the greater part of the Democrats represented 
 men who were very strongly opposed to the idea of 
 separation, but were desirous of resisting, by all con- 
 stitutional ways, the motives of those who desired to 
 abolish slavery by any action coming from beyond the 
 State. They were State rights people, and often enough 
 hostile to slavery in their sober judgment ; but as a 
 class they were not willing to go to the point of sepa- 
 rating from the Union to advance their State rights 
 politics. 
 
 In a certain sense the Democratic party was now the 
 conservative party of the Commonwealth. It was the 
 party that desired to maintain the existing state of in- 
 stitutions against a faction that was decidedly, though 
 in a conservative way, revolutionary in its tendencies, 
 in that it was willing to take some active measures con- 
 cerning slavery. We may also notice that in this elec- 
 tion of 1859 the same number of congressmen were 
 chosen by each party. This indicates an equal division 
 in the politics of the Commonwealth that deserves espe- 
 cial notice. The Democratic majority came mainly 
 from the Blue Grass or wealthier districts of Kentucky ; 
 the counties on the jDOorer soil, where the slave interest 
 was small or non-existing, retained their resolutely hos- 
 tile attitude to the leadership of the slave power. This, 
 
 • the first definite decision on the slavery question, shows 
 in a remarkable way an influence of the soil on jDolitics. 
 
 • The dwellers on the limestone formations, where the 
 soil was rich, gave heavy pro-slavery majorities, while 
 
 • those living on the poorer sandstone soils were gen- 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 233 
 
 erally an ti- slavery iu their position. This geological 
 distributiou of politics was by no means peculiar to 
 Kentucky : it was common throughout the South. 
 
 In the selection of Beriah Magoffin for governor, the 
 Democratic party gave the executive office of the State 
 into the hands of a man who, though an honorable citi- 
 zen and one desirous of doing his whole duty, was not 
 by nature or training well fitted to manage a govern- 
 ment in the grave trouble that was coming upon it. 
 Neither in politics, nor in any other line of activity, 
 had he received the education which his difficult posi- 
 tion required. Under ordinary circumstances he would 
 have made a good, faithful, and efficient governor, but 
 in the terrible trials that were iu store for him he broke 
 down altogether. 
 
 This election gave the Democratic party a large ma- 
 jority in both houses of the legislature. The assembly 
 elected John C. Breckinridge, then Vice-President of 
 the United States, as senator, by a vote of eighty-one to 
 fifty-two for the opposition candidate. This is a fair 
 measure of their majority. It will thus be seen that the 
 Democratic or Southern Rights party had the fortune 
 of the State given in tlieir hands by the last election 
 preceding the outbreak of the Civil War. Men of their 
 choice had the future destinies of the State in their 
 keeping. They had all the advantage of position in 
 the struggle that was to come. There can be no doubt 
 that already the greater part of the leaders of that 
 party were latently inclined to secession in the event of 
 Lincoln's election, though their motives only became 
 gradually known to the people, or even to themselves. 
 Their designs became manifest, not by any proclama- 
 tion of their views, for it seems certain that as yet there 
 
234 KENTUCKY. 
 
 was no distiuct design of separation, but from the gen- 
 eral course of their speech and action. But the fact 
 that their cause was not approved by the people was 
 at once plainly shown. 
 
 In the August election of 1860, the fact that the peo- 
 ple were drifting away from the leaders who held the 
 State government was marked by the election of the 
 Union candidate for clerk of the appellate court by a 
 plurality of about twenty-four thousand over the Breck- 
 inridge or secession candidate. The vote stood : Leslie 
 Combs, Unconditional Union, 68,165 ; Clinton McCarty, 
 Breckinridge Democrat, 44,942 ; and R. R. Boiling, 
 Union Democrat, 10,971, — making the anti-Breckin- 
 ridge vote nearly two to one that which his party polled.'^ 
 In the presidential election of the following November, 
 Bell and Everett (Compromise Union) received 66,016; 
 Breckinridge and Lane, 52,836 ; Douglas and Johnson, 
 24,644 ; Lincoln and Hamlin, 1,366. Counting the votes 
 opposed to Breckinridge as for the Union, we have a 
 majority of 39,184 against secession in a total vote of 
 145,862.^ Comparing this vote with that of the elec- 
 tions of the preceding year, when Magoffin, the Dem- 
 ocratic candidate for governor, had a majority of 8,904, 
 we see clearly how rapidly the people of Kentucky 
 were arraying themselves against secession as the na- 
 ture of that project began to be unfolded. It would, 
 however, not be proper to represent this feeling of 
 the conservative party as an unqualified approval of 
 the project of remaining in the Union come what 
 would. The state of mind of the masses of the people 
 at this time is hard to make clear to those who, by 
 geographical position, were so fortunate as to have their 
 1 See Collins, i. 84. 2 Collins, i. 84. 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 235 
 
 minds carried into a perfectly definite position in this 
 difficult question of national politics. The citizen of 
 Massachusetts or the citizen of South Carolina, sur- 
 rounded by institutions and brought up in associations 
 which entirely committed him to a course of action that 
 was unquestionably the will of his people, had only to 
 go with the tide that bore him smoothly along. What- 
 ever the issue might be, unity within his sphere of action 
 was easily attained. Not so with the citizen of Ken- 
 tucky ; the Commonwealth was pledged by a generation 
 of conservatism to her line of conduct set forth in the 
 inscription she had placed in the monument to Wash- 
 ington.-^ Her people, almost without exception, shrank 
 from any dissolution of the Union with a real horror. 
 At the same time, if the Union should go utterly to 
 pieces, if this fine fleet of sister ships was to be cast 
 away in the great storm that was rising, what should 
 she do to save her own staunch ship from the general 
 peril ? The ties of blood and of institutions bound the 
 Commonwealth with the Southern States, every one of 
 which was drifting away from the Union. The pledge 
 of political faith tied her to the fragment of the Union 
 with which she had little social sympathy, and in which 
 she could not expect much comfort. Surely never was 
 a people so unhappily placed. 
 
 All the days and nights for the dismal year that pre- 
 ceded the war the harrowing question of their action 
 was upon men's minds ; by every fireside and in endless 
 meetings the conflict of opposed minds went on. Men, 
 women, and children thought and talked of nothing 
 else. The whole life of the citizens went into the mat- 
 ter as never before among any people. In all the other 
 1 Vide supra, p. 231. 
 
236 KENTUCKY. 
 
 stages of our race conflicts there has been a lower por- 
 tion of the populace which gave little thought to polit- 
 ical questions. They have acted, when the time came, 
 in the way their leaders led them ; but in 1860 no white 
 man's cabin in Kentucky was so remote in the wilder- 
 ness that grave care did not sit by its fireside during all 
 this year. 
 
 The intellectual and political leadership of the Com- 
 monwealth was mainly in the hands of men who, though 
 often unconsciously, were steadily acting in a way to 
 lead the people toward secession. Still there was in the 
 crisis a host of strong, clear-headed men whose voices 
 were heard in every gathering, who urged that political 
 faith could not be abandoned for sympathies, and that 
 the State must stand by her deliberate pledges to the 
 Union. Gradually, out of the endless praying and de- 
 bating, there came a curious state of mind, which soon 
 took shape in action. 
 
 This general opinion of Kentucky was that the war 
 was an unnatural strife which would necessarily result 
 in the certain, though, as they hoped, temporary disrup- 
 tion of the Union they all loved so well. They did not 
 believe that the States had a moral right to secede ; on 
 the other hand, they did not believe that the Federal 
 government had either the constitutional right or the 
 power and energy to coerce them back into the Union. 
 The undoubted preference of the Kentucky people was 
 that the Southern States should be allowed to go in 
 peace. She herself would stay where her pledges kept 
 her, and, after a sorrowful experience, she believed that 
 her erring sisters would sue for readmission to the 
 Union. If the Federal government resolved to take 
 what seemed to them the unconstitutional process of 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 237 
 
 arms to compel the States to return into the Union, 
 Kentucky would have no part in the process. She 
 would stand alone, while North and South both left the 
 paths of duty under the constitution, bidding them to 
 keep their battles away from her soil. The position 
 was a logical one, and has a certain grandeur in its con- 
 ception. The people clearly believed that both sides 
 had left the paths of the constitution, that the war was 
 essentially unconstitutional, and that in time they would 
 have to return to their old positions. They thought that 
 Kentucky, by well-timed mediation, could soon persuade 
 the warring States to peace. 
 
 In the wild talk of the time this neutrality project of 
 the Kentucky people was denounced as cowardly. There 
 are States in the world which it would be proper to de- 
 fend from this accusation. With Kentucky this atti- 
 tude was a sorrowful and noble, though it must be con- 
 fessed in the after light of events a somewhat Quixotic, 
 position. But in 1860 and the beginning of 1861, it 
 seemed to be a very rational standing ground. If war 
 came into Kentucky it would be internecine and frat- 
 ricidal. The people did not so much fear war for the 
 dangers and losses it would bring, but they did look 
 with terror on the fight between friends and brothers. 
 They were justified in their own minds, and will be 
 justified in the opinions of reasonable people, in doing 
 anything that honorable men could do that promised to 
 avert this evil. 
 
 At this time the State was rich in men and means of 
 war. With fifty thousand soldiers of its own and forty 
 thousand square miles of territory that lay between 
 North and South, and with a willingness to take every 
 means of conciliation to make an end of the conflict, 
 
238 KENTUCKY. 
 
 they could soon hope to still the sea of troubles. Look- 
 ing at it from half a lifetime of distance, it appears as 
 a very remarkable resolution for a people to make, 
 thouo-h it will be seen to be in many ways the logical 
 result of the history of the people. The Kentuckians 
 were, from the beginning of their history, in many ways 
 a singularly separate State. The ancestors of the peo- 
 ple won their right to life and property by their own 
 hands. For two generations they stood almost entirely 
 apart in their life and their politics, keeping always a 
 keen interest in American affairs, but not wedded by 
 interests very closely to the American system of States. 
 Gradually Clay, Crittenden, and other great leaders, 
 brought them to a sense of pride in, and devotion to, the 
 Union. But the sense of their place as Kentuckians 
 was always stronger than their sense of the Federal re- 
 lation. It would require a separate chapter to explain 
 the peculiar Southern sense of State rights and to ac- 
 count for its development. We have, in a previous 
 chapter, looked at the outlines of this history; as we 
 are now to deal with a problem in which this motive is 
 again to be in the lead in the State life, we should bring 
 it once more before us, — as clearly as it can be done 
 in a few words. 
 
 From tlie colonization of this country until the end 
 of the Revolutionary War the motives of political life 
 were limited. Within the colony the adhesion to the 
 mother country grew steadily less and less strong, until 
 it was too weak to bear even trifling strains such as 
 gave birth to the Revolution. No theory of the Amer- 
 ican Revolution can be made reasonable that does not 
 take as its essential basis the singular and hardly to be 
 explained sense of local independence which was de- 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 239 
 
 veloped in the colonies. As separate States the original 
 thirteen colonies fought the Revolutionary War, and 
 whatever interpretations may be given to the constitu- 
 tion, it was as separate States that they -dealt in making 
 the final Federal compact. This separatist impulse they 
 took with them into their life as united States. What- 
 ever motives of love for the Federal Union have since 
 come into existence are new compared with the local 
 loyalty of early days. In the Northern States, — mostly 
 communities occupying smaller areas, which soon be- 
 came united one to another by the strong bonds of com- 
 merce, — this beloved sense of isolation and indepen- 
 dence, perhaps in the beginning less strong than in the 
 Southern States, became gradually weaker, and was re- 
 placed by a strong national sense. In the South, where 
 the social conditions favored a mediasval isolation of 
 communities, and when the interstate commerce, and, 
 indeed, commerce of any kind, was always a small ele- 
 ment in the life, State rights never lost their original 
 strength. It is a great misfortune that the excellent 
 political motive embodied in the " State Rights " im- 
 pulse became the tool of the slave power, and the means 
 of protection of that institution from the natural forces 
 that menaced it. There is a common notion that State 
 rights was a device of that power for the maintenance 
 of its conflict with the rest of the country. The mo- 
 tive was a deeper and nobler one than this theory would 
 make it. Its connection with slavery was a mere acci- 
 dent. It arose from that sense of domestic strength, 
 that admirable power of trusting to and loving a com- 
 munity that is the best quality of the race, — that on 
 which alone a great nation of freemen can firmly stand. 
 When Kentuckians declared for neutrality they acted 
 
240 KENTUCKY. 
 
 out the motives of their history. Futile as the expe- 
 dient proved to be, it was singularly spontaneous and 
 acceptable at the time it was devised. The decided 
 Union men who desired to join in arms with the Fed- 
 eral government, and the secessionists who wished the 
 State to go with its southern kindred States, each wel- 
 comed the movement as giving them possibilities of aC' 
 tion that were denied them at the moment. In the 
 chances of the combat each party could hope to win 
 the result it wished to obtain. 
 
 There is reason to believe that this course was the 
 only one that could have kept Kentucky from seces- 
 sion. If what had been unhappily named a sovereignty 
 convention had been called in 1861, if the State had 
 been compelled to accept the decision of a body of men 
 who were acting under the control of no constitutional 
 limitations, the sense of sympathy and of kinship with 
 the Southern States, such as would easily grow up under 
 popular oratory in a mob, would probably have precipi- 
 tated action. Virginia, the mother State, was as decid- 
 edly Union in its sentiments as Kentucky; yet it proved 
 easy, as soon as it had departed from constitutional 
 ways, so to turn the sentiment of sympathy that it 
 overwhelmed the respect for the organic law of the 
 Commonwealth, and led the State out of the Union. 
 The Legislature of Kentucky caught this universal will 
 of the citizens for neutrality, and proceeded to shape its 
 action accordingly. 
 
 Even after this resolution of neutrality had been so 
 generally expressed as the will of the Kentucky people, 
 there were various schemes for the solution of the dif- 
 ferences between the Northern and Southern States. 
 All of these efforts to stay a moral cyclone with a little 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 241 
 
 political oil are interesting, especially those known as 
 the Border State, or Crittenden, compromises ; they are 
 interesting as a part of the political history of the times, 
 but it would carry us too far from the account of the 
 local affairs to give them more than mention here. 
 They were all approved by the people, who were will- 
 ing to take any road to peace, and were warmly sec- 
 onded by the legislature, but they never got beyond the 
 state of resolutions ; they never had a chance of becom- 
 ing a part of the Constitution of the United States, 
 where alone they could have been of any service. In 
 this time of storm the border people, on whom the blow 
 of the war was to fall, caught like drowning men at 
 every straw that promised safety. 
 
 On May 6, 1861, the legislature met under a call of 
 Governor Magoffin, and remained in session until the 
 24th. It should be remembered that it was a Demo- 
 cratic legislature, and that when elected it was supposed 
 to be favorable to secession. Brief as was this session 
 — it lasted less than a month — it was lonsf enough to 
 determine the future history of Kentucky, perhaps of 
 the Union, for if Kentucky had cast her lot with the 
 rebellion, it may well be doubted if the Union would 
 have been preserved. 
 
 In the rapidly changing conditions of the time, these 
 legislators who assembled in Frankfort on the 6th of 
 May were, for a time, in much confusion of mind. 
 There was a distinct division between the decided Union 
 men and the decided secessionists ; but between them 
 there was a floating body wliich was awed by the re- 
 solve of the people for neutrality, yet desired to obey 
 their impulses and to act with the Southern States. 
 Some men elected as Union had drifted to the other 
 16 
 
242 KENTUCKY. 
 
 side. At least four of those who were originally " Breck- 
 inridge men," or classed as "Southern Rights," had 
 abandoned their leader after finding whereto he led 
 them.^ In this state of the parties the Confederate 
 element was more hopeful than the Union party. The 
 most that the latter dared try to obtain in a legislature 
 so Southern in its sympathies was the accomplishment 
 of the neutrality project. The secession party desired 
 to defeat this measure, as the alternative would be, they 
 had every reason to expect, w^hat it had been in the 
 other States, namely, secession. 
 
 The legislation of this session began with resolutions 
 intended to define the position of the Commonwealth. 
 The first of these referred to the answer that Governor 
 Magoffin had made to the call of the Federal govern- 
 ment for " four regiments of militia for immediate ser- 
 vice." His answer was that " emphatically Kentucky 
 will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of sub- 
 duing her sister Southern States." ^ 
 
 The first resolution proposed was as follows : ^ — 
 
 " Resolved, That we most cordially approve and in- 
 dorse the course of Governor Magoffin in refusing to 
 comply with the recent requisition of the Federal gov- 
 ernment for troops to invade the Southern States." 
 
 On this resolution a vote was offered to postpone, 
 which was lost by a tie of forty-five to forty-five. This 
 vote was never passed. On May 16th the Committee 
 on Federal Relations reported a resolution which read 
 as follows : — 
 
 1 These men. were R. T. Jacob and R. A. Burton, of the house ; F. 
 Marshall and J. A. Prall, of the senate. 
 
 2 Collins, i. 87. 
 
 3 See speech of Colonel Jacob, Louisville Commercial, January 8, 
 1882. 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 243 
 
 " Considering the deplorable condition of the coun- 
 try, for which Kentucky is in no way responsible, and 
 looking to the best means of preserving the national 
 peace and securing the laws, liberty, and property of the 
 citizens of the State ; therefore 
 
 " Resolved by the House of Representatives, That this 
 State and the citizens thereof should take no part in 
 the Civil War now being waged, except as mediators 
 and friends of the belligerent parties; and that Ken- 
 tucky should during the contest occupy the position of 
 strict neutrality. 
 
 " And your committee recommend the adoption of 
 the following resolution : — ■ 
 
 " Resolved, That the act of the governor in refusing 
 to furnish troops or military force upon the call of the 
 executive authority of the United States, under existing 
 circumstances, is approved." 
 
 The first resolution was carried by sixty-nine to twen- 
 ty-six, the second by eighty-nine to four votes. 
 
 These declarations the secessionist members took to 
 be in the line for which they were acting. They, there- 
 fore, in the main joined the neutrality men in voting 
 for them. The next and third step was away from the 
 path they chose to tread, for if taken it certainly made 
 immediate action in favor of their party impossible, and 
 they well saw that they would not be so strong when 
 they had submitted their cause to the election impend- 
 ing in the August following. A motion was made to 
 substitute for the preamble of the preceding resolution 
 the following words : — 
 
 "Whereas, the General Assembly of the Common- 
 wealth of Kentucky have asserted strict neutrality to 
 be the position desirable for the State to occupy in the 
 
244 KENTUCKY. 
 
 present contest between the Federal government and 
 the seceding States, therefore the General Assembly of 
 the Commonwealth of Kentucky asserts that their po- 
 sition will be maintained with sincerity and honor by 
 the State ; that the parties engaged in the present frat- 
 ricidal war should respect the neutrality, and know that 
 Kentucky cannot with honor to herself submit to armed 
 forces hostile to this neutrality invading her soil ; that 
 Kentucky asks and will defend her rights of friendly 
 intercourse and trade with both sections, thereby de- 
 nying and intending to deny to the Federal government 
 and the Confederate States the right or authority, by 
 force or otherwise, to take possession of and hold the 
 property of private corporations on any territory within 
 her borders for any purpose or on any pretense what- 
 ever. 
 
 " That a copy of the resolutions passed by the gen- 
 eral assembly, and approved by Governor Magoffin, 
 in refusing troops to participate in this conflict, together 
 with a copy of these resolutions, be forwarded to the 
 executives of the Federal government and the Confed- 
 erate States, respectfully requesting the proper author- 
 ities in this unfortunate conflict to respect the neutrality 
 of Kentucky." 
 
 The previous question was moved by the advocates 
 of neutrality. The leader of the secessionists moved 
 to lay the motion on the table. The motives that led 
 the secessionist party to vote for the milder resolution 
 of neutrality, while they resisted this clear statement of 
 the proposed amendment, were about as follows. The 
 first proposition was so general in its terms that they 
 would be left perfectly free to give active support to 
 their cause ; some form of neutrality was called for by 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 245 
 
 the people, and this to the secessionists the least offen- 
 sive shape of that action might serve to meet the popu- 
 lar demand. The substitute meant that the neutrality 
 was to be very definite in its provisions, and that if it 
 were to become the basis of action of the executive they 
 could not hope to go farther with their projects within 
 the State. 
 
 Now began the most dramatic incident in this re- 
 markable session. It was decided that the main ques- 
 tion should be put. Then the motion to lay the pream- 
 ble and resolution on the table was put and rejected by 
 forty-eight to forty-seven. In this complicated game 
 of political fencing, the details of which are not inter- 
 esting, this was hailed by the secessionists as a victory ; 
 it appeared that one of the Union men had gone over 
 to their side. 
 
 The remainder of the incident can best be told in 
 the words of Colonel Jacob, himself one of the Union 
 men of that legislature. "The secessionists, exultant 
 with the prospect and certainty of triumph, were un- 
 bounded in their expression of delight. The Union 
 men, pale, despondent, and apprehensive that all was 
 lost, were for a moment overcome and staggered with 
 dismay. Mr. William Brown, I think, of Christian 
 County, one of the staunchest and best Union men, 
 had apparently gone over to the Democrats, and given 
 them the majority. Having every confidence in Mr. 
 Brown's integrity, I determined to know the worst. I 
 crossed over to his seat, and said, ' Brown, have you 
 deserted us ? ' He replied, ' No.' Then I said, ' Why 
 did you give that vote ? You have scared us nearly to 
 death.' And I shall never forget his reply; it was 
 this : ' I wanted to give them a high fall.' And I tell 
 
246 KENTUCKY. 
 
 you he did it on the next question, which was taken on 
 the adoption of the substitute for the preamble, and it 
 was decided in the negative, forty-seven to forty-eight, 
 Mr. Brown renewing his connection with the Union 
 party, and giving them one majority. The house then 
 adopted the original preamble and resolution." 
 
 This seems like a trifling incident, but it did much to 
 determine the fate of the Commonwealth. The seces- 
 sionists had seen victory in their grasp, they had ex- 
 ulted in their majority, and found that they had been 
 played with by their antagonists. They lost heart from 
 that vote. Some of them at once left their places for 
 the Confederate army, convinced that nothing but the 
 invasion of Kentucky by an army from the Southern 
 States would give them mastery. In this they judged 
 well. The minds of the people were daily becoming 
 more decided against the secession movement. The 
 fury and haste with which their sister Southern States 
 were leaving the Union did much to turn the Kentucky 
 people against them. 
 
 The State was now in a very precarious condition on 
 ^account of the known animus of the militia organization 
 called the State Guard. There were fifty-four com- 
 mands of these troops, amounting in all to about fifteen 
 thousand men. They were the only military force in 
 the Commonwealth, and were generally under ofliicers 
 of disunion sentiments. About all the serviceable arms 
 owned by the State were in their possession. The 
 legislature gave the control of these troops into the 
 hands of a military board, composed of trusted citizens, 
 and presided over by the governor. They provided the 
 sum of $1,000,000 for the expense of arming and dis- 
 ciplining the militia, $750,000 to be expended for arms, 
 
THE BEGINNING OF TEE CIVIL WAR. 247 
 
 one half to be issued to the State Guard, the other half 
 to the Home Guards. The State Guard was to be at 
 once placed in camp ; the Home Guards were to be held 
 in reserve. It was provided that " neither the arms nor 
 the militia were to be used against the government of 
 the United States nor the Confederate States, unless in 
 the sole defense of the State of Kentucky." On the day 
 of the passage of this act the governor appointed Gen- 
 eral Simon Bolivar Buckner Inspector- General of the 
 State forces.^ As will be seen in the sequel these ap- 
 prehensions concerning the State Guard were entirely 
 justified. 
 
 At a special election for congressmen to fill vacan- 
 cies, held in June, the Union majority was 54,670, the 
 anti-secession candidates being elected in nine out of the 
 ten districts. On the 24th of June six companies of 
 the State Guard, under the command of Colonel Lloyd 
 Tilghman, were ordered to Hickman to secure that 
 quarter against the threatened invasion of the Confed- 
 erate troops. Colonel Tilghman at once resigned his 
 command to take a place in the Confederate army, thus 
 showino^ the first clear evidence of the entire untrust- 
 worthiness of this force. 
 
 The regular election on the first Monday in August 
 gave the first distinct expression of the will of the neu- 
 trality party; it gave 76 Union to 24 States rights or 
 secession votes in the house, and 27 Union to 11 States 
 rights in the senate. The Union majority in the sen- 
 ate would have been larger but for the fact that one 
 half that body held over from the preceding election.^ 
 
 i Collins, i, 91. 
 
 2 In the Kentucky senate the members are elected for four years ; 
 one half the number is replaced each two years. 
 
248 KENTUCKY. 
 
 Although the neutrality party had now obtained full 
 control of the State legislature, the impossibility of their 
 project was already beginning to be apparent. Thou- 
 sands of the Confederate sympathizers slipped away 
 over the border to Tennessee and Virginia. In some 
 cases they were organized into companies on the soil of 
 Kentucky. Humphrey Marshall had a recruiting camp, 
 and organized troops in Owen County, within thirty 
 miles of the State capital ; a camp of out-and-out Union 
 men was established under the command of General 
 William Nelson, at Camp Dick Robinson, in Garrard 
 County. The extreme men of either party, dissatisfied 
 with the position of the State, yet respecting its pro- 
 claimed position, were pouring in a constant stream to 
 take service in the regiments of other States. 
 
 In this period of rapid change President Lincoln 
 showed his remarkable discretion in avoiding all acts 
 of invasion of the Commonwealth. The small United 
 States garrison at Newport, the only government mili- 
 tary station in Kentucky, was retained, but neither re- 
 enforced nor fortified. The force gathered at Camp Dick 
 Robinson, in Garrard County, was composed solely of 
 Kentuckians, who claimed that they were organized for 
 their own protection, and though they were recognized 
 by the Federal authorities as Union soldiers, their ac- 
 tion did not in strict terms constitute an invasion of the 
 State. They went no farther against the attitude of 
 neutrality than Marshall's action did. Several regi- 
 ments of Kentuckians were, however, enrolled by the 
 Federal government in camps in Indiana and Ohio, 
 from among the citizens who crossed the border to 
 enlist. This, too, was no transgression of the neutrality 
 chosen by the Kentuckians. It was fast becoming evi- 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 249 
 
 dent that the greater part of the able-bodied citizens of 
 the State would soon drift away into the opposing 
 armies, leaving the Commonwealth an empty shell, an 
 object of contempt to both sides. There was no chance 
 to guard the frontier, and so to retain the citizens in 
 the State ; the able-bodied whites, if all were mustered 
 on the border, could not suffice to guard the possible 
 lines of escape to the North and South. Moreover, 
 there was no law that could have been used to retain 
 citizens within the State. The periphery of the State 
 is about fifteen hundred miles in length, and all its 
 adult white males would, if constantly on watch, hardly 
 make a singfle line of sentries alons: its extent. 
 
 While it thus became evident that the position of 
 neutrality would have to be abandoned, a number of 
 circumstances now served to turn the temper of the 
 people more and more towards a union with the North. 
 A remark attributed to Howell Cobb, of Georgia, that 
 the Southern men would only have " to go home, raise 
 cotton, and make money," leaving the war to the border 
 States, was one of the many stings that turned the peo- 
 ple from the once cherished idea of neutrality. More- 
 over, the unanimity and apparent heedlessness of the 
 Southern States in rushing into rebellion were irritating 
 to the Kentuckians, who had planned a course which 
 they expected would bring the disturbance to some 
 happy end. They felt they had a right, in this endeavor, 
 to the sympathy and cooperation of the Southern States, 
 especially of their cousins in Tennessee and their broth- 
 ers in the mother State of Virginia. It was the belief 
 of the neutrality men that these States had been forced 
 from their position in the Union by the secession ele- 
 ment without a proper appeal to the people of those 
 
250 KENTUCKY. 
 
 States, and that by their action Kentucky had been 
 deprived of her natural allies in its effort to stem the 
 tide of war. It was felt that the Federal government, 
 which had a real claim to Kentucky's allegiance, had 
 acted liberally in respecting the neutrality, in form at 
 least ; while the message of Davis, that he would respect 
 the neutrality of Kentucky " so long, as the people of 
 Kentucky maintain it themselves," was a discourteous 
 piece of arrogance to those who were struggling for 
 peace. The tone of the Southern States in assuming 
 that Kentucky belonged to them, but was kept in her 
 relation to the Union by fear, was deeply offensive to 
 the State pride. 
 
 In this position of affairs the Confederates made the 
 first distinct trespass on the neutrality proclamation. 
 Major-General Leonidas Polk, a nephew of President 
 Polk, a graduate of West Point, then a bishop of the 
 Episcopal Church, was commander of the Confederate 
 forces of Tennessee. Desiring to strengthen his hold 
 on the Mississippi, he invaded Kentucky, and took up a 
 strong position on the bluffs that command the stream 
 at Columbus and Hickman, near the Tennessee line. 
 This important step was taken on September 3d. At 
 the same time General Zollicoffer invaded the south- 
 eastern corner of the State, establishing his lines near 
 Cumberland Gap. 
 
 The first action of the State, in view of these inva- 
 sions, an ominous act indeed, was a vote passed in the 
 legislature that the United States flag be hoisted on the 
 Capitol at Frankfort. This step was taken by the house 
 of representatives by a vote of 77 to 20. On the 10th 
 a State rights convention for Kentucky was held at 
 Frankfort ; they passed a resolution in favor of the di&- 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 251 
 
 persiou of the Federal camps in Kentucky, promising, 
 when that was done, to assist in driving the Tennessee 
 troops from the State. -^ 
 
 It is maintained by many Confederate sympathizers 
 that the violation of the State's neutrality came first 
 from the Federal authorities. They cite the recruiting 
 at Camp Dick Robinson as evidence in proof of their 
 assertion. It is hardly worth while to debate this ques- 
 tion of precedence, when the action of both sides was 
 so nearly simultaneous, and only accomplished the in- 
 evitable overthrow of the neutrality of the Common- 
 wealth ; still, after a careful review of all the records, 
 the present writer has been driven to the conclusion 
 that the actual infringement of the neutrality proclama- 
 tion was due to the action of Polk and Zollicolfer, and 
 that this simultaneous invasion of the State at points 
 some hundred miles apart, shows that the rupture of 
 Kentucky neutrality was deliberately planned by the 
 Confederate authorities. Ill as it turned out for their 
 cause, it gave them their last chance of getting political 
 possession of the State. 
 
 On the 11th, after much private deliberation, the leg- 
 islature, by a vote of 71 to 26 in the house, and by 25 
 to 8 in the senate, resolved " That Governor Magoffin 
 be instructed to inform those concerned that Kentucky 
 expects the Confederate or Tennessee troops to be with- 
 drawn from her soil unconditionally." This resolution 
 was vetoed by the governor, but immediately passed 
 over the veto by an overwhelming majority. 
 
 Immediately after General Polk's invasion Grant's 
 army moved across the Ohio and took up a position at 
 Paducah. It was moved in the house that the gov- 
 1 Collins, i. 93. 
 
262 KENTUCKY. 
 
 ernor demand the removal of the Federal as well as 
 the Confederate trooj^s. This was refused by a vote of 
 29 to 68. 
 
 This vote may be regarded as a final commitment of 
 the State to a policy of complete allegiance to the Fed- 
 eral government. On September 18th, the Committee 
 on Federal Relations brought in the following resolu- 
 tions : ' — 
 
 " Whereas, Kentucky has been invaded by the forces 
 of the so-called Confederate States, and the commanders 
 of the forces so invading the State have insolently pre- 
 scribed the conditions upon which they will withdraw, 
 thus insulting the dignity of the State by demanding 
 terms to which Kentucky cannot listen without dis- 
 honor, therefore : 
 
 1. ^'' Be it Resolved hy the General Assembly of the Com- 
 monwealth of Kentucky, That the invaders must be ex- 
 pelled. Inasmuch as there are now in Kentucky Federal 
 troops assembled for the purpose of preserving the tran- 
 quillity of the State, and of defending and protecting 
 the people of Kentucky in the peaceful enjoyment of 
 their lives and property, it is, 
 
 2. " Further Resolved, That General Robert Ander- 
 son, a native Kentuckian, who has been appointed to 
 command the department of the Cumberland, be re- 
 quested to take instant command, with authority and 
 power from this Commonwealth to call out a volunteer 
 force in Kentucky, for the purpose of ex2:)elling the in- 
 vaders from our soil. 
 
 3. " Resolved, That in using the means which duty 
 and honor require shall be used to expel the invaders 
 from the soil of Kentucky, no citizen shall be molested 
 
 1 See Collins, i. 93. 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 253 
 
 on account of his political opinions ; and that no citi- 
 zen's property shall be taken or confiscated because of 
 such opinions, nor shall any slave be set free by any 
 military commander, and all peaceable citizens and their 
 families are entitled to and shall receive the fullest pro- 
 tection of the government in the enjoyment of their 
 lives, their lil)erties, and their property. 
 
 4. " Resolved^ That his excellency the Governor of 
 the Commonwealth of Kentucky be requested to give 
 all the aid in his power to accomplish the end desired 
 by these resolutions ; and that he call out so much of 
 the military force of the State under his command as 
 may be necessary therefor, and that he place the same 
 under the command of General Thomas L. Crittenden. 
 
 5. " Resolved, That the patriotism of every Kentuck- 
 ian is invoked and is confidently relied upon to give ac- 
 tive aid in the defense of the Commonwealth." 
 
 These resolutions amount in fact to a declaration of 
 war on the Southern Confederacy. They were vetoed by 
 the governor, who remained in sympathy with the se- 
 cessionist movement, and were at once passed by au 
 overwhelming majority. This vote definitely closes the 
 effort to maintain the State in a neutral attitude. 
 
 Before passing to the consideration of the next act of 
 this political drama, it will not be amiss to consider cer- 
 tain features of the rapidly changing politics of the 
 time. 
 
 The curious feature in the behavior of Kentucky at 
 this time is the simple, indeed artless, exhibition of hu- 
 man nature in the whole transaction. It was a singu- 
 larly popular movement. Generally in the action of 
 large communities in time of such trial the course of 
 a State is dictated by certain leaders, — deliberative 
 
254 KENTUCKY. 
 
 statesmen who direct the course of events in highly 
 artificial channels, so that there is a cold, disciplined 
 quality in the results ; or, if this is wanting, it is be- 
 cause some fierce outburst of passion has carried the 
 people onward into headlong ruin. I do not know 
 where else to find the likeness of these political move- 
 ments of Kentucky, so deliberate, so dignified, and self- 
 respecting as they were. 
 
 The most singular ' thing about the movement was 
 that the feeling, though intense, was at this time re- 
 markably free from the commonplace bitterness that 
 marks the earlier stages of most civil wars. While the 
 people were falling asunder, going each to their places 
 of arms, there were no outrages, no combats between 
 the passing parties of men who were to be foes. On 
 the contrary, it is doubtful if in years the State had 
 been as free from all forms of disturbance as in this 
 time of parting. A great sorrow fell upon the land. 
 It was common enough to see strong men weeping for 
 the woe that was to come upon their beloved State. 
 
 One of the most painful features was the sundering 
 of households that now took place. AYhen the division 
 came, very often the father went one way, the sons an- 
 other. Usually the parting lines in civil wars are 
 drawn by neighborhoods and clans, but in this battle 
 the line of separation went through all associations 
 whatsoever. Families, churches, friendships, seemed to 
 have no influence whatever on the way men went. It 
 was the most singular evidence of independent minded- 
 ness that is recorded in history. 
 
 To the considerate observer, the most interesting 
 feature in this period was the absolute forgetfuluess of 
 the moneyed value of the slave. Nearly one fourth the 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. 255 
 
 estimated value of the State was in slaves, yet this in- 
 terest never seemed to enter into the minds of men ; 
 we never hear of it in the public debates, and it was 
 equally absent from the private talk of the times. There 
 was no movement to remove the slaves southwards 
 where they still had their price. There was the same 
 absence of desire to secure other property. There was 
 no drifting out of capital or population from the State, 
 no effort to convert real estate or chattels into money, 
 such as has so often in other countries marked the be- 
 ginning of perilous times. This, more than anything 
 else, shows the intensity of the moral shock that was 
 brought upon the people by the swift and appalling 
 changes of the times. 
 
 There have been many who have from afar flippantly 
 criticised the behavior of the Kentuckkns in the outset 
 of the Civil War, who have attributed their slowness 
 of action to the calculation of self-interest, or their un- 
 willingness to enter upon the combat which was before 
 them. The truth is the Kentucky people had a clearer 
 prescience of what this war would mean than the other 
 parts of the Union. The traditions of their firesides 
 were full of war memories ; there was scarcely a family 
 where there was not some one who could remember the 
 kindred who had fallen on the numberless fields where 
 the children of Kentucky had bled. There were men 
 still living who remembered the days of St. Clair's de- 
 feat, and the Raisin massacre. There is nothing more 
 pathetic than the appeal that the women of Kentucky 
 made in 1861 to the legislature of the Commonwealth, 
 to guard them from the calamity of Civil War by main- 
 taining neutrality. If the people of the other States 
 had been as well able to perceive the awful seriousness 
 
256 KENTUCKY, 
 
 of this crisis as were those of Kentucky, there would 
 have been no war. 
 
 When a historian arises who can treat this part of 
 American history with the calm philosophy it deserves, 
 we may be sure that the effort of Kentucky to stay the 
 tide of civil conflict, and to decide the difficulty by 
 statemanship rather than by arms, will not be set down 
 to her discredit, but will appear as the most remarkable, 
 as well as the most creditable, spontaneous political ac- 
 tion in the history of that great struggle. It is not too 
 much to say that it will be regarded as one of the best 
 evidences of a general political capacity that this coun- 
 try has yet afforded. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 FROM THE ABANDONMENT OF NEUTRALITY TO THE 
 FALL OP FORT DONELSON. 
 
 The suddenness of the final determination in the 
 matter of neutrality was at once fortunate and unfortu- 
 nate for the State. It made it impossible for the Con- 
 federacy immediately to seize upon its strong points, 
 and thus forced the war back so far south, that for the 
 time the territory of the Commonwealth was safe from 
 invasion by those who were now the enemies of the 
 State. At the same time it left the State in a very de- 
 fenseless condition ; the greater part of the arms that 
 had been purchased by the legislature went into the 
 hands of the State Guard. This organization contained 
 at this time ten thousand men, and was an admirably 
 selected and tolerably efficient body of troops, under 
 the command of well trained officers, some of them 
 from the West Point Academy, others from the State 
 military school. Many of them had seen service in 
 Mexico. It had long been known that the greater part 
 of this body of troops was in hearty sympathy with the 
 disunion element, yet it was hoped that their States 
 rights motives would keep them true to the Common- 
 wealth. 
 
 No sooner had Kentucky cast in her lot with the 
 Federal government than almost all of the companies 
 of the State Guard marched from the State and joined 
 17 
 
258 KENTUCKY. 
 
 the Confederate army. Its commancler-in-cliief, Buck- 
 ner, resigned his position and repaired at once to Camp 
 Boone, Tennessee, where he was joined by the regiment 
 of Colonel Roger Hanson, by the battalion of Lloyd 
 Tighlman, and by many separate companies of the same 
 force. They then became the 2d, 3d, 4th, and 5th 
 Kentucky regiments of the Confederate army. These 
 men of the State Guard were not the first Kentucky 
 troops that entered the service of the Confederacy. In 
 June, 1861, Colonel Withers began to recruit a regi- 
 ment for that service, selecting Camp Boone for his 
 rendezvous. The stimulus given to the Confederate 
 hopes by the victory of Bull Run sent a large number 
 of recruits to this camp, so that even before the State 
 had determined against the South the 2d Regiment of 
 Kentucky Confederate Infantry was organized, as early 
 as July 17th.^ 
 
 John H. Morgan's company and other organizations 
 passed from the State on other lines of march. Tlius 
 a force which was designed to protect the State, which 
 was armed at its expense and sworn into its service, 
 abandoned its flag as soon as the Commonwealth finally 
 determined to respect its Federal obligations. Noth- 
 ing shows better the intensity of the sympathy with 
 the Southern movement that animated the secessionist 
 minority of Kentucky. Nothing shows so well that the 
 essential motive of the rebellion had not come from 
 the States rights motive. The men and officers of 
 this State Guard were as honorable men as the Com- 
 monwealth ever had ; yet in this moment of excitement 
 they cast aside all the bonds of allegiance to the soil 
 
 1 See Thompson's Hislory of the 1st Kentucky Biif/ade, p. 51 et 
 seq. 
 
FIRST STAGE OF THE WAR. 259 
 
 that bred them, and with the training and in part with 
 the weapons that the State had just given them for 
 her defense, repaired to the camp of those who were 
 now her declared enemies.^ This was the only inci- 
 dent in the days of parting on which we can look 
 with grave regret. Knowing as the present writer does 
 the soldierly spirit that animated so many of the mem- 
 bers of the State Guard, he believes that they, too, 
 must share in the feeling that they then did what they 
 should not have done. A few officers and some men of 
 the State Guard did not take part in this movement. 
 Thomas L. Crittenden, the brigadier-general of the 
 Guard, remained, and afterward took service in the 
 Federal army, but the State Guard as a whole went 
 over to the Confederacy. The Home Guards remained, 
 and took a brave but not always admirable part in the 
 subsequent history of the war ; they were not well or- 
 ganized ; their commanders were less able soldiers than 
 those of the seceding State Guard. 
 
 Although the secession of the State Guard cannot be 
 defended by those who dispassionately examine it, much 
 can be said in its favor. In the first place, it was in 
 the power of the governor and the commanding officer 
 of the Guard to have precipitated the State into seces- 
 sion in the spring of 1861. Some of the hot-heads of 
 the party desired to have this Guard, or the most de- 
 cidedly secession of its commands, assembled in Frank- 
 fort at the time of the meeting of the legislature during 
 the month of May. The presence in the capital of this 
 force at that time would probably have driven the State 
 
 1 Only a portion (how larffe cannot be determined) of the State 
 Guard took their arras with them when they left the State. Probably 
 the larger part went out unarmed. 
 
260 KENTUCKY. 
 
 into a nominal secession, which would have been as 
 effective for the Southern cause as was the action of 
 Tennessee. To General Buckner, the commander of 
 the forces, to John C. Breckinridge, who still clung to 
 the hope of some accommodation, and to Governor Ma- 
 goffin, who, be it remembered, in all cases opposed a 
 severance of the State from the Union without what 
 seemed to him due forms of law, we owe the fact that 
 this well trained Guard was not made an instrument 
 of great danger to the State. 
 
 It would require many pages to give even a list of 
 the prominent citizens of the State who passed its bor- 
 ders on their way to the Southern army. In the month 
 following the abandonment of neutrality the roads were 
 filled with the hurrying throng of horsemen and of 
 wagons conveying munitions, on their way to the Con- 
 federate camps that had been pitched beyond the south- 
 ern and eastern borders of the State for their recep- 
 tion. The Federal government pressed what troops 
 were available for service into the State, but for a 
 month or more the central part of the Commonwealth 
 was held by the recruits that had been gathering at 
 Camp Dick Robinson and by the companies of Home 
 Guards. The process of enlistment of the Federal reg- 
 iments went rapidly forward, but the material fit for 
 immediate service had left the State to return as in- 
 vaders. 
 
 If the Confederate army that had gathered around 
 the seceded State Guard had believed that the people 
 were with them and had been tolerably determined in 
 their resolution to possess the Commonwealth, they 
 might have at this time seized Louisville, and perhaps 
 occupied the line of the Ohio. It is a valuable com- 
 
FIRST STAGE OF THE WAR. 261 
 
 mentary on the assertion that Kentucky was at heart 
 with the Confederacy, that with a force of several tliou- 
 sand men, whose discipline was much above that of any 
 force that could oppose them, and which certainly 
 equaled the Federal troops that could at this time have 
 been brought to arrest their advance to the northward, 
 General Buckner's return to Kentucky, he knew so 
 well, was made with extreme caution.^ 
 
 This advance of Kentucky troops against their own 
 State was begun even before the position of neutrality 
 was overthrown. But this movement was extremely 
 slow and circumspect. On the 20th Buckner was in 
 possession of the line of the Green River, a strong 
 strategic position defending Nashville. His scouts came 
 as far north as Rolling Fork Station, about forty miles 
 south of Louisville, breaking up the line of the Louis- 
 ville and Nashville Railway, so that it could not be used 
 by the Union forces. On the 21st of September he 
 destroyed the locks and dams on the Green River, so 
 as to prevent a movement on his flank by Grant's army, 
 then in Western Kentucky, which he feared might 
 come upon him by boats by way of that river. At the 
 same time a Confederate army, under General Zolli- 
 
 1 On September 10th General Albert Sydney Johnston, lately in com- 
 mand of the United States forces on the Pacific, by birth a Kentuckian 
 and well acquainted with the State, commanded the Confederate de- 
 partment which included Kentucky. On the 17th of September, the 
 day before the State abandoned its pohcy of neutrality, General John- 
 ston ordered General Buckner to enter the State under the following 
 instructions, namely : — 
 
 " You will, in order to cover the northern line occupied by the Con- 
 federate army in this department, and threatened by the army of the 
 United States, concentrate your command at Bowling Green, Ken- 
 tucky, and secure and hold this important point in our line of de- 
 fense." See The Life of General A. S. Johnston, by W. P. John- 
 ston, New York, 1880. 
 
262 KENTUCKY. 
 
 coffer, was moving on Central Kentucky by way of Bar- 
 bourville, in the eastern part of the State. 
 
 The first recorded combat of the war in Kentucky 
 was between the advanced guard of this force and a 
 body of Home Guards. It was termed a " spirited en- 
 gagement," with no great loss, but it served to show 
 the Confederate armies, if indeed they needed the in- 
 formation, that the armed populace of the State would 
 make a stubborn resistance to their projected invasion. 
 The departure of the State Guard, and the hegira of 
 secessionists that accompanied it, had left the jDCople 
 substantially united in tlieir determination to combat the 
 Confederacy. This united resistance did much to give 
 the Confederate northward movement a pause, which 
 made it afterward impossible for them to secure posses- 
 sion of the State. Kentucky was now foreign and hos- 
 tile ground to them. Their movements in it were re- 
 ceived much as they would have been in Ohio or In- 
 diana. 
 
 When General Johnston made his well-considered 
 movement upon Bowling Green it was with the hope 
 that his presence within the State would bring great 
 numbers of recruits to his banners. Despite stirring 
 proclamations the people received him sullenly ; and with 
 a force that on October 28th was, according to General 
 Johnston's own memoranda, twelve thousand strong, 
 quite equaling the Federal force which could have been 
 brought to resist him, he did not venture to move be- 
 yond his fortifications. General Johnston was a brave 
 and enterprising soldier, and if it had not been for his 
 conviction that the Kentucky people were not as much 
 in sympathy with the South as had been supposed, he 
 would have moved forward with more decision. In a 
 
FIRST STAGE OF THE WAR. 263 
 
 letter to the Confeclerate War Department, dated Oc- 
 tober 22, 1861, he says : — 
 
 " We have received but little accession to our ranks 
 since the Confederate forces crossed the line {{. e., the 
 line dividing Tenne|^e and Kentucky) ; in fact no such 
 demonstrations of ewwiusiasm as to justify any move- 
 ments not warranted by our ability to maintain our own 
 communications. It is true that I am writing from a 
 Union county, and it is said to be different in other 
 counties. They appear to me to be passive, if not apa- 
 thetic. There are hundreds of ardent friends of the 
 South in the State, but there is apparently among them 
 no concert of action. I shall, however, still hope that 
 the love and spirit of liberty are not yet extinct in Ken- 
 tucky." 1 
 
 It is evident that the calm, intelligent mind of Gen- 
 eral Johnston, already saw through the errors concern- 
 ing the real attitude of Kentucky which the imagina- 
 tions of the Confederate sympathizers had created. 
 
 On the 23d of September the military board was 
 given power to demand the return of arms from all 
 associations that were suspected of disloyalty. This 
 was a provision to destroy the giispected remnants of 
 the State Guard, which were still within the State. The 
 military board was now provided with a large amount of 
 money. In addition to the appropriation of $1,000,000 
 previously made, the legislature, on the 23d of Sep- 
 tember, gave the board authority to borrow another 
 $1,000,000, and on October 1st $2,000,000 more were 
 put at their disposal for raising and arming troops. By 
 a call of September 2oth, the Commonwealth demanded 
 
 1 See Life of General A. S. Johnston, by Wm. Preston Johnston, 
 p. 351. 
 
264 KENTUCKY. 
 
 of its people forty-two thousand troops, or one man for 
 each twenty-one of the whole white population, — nearly 
 one half of those remaining in the State who were fit to 
 bear arms. The legislature also provided that the ex- 
 ecutive departments might remoy^ their offices beyond 
 the reach of the enemy ; and thf|v no liquor should be 
 sold within five miles of any military camp. These 
 resolute steps mark the earnestness and decision with 
 which the Commonwealth entered on the war. 
 
 These appropriations of money and of men were far 
 ahead of the preparation that the State was called on 
 to make. The appropriation of four millions of dollars 
 from her slender means, and forty thousand from the 
 possible eighty thousand able-bodied white men left in 
 the State, show that she alone of all the American 
 Commonwealths saw the magnitude of the struggle on 
 which she had entered. It should be noticed that these 
 steps were taken in the dark and gloomy days that fol- 
 lowed the battle of Bull Run, when the chances seemed 
 all against the success of the Federal arms. Nowhere 
 in the Commonwealth did that disastrous and dispirit- 
 ing reverse, and the subsequent trying inaction of the 
 Northern armies, lead to any hesitation or temporizing. 
 The State government went forward with an admirable 
 courage in the path they had chosen. 
 
 A most interesting and instructive feature of the time 
 is the singular determination with which the people 
 clung to their constitution and the laws, even when com- 
 pelled by the needs of self-preservation to disregard them. 
 A capital instance of this is seen in their action with ref- 
 erence to their governor. Although Governor Magoffin 
 was known to be in sympathy with the rebellion, and 
 desirous of leading the State out of the Union ; although 
 
FIRST STAGE OF THE WAR. 265 
 
 he vetoed nearly every measure* of protection that was 
 passed by the legislature, no effort was made to displace 
 him by impeachment, or in other ways to drive him from 
 his post. He was closely watched, and in fact was 
 guilty of no act of disloyalty. His vetoes were within 
 his constitutional right. They were in succession over- 
 borne by a large majority, and in each instance, be it 
 said to his great credit, he at once did his duty as an ex- 
 ecutive officer in giving effect to the laws which he had 
 conscientiously vetoed. For eighteen months the legis- 
 lature bore with this extraordinary relation to the chief 
 executive officer of the Commonwealth because it was 
 not in their power legally to dismiss him. Throughout 
 they gave him the formal respect that his station de- 
 manded, and when his own slow won conviction of his 
 false position led to his resignation, they accomplished 
 the change of officers in a legal and dignified manner. 
 This commendable course should be borne in mind 
 until we have considered the critical attitude which the 
 legislature was in the end compelled to take to the Fed- 
 eral usurpations of authority. This determined and 
 instinctive clinging to the letter of the law is the key 
 to many important actions in the subsequent years of 
 the war. 
 
 This regard for the laws was shown in mauj'^ other 
 ways, but only one other instance need be given. In 
 order to afford every facility to the Federal commanders 
 the legislature passed, on October 1st, a bill which " re- 
 quired information, surveys, maps, and drawings to be 
 given to officers of the army upon application therefor 
 without delay." This bill was vetoed by the governor 
 on the ground that private property was guaranteed 
 from seizure without the process of law. The legisla- 
 
266 KENTUCKY. 
 
 ture instantly receded from its action, there being but 
 one vote in favor of passing the bill over the governor's 
 veto. This was the only veto of the governor that re- 
 ceived this treatment. 
 
 It was a great good fortune for the Commonwealth 
 in this critical period, that the Federal command was, 
 at the request of the legislature, given to General Rob- 
 ert Anderson, well known for his defense of Fort 
 Sumter. General Anderson was born in the ^tate, 
 and his extensive family connections gave him a better 
 understanding of the motives of the people than any 
 other commander could have had. He was in perfect 
 sympathy with the determination of the leaders of that 
 party to maintain the civil law as far as it was possible 
 to do so. On September 24th, he issued the following 
 proclamation : " The commanding general, understand- 
 ing that apprehension is entertained by citizens of this 
 State who have hitherto been in opposition to the 
 policy now adopted by this State, hereby gives notice 
 that no Kentuckian shall be arrested who remains at 
 home attending to his business, and does not take part, 
 either by action or speech, against the authority of the 
 general or State government, or does not hold corre- 
 spondence with or give aid or assistance to those who 
 have arrayed themselves against us as our enemies." ^ 
 At the same time the legislature refused to pass a bill 
 making all those who joined the Confederate army or 
 acted with the Confederacy incapable of taking any es- 
 tate in Kentucky by bequest, descent, or distribution. 
 The basis of their refusal was that this was contrary to 
 the spirit of the constitution. 
 
 The difficulty of maintaining the activity of the civil 
 1 Collins, i. 94. 
 
FIRST STAGE OF THE WAR. 267 
 
 law in this period of conflict was made the greater by 
 the action of tlie Home Guards, a force that could not 
 be kept in proper control. These partisan troops made 
 many raids upon persons known to be in sympathy 
 with the South. The whole experience of the Civil 
 War with these detached localized troops served to 
 show that they were an element of great danger to the 
 civil government of the State. The rapid organization 
 of the regular troops of Kentucky fortunately made it 
 possible in time partly to do away with this mediaeval 
 type of soldiery, but the local disturbances that they 
 bred were of more permanent damage to the State than 
 all the large operations of war that were ever carried 
 on within her borders. Their deeds of violence bred a 
 crop of hatreds and blood feuds in which hundreds of 
 lives were sacrified, and certain counties made almost 
 desolate for years after the close of the war. Perhaps 
 the best military lesson taught by the rebellion is that 
 the middle age system of partisan commands is utterly 
 unfit for the warfare of the day, and a source of great 
 danger to any State which is trying to preserve the 
 precious elements of its social system in a time of civil 
 war. 
 
 The organization of the State troops for service in 
 the Federal army now became a matter of the first im- 
 portance and of extreme difficulty. The governor and 
 his cabinet were committed to an opposition to this pro- 
 cess. Although the recruiting camps were overflowing 
 with men, they were not organized and mustered as 
 rapidly as they should have been. Fortunately the 
 resignation of the adjutant-general, Scott Brown, was 
 brought about, and in his place the governor consented 
 to appoint General John W. Fiunell. This gentleman 
 
268 KENTUCKY. 
 
 was extremely well fitted for the arduous duties of his 
 place ; of untiring energy, strongly devoted to the cause 
 of the Union, and skillful in his dealings with men, he 
 soon proved of incalculable value to the State. Before 
 the end of the month nearly twenty thousand Ken- 
 tuckians were enlisted and fairly ready for the field. 
 The newly organized regiments from Ohio, Indiana, and 
 the other Northern States, brought up the Federal force 
 in the State to about forty thousand men. 
 
 This support came none too soon. Heavy columns 
 of Confederate troops were endeavoring to make their 
 way into the State before the Federal government could 
 fix itself in advantageous positions. Their armies held 
 nearly all the district south of tbe Green River, and 
 were pushing their detachments towards the central and 
 northern parts of the State. On the 21st of October, 
 General ZollicofFer, a trained soldier, of a distinguished 
 Swiss family, though of American birth, in command 
 of seven thousand troops, endeavored to push his way 
 along the " wilderness turnpike " to Central Kentucky. 
 He was met at the Wild Cat Mountain, near London, 
 by the 7th Kentucky Regiment under Colonel Gari-ard. 
 Colonel Garrard's force acted well in its first action ; 
 they resisted the Confederate advance until they were 
 reinforced by General Schoepff in command of six reg- 
 iments of Ohio, Indiana, and Tennessee troops, as well 
 as by Wolford's cavalry. The Confederates, finding 
 themselves in face of an equal force occupying a very 
 strong position, retired after a loss of thirty killed and 
 about one hundred wounded ; the Federal loss was less. 
 
 This action, though it did not deserve the name of a 
 battle, was worth a good deal as a source of inspiration 
 to the raw levies of the State. There was at this time 
 
FIRST STAGE OF THE WAR. 269 
 
 a common notion that the emigration of some forty 
 thousand of the natural leaders and fighting population 
 of the State had left it with little material that could 
 be made into good soldiers. Even General Sherman, 
 who had recently replaced General Anderson, took at 
 first a hopeless view of the military situation. He re- 
 ported to Washington that the young men of Kentucky 
 had generally joined the Confederate army, and that the 
 Union men were aged and conservative, and would not 
 enlist to fight against their Southern kindred. He as- 
 sured the government that few Union regiments could be 
 raised in Kentucky. How easy it is to misjudge a peo- 
 ple is shown by the fact that Kentucky's quota of troops 
 was always full, and that despite the fact that over forty 
 thousand of her young men did go into the rebellion, 
 she raised all the men that fell to her share almost 
 without bounties, and practically without a draft, a pa- 
 triotic record that was not exceeded, if it was equaled, 
 by any State in the Union. 
 
 The remainder of the year 1862 was spent in prepa- 
 ration for movements that were to drive the Confederates 
 from Kentucky. There were many small actions be- 
 tween the outposts of the two armies, only two of which 
 deserve particular mention. On November 8th a Con- 
 federate force of about one thousand men, under com- 
 mand of Colonel John S. Williams, well known for his 
 gallant service during the Mexican War, encountered a 
 Federal force of nearly thrice their number under Gen- 
 eral Nelson at Ivy Mountain, on the head waters of the 
 Kentucky River, near the Virginia line. Unhappily 
 for their plans, the Confederates had chosen a position 
 where their fire was downwards, and therefore entirely 
 ineffective ; so, after a stubborn forest fight of over an 
 
270 KENTUCKY. 
 
 hour, they were driven from the field. On December 
 17th the Confederates were defeated in an action of 
 a considerable nature near Munfordsville, where the 
 Louisville and Nashville Railway crosses the Green 
 River. These, and numerous other slight engagements, 
 were useful for the training of the Federal troops, 
 though they had no strategic value. 
 
 Mingled with such endless skirmishes and cross-roads 
 battles we find a singular incident which throws some 
 light on the political projects of the Confederate gov- 
 ernment. It shows very clearly how important the 
 possession of Kentucky, even in name, appeared to it, 
 and how much they were willing to ignore the facts of 
 the political position of Kentucky in order to have some 
 apparent claim upon the soil. It should be premised 
 that the secession element had convinced themselves 
 that the State was in some obscure way held under Fed- 
 eral domination, and that if they could have a plebiscit 
 for or against secession they could win the State to their 
 side. At this time the Confederate armies held about 
 one tenth the area of the Commonwealth, a region lying 
 south of the Green River and east of the Cumberland ; 
 within this region they were closely hemmed ; their 
 forays beyond their lines having been in all cases easily 
 beaten back. Yet on the 18th of November they called 
 what they were pleased to term a " sovereignty conven- 
 tion," which sat for three days, and claimed to have rep- 
 resentatives from sixty-five of the counties of the State. 
 These representatives were self-appointed, or chosen 
 by the troops from Kentucky then in the Confederate 
 army. In this singular assembly a declaration of inde- 
 pendence and an ordinance of secession were passed;^ 
 1 See Collins, i. 97. 
 
FIRST STAGE OF THE WAR. 271 
 
 a full list of State officers was elected. At the head 
 of this list was Colonel George W. Johnson, of Scott 
 County, as provisional governor, and at the foot, W. N. 
 Haldeman, of Oldham, was chosen to be Statd printer. 
 Three commissioners were sent from the convention to 
 Eichmond, Va., to ask the admission of the State into 
 the Confederacy, and on the 9th of December that body 
 went through the process of admitting Kentucky into 
 the Southern Union. When we recall the year of skill- 
 ful, devoted labor these gentlemen who managed the 
 convention had just given to carry the State into re- 
 bellion, an effort in which they were favored by the 
 possession of the State government and a large share 
 of the sympathies of the people, it seems incredible that 
 they should of their own will have undertaken this pre- 
 tense of legislation. It has been conjectured that the 
 Confederate government needed the appearance, if they 
 could not get the substance, of Kentucky support, and 
 that this performance was gone through with under in- 
 structions from the Richmond government. 
 
 This, however, is not the case. The writer has been 
 assured that the project came from the brilliant and 
 fertile raind of Mr. G. W. Johnson, who was elected 
 the provisional governor. It is said that to his great 
 powers of persuasion was due the final consent of Gen- 
 erals Johnston, Preston, and Breckinridge, who at the 
 outset vigorously opposed the project. The arguments 
 of Mr. Johnson have not been published ; it is likely, 
 however, that he saw the need of satisfying the Ken- 
 tucky Confederate troops that they were acting with, 
 and not against, their State government, and that he 
 deemed this semblance of such government, the best 
 at the moment attainable, better than nothing at all. 
 
272 KENTUCKY. 
 
 There was much reason in this judgment. It, however, 
 proceeded on the assumption that the Confederates were 
 to continue their advance into Kentucky, 
 
 In a few weeks this " provisional government " gave 
 evidence of its eminently temporary character by leav- 
 ing the State in company with General Johnston's 
 army. For nearly two years they waited over the bor- 
 der, like exiled Stuarts, for the time of coming to their 
 own. Their gallant leader, Mr. Johnson, governor, met 
 a soldier's death as a private, in the ranks of the 4th 
 Kentucky Confederate regiment, at Pittsburg Landing. 
 The other officers watched for a chance that came, but 
 for one hour, when they might take their places in the 
 capitol of the State ; ^ still, during the whole war, the 
 pretense that Kentucky was a Confederate State was 
 steadfastly maintained. There were senators and rep- 
 resentatives from the State in the Confederate Congress 
 elected by the soldiers in the field. Few more curious 
 instances of a political pretense can be found in history. 
 It is impossible to see where was the profit of this ac- 
 tion ; so far from gaining sympathy for the rebellion in 
 Kentucky, it tended rather to discredit the Confederacy 
 among its people. 
 
 During the whole of the year 1861 the Legislature of 
 Kentucky was in intermittent session, the adjournments 
 being for only a few weeks at a time ; their attention 
 was given to the work of watching their governor, who, 
 be it said, acted in a perfectly honorable manner in the 
 discharge of the duties committed to him, and to a so- 
 licitous care that the machinery of the civil law was 
 kept in motion as well as it could be in a time of war. 
 Their anxious efforts to preserve the people fi-om the 
 
 1 Vide infra, p. 303. 
 
FIRST STAGE OF THE WAR. 278 
 
 exactions of military commanders is worthy of great 
 commendation. The Federal government, out of grati- 
 tude for the allegiance of the State, was naturally dis- 
 posed to give way to their suggestions, and for a long 
 time, indeed, until the war became much embittered, 
 there was little severity or lawlessness in the action of 
 the Federal commanders. The only considerable difii- 
 culty was with General Nelson, himself a Kentuckian, 
 but a man of a singularly furious nature, who persisted 
 in the summary arrest and deportation from the State 
 of many citizens whom he suspected of sympathy with 
 the Confederacy. General W. T. Sherman, who for a 
 while commanded the forces in the State, and all others 
 in command in the first year of the war in Kentucky, 
 except General Nelson, who, though Sherman's subordi- 
 nate, seems never to have been in any proper sense 
 under his command, seconded the protests of the legis- 
 lature against arbitrary arrest. General Sherman stated 
 that the removal of prisoners beyond the State, except 
 those held as spies and prisoners of war, " without giv- 
 ing them an opportunity for trial by the legal tribunals 
 of the country, does not meet my approval." 
 
 Long after the legislature had demanded the resigna- 
 tions of their senators at Washington, the United States 
 senate expelled John C. Breckinridge, who had been 
 for some months with the Confederate army. The leg- 
 islature chose as his successor Garrett Davis, an able 
 and loyal man, who had previously held a seat in the 
 lower house of Congress. 
 
 In January the Confederate army, under General 
 Johnston, which closely pressed and gravely threatened 
 Western Kentucky and Tennessee, sought to create a 
 
 1 See Collins, i. 97. 
 18 
 
274 KENTUCKY. 
 
 diversion by a movement on the Federal lines in the 
 eastern part of the State. General George B. Critten- 
 den, the Confederate commander, held an entrenched 
 camp at Beech Grove, on the north bank of the Cum- 
 berland, in Pulaski County. A considerable force, 
 under General George H. Thomas, was marching upon 
 his position, but had not concentrated for an attack. 
 General Crittenden sought to beat his enemy in detail 
 before the impending concentration was effected. Leav- 
 ing his camp with a force of about five thousand men, 
 on Sunday, January 19 th, before day, General Zol- 
 licoffer, who commanded under Crittenden, struck the 
 advanced part of this Federal force under the command 
 of General George H. Thomas. Thomas had with him 
 the 4th Kentucky Infantry, a portion of the 1st Ken- 
 tucky Cavalry, and a regiment each from the States of 
 Ohio, Indiana, and Minnesota, a force but little less than 
 General Zollicoffer's attacking column. Then began the 
 most hotly contested battle that had yet taken place in 
 the Mississippi Valley. For some hours the fight went 
 on with varying fortune, but with no clear indication 
 of the result, when the overwhelming reinforcements 
 received by the Federal army and the death of Zolli- 
 coffer by a pistol shot from Colonel Speed Fry, who 
 commanded the 4th Kentucky Infantry, decided the ac- 
 tion. The Confederates were forced to their intrenched 
 camp, from which they managed to escape across the 
 Cumberland River during the night, by boats which 
 they burned behind them, with a total loss of about 
 five hundred men. The evacuated camp was found to 
 contain a large amount of artillery, munitions, and many 
 stores. 
 
 This blow removed for a moment the danger of in- 
 
FIRST STAGE OF THE WAR. 275 
 
 vasion iu P]astern Kentucky. It was several months 
 before the Confederate army again gathered force and 
 courage to make another attack upon the State by this 
 eastern line. This battle of Mill Spring, or Logan's 
 Cross Roads, thougli the total of killed and wounded 
 did not exceed six hundred, was a remarkably well con- 
 tested fight. The men on both sides were entirely un- 
 used to war, yet they showed the endurance of veterans. 
 In the winter of 1861-62 the success of General 
 Grant's movement against the fortifications by which 
 the Confederates expected to secure control of the Ten- 
 nessee and the Cumberland rivers had an important in- 
 fluence on the Confederate plan of campaign. The 
 organization of the "provisional government" at Rus- 
 sellviile, and the rapid accumulation of troops and mu- 
 nitions at Bowling Green, showed pretty clearly that 
 the Confederates had the military capacity to foresee 
 that the possession of Kentucky was absolutely neces- 
 sary to the prosecution of any successful campaign in 
 the valley of the Mississippi. A glance at a map of the 
 United States will show that this State cuts deeply into 
 the area of the South. If the Confederacy could but 
 once seize upon it and hold the borders of the Ohio 
 River, they would have the only strongly defensible line 
 of the West. They could then hope to transfer the war 
 to the very frontier of the South, or even bring its bur- 
 den upon the Northern soil. The Ohio River line is 
 very defensible. There are very few fords practicable 
 for an army even in the lowest water; there were 
 then no bridges. With the shipping on that river de- 
 stroyed, and with strongholds at a few points on the 
 line of the river, they would have had a position even 
 •more secure than that they held in Virginia. Their 
 
276 KENTUCKY. 
 
 plan evidently was to make a strong push for the pos- 
 session of this Ohio line. They would then have at 
 their back the fertile lands of Kentucky, richer in grain 
 and horses and mules than any other part of the South, 
 — the best fitted to maintain an army of any State in 
 the Union. — together with a population of a million 
 people, from which they could hope to draw a large 
 force of men. The neutrality attitude of Kentucky had 
 deprived them of their chance to capture this ground 
 with the sudden enthusiastic rush that secured them 
 Virginia ; the obstinate resistance that they had met in 
 their first efforts to push flying columns into the north- 
 ern part of the State during the autumn of 1861 made 
 it evident that they would have to accumulate a large 
 force of men before this campaign could be undertaken 
 with any prospect of success ; so it was midwinter be- 
 fore they were ready to act. 
 
 In the mean time they were threatened by the way 
 of the Tennessee and the Cumberland rivers, which 
 streams made their position open to a turning move- 
 ment from the west. They appear to have neglected 
 to strengthen the fortifications on these waters in any 
 effective way. The little that was known of the Fed- 
 eral gunboats led the Confederate soldiers to underesti- 
 mate their ability to develop any formidable attacking 
 qualities ; so the fortifications on these rivers, though 
 strong enough to resist any assault from the Federal 
 armies, fell easily before a combined naval and military 
 force. The Confederate commanders do not seem to 
 have apprehended the very great importance of these 
 positions, though this should have been clear to them. 
 
 The first great misfortune to the Confederate arms 
 was in the loss of Fort Henry, on the Tennessee River, 
 
FIRST STAGE OF THE WAR. 277 
 
 just south of the Kentucky line. This fort was com- 
 manded by General Lloyd Tiighman, who was an offi- 
 cer of the Kentucky State Guard, and had hastened 
 into the army of the Confederacy as soon as the State 
 called upon him for the service he had engaged to give. 
 He surrendered his post after a few hours' bombard- 
 ment, without receiving any assault. This placed Gen- 
 eral Grant's force well on the flank of the column at 
 Bowling Green, but as the Cumberland River was still 
 held by the Confederates, that force was not yet in 
 serious danger. There was still a chance for its able 
 leader, General Albert Sidney Johnston, to make his 
 proposed dash for Louisville and the line of the Ohio, 
 provided the Cumberland River was firmly held ; but 
 before this movement could be undertaken. Grant's 
 fleet and army were thundering at the defenses of the 
 Cumberland. General Johnston was not without a clear 
 discernment of his position ; he knew that this critical 
 point should have been held at all hazards, yet it was 
 inefficiently defended. Only a week after the fall of 
 Fort Henry Grant's forces were before the lines of Fort 
 Donelson. The action began on the 12th of February, 
 and lasted five days. The Confederates in this fort 
 were under the command of Generals Floyd and Pil- 
 low. General Buckner, lately in charge of the Ken- 
 tucky Guard, was the third in command. The total 
 Confederate force available for the defense of Donelson 
 amounted to about fifteen thousand men, who occupied 
 an exceedingly strong natural position, which had been 
 made stronger by an abundant expenditure of engineer- 
 ing skill.^ Grant's force was nearly twice as numerous 
 as that of the Confederates, but the strength of the 
 
 1 See Life of Albort Sidney Jvbnston, p. 4-13. 
 
278 KENTUCKY. 
 
 Confederate lines made the conditions of the struggle 
 not unequal. The Confederate artillery succeeded, in 
 the end, in crippling all the gunboats before they had 
 destroyed the defenses of the stronghold. It then re- 
 mained for the Federal army to carry the position by 
 assault. 
 
 The Federal forces essayed several assaults, but were 
 easily beaten back with severe loss. This, in connec- 
 tion with the successful combat with the gunboats, would 
 have encouraged a well trained soldier to hold his 
 ground with the hope that at the right moment he 
 might take the offensive against his enfeebled antago- 
 nist. But Floyd, though brave enough, was not made 
 of war-proof material. He had been charged by Gen- 
 eral Johnston under any circumstances to save his army, 
 so he determined to cut his way out, and escape with his 
 force to -Nashville while it was possible. A sortie was 
 determined on and abandoned, and finally replanned and 
 successfully executed with great gallantry. The Fed- 
 eral line gave way, was thrown back like a door on its 
 hinges, and the way of escape for the Confederates lay 
 wide open. An unfounded alarm concerning Federal 
 reinforcements caused Floyd to return to his intrench- 
 ments after he had practically attained the object of his 
 sortie. His troops had been worn out in winning their 
 profitless victory, and were benumbed by a fierce win- 
 ter's storm. Still they had not lost more than one in ten 
 of their numbers. It was determined to surrender after 
 a portion of the army had been passed over the river to 
 the uninvested side of the fortress, and another part es- 
 caped up the stream on a steamer. General Buckner, 
 to whom the command had been turned over, capitu- 
 lated to General Grant. Soldiers of the Commonwealth, 
 
FIRST STAGE OF THE WAR. 279 
 
 both Confederate and Federal, were engaged in this 
 battle, — two regiments on each side, — and did their 
 share of the fighting. The Confederate loss in killed 
 and wounded was 1,338 men, or about one tenth their 
 force, and 8,000 prisoners. The Federal loss by wounds 
 was about the same. 
 
 It is the general opinion of military men that the de- 
 fense of Fort Donelson, though obstinate, was not as 
 desperate as the exigencies of the Confederate cause de- 
 manded. The chance of ultimate Confederate success 
 in Kentucky depended on the issue of this defense 
 more than it ever depended on any other battle in the 
 Mississippi Valley. On it hung also the power of the 
 Confederacy to control the State of Tennessee, and its 
 chance of getting possession of Kentucky. It was for 
 the Southern cause the most serious action of the war. 
 The commander should have sacrificed everything for 
 the reasonable hope that he might in the end have 
 worn out the force of his enemy. If there ever was a 
 position in which a desperate defense was called for, it 
 was at Fort Donelson. But there was a singular lack 
 of determination in the resistance that the Confederacy 
 made at this stage of that western campaign. On the 
 14th of Februar}^, even before the fate of Donelson was 
 fully decided by the issue of battle, General Johnston, 
 accepting defeat as inevitable, began the evacuation of 
 Bowling Green. The Confederate army was compelled 
 to destroy the stores accumulated for the Kentucky cam- 
 paign, necessarily abandoned on the fall of Donelson. 
 On the 27th of the month the Confederate position at 
 Columbus, the occupation of which by General Polk 
 had ended the neutrality of Kentucky, was evacuated. 
 
 These movements cleared away the first invasion of 
 
280 KENTUCKY. 
 
 Kentucky. There were now no organized bodies of the 
 enemy within its limits, nor for months was its peace 
 disturbed except by raids of the Confederates. 
 
 This failure of the Confederates to obtain possession 
 of Kentucky at the outset of the war was in good part 
 due to their own extreme caution. This caution is very 
 instructive. It will be noticed that the Confederate 
 army consisted in large part of Kentuckians, including 
 the most enthusiastic and soldierly part of the popula- 
 tion; it was commanded by men like Johnston, Buck- 
 ner, Crittenden, and Tilghman, who were intimately ac- 
 quainted with the State and with the temper of ^he 
 people. In their public utterances, the Confederates 
 always claimed that Kentucky was in thorough sym- 
 pathy with their cause. Why, then, we may ask, did 
 they not at once push north and rescue their State from 
 Federal domination ? When Buckner moved from Nash- 
 ville to Bowling Green, there were few troops in Ken- 
 tucky except those native to the State ; if he could 
 have counted on the sympathy of the population, he 
 would have had no difficulty in overrunning the State, 
 for the men whom he received as recruits would have 
 been as fit for service as the raw Federal levies. Their 
 action makes it evident that the Confederate leaders 
 did not believe that Kentucky would receive them with 
 open arms. If they had any doubts on the subject, the 
 spirited battles between their scouting parties and the 
 citizens cleared their minds, and showed them that it 
 would require about the same force to invade Kentucky 
 as it would to march into the States north of the Ohio. 
 It is likely that this view of Kentucky's position did 
 much to hinder the movement from Bowling Green to 
 the northward. 
 
FIRST STAGE OF THE WAR. 281 
 
 The belief that Kentucky was with them in spirit, 
 though not held by those who knew most of the matter, 
 grew to be a mania with Confederate authorities at 
 Richmond. It resembled the Northern idea of the im- 
 mense Union interest in the South, or the longing of the 
 negroes to take active measures to secure their free- 
 dom. Such delusions, born of desire, are an accompani- 
 ment of all civil wars ; these wars are always fought in 
 a glamour, a sort of moonshine of sentiments and prej- 
 udices, that change the facts out of their semblance of 
 reality. It is necessary to wait until all these delusions 
 have cleared away before the truth can be seen. 
 
 The Confederates while at Bowling Green had 
 learned a part of their lesson concerning the attitude of 
 Kentucky. They were even better advised by the re- 
 sults of Bragg's subsequent campaign ; but with many 
 the delusion that Kentucky was at heart a Southern 
 State still remained alive. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 FROM THE EVACUATION OF KENTUCKY IN FEBRUARY, 
 1862, TO THE BATTLE OF PERRYVILLE. 
 
 The process of organizing Kentucky troops in the 
 first few months of the period following the overthrow 
 of neutrality went on with very great rapidity. Al- 
 though the Commonwealth lost the first flower of her 
 military material by the secession of the greater part of 
 the State Guard, for with them went those young men 
 who had been selected to form the first levy of the 
 State, such was the energy of the work of organization, 
 that on February 18th, five months from the time she 
 cast in her lot with the North, the State already had in 
 the Federal army 24,026 infantry, 4,979 cavalry, and 
 198 artillery men, — a total of 29,203 men. This does 
 not include a large force of Home Guards, — men who 
 were under a certain discipline, and in a way doing 
 valuable work in resisting the small cavalry forays 
 which the Confederates were constantly making into 
 the State. In this five months, despite the depletion 
 of the population from the going soutli of a force that 
 may be estimated at 35,000 men, the State had propor- 
 tionately more soldiers in the field than any other State 
 within the Federal Union. 
 
 In its repeated sessions the legislators gave little at- 
 tention to anything but the war; still some of the legis- 
 lation is interesting, as showing that they found time 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 283 
 
 for other considerations. In February, during the time 
 when the battles of Forts Henry and Donelson were 
 being fouglit, they passed an important bill concerning 
 the organization of Transylvania University, — an insti- 
 tution in which the State had long been deeply inter- 
 ested. They also provided that the school terms inter- 
 rupted by the crisis of 1861 should be completed during 
 the year 1862. At this time the war seemed to act as 
 a needed stimulus to the energies of the people. 
 
 Now for the first time we find severe legislation di- 
 rected against those who had passed from the State 
 into the Confederate army. Such persons were de- 
 clared to have expatriated themselves, and were not to 
 be restored to citizenship except by permission of the 
 legislature. The governor vetoed this bill, but it was 
 quickly passed over his veto. Legal proceedings were 
 authorized to secure from the so-called provisional gov- 
 ernment a portion of the State taxes that it had laid 
 hands on while the Confederate army held the country 
 south of Green River.^ A suit for money against citi- 
 zens in rebellion is a novelty in civil warfare. 
 
 In April came the great battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburg 
 Landing, — a battle in which nearly every State of the 
 Mississippi Valley had a melancholy interest. 
 
 After the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson the 
 Federal army showed something of the same lack of 
 energy in tlieir action that the Confederates had done 
 in the defense of these posts. A Federal force of about 
 twenty thousand men was left on the west bank of tlie 
 Tennessee in a poor position, exposed to an unknown 
 force of the enemy under the command of General Al- 
 bert Sidney Johnston. This Federal force knew so lit- 
 
 1 Collins, i. 101. 
 
284 KENTUCKY. 
 
 tie of the enemy, that on the morning of April 6th they 
 were driven from their very tents by an attack of the 
 whole Confederate army of the Tennessee. After a day 
 of overwhelming disasters, that even the persistent valor 
 of his best men could in no way stay, General Grant's 
 army was driven back upon the river in nearly utter 
 rout, with the loss of nearly one fifth of the force as 
 prisoners. By great good fortune, while his army was 
 scarcely more than the debris of the command, and was 
 exposed to utter destruction, he was reinforced by Gen- 
 eral Buell, who, by a hurried march of twenty-five miles, 
 one of the finest feats of American military history, suc- 
 ceeded in interposing his army of twenty thousand men 
 between the wreck of Grant's army and the victorious 
 Confederates. 
 
 Thus what promised to be an overwhelming victory 
 for the rebel army was turned into a disastrous defeat, 
 through the action of General Buell, whom we are here- 
 after to see treated with most unmerited severity, and 
 left in his time of trial without a friendly word from the 
 man whom he had saved from utter ruin. If Grant's 
 army had fallen a prey to the Confederates, as it would 
 certainly have done if Buell, acting on his own sense of 
 the emergency, had not hastened with great celerity to 
 its rescue, all that had been gained by the victories at 
 Donelson and Henry would have been quickly lost. The 
 subsequent movement of the Confederates into Ken- 
 tucky would have been a triumphal march instead of 
 the disastrous series of blunders which it came to be. 
 
 The victory at Pittsburg Landing was dearly bought ; 
 no other battle in which Kentucky troops had ever be- 
 fore been engaged was so bloody. The Federal loss in 
 killed and wounded was about ten thousand, the Con- 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 285 
 
 federates about the same, so that the action deserves to 
 rank with the greater battles of history. The loss of 
 the Kentucky troops was particularly severe. It is not 
 possible to determine the precise number of men from 
 this Commonwealth engaged in the action. There were 
 twelve regiments from the Commonwealth in the Fed- 
 eral army/ amounting probably to a total of about six 
 thousand men. Eight of these regiments showed a loss 
 of five hundred men ; the loss in the other regiments is 
 not traceable. On the Confederate side the loss of Ken- 
 tucky commands amounted to six hundred and eighty. 
 It is likely that the total loss in the Kentucky com- 
 mands amounted to about thirteen hundred men, or 
 nearly two per cent, of the men of military age and fit- 
 ness for service, a dreadfully heavy tax. 
 
 This battle, so dear in men, was practically without 
 consequences; the Confederate army was not followed 
 up ; its beaten but undismayed forces made their way to 
 other fields of action. In the months of waiting, while 
 the Federal commanders were trying to find what they 
 wanted to do with their victories on the Tennessee and 
 Cumberland, the Confederate government essayed a most 
 important campaign, which had again for its aim the 
 possession of Kentucky. 
 
 In the early part of the war President Lincoln, who 
 seems to have had an excellent natural capacity for mili- 
 tary affairs, saw the supreme importance of that point 
 of the Appalachian Mountains which lies about Cum- 
 berland Gap. It is easily seen that by way of this 
 region, through which lies the high road by which the 
 settlement of Kentucky was in the main effected, the 
 
 1 Collins gives the total as sixteen regiments, and sets the loss at 
 five hundred in eight regiments. See i. 102. 
 
286 KENTUCKY. 
 
 Confederate armies could quickly and easily force them- 
 selves on to Central Kentucky. Besides this mountain 
 pass, known as Cumberland Gap, there are several other 
 roads, all passing near this gap, by which troops could 
 make their way from Central and Eastern Tennessee. 
 
 President Lincoln's plan was to have a railway con- 
 structed to Cumberland Gap, and that point strongly 
 fortified, so that an army there might give an element 
 of security to Central Kentucky, and threaten the rebel 
 lines of communication in Eastern Tennessee. His pro- 
 ject, though excellent in its conception, was never car- 
 ried out. This part of the State was never provided 
 with any adequate defenses. It was always as easy for 
 the Confederate forces to turn the Federal position on 
 its east flank as it was for the Federals to make their 
 way by the Tennessee and Cumberland to the west 
 of any force they had in Tennessee. The Confederate 
 armies had been subjected to incessant defeat in the 
 region adjacent to these rivers. As long as they were 
 navigable to the Federal gunboats and transports the 
 Confederates were at a hopeless disadvantage. They 
 were at first slow to perceive this. In fact, the use 
 of light draft gunboats extemporized from Mississippi 
 steamers, conveying a fleet of admirably constructed 
 transports, such as that type of vessels afforded, was 
 an altogether new feature in warfare. Railways could 
 easily be broken by raiding parties, and at best the 
 transporting power of a poorly constructed single track 
 railway was small. A stream like the Tennessee or 
 the Mississippi, once in the control of gunboats, could 
 not be wrested from an enemy's hands without defeating 
 their fleet, — an impossible task for the Souih' rn Con- 
 federacy. 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 28T 
 
 After the defeat of their army at Shiloh, the Con- 
 federates were compelled for a time to abandon any 
 further effort to approach Kentucky by way of Nash- 
 ville, and laid their plans for an invasion on lines far 
 enough to the east to avoid the danger of being attacked 
 on their left wing from the Federal forces in control of 
 the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. The Confed- 
 erate lines had been pushed south and east, to near 
 Chattanooga, by the advance of Buell's forces. The 
 tide was setting so strongly against them, that if their 
 hold upon the Mississippi Valley was to be preserved 
 they must make another push for Kentucky. Their 
 extreme need at this time developed a man who was 
 one of the most extraordinary characters of the war, 
 — a man of whom it is hardly too much to say that he 
 created and develo[)ed a new branch of the military 
 art. John Hunt Morgan was one of the most notable 
 soldiers that the war developed. A native of Alabama, 
 he became in his youth a citizen of Kentucky ; he was 
 a lieutenant in Humphrey Marshall's regiment in the 
 Mexican War, and took a part in the battle of Buena 
 Vista, but in no way did he give any promise of his 
 subsequent career, nor was his purely commercial life 
 from 1847 to 1861 in the least degree likely to arouse 
 his dormant powers ; it was spent in inaction. He was 
 a captain in the State Guard, and escaped with his 
 command to the Confederate army. Early in the war 
 he showed his singular capacity for swift and effective 
 action. 
 
 To Morgan may be attributed the invention of the 
 raid in the rear of the enemy, which became such a 
 peculiar feature in the Civil War. Used skillfully, this 
 form of operations showed itself to be a most valuable 
 
288 KENTUCKY. 
 
 means for relieving the pressure brought about by a 
 vigorous advance of an enemy, when that advance has 
 led him far from his base. It may fairly be said that 
 Morgan's successes compelled the Federal army to use 
 one fourth of its force for rear-guards that would not 
 otherwise have been required for this service. 
 
 But for its accomplishment this method of action de- 
 manded very peculiar qualities in commander and men. 
 To be successful the leader must take no counsel of his 
 fears ; have very quick wits, a great power of inven- 
 tion, and a great tactical capacity. His subordinates 
 must share his qualities, for both in advance and retreat 
 the movements of the force must be often by numer- 
 ous detachments, so as to blind the enemy to his plans. 
 His men, too, must have the power of acting individ- 
 ually, and have an absolute confidence in their chief. 
 With these conditions it is possible for a horsed force 
 of three thousand men to keep ten times their number 
 occupied in the defense of depots and communications ; 
 they can destroy communications, capture weak posts, 
 and in a critical moment break up the enemy's plan of 
 campaign by requiring the detachment of so many 
 troops that the striking power is gone from his army. 
 Morgan's subordinate officers were nearly all Kentuck- 
 ians, as were by far the greater part of his men. Their 
 wonderful work is perhaps the best evidence of the 
 military capacity of this people. More than any other 
 it shows the people to possess fertility of invention, en- 
 durance, and the vigor in action demanded in success- 
 ful war. 
 
 Colonel Morgan, after being engaged in many expe- 
 ditions and seeing much service in the more southern 
 States, made his first raid into Kentucky in June, 1862, 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 289 
 
 on the lines of the Louisville and Nashville Railway in 
 Kentucky ; he captured some trains and a few soldiers, 
 but the result was inconsiderable. This with his previ- 
 ous partisan work in Tennessee was, however, enough 
 to show the possibility of such cutting out tactics. Early 
 in June, with a force of a little less than one thousand 
 men, he again entered Kentucky. Leaving Knoxville 
 on the 4th of July, on the 8th he defeated a force of 
 250 men at Tompkinsville, Monroe County; getting 
 possession of the telegraph wires, he sent false dis- 
 patches to the Federal commanders so as to open his 
 way to the North. This use of the telegraph to deceive 
 the enemy was a novelty in the art of war, and a re- 
 source that often served Morgan in his movements. 
 On the 11th, he was checked by a Federal force at 
 New Hope, in Nelson County, but on the 12th he cap- 
 tured Lebanon with a small force stationed there. 
 
 Morgan quickly adopted the plan of rarely giving bat- 
 tle if he could possibly help it. More clearly than any 
 other commander he recognized the limitations of his 
 activities. In a running fight with the Home Guards, 
 he passed on to Harrodsburg, burning bridges and de- 
 stroying the railway as he went. Masked by a cloud 
 of skirmishers which he threw about him, it was im- 
 possible for the Federal commanders to determine his 
 force, which was commonly believed to be several times 
 as large as it really was, or to determine the direction 
 of his movements. He constantly used the telegraph 
 lines to magnify his forces in the eyes of the Federal 
 commanders, and to change the disposition of their 
 troops to suit his purpose. Cincinnati and Louisville 
 were almost without troops, and were greatly alarmed 
 by the invasion. Moving toward Cincinnati so as to 
 19 
 
290 KENTUCKY, 
 
 compel a Federal concentration there, Morgan on the 
 17th captured Cynthiana, a town about sixtj^-five miles 
 south of Cincinnati, despite the sturdy resistance of the 
 Home Guards and a part of a newly organized regiment 
 under Colonel Landrum ; the loss was about sixty men 
 on each side in killed and wounded. At this point he 
 destroyed a large amount of government stores. He 
 was now pressed by a superior force of Kentucky cav- 
 alry under General Green Clay Smith and Colonel 
 Wolford, and by them was forced into a rapid retreat to 
 East Tennessee, on which, however, he was able to de- 
 stroy a large amount of government property. His re- 
 port shows that in twenty-four days' campaign he trav- 
 eled over 1000 miles, "captured" 17 towns, paroled 
 about 1,200 regular troops, and lost in the raid only 90 
 of his men.^ The destruction of Federal stores proba- 
 bly amounted to over a million dollars in value, and at 
 least nearly twenty thousand men were for the time 
 tied to the government posts they were guarding, or 
 occupied in pursuing him. 
 
 From this success came many similar though less 
 spirited raids into Kentucky under the lead of inferior 
 commanders. There were in the next few months many 
 small actions all over the State, principally between 
 these raiders and the Home Guards. These move- 
 ments were but the precursors of the last great effort 
 the Confederacy was about to make to gain possession 
 of Kentucky. Under the cover of this cloud of raid- 
 ing parties that forced back the Federal scouts, and 
 thoroughly masked their movements, the Confederate 
 army, which had been gathered in East Tennessee under 
 
 1 Collins, i. p. 104; also, Dukes' History of Moi^gan's Cavalry, p. 
 182 et seq. 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 291 
 
 command of Generals Bragg and Kirby Smith, ad- 
 vanced into Central Kentucky. At this time the Fed- 
 eral forces in this section of the State consisted of 
 about ten thousand men, all except two regiments be- 
 ing raw troops recently brought into the State from 
 Ohio and Indiana. 
 
 This force was under the general command of the able 
 but erratic General William Nelson. General Nelson 
 was an excellent division commander, as was well proven 
 at Shiloh, where he won distinguished credit. He was, 
 however, unfitted by his furious nature for indepen- 
 dent command. Nelson expected the attack, but was 
 surprised by the amazing swiftness of the Confederate 
 advance, for in three days they had marched nearly 
 ninety miles. Nelson himself was at Lexington, when he 
 should have been with his army. About all his force, 
 consisting of Manson's and Cruft's brigades, amounting 
 to about seven thousand men, were posted in Richmond 
 when the Federal pickets gave a brief warjaing of the 
 enemy's approach. There were only these two inex- 
 perienced brigadiers with their raw troops to meet the 
 Confederate force. The senior and commanding officer, 
 Manson, believing that he had only to deal with one of 
 the numerous raiding parties of the enemy, moved out 
 with his own brigade, leaving Cruft in Richmond. 
 
 At Rogersville, a few miles beyond Richmond, he re- 
 pulsed the vanguard of the Confederate army. After 
 the night came, he, still thinking that he had to deal 
 with a small body which he had easily beaten, ad- 
 vanced still further away from his supports in Rich- 
 mond. In this more advanced position he became on 
 the following day engaged with the whole of Kirby 
 Smith's army, more than double his force. For the mo- 
 
292 KENTUCKY. 
 
 ment it went well with him, for Kirby Smith detached 
 half his force under General Churchill to execute a 
 flank movement. This body missed its way and did not 
 at first take part in the action. Hanson's force, although 
 it was their first action, did gallant duty. Cleburne, the 
 ablest of the Confederate generals, was wounded, and the 
 Confederate advance stayed. Then at last Churchill 
 found the right wing of Manson's brigade, broke it, 
 and although General Cruft came up with a regiment 
 and two batteries of the force that had been left in Rich- 
 mond, the exhaustion of the Federal ammunition in the 
 regiments most hotly engaged, and the disorder of the 
 troops on the right, made it impossible to resist the re- 
 peated assaults of the veteran enemy. Manson ordered 
 a retreat to Rogersville, hoping to reform there under 
 the protection of the remainder of Cruft's force that was 
 marching towards him. Retreating to this point, the 
 Federal commands reformed in good shape, but after an 
 hour's fighting their right was again turned, and the de- 
 moralized force driven back into Richmond. There 
 they met General Nelson, who, raging like a wounded 
 lion, tried to restore a line of battle. A small part of 
 the force again gallantly rallied, but only for a brief re- 
 sistance ; they were quickly broken by the Confederates, 
 and almost all of the men captured. Nelson was an 
 hour too late ; the tide of fugitives swept back towards 
 the bridge over the Kentucky River. For a little while 
 it seemed as if they were safe ; the Confederate infantry 
 was too much exhausted by the long and fierce fighting 
 for further pursuit. 
 
 But even this chance of safety for the broken army 
 was to be lost. Colonel Scott, commanding Kirby 
 Smith's cavalry, who had been marching on a detour 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 293 
 
 to the west to secure the infantry cohimn against any 
 movement on its f]a,nk, struck the road in front of the 
 rout of the utterly broken but not dismayed army. 
 General Mansoo, with a hundred men, tried to beat 
 them off, but was soon overcome. All the artillery and 
 trains and three thousand prisoners fell into the Con- 
 federate hands. The remainder scattered through the 
 woods and by-paths in utter rout and confusion. The 
 debris of the defeated army came out to the Ohio River, 
 all the way from the Little Sandy River to Louisville, 
 a line three hundred miles in length. 
 
 In no other case during the war was an army so 
 completely annihilated in a single day's battle. Gen- 
 eral Nelson, himself wounded, escaped, but the greater 
 part of his officers fell into the hands of the enemy. 
 The Federal loss is not known with certainty ; it was 
 probably about 300 killed, 600 wounded, and about 
 3,500 prisoners. The Confederates lost 250 killed and 
 700 wounded. It is manifest that the Federal troops, 
 though raw, on the whole behaved with remarkable 
 steadiness in the face of the larger and veteran force 
 that they resisted so long. The battle does not deserve 
 the opprobrious names that have been given to it. A 
 raw force of 7,000, under inexperienced commanders, 
 had held its own for hours against twice its number of 
 tlie best Confederate troops. But for Scott's luck in 
 striking the road of their retreat, their disorder would 
 have been by no means overwhelming, and on the line 
 of the Kentucky River they might have fought again. 
 
 Although the Confederates had suffered heavily, their 
 victory was full of promise. They had beaten the only 
 organized troops in Kentucky. General Buell, the de- 
 partment commander, still holding to the notion that 
 
294 KENTUCKY. 
 
 Bragg, with his army of 40,000 men, intended to strike 
 him in Central Tennessee, had made no preparations 
 to meet this unexpected movement of his enemy into 
 Kentucky. Kirby Smith now had command of about 
 10,000 men, who in their triumph forgot the fatigues of 
 their forced march. The redoubtable Morgan's force 
 was hastening to his support. There was a wide field 
 of action before him. 
 
 While Buell was awaiting the Confederate attack 
 in Eastern Tennessee, Bragg, encouraged by Kirby 
 Smith's successes, and well informed as to the exposed 
 position of Kentucky, began his march across the Ten- 
 nessee table-land to enter Kentucky. It was desirable 
 for him to threaten Nashville in order to delay Buell's 
 movement towards Kentucky. This he accomplished 
 by moving westward on the Knoxville and Nashville 
 turnpike to the village of Carthage, from which point 
 he turned northward into Kentucky. Moreover, by 
 this route he gained new and richer foraging ground by 
 which to supply his army on the march. Eastern Ken- 
 tucky not offering supplies for so large an army. 
 
 When Bragg entered Kentucky, Buell's force was 
 massed between Murfreesboro and Nashville. By this 
 movement Bragg placed himself so near the line of 
 Buell's communications with Central Kentucky that he 
 might hinder, by his raiding parties, his enemy's effort 
 to get north on the Louisville and Nashville Railway. 
 It was not until Bragg actually turned north into Ken- 
 tucky that Buell had a right to feel sure that his ob- 
 ject was not to fight in Tennessee. So far Bragg's 
 movement was skillfully contrived, and it is hard to see 
 how it could have been met by Buell in any more sat- 
 isfactory way, though if Bragg's object had been to seize 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 295 
 
 Louisville or Cincinnati, he had wasted time in march- 
 ing so far westward, for he could have hastened Buell's 
 retrograde movement equally well by means of powerful 
 detachments of cavalry, of which he had a large force. 
 As wo shall see, the eight days that Bragg spent in 
 this movement, which was intended to threaten Nash- 
 ville, was probably the cause of his failure in his main 
 object, which we may presume to have been the capture 
 of Louisville and Cincinnati and the gaining a good 
 position in Kentucky.^ 
 
 Even after he had made his westward march, Bragg's 
 advance was exceedingly dilatory. On September 12th 
 his infantry advance force was only at Glasgow, having 
 marched very easily all the preceding week. Veteran 
 men could not have been worn down by their slow 
 marching and in need of the rest he gave them. Bragg 
 had now lost at least ten precious days. Though sin- 
 gularly well placed for giving quick blows, he was pur- 
 
 1 The Comte de Paris thinks that Brayg moved west in order to 
 have the advantage of a turnpike. This was not at all necessary for 
 his movement. He could easily have gone into Kentucky by way of 
 Big Creek Gap, the route pursued by Kirby Smith, and he would 
 thereby have saved a week of precious time. It is likely that in part 
 his aim was to secure a way through a region that would forage his 
 army. But the principal reason for this movement was doubtless the 
 hope that he might be able to capture Nashville by a sudden assault. 
 Bragg had with him the Confederate government of Tennessee. If by 
 any chance he could regain Nashville and reestablish the Confederate 
 State authority in that place, he would be in a much stronger posi- 
 tion for his Kentucky campaign. At this time Bragg had upon his 
 staff as aid Colonel J. Stoddard Johnston, a nephew of General Albert 
 Sidney Johnston. Colonel Johnston was, in the main, the originator 
 of the plan of this campaign. He urged upon his chief the necessity 
 of vigor in its prosecution, but Bragg seems to have been paralyzed 
 by the magnitude of the undertaking he had set about. A com- 
 mander of vigor in lesser operations of war, he now moved like a man 
 in a dream. 
 
296 KENTUCKY. 
 
 sued by a powerful enemy under the command of an 
 able general, who though slow to move was extremely 
 careful of his steps and never blundered into danger. 
 Bragg's project was, in its motive, a raid in force re- 
 sembling, in a way, Morgan's exploits, and controlled 
 by the same need of swiftness in action. If his whole 
 army could not be carried rapidly forward it should 
 have been divided, — a rear-guard left to resist Buell's 
 northward movement, and the remainder hurried for- 
 ward for a junction with Kirby Smith's victorious troops, 
 who only needed a little help to secure both Louisville 
 and Cincinnati. 
 
 At the crossing of the Green River, Bragg found 
 himself opposed by a force of 3,500 men, under the 
 command of General Wilder. This officer was in- 
 trenched in a position that commanded the crossing of 
 the railway and turnpike road. An effort was made to 
 carry this position by assault, but failed. Bragg was 
 then three days in investing and reducing this work, 
 and forcing it to surrender. He won it on the 16th. 
 This position could have been left with its garrison 
 without delaying the Confederate march more than 
 a few hours. When Bragg should have been the mas- 
 ter of Louisville, he was occupying himself in captur- 
 ing this petty stronghold. 
 
 Kirby Smith, whose army had now been increased 
 by a force of several thousand under General Heth, 
 was now well up to the line of the Ohio before Louis- 
 ville and Cincinnati. He had a force near each of 
 these points strong enough to tempt him to an assault, 
 but was restrained by the orders of Bragg. Two 
 courses were now open to General Bragg ; despite his 
 delaj^s he was still a good four days ahead of the north- 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERR7VILLE. 297 
 
 ward moving army under Buell. He could have turned 
 sharply to the south, struck the Federal force, fatigued 
 with its long marches, and drawn out of battle order by 
 the need of movement over several parallel roads ; or 
 he could have still pushed northward, captured Louis- 
 ville or Cincinnati, and gathering support from Kirby 
 Smith and Heth, have given battle to Buell with su- 
 perior numbers. But General Bragg, though an excel- 
 lent artillery officer, found the position he now occupied 
 too complicated for his powers. In his place Stonewall 
 Jackson would have l)eaten the army of Buell in detail, 
 and thus won the possession of Kentucky for the Con- 
 federacy ; as it was, he fell between two lines of bril- 
 liant and promising action ; he turned to the eastward 
 on the road to Lexington, gathering ponderous trains of 
 supplies from the rich country as he went, and allowed 
 Buell to move on to Louisville, which he entered on 
 September 29th. So slow was Bragg's movement that 
 he took sixteen days to march the one hundred and 
 twenty miles between the Green River, at the point 
 where he crossed it, and Lexington, a march that could 
 easily have been made in nine days. 
 
 Li order to see the imminent peril of Kentucky at 
 this time, it will be necessary to consider the conditions 
 at Cincinnati and Louisville while they were threatened 
 by the armies of Generals Bragg, Heth, and Kirby 
 Smith. Bragg's possession of the latter point would 
 have placed Buell's army in a hopeless position ; he 
 would have been compelled to find his way to the Ohio, 
 at some point where he could have opened new commu- 
 nications. This would have been, in the face of a vic- 
 torious and vigilant enemy, a serious difficulty even for 
 a commander of Buell's great ability. 
 
298 KENTUCKY. 
 
 As before noted, the army of General Kirby Smith 
 had the roads to the Ohio wide open to where the force 
 under General Nelson was scattered at Richmond. Af- 
 ter that signal victory he was reinforced by Heth and 
 Morgan ; with these added forces General Smith imme- 
 diately closed down on Cincinnati and Louisville. At 
 the moment when the Confederate forces appeared be- 
 fore these cities they could easily have been taken by 
 assault, and thereby the base of supplies of the army 
 of the Tennessee would have fallen into the Confed- 
 erate hands. Heth's force threatening Cincinnati, 
 amounting to not over nine thousand men, occupied a 
 commanding position within five miles of Cincinnati, 
 which was practically undefended. When he first set 
 down before that city there were no troops that were 
 likely to be useful in action to oppose him. The de- 
 fenses consisted of a few weak unconnected redoubts, 
 mounting about a dozen pieces of siege artillery, along 
 a line nearly ten miles in length. This line was pene- 
 trable at many points where it could not be swept by 
 the fire of these guns. The surface of the country con- 
 sists of sharp ridges and deep, interlaced valleys, re- 
 quiring a very extensive system of fortifications to make 
 it secure. Moreover, there were no gunners trained to 
 the use of such pieces of artillery as were available, 
 which require especial skill to make them effective 
 against a well managed assault. There was, at the 
 moment, hardly a single regiment on the ground that 
 could have been trusted to be steady in the open field. 
 The force there was altogether of newly enlisted troops, 
 with no confidence in their ofiicers, and with a great 
 and well founded fear of the rebel prowess. 
 
 On the report of Kirby Smith's northward march 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 299 
 
 from Lexington the States north of the Ohio were pro- 
 foundly stirred. Thousands of volunteers, with domes- 
 tic arms, but without organization or discipline, flocked 
 to Cincinnati and Louisville. At Cincinnati the com- 
 mand fell to General Lew Wallace, an officer of singu- 
 lar energy in the work of organization. By him the 
 city was at once placed under martial law, and nearly 
 every man in it set to work upon the fortifications ; in 
 about thirty-six hours the detached redoubts were con- 
 nected by rifle pits, behind which the " squirrel hun- 
 ters,'' as the volunteers were termed, found a position 
 where it was hoped they could make some resistance. 
 It is doubtful if ever before a line of fortifications of 
 such length was constructed with such rapidity. Still, 
 when, on September 6th, Kirby Smith's force arrived 
 within sight of the fortifications, the defenses were in- 
 complete, and the horde of unformed citizens in the 
 trenches, mingled with the half-armed, undisciplined, un- 
 commanded militia, would have given way before such 
 a charge as the men who won the battle of Richmond 
 could easily have made. 
 
 Until the morning of September 8th, General Kirby 
 Smith could have broken this line with the loss of a 
 few score of men. Once within the defenses the very 
 numbers of the mob engaged in the defense would have 
 made his victory the more certain. There was no sec- 
 ond line of defense, and the only line of retreat was by 
 way of the single pontoon bridge over the Ohio. It 
 was quite possible for the Confederates to capture the 
 whole force. But the lethargy that had come with 
 Bragg's assumption of the command paralyzed Kirby 
 Smith and his able lieutenant, Heth. 
 
 While these scenes of confusion, so tempting to the 
 
300 KENTUCKY. 
 
 vigorous sj)irits of dashing commanders, were going on 
 at Cincinnati, similar conditions prevailed at Louisville. 
 A throng of willing but unorganized citizens was all 
 that intervened between Bragg's force and the immense 
 stores that had been gathered for the supply of Buell's 
 army. After remaining six days in front of Cincinnati, 
 restrained from action by the orders of the slow moving 
 Bragg, General Heth was ordered back to Lexington 
 to effect a junction with Bragg. About the same time 
 Kirby Smith also fell back from his advanced positions 
 towards Bragg's army. Although the Confederates 
 thus lost the golden opportunity of doing great things 
 for their cause, the Federal inaction was almost equally 
 blundering. When, on September 9th, Kirby Smith, 
 with not more than nine thousand men, was within sight 
 of Cincinnati, the Federal force behind the fortifications 
 amounted to over thirty thousand men. At least one 
 third of these were veteran soldiers belonging to com- 
 mands which had been hastily sent from the West. 
 Pleth's position was in the apex of a triangle, two 
 sides of which were formed by the sharp northward 
 bend of the Ohio River. The fortifications were now 
 in such shape that they could have been safely trusted 
 to one third of this force. With the remainder, or say 
 twenty thousand men, the Federal commander could 
 have easily overwhelmed and captured the little Con- 
 federate army. 
 
 While these vacillating and abortive movements were 
 under way, Buell was steadily and certainly creeping 
 along lines a few miles to the west of Bragg's army, 
 towards Louisville. He had to subsist, in the main, 
 from the country, and therefore was compelled to move 
 with divided forces in several roads. A quick move- 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 301 
 
 ment of Bragg's forces, after they had united with 
 Smith, would have enabled him to strike Buell with 
 superior numbers, while he was drawn out in this dan- 
 gerous way by the needs of his march. There is rea- 
 son to believe that he could have beaten him in detail, 
 and forced the remnants of his army into the forests of 
 Western Kentucky, where there would have been no 
 subsistence for it. 
 
 When Buell got to Louisville on the 2oth of Septem- 
 ber, Bragg had lost his last opportunity of effective 
 action in this momentous campaign. 
 
 As soon as Buell's army was within the strong de- 
 fenses of Louisville, Bragg's position changed for one 
 that gave unbounded opportunities of attack to a purely 
 defensive attitude. Buell's force was increased by a 
 valuable reinforcement sent by river from Corinth, 
 Miss., and by new and willing recruits from the North, 
 until it amounted to one hundred thousand men, about 
 one half being raw troops, the remainder seasoned vet- 
 erans of that capital material which formed the early 
 regiments of the Western States. Taking four days to 
 reorganize and recruit his troops, none too much for the 
 needed repair of his army before it set out on another 
 long campaign, Buell prepared to take the offensive. 
 
 On the day appointed for his marching, an order 
 came for him to turn over his command to General 
 George H. Thomas, one of his corps commanders. At 
 Thomas's own earnest intercession this order was re- 
 voked, but the discussion caused a delay of a day in 
 the movements of the army, and the incident did much 
 to diminish the effective control of Buell over his troops. 
 The Washington authorities seemed to have a genius 
 for removals at the most critical moments of campaigns. 
 
302 KENTUCKY. 
 
 If Buell was to be removed, the action should have 
 come as soon as he reached Louisville. 
 
 At this time Bragg, having wasted the last opportu- 
 nities of fortune, seems to have abandoned all expecta- 
 tion of doing more tlian effecting a retreat which should 
 be slow enough to give time for his enormous trains, 
 full of the booty of war material and provisions that 
 he had gorged himself with, to creep into East Tennes- 
 see. To do this effectively he had determined, as far 
 as he was capable of determination, to hold against 
 Buell's advance the rectangular line formed by the Ken- 
 tucky River and Dick's River, a steep-banked tributary 
 of the Kentucky, that falls into it not far from Lex- 
 ington. This was a naturally strong position, and was 
 the stronger by the fact that an extraordinary drought 
 had made it nearly impossible for Buell's army to find 
 water away from the main streams. For nearly a month 
 every military movement was hampered by this diffi- 
 culty. There was hardly a march of Bragg's or Buell's 
 army that was not in part determined by this unprece- 
 dented drought. 
 
 In his retreat Bragg proved by his movements that 
 he was nearly as incompetent in defense as in attack. 
 In the first place, he assumed that the Federal force 
 would march by way of Frankfort, a path that would 
 have placed Buell's army in great difficulties because 
 of the rugged nature of the country caused by the 
 deeply incised streams that enter the Kentucky River 
 in that district. In this he reckoned without his host. 
 Buell took the simpler and more effective plan of mov- 
 ing towards Dick's River by way of Bardstown and 
 Lebanon, where he had a plain country to traverse, — 
 one not affording strong positions to an enemy, and 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 303 
 
 affording ground for a well-developed battle ; moreover, 
 he secured by his route possession of a reasonably good 
 railway, that needed but little repair to serve for the 
 transportation of his supplies. This movement had also 
 the advantage that it brought his army well on the 
 flank of Bragg's course in his intended retreat. 
 
 While Bragg, assuming that Buell would advance by 
 way of Frankfort, was effecting a concentration near 
 Lexington, Buell was slowly moving upon his flank. 
 It is likely that Bragg's desire to remain north of the 
 Kentucky River was in part due to his anxiety to carry 
 out a political manoeuvre that was then under way. As 
 soon as the Confederates obtained possession of Frank- 
 fort they had a long-desired opportunity of giving some 
 semblance of fact to the provisional government in Ken- 
 tucky, by installing their officers in the State capital. 
 It took some time to gather this ghost of a government 
 at the capital, and to go through the form of electing 
 and inaugurating a successor as governor to Colonel 
 Johnson, who had met a soldier's death at Shiloh. 
 
 Buell was in motion before the preliminaries to the 
 induction ceremonies were under way. Just as the 
 new governor was making his speech Sill's division, 
 sent out as a flanking party of Buell's march, began to 
 fire on the town. The flowing periods of Governor 
 Hawes were interrupted, and with his staff he was driven 
 through the tunnel near the capital on his way to Lex- 
 ington. It was probably to complete this political farce 
 that Bragg had loitered with a large part of his army 
 about Lexington and Frankfort, as he for a similar 
 purpose had loitered near Nashville, when he should 
 have been concentrating his forces to meet the mena- 
 cing flank movement of the Federal army. This he 
 
304 KENTUCKY. 
 
 endeavored to effect when it was too late to get the 
 profit of it. Buell's forces were now in a tolerably 
 compact series of columns near Lebanon, marching by 
 parallel roads towards Dick's River. If his army had 
 not contained a large portion of raw troops, who had 
 not yet been trained in marching, and who were worn 
 out by the heat and dust, he would have been able to 
 interpose his army between Bragg and his line of re- 
 treat. 
 
 On October 8th the Federal columns were all within 
 easy supporting distance of each other, a few miles west 
 of Perry ville. The advance was at Doctor's Fork, a 
 small stream now reduced by the drought to a few 
 pools of stagnant water. The line of this stream was 
 occupied by Sheridan's division, whose outposts were 
 posted only a little distance beyond the stream. The 
 wooded nature of the country prevented any distant 
 view, and the men were too much exhausted for a vig- 
 orous reconnaissance ; still it was a mistake to rest over 
 night in the face of dangers that even a trifling scout 
 would have revealed. The failure to make this recon- 
 naissance was the only serious mistake that can be 
 charged against the Federal commander. It was a mis- 
 take, but one more visible in the retrospect than at the 
 time when it was made. 
 
 When the Federal force camped in the order of bat- 
 tle, the low heights near Perryville, only two miles 
 away, were occupied by a large part of Bragg's force, 
 perhaps one third of his army, amounting to about fif- 
 teen thousand men under Hardee, which was then about 
 receiving reinforcement from Cheatham's division, 
 which gave him about thirty-three thousand men. The 
 Federal force, within attacking distance, amounted to 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 305 
 
 about fifty-eight thousand men. If a reconnaissance 
 had been made, the weakness of the Confederate force 
 could probably have been ascertained, and it would liave 
 been possible on the following day to have over- 
 whelmed their force with numbers. As it was, Buell 
 acted on the supposition that he had the whole Confed- 
 erate army before him, and took time to close his col- 
 umns well together that he might be ready for the 
 struggle of the morrow. 
 
 This concentration was difficult on account of want 
 of water and the forest-clad surface of the country. A 
 similar error was made by the Confederates. They 
 supposed that they were dealing with an inferior de- 
 tached force which they hoped to overwhelm before its 
 supports arrived. They probably supposed that the 
 main Federal army had gone to drive the Hawes gov- 
 ernment out of Frankfort. It is evident that they re- 
 garded Hawes' presence at the Kentucky capital as a 
 very important matter, — one well deserving General 
 Buell's entire attention. 
 
 Buell's order of battle was necessarily controlled by 
 the generally wooded condition of the country, which 
 greatly impeded the formation of his lines. Critten- 
 den's force was on the extreme south, cut off by a wide 
 interval from the other forces; Gilbert's corps, which 
 included Sheridan's division in the centre and Mitchell's 
 division, farther to the north or left ; on the extreme 
 left was McCook's admirable corps. 
 
 There was no expectation of a battle on that day al- 
 though the line was formed for it. In the budget of 
 misconceptions, the Federal commander doubtless sup- 
 posed that the Confederates knew that the force before 
 them was the main army of the Cumberland, and that 
 20 
 
306 KENTUCKY. 
 
 they would take all the time he would give them for 
 concentration and defense. 
 
 The battle began about noon of October 8th by a 
 cannonade, which did not seem to presage any serious 
 action. Such artillery engagements were in those days 
 common enough between forces which lay over against 
 each other. The Federal commanders prepared not for 
 immediate action, but for an attack they meant to de- 
 liver on the following day after their troops had much 
 needed rest. The force was in good shape for an ad- 
 vance, and an attack at the moment would have brought 
 the whole of Buell's army against less than one half of 
 Bragg's. On the other hand, the Confederates, equally 
 ill advised concerning the force of the enemy, had de- 
 termined on an attack, which they delivered suddenly 
 and with crushing force. At two o'clock in the after- 
 noon they began their assault on the right of the Fed- 
 eral line, composed of the brigades of Lytle and Harris ; 
 on this force they made no impression, but yet farther 
 to the right, where Buckner's attack was masked by a 
 wood, it struck Tirrill's brigade with such overwhelming 
 force that the Federal line immediately gave way. The 
 Federal troops on this part of the line were all raw, and 
 thouffh Generals Jackson and Tirrill were both killed 
 in their efforts to maintain their lines, this part of the 
 Federal force was utterly routed with a loss of eleven 
 pieces of artillery. Webster's brigade of Jackson's di- 
 vision succeeded for a moment in checking the utter 
 rout of the broken line. Here General Webster fell, 
 and his troops were driven back. 
 
 Unfortunately for the Confederates they had not 
 shuken Sheridan's force, which lay on the left or the 
 south of their attack. His well posted and well secured 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 307 
 
 artillery enfiladed their advancing lines, and compelled 
 them to settle with him before they Allowed up their 
 advantage. Sheridan's position gave his men the shelter 
 of some V70ods, while the Confederates advancing to 
 the attack had to cross open fields ; though the Con- 
 federate attack was heavily reinforced by two brigades 
 of Cheatham's division, their gallant and repeated 
 charges failed to shake Sheridan's veteran regiments. 
 The other end of the broken Federal line was rein- 
 forced by a brigade of Mitchell's division, which was 
 sent to aid McCook, whose position the Confederates 
 were endeavoring to turn. Despite the loss of its com- 
 mander, General Gooding and one third of its force, it 
 materially aided McCook to retain his position until 
 night fell, and this furious action came to an end. 
 
 Although the Federal force lost a dozen pieces of 
 artillery, and for a time was beaten, it in the end gained 
 on the enemy. They were driven beyond Chaplin 
 Creek and through Perry ville. If the repulse had been 
 followed up by the Federal force, some important re- 
 sults might have been obtained. 
 
 By some blunder of the staff officers. General Buell, 
 who was some distance from the front, was not informed 
 of this action until two hours after the Confederate at- 
 tack began, nor did Crittenden know that there was 
 anything of importance going on ; the thick forests be- 
 tween the roads prevented the sound of musketry reach- 
 ing any distance, and both the Federal commander and 
 his lieutenant, Crittenden, supposed that the artillery 
 firing was but a meaningless skirmish between batteries 
 that did not mark an action of any moment. But for 
 this unaccountable failure of the intelligence of the ac- 
 tion to come at once to Buell, he could easily have by 
 
308 KENTUCKY. 
 
 a counter-attack pushed Hardee to the wall before the 
 darkness had fallen. As it was, the chapter of blunders 
 that marks this battle had its conapletion in the failure 
 of the Federal commander to know of it until it was 
 half over. 
 
 The retirement of the enemy, and the coming of the 
 night made it ill advised for Buell, at the late hour when 
 he learned of the action, to make any movement until 
 the following day. Had he known that Bragg, though 
 present himself, had but half his army with him, it would 
 have been possible to have pushed forward his unshaken 
 troops, and, taking advantage of the few hours of day, 
 he might have carried the Confederate position. But 
 the heavy blow he had received made him more than 
 ever convinced that he had to reckon with the whole of 
 his adversary's army. He therefore postponed his ad- 
 vance until the following day. Bragg, who had now 
 arrived on the ground, at once saw that he was con- 
 fronted by Buell's whole force, and acted accordingly. 
 It was not his purpose to fight a general battle, least 
 of all did he desire to fight with half his army ; he 
 therefore prepared to retreat in a northeasterly direc- 
 tion, which would give him time to concentrate his 
 scattered forces. 
 
 Brief as this battle had been, lasting but for four 
 hours, it was the bloodiest that was ever fought on Ken- 
 tucky soil ; for the numbers engaged, and the duration 
 of the action, it was one of the most destructive in 
 modern military history. The Federal force actually 
 engaged numbered rather less than twenty-five thousand 
 men. Of these they lost in killed and wounded about 
 four thousand ; McCook's corps lost three thousand 
 killed and wounded, out of twelve thousand five bun- 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 309 
 
 dred men engaged. The Confederates lost from the 
 fifteen thousand men whom they brought into action 
 over three thousand in killed and wounded. At least 
 seven thousand men fell in that fierce storm between 
 2.30 and 6 p. m. 
 
 In the night Bragg, satisfied that he had to deal with 
 the whole of Buell's army, fell back toward Harrods- 
 burg, that he might hasten his conjunction with Kirby 
 Smith's corps, which was moving toward him from 
 Frankfort and Lexington, as well as with several other 
 detached bodies of troops which were in various parts 
 of Central Kentucky. This, though a necessary, was 
 a very dangerous move, for it carried him farther from 
 his line of retreat, and exposed him to attack from 
 Biiell, while in a position where orderly retreat would, 
 in case of defeat, have been quite impossible. But 
 Buell could hardly hope to strike him another blow be- 
 fore this concentration was effected, even if he knew, as 
 he probably did, the object of Bragg's northward move- 
 ment. He therefore waited before forcing another ac- 
 tion for the junction of Sill's division, detached to drive 
 out the Confederate force in Frankfort, meanwhile war- 
 ily pushing forward his line to Danville. 
 
 Hardee's blow, though in a way a blunder, served a 
 good purpose for his cause, as it made Buell even more 
 cautious than he was wont to be. After his junction 
 with Kirby Smith's and the other detached forces, Bragg 
 moved eastward to beyond Dick's River, making his 
 centre at Bryantsville. Buell has been blamed for not 
 attacking him here ; and at first sight there seems to 
 have been a good chance lost in not forcing the game 
 at this point. 
 
 As will be seen from the map, Buell had what sailors 
 
 /' 
 
810 KENTUCKY. 
 
 would call the weather gauge of Bragg's position. To 
 make good his retreat, Bragg had to march at least one 
 third farther than Buell to attack him. But whoever 
 will go over the ground, or even examine good maps of 
 the country, will see that while a victory of the Federal 
 arms at this point would have been overwhelming, the 
 chance of winning it from an enemy of nearly equal 
 strength, all of whose forces were veterans, was not so 
 good that a discreet commander should have risked the 
 venture ; a defeat would have been utter ruin to the 
 -Federal cause. If Buell had driven them, the enemy 
 could easily have forced the fight at Dick's River, or, 
 beaten from that point, he would have the extensive 
 defenses of Camp Dick Robinson at his disposal as a 
 point (Toppui. Moreover, the long drought had broken 
 the very day of the Perryville fight, and the difficulties 
 of the Sahara were exchanged for those of wet roads 
 and swollen streams. Before Buell was prepared to 
 strike a blow, Bragg, who was better in managing a 
 retreat than an advance, slipped from his dangerous po- 
 sition, and made for the ford of Rockcastle River at 
 Livingston. 
 
 Crittenden's corps marched parallel with Bragg's army 
 through Stamford, but was unable to gain upon him far 
 enough to force anything but trifling actions with his 
 rear-guard. The battle at Perryville had given the 
 Confederate trains a long start for Cumberland Gap, so 
 that Bragg had open ways and well-arranged supply 
 stations for his light marching army. By obstructing 
 the roads which, in this region, frequently run through 
 forests, with felled trees, he was able to so hinder the 
 Federal chase that it became hopeless, especially as the 
 country had been absolutely denuded of all provisions 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 311 
 
 for man or beast bj the armies which had passed 
 tlirough it, and the pursuing column was necessarily 
 dependent on its trains for all supplies. The pursuit 
 was kept up to London and Manchester, but became 
 daily more unavailing, and the Confederate army finally 
 escaped with a vast amount of plunder to its strong- 
 holds beyond the Cumberland Mountain, amid the ex- 
 ecrations of all Southern sympathizers who deemed his 
 enforced retreat a disgraceful act. 
 
 As soon as it was evident that Bragg had abandoned 
 all hope of further action in Kentucky, it became nec- 
 essary for Buell to make all due haste for Nashville, 
 lest the half beaten enemy should overpower the garri- 
 son that Buell had wisely left in that place. But it 
 was not to return under Buell's command ; on October 
 30th he was displaced by Rosecrans, who had just won a 
 considerable victory near Corinth, Miss., and whose star 
 was on that account now in the ascendant. Early in 
 December the Federal army was out of the State, except 
 large garrisons that were left to guard against such suc- 
 cesses as had been won by Morgan and Kirby Smith. 
 
 There has been much criticism of this Kentucky cam- 
 paign of the Federal army under Buell, the most of 
 which seems quite undeserved. Buell's retreat to Louis- 
 ville was clearly one of the best executed pieces of 
 strategy of the war ; it was well planned and admirably 
 executed, and though much of its success is to be at- 
 tributed to the dilatory action of his enemy, it is fair to 
 assume that its leader could have met all opposition in 
 a soldierly way. The read van ce from Louisville was 
 swift, and extremely well suited to the needs of the 
 position. It showed a remarkably clear grip on the 
 whole problem before him. But for the singular series 
 
812 KENTUCKY. 
 
 of accidents at Perryville, due to the blunder of Har- 
 dee as to the force he was striking, and the mistake of 
 Buell as to the force with which the blow was struck, 
 to which was added the strange negligence of his sub- 
 ordinates in not giving him due notice of the action, it 
 is likely that he would have been able to deliver an 
 overwhelming blow against Bragg's army. 
 
 It must be remembered, however, that Bragg's posi- 
 tion was exceedingly strong. As soon as he abandoned 
 all his plans for holding Kentucky, and limited himself 
 to the defense of his booty trains, he confessed his es- 
 sential defeat, but was in a position to secure his retreat 
 from the State. His army of forty-eight to fifty thou- 
 sand veterans was so nearly a match for the fifty-five 
 or sixty thousand men that Buell could hope to bring 
 against it, that with the choice of position it could well 
 afford to risk a battle. If defeated, it could expect to 
 make good its retreat ; if victorious, it might again find 
 Kentucky in its grasp. 
 
 - Buell's supreme duty was to drive Bragg from Ken- 
 tucky ; he should have endeavored to destroy him if 
 the chance of doing so was extremely good, but merely 
 expelling him was a victory. He could not afford to 
 risk the chance of the misfortunes that might come with 
 any doubtful battle. If we justify Meade in permitting 
 the broken Confederate army to escape after Gettys- 
 burg, without further attack, as almost all good military 
 authorities do, we must deem Buell's caution, in the 
 face of a stronger and much better conditioned army, 
 well within the limits of his duty, if not his supreme 
 duty, under the circumstances. His sagacious action 
 turned back the strongest wave of war that ever rolled 
 over Kentucky without the risks of a hazardous battle. 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 313 
 
 In following the movements of those great armies we 
 have necessarily omitted all mention of several discon- 
 nected incidents that are a part of the history of the 
 campaign, which led to important consequences. The 
 most notable of these was the admirably conducted re- 
 treat of General George H. Morgan from Cumberland 
 Gap to the Ohio River. On June 17th, General Mor- 
 gan, with four brigades of troops, by threat of siege 
 drove the Confederate General Stephenson from his un- 
 assailable position, and occupied this magnificent natural 
 stronghold. When the Confederates under Kirby Smith 
 entered Kentucky by way of Big Creek Gap, a pass con- 
 siderably to the west of Cumberland Gap, which the Fed- 
 eral forces, in their ignorance of the topography, failed 
 to fortify, Morgan was left to shift for himself without 
 any instructions as to his course. He appears indeed 
 to have been quite forgotten by his superior officers. 
 
 If, on the threat of Kirby Smith's invasion, he had 
 been promptly withdrawn to Central Kentucky, his force 
 of about eight thousand men, all well seasoned soldiers, 
 under the command of a man of decided military capac- 
 ity, would doubtless have avoided the defeat of Nelson. 
 Nothing shows the confusion of the Federal operations 
 in the West so well as this capital blunder. When the 
 interior of Kentucky was in the hands of the Confeder- 
 ates, General Morgan found himself without provisions, 
 and his old enemy, Stephenson, so placed that foraging 
 was impossible. His only resort for supplies was in the 
 rich valleys of Eastern Tennessee, now fully controlled 
 by the Confederates. The mountain district of Ken- 
 tucky furnished little for him. The small farms of the 
 country were scantily tilled, and at best afforded little 
 provision for an army. 
 
314 KENTUCKY. 
 
 Many another commander would have surrendered 
 his abandoned brigades to the enemy, but Morgan, de- 
 stroying his stores, leaving nothing of profit to his pur- 
 suers, plunged into the wilderness of Eastern Kentucky, 
 and through a mountainous forest, where he had often 
 to create his roads as he went, he made his way for 
 about two hundred miles to the Ohio at Greenupsburg. 
 He brought ofT all his field cannon, despite the ener- 
 getic efforts of the Confederate General Morgan to 
 cripple his march or at least to capture his trains. 
 
 The Confederate resistance to his movement was 
 skillfully planned, and might have been successful but 
 for the unwillingness of General Humphrey Marshall 
 to move as he was ordered by Bragg to do. As it 
 was, the march of the Federal army was a long, run- 
 ning, starving fight, from which the force came out 
 looking like an army of spectres, shoeless, their cloth- 
 ing in tatters, and their bodies wasted by scant food. 
 This retreat deserves to be remembered as one of the 
 great exploits of the war, and one of the most success- 
 ful movements of the kind in military history. Mor- 
 gan's retreat never received the credit it deserved. The 
 public was clamorous for battle, and was too little 
 pleased with the masterly retrograde march of Buell to 
 praise this equally capital exploit. 
 
 There were many small actions between the de- 
 tached parties of Confederate cavali-y and the Home 
 Guards of the several counties during the period of 
 Bragg's great movement. We can only describe one 
 or two of these by way of example, to show how strong 
 was the spirit of resistance among the people. 
 
 On September 27th Colonel Basil Duke, of the Con- 
 federate General John Morgan's command, with about 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 315 
 
 four hundred men, undertook to cross the Ohio at 
 Augusta, in Bracken County, about forty miles above 
 Cincinnati, in order to threaten that city with the ex- 
 pectation that a portion of the Federal troops on the 
 south side of the town might be compelled to with- 
 draw. This was apparently undertaken with the hope 
 that the fortifications about Covington might thus be 
 laid open to a sudden dash of the Confederate forces, 
 which still lay within convenient distance for attack. 
 Duke's move was resisted at the point where they un- 
 dertook to cross the Ohio by a force of -about one hun- 
 dred Home Guards, citizens of Augusta, under the com- 
 mand of a Dr. Joshua Taylor Bradford. A part of 
 this force consisted of Southern sympathizers, who had 
 been pressed into service by the Union men. Two ex- 
 temporized Federal gunboats fled at the outset of the 
 fight, as soon as tbey found themselves exposed to the 
 fire of some light field-guns in the Confederate hands. 
 I'he Home Guards, though outnumbered four to one by 
 their veteran assailants, fought for several hours from 
 house to house, killing and wounding about fifty of 
 Duke's men, and compelling him to expend the am- 
 munition he had provided for his raid. Duke lost a 
 large part of his officers from the accurate fire of these 
 extemporized soldiers. Three of the captains of the 
 Confederate force and six of the lieutenants were 
 killed. 
 
 It is doubtful if even in the old Indian warfare there 
 had ever been a fight of such terrible ferocity. The 
 town was stormed, and the fighting was kept up from 
 house to house, the inmates continuing the struggle until 
 they were burned out or killed. General Duke says, in 
 his account of the battle : " Details of men were posted 
 
316 KENTUCKY. 
 
 ill the middle of the street in front of every house, to 
 fire on the inmates as they showed themselves, and pre- 
 vent them from maintaining an accurate and effective 
 fire. Other details were made to break in the doors of 
 the houses and enter them. The artillery was brought 
 into the town, and turned upon the houses in which the 
 most stubborn resistance was kept up. Planted about 
 ten paces from a house, aimed to strike about a j^ard 
 below the sills of the windows, beneath which the de- 
 fenders were crouched (except when taking aim), and 
 double - shotted with grape and canister, the howitzers 
 tore great gaps in the walls. . . . Flags of truce about 
 this time were hung out from several windows, and, 
 believing that a general surrender was meant, I ordered 
 the fires to be extinguished. But only those who shook 
 the white flags meant to give up ; the others continued 
 to fight. One or two men putting out the fires were 
 shot. I immediately ordered that every house from 
 which shots came should be burned. A good many 
 were soon in flames, and even then the fighting con- 
 tinued in some of them. My men were infuriated by 
 what they esteemed bad faith in a continuance of the 
 fight after the flags of truce were displayed, and by the 
 loss of their comrades and of some favorite officers. I 
 never saw them fight with such ferocity. Few lives 
 were spared in the houses into which they forced their 
 way." 
 
 The Home Guards, having finally expended their 
 ammunition, and the houses in which they were posted 
 being burned over their heads or battered to pieces 
 by the artillery, were compelled to surrender. But 
 the expedition into Ohio was foiled. Duke returned to 
 Morgan with his force decimated by this battle and with 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. Sl7 
 
 one more experience in the fighting power of the citizen 
 Kentuckian. 
 
 On September 28th, eleven Home Guards at Fal- 
 mouth had an encounter with twenty-eight Texan cav- 
 alry, in which they defeated their assailants, inflicting a 
 loss of six men. In a score of other engagements these 
 little detached commands, fighting by their thresholds, 
 showed their willingness to combat against hopeless 
 odds and to endure a degree of punishment which it is 
 hard to obtain from regular troops. Though often over- 
 come, they showed the Confederate troops that the State 
 would ' not be readily subjugated, and dissipated all the 
 fondly-cherished ideas that Kentucky was actually in 
 sympathy with the Confederacy, though she was held in 
 bondage by the Federal power. 
 
 This Confederate movement into Kentucky marks 
 the high tide of the Civil War, and the retreat of Bragg 
 was a part of the great reflux of that wave. The crush- 
 ing defeat of Nelson's forces by Kirby Smith came on 
 the same day as the second Confederate victory at Ma- 
 nassas. The battle of Perryville, which made the re- 
 treat of Bragg's army an imperative necessity, came 
 three weeks after the defeat of Lee at Antietam. It 
 was necessary that the Confederates should win both 
 these hazards in order that their cause should succeed. 
 In both cases the result was the sullen retreat of the 
 Confederate forces into their strongholds. Their ar- 
 mies were checked, but not broken, and the Federal 
 forces were not able to give a crushing pursuit to the 
 forces that they had beaten back, — far better than the 
 northern armies the troops of the Confederacy with- 
 stood the trials of defeat. 
 
 The enforced retirement of General Buell, and his 
 
318 KENTUCKY. 
 
 subsequent court-martial, are painful incidents of this 
 campaign. He was blamed for permitting the escape 
 of the Confederate forces into Kentucky. It is difficult 
 to see how he could have prevented Bragg from mak- 
 ing this movement. He was endeavoring to possess 
 himself of Chattanooga, and had barely force enough for 
 this appointed task. It was impossible in such a coun- 
 try for him to keep an effective grip upon his enemy. 
 There should have been an army in Kentucky compe- 
 tent to restrain a Confederate advance. The whole 
 available force left in the State, except the entirely iso- 
 lated and apparently forgotten garrison at Cumberland 
 Gap, consisted of not over ten thousand raw troops, and 
 these were scattered. The blame for this rests upon 
 the Federal government, which was given to much lock- 
 ing of the stable whenever the horse was stolen. 
 
 One other incident of the war deserves notice here. 
 This was the killing of Nelson by the Federal general, 
 Jefferson C. Davis.-^ Nelson was one of the remarkable 
 soldiers that Kentucky produced during the war. At 
 its outbreak he was an officer of the United States navy. 
 He was sent by President Lincoln to Kentucky to aid 
 in the organization of new levies. He commanded a di- 
 vision at Shiloh, where he won great credit. Always a 
 man of passionate nature, the defeat of his forces by 
 Kirby Smith made him furious, though he was respon- 
 
 1 The numerous coincidence of names in the Federal and Confeder- 
 ate armies in Kentucky will be apt to puzzle the reader. Nothing 
 else shows so well the near kinship of the combatants. Jefferson G. 
 Davis, Federal, and Jefferson Davis, Confederate ; George H. Mor- 
 gan, Federal, and John H. Morgan, Confederate ; Thomas L. Critten- 
 den, Federal, and George B. Crittenden, Confederate, are but a few 
 cases of this correspondence of names among important men of the 
 time. 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 319 
 
 sible for the conditions that brought it about, for to him 
 more than to any one else must be attributed the leav- 
 ing of Morgan's forces at Cumberland Gap. When 
 organizing the forces in Louisville under Buell, his 
 rage broke forth against General J. C. Davis. Dur- 
 ing a trifli-ng dispute concerning some unimportant mat- 
 ter, he insulted his opponent, and, on his dignified re- 
 monstrance, struck him with his hand. Davis instantly- 
 killed him. Davis's act was generally approved by his 
 brother soldiers.^ 
 
 It is a well-known fact that in the conflict of arms 
 the laws are commonly silent, but all the while these 
 momentous movements were going on in Kentucky, the 
 law-making power of the Commonwealth was by no 
 means stilled. The vitality of the Kentucky legislature 
 defied the shock of armies. From March 17th to August 
 24th the legislature stood adjourned ; on the latter date 
 it met on the summons of Governor Magoffin. In his 
 message he set forth the fact that the State laws con- 
 cerning the security of citizens had been violated ; that 
 many civilians had been arrested for asserted sympathy 
 with the rebellion, and that these were detained by the 
 Federal government, many of them having been taken 
 from the State without due form of trial, and were de- 
 tained in prison by process of military law. At the 
 elections that had taken place a few days before the 
 
 1 It was the present writer's chance to serve for a while under Gen- 
 eral Davis. It is impossible for him to believe that a man so mild in 
 nature would have slain a brother officer without the bitterest provo- 
 cation. In the French army even a common soldier is justified by 
 military law in killing instantly his commander if he receives the in- 
 sult of a blow with the hand. In war the personal dignity of officers 
 and men must be preserved. It cannot be kept without maintaining 
 such cruel customs. 
 
320 KENTUCKY. 
 
 legislature met men who were believed to be secession- 
 ists were not allowed to vote or to be voted for. 
 
 There is no doubt that the facts were as alleged, and 
 that, without formal proclamation of martial law, the 
 Federal commanders had undertaken to regulate a great 
 many matters that did not properly concern them. The 
 principal offender was Brigadier - General Boyle, of 
 Louisville, commanding the provost guard forces in 
 Kentucky. This man was much more vigorous in his 
 dealings with citizens than with soldiers, and for a time 
 carried a high hand as a tyrant in Kentucky. 
 
 There was no doubt a serious difficulty arising from 
 the presence of many Confederate sympathizers in Ken- 
 tucky, but while the civil law was allowed to perform 
 its functions it was an insult to the State to have such 
 intermeddling from its subject, the military arm. At 
 certain points martial law was proclaimed, and the civil 
 courts suspended in times of emergency ; but as a whole 
 the Federal government long endeavored to abide by 
 the strong desire of the people for civil control. The 
 action of men like Boyle did a great deal to turn many 
 men against the Federal authority. They had entered 
 on the war to preserve the laws that these cheap briga- 
 diers treated with contempt. 
 
 When Bragg came into the State he recruited about 
 two thousand five hundred men in Central Kentucky, 
 from the class of persons who had suffered in person 
 or in their sympathies from the often brutal tyranny 
 of the provost marshal system.-* Many of them were 
 
 1 It has been asserted that a much larger nv;mber joined the Con- 
 federate army during this invasion. The estimate given is that of 
 Colonel J. Stoddard Johnston, and has been confirmed by other au- 
 thorities. 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 321 
 
 men of conservative Union proclivities who had been 
 turned into rebels by the outrages of the noiilitary au- 
 thorities. 
 
 At the time of its reassembly the legislature had lost 
 all hope of maintaining the machinery of the civil law 
 in its perfect integrity amid the shock of arms ; Gov- 
 ernor Magoffin's message received not much sympathy, 
 and that officer was at length persuaded to resign. He 
 insisted, however, that his successor should be a man 
 that should suit him, else he would not yet abandon his 
 very uncomfortable chair.^ Finally a treaty was made 
 between the legislature and the executive, by which 
 both the governor and acting lieutenant-governor were 
 to resign. Mr. James F. Robinson was then elected 
 speaker of the senate, and thereby became ex-officio 
 go^^ernor. Then the speaker of the senate who had re- 
 signed for the nonce, in order to make way for Robin- 
 son, was reelected to that office. Thus after two years 
 of patient endurance of their difficult chief magistrate, 
 by due form of law the legislature succeeded in clear- 
 ing itself of a very unhappy connection. 
 
 As before remarked, this patience of the Union men 
 under circumstances calculated to inspire rage in a time 
 of such peril is a very creditable incident in the history 
 of Kentucky ; none but a people devoted to the prin- 
 ciple of legality would have borne for two years with 
 a chief magistrate, when rightly or wrongly they fully 
 believed him to be at least an enemy to the cause they 
 were battling for, if not in actual alliance with their 
 foes. 
 
 The earnest protest that went up from all good citi- 
 zens against the action of the provost marshal of Ken- 
 
 1 Sec Collins, i. 108. 
 21 
 
322 KENTUCKY. 
 
 tucky, and the evident danger of an armed conflict with 
 the legislature on the question, led to the momentary 
 mitigation of its evils. General Boyle was ordered to 
 execute his office under the governor, an arrangement 
 which, loyally maintained, would have removed the worst 
 sting from the system. This interlude of peace was, 
 however, destined to be but brief. 
 
 This session of the legislature marks by its acts the 
 deepening rage of the people against those who were 
 giving aid and comfort to its enemies. A number of 
 severe acts were passed designed to make it uncomfort- 
 able for persons who had taken part in the rebellion to 
 remain within the State. All jurors were compelled to 
 swear to their present and future loyalty. A similar 
 oath was required of all " common school commission- 
 ers, examiners of teachers, teachers, and college profes- 
 sors." ^ Even ministers of the gospel were required to 
 swear allegiance before they could legally perform the 
 marriage rite. In fact it came about that even loyal 
 people could hardly get through the activities of a day 
 without at least once or twice swearing allegiance to 
 the State and Federal government. 
 
 This utter degradation of the solemnity of an oath 
 was a serious and lamentable feature in our Civil War. 
 It was by no means peculiar to Kentucky, though, from 
 the fact that both State and Federal authorities were 
 engaged in the miserable business, it was worse there 
 than anywhere else. In his ordinary contacts with the 
 people, an officer was constantly engaged in swearing 
 men and women as to what they had done in the past 
 or would do in the future. 
 
 The orii^in of this distressing mistake is to be found 
 1 See Collins, 1. 109. 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 323 
 
 in the very high value given to a judicial oath among 
 all classes of rural Americans. Before the war and 
 since, perjury was among the rarest of crimes in Ken- 
 tucky. Thus the legislature, in casting about for a safe- 
 guard against the numerous sympathizers with the re- 
 bellion, bethought itself of this bond of the oath. It 
 goes without saying that the bond sat lightly on most 
 minds, and even came to be utterly meaningless, al- 
 though the parole of honor retained its moral value to 
 the last. This miscellaneous oatli takiuo- was a desra- 
 dation of a most sacred relation, that brought no profit 
 to those who prostituted it to political ends. 
 
 On the 31st of August, two days after the overthrow 
 of Nelson's army, the legislature abandoned Frankfort, 
 andv^^emoved with the State records to Louisville, hav- 
 ing previously passed an act that warranted the change 
 of the capital in case invasion made it necessary. 
 
 The session held in Louisville did no important legis- 
 lation. The war had now drawn away the greater part 
 of the abler men from the legislative halls. The Con- 
 federate or the Federal army held those to whom the 
 people naturally looked for the control of their laws. 
 The civil law had done all that it could to affect the 
 immediate destinies of the people, the rest had to be 
 left to the stern arbitrament of war. The efiicient gov- 
 ernor, in perfect sympathy with the Union cause, gave 
 the people a sense of security that they never had while 
 the chief executive was a man whose sympathies were 
 with the Confederates, even though his honor kept him 
 true to his oath of office. Governor Robinson had the 
 qualities of an admirable executive, and earnestly sec- 
 onded the energetic action of General Finnell, the adju- 
 tant-general of the State, who had already done a won- 
 
324 KENTUCKY. 
 
 derful work iu pushing forward the recruiting of the 
 State forces. 
 
 On August 16, 18G2, on the day of Robinson's in- 
 auguration, General Finuell reported tliat the State had 
 abeady furnished to the United States army 41,703 
 men. Much talk has been made of the recruits that 
 Bragg and Morgan received during their occupation of 
 the State. It is doubtful if in all, with the prestige 
 of their brilliant successes to aid them, the Confeder- 
 ates obtained more than two thousand five hundred re- 
 cruits ; while during the period when the prospects of 
 the Federal party seemed the gloomiest, when for a 
 time it appeared as if the Commonwealth had fallen 
 before the rebel arms, and much of its area was in their 
 possession, the State received more men than it could 
 secure acceptance for under the Federal calls for troops. 
 There were now, including the Home Guard forces, about 
 fifty thousand Kentucky troops at the command of the 
 Federal authorities. This total included much more 
 than one half the able-bodied men, of all ages, in the 
 State, after deducting those who joined the Confederate 
 army. 
 
 After the escape of the Confederate forces from Ken- 
 tucky a period of relative inaction set in. There was 
 still an incessant series of small raids, which were 
 neither of political meaning nor military importance, yet 
 were exceedingly harassing to the people. This was 
 the beginning of a new form of evil that endured for 
 a long time, and was more intolerable than the larger 
 operations of legitimate warfare, which were generally 
 conducted on both sides with a singular respect for non- 
 combatants. Such marches and combats as had recently 
 taken place in Kentucky always leave in their train a 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 325 
 
 mass of unsoldierly rubbish that is hard to clear away. 
 Deserters from both armies formed bands of outlaws 
 called guerrillas. These wretches, without commanders 
 from either army, sheltered in the great forests that 
 abound in nearly all parts of the State, were often 
 strong enough to overcome the domestic forces, and 
 were guilty of many outrages. They brought back to 
 Kentucky the evils of its struggle with the Indians. 
 Men again tilled their fields with their muskets by their 
 sides, and slept in expectation of combat. During the 
 whole of this and the following year these parties were 
 hunted down, and when captured hanged without mercy. 
 Still their numbers, their daring, and their swift move- 
 ments, made the struggle as difficult and as bloody as 
 in any year during the last century. 
 
 The only military operation of any moment during 
 the remainder of the year 1862 was another of Mor- 
 gan's remarkable raids. After the battle of Perryville 
 and the retreat of Bragg's army, Morgan, with a curi- 
 ous confidence in his own resources, remained for near- 
 ly a fortnight in Central Kentucky, making occasional 
 attacks on exposed positions ; then, dividing his force, 
 he made a retreat from the State, in part by the way of 
 Williamsburg, and in part by Waynesboro, on the Green 
 River. In Tennessee he performed many brilliant feats 
 by hampering the movements of Rosecrans in his efforts 
 to repossess Tennessee. It would require the remainder 
 of this volume to give an account of the swift and tell- 
 ing strokes which he gave his enemy. As his men were 
 Kentuckiaus the story would be germain to the history 
 of the Commonwealth, and it is in many ways the best 
 part of its military history. Unfortunately, we must 
 limit the mention of Morgan's exploits to the more im- 
 
326 KENTUCKY. 
 
 portant incidents of his campaigns in Kentucky, which 
 were but a small part of the work effected by his com- 
 mand. 
 
 In the latter part of December it was evident that 
 Morgan's cavalry, with their untiring exertions and 
 singular successes in cutting off detached forces, could 
 not greatly hinder the excellent plans of Rosecrans. 
 The only remaining chance was for Morgan to try once 
 more the task of breaking up the Federal lines of com- 
 munications with the North, and the creation of a divi- 
 sion in Kentucky. 
 
 On the 2 2d of December Morgan started on this ad- 
 venture with about three thousand men. The lessons 
 of experience had taught the Federal commanders to 
 leave large garrisons at the important points on this line 
 from Louisville to Nashville. There were more than 
 thrice Morgan's numbers guarding the weak points of 
 this line, but they were principally infantry troops, an 
 arm that is worthless in dealing with such raids. 
 
 Slipping adi'oitly by the larger garrisons of the Fed- 
 eral forces, Morgan managed to capture first Glasgow 
 and then Elizabethtown, the garrison at the latter place 
 surrendering without any serious struggle ; next, though 
 closely pursued, he captured the block-houses protecting 
 the bridges at Muldraugh's Hill, where he burned the 
 trestle work and destroyed the track. lu this district he 
 destroyed two thousand two hundred and fifty feet of 
 bridges.-^ Thence he turned towards Bardstown, but 
 finding strong bodies of troops at every important point 
 he made a swift retreat into Tennessee without being 
 brought to a battle. 
 
 While crossing the Rolling Fork of Salt River, Mor- 
 
 1 History of Morga7i's Cavalry, Basil W. Duke, p. 335. 
 
FROM DON ELS ON TO PERRYVILLE. 327 
 
 gan's rear-guard and some detachments, amounting to 
 about eight hundred men, were attacked by about seven 
 thousand Federal troops. They should have been cap- 
 tured, but by a brilliant attack on the advancing force, 
 followed by a swift retreat, they were enabled to rejoin 
 their commands on the other side of the river. 
 
 This blow of Morgan was answered by a similar raid 
 from the Federal forces, whose commanders had at 
 length caught the spirit of this swift partisan warfare. 
 General Carter, a brilliant cavalry officer, with eleven 
 hundred picked men, set out from Winchester, Kentucky, 
 on December 25th. Through bitter winter weather, 
 and exceedingly difficult ways, he pushed on without 
 encountering any body of the enemy until he struck the 
 Tennessee and Virginia Railway, in the valley of the 
 Holston. His first object was to burn the great railway 
 bridge at Bluntsville ; this was guarded by a Confed- 
 erate force of three hundred men under a Major Mc- 
 Dowell. Carter had marched with such rapidity that 
 he was his own herald ; he captured McDowell's force 
 without firing a shot. Burning this bridge over the 
 Holston he marched westward, until he captured the 
 bridge over the Watauga, some twelve miles away. 
 The destruction of these bridges, and the burning of 
 the ties of the road between, broke the railway in such 
 a complete fashion that it would require months to 
 effect its repair. After this considerable work, which 
 was entirely undisputed, he made a swift and practically 
 unopposed retreat into Kentucky.^ This was the first 
 semblance of retaliation for the numerous cavalry raids 
 to which the Federal army had been subjected. It had 
 not the brilliancy of Morgan's and Forest's work, which 
 
 1 See Comte de Paris, Civil War in Amevicn^ vol. ii. p. 496. 
 
328 KENTUCKY. 
 
 indeed was never attained by the Federal cavalry, but 
 it did away with the notion that this sort of warfare 
 was the peculiar property of the Confederates, though 
 to the end they remained the best masters of the art 
 which they had so well devised. 
 
 It is a reasonable estimate that Morgan's force, which 
 at the highest never exceeded four thousand men, and 
 probably did not average over two thousand, which 
 was horsed, foraged, and fed from its enemies, served 
 to neutralize in the time of action at least ten times 
 its numbers of less active troops. In no modern war- 
 fare has the quality of commander and men served to 
 give a force anything like this power. It should not 
 be supposed that Morgan's success was due to any pe- 
 culiar circumstances of American warfare. There can 
 be no doubt that the same audacity, swiftness, and fer- 
 tility of resources would have been equally successful 
 on European fields. Such a force as Morgan's, oper- 
 ating in the rear of the German armies during the war 
 of 1870, would doubtless have attained something like 
 the same measures of success as Morgan won. 
 
 There was only one peculiar feature of America that 
 especially favored such partisan warfare ; it was the 
 wide distribution of saddle horses in the country where 
 these operations were carried on. This made it possible 
 for his men to obtain remounts as rapidly as their horses 
 became exhausted, while their pursuers soon found their 
 steeds worn out, while they were without means of re- 
 placing them. None of the continental countries of Eu- 
 rope could furnish anything like the number of horses 
 fit for the saddle as may be found in the Southern Amer- 
 ican States. This might somewhat limit the success of 
 such movements in other lands, still it should be remem- 
 
FROM DONELSON TO PERRYVILLE. 329 
 
 bered that Morgan's men were not properly cavalry, but 
 mounted infantry. They were armed with muskets, and 
 in almost all cases fought as foot soldiers in single open 
 ranks, so the horse was practically used to save the legs 
 of the men in marching, and rarely served the more 
 picturesque purpose of a charger. 
 
 While considering this use of mounted infantry in 
 flying columns, which was essentially an invention of 
 Morgan, it may be worth while to call attention to 
 another peculiar military project of his that marks his 
 fertile mind. His men being essentially horsed infan- 
 try, Morgan found that they were weak in a mounted 
 charge ; he desired to have a small portion of his force 
 with which he could strike a quick, telling blow, that 
 might leave the enemy in a bad shape to resist the 
 slower movement of his dismounted horsemen. He 
 therefore chose, by competition, fifty men for their skill 
 in shooting with the pistol while they were riding 
 swiftly, mounted them on his swiftest horses, providing 
 each man with four revolvers, or a total of twenty-four 
 shots, giving them no other weapon. 
 
 His general plan was to watch for a chance to hurl 
 this force against the flank of men in line of battle, or 
 marching in column, or perhaps in the momentary con- 
 fusion of action. This project was matured only a short 
 time before his death. The writer was told that it was 
 twice tried with singularly good results, but his notes 
 of the actions where it was essayed have been lost. It 
 is easy to imagine that in such warfare as he waged, this 
 picked body of swift riders and accurate marksmen 
 might be a most valuable resource in the hands of a 
 clear headed commander. It could convert momentary 
 
330 KENTUCKY. 
 
 confusion into rout, and even in favorable cases it might 
 be made to break an enemy's lines sufficiently to give 
 its assailant a great advantage in his main attack.-^ 
 
 1 It is proper to say that General Duke makes no mention of this 
 device in his history of Morgan's command. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE CLOSING STAGES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 
 
 The failure of Bragg's campaign removed the seat of 
 all grand movements of the war from Kentucky ; the 
 following years are no longer to be divided by great 
 events, but fall into something like the order of ordi- 
 nary times. 
 
 The most interesting incident of this comparatively 
 barren period was the fierce discussion concerning the 
 emancipation proclamation. It was not to be expected 
 that this momentous event would be allowed to pass 
 without a fierce battle of words among a people so long 
 accustomed to dispute the actions of the Federal gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 When the Federal government entered on the war it 
 took up an attitude of neutrality on the question of 
 slavery. This neutrality, like that which Kentucky es- 
 sayed with reference to the whole conflict, proved in a 
 short time to be impracticable. The logic of events, 
 which were unforeseen at the outset of the rebellion, 
 compelled the overthrow of slavery, thus recognizing 
 the essentially revolutionary character of the war in 
 which the nation was engaged. 
 
 There is no doubt that this overthrow of slavery was 
 in violation of repeated and solemn assurances that the 
 Federal government would not meddle with the insti- 
 tution of slavery, but would prosecute the war without 
 
332 KENTUCKY. 
 
 disturbing its legal status ; but it is the verdict of his- 
 tory that this attitude had, at the time of the procla- 
 mation, become utterly untenable. To have kept these 
 words of promise would have been an act of treason to 
 the country. Slavery had been practically destroyed ; 
 all that the emancipation proclamation of January 1, 
 1863, did, was to relieve the administration of its nec- 
 essary difficulties arising from the effort to tear down 
 slavery with one hand and hold it up with the other. 
 
 Although this proclamation did not nominally affect 
 the institution of slavery in Kentucky, for the action 
 applied in its terms to the States in rebellion alone; 
 although the institution at which it struck was a dere- 
 lict, a mere wreck in the sea of war, this proclamation 
 was felt as a blow by a large part of the Union people 
 in Kentucky. They had taken sides with the Federal 
 government to support the Constitution of the United 
 States. In their view the essential difference between 
 the combatants was that the rebels were breaking the 
 constitution, while the armies to which they were giv- 
 ing their support were endeavoring to maintain that 
 contract. The proclamation of Lincoln was to their 
 minds an act that put them as well as their enemies in 
 an extra constitutional attitude. They felt that if both 
 sides were to fight outside of the constitution their posi- 
 tion lost the moral and historic value it had at the 
 outset. 
 
 A considerable number of the sympathizers with the 
 Confederates were made more decidedly rebellious by 
 this action. The deliberative minds were puzzled, and 
 generally disgusted, by the turn the war had taken, yet 
 the motives of the people, as a whole, were not changed 
 by the action, as the elections in August clearly showed. 
 
THE CLOSING STAGES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 333 
 
 Their blood was up, they felt that they were in for the 
 war where they stood, so they contented themselves with 
 abundant and often noisy protest against the proclama- 
 tion. 
 
 These difficulties brought about by the proclamation 
 were, however, naturally increased by the constant in- 
 terference of the military with unoffending citizens who 
 were suspected of rebel sympathies. The Union party 
 and its legislature, instinctively and determinedly cling- 
 ing to the civil law, deprecated this action, and by fre- 
 quent remonstrances with the Federal authorities from 
 time to time broke up the evil. The difficulty would 
 have been easy to overcome if the Federal govern- 
 ment had taken a sensible course in the matter. If 
 the military officers in the State, or at least the pro- 
 vost marshals, had been left in the control of some dis- 
 creet officer who could have had the time to compass the 
 problem before him, it would have been easy to devise 
 a system that would have sufficiently controlled the small 
 number of Confederate sympathizers in the State with- 
 out estranging the feelings of the Union population. 
 But these provost commanders were coming and going 
 with the movements of troops ; no sooner had one been 
 educated to his difficult task than he made way for an- 
 other who had his blunders to make. 
 
 These interferences with the civil law took two fla- 
 grantly unjust forms. One of these was the taxing of 
 so-called rebel sympathizers for the damage done by the 
 guerrillas or by the raiding parties of the enemy. It is 
 impossible to devise any system under the pretense of 
 law that brings about more irritating injustice than this 
 often tried but ever failing measure. General La Mar- 
 mora made it effective in the temporary suppression of 
 
334 KENTUCKY. 
 
 brigandage in Sicily, but tbis was a case where the evil 
 to be corrected was due to the inaction of a society 
 which had abundant means of making its government 
 effective against the evil-doers. But the outrages which 
 the so-called Confederate sympathizers were forced to 
 make good were utterly beyond their control. They 
 were the work of a public enemy that the whole military 
 force of the nation was endeavoring to overthrow. The 
 only hope of the people whose property was confiscated 
 was that the raiders would cease their work out of pity 
 for their misfortunes. Moreover, the evidence on which 
 the people were denounced as rebels was generally of 
 a worthless nature, — a few words of criticism of some 
 Federal officer, the reported presence of a son or brother 
 in the Confederate army, or the mere fabrications' of 
 some one who had a grudge to pay, were often enough 
 to sweep away the property of citizens who had at most 
 given nothing but their sympathy to the rebel cause. 
 No American people have ever been subjected to as 
 iniquitous oppression as this system brought about. 
 
 The other form of the evil arose from the interfer- 
 ence of the military power with elections. This was 
 even more unnecessary and more irritating to the lawful 
 Union men than the confiscation of property. For cen- 
 turies they and their fathers had guarded the freedom 
 of elections as a sacred heritage. The sight of a sol- 
 dier at the poll has always been like a red rag to a bull 
 among all English people. There was never a time 
 since the overthrow of neutrality that the " out and 
 out " Union men did not have a majority of two thirds 
 of the voters of the Commonwealth. Even when fifty 
 thousand of the Union voters were absent in the field, 
 the old men of the Union party had absolute control of 
 
THE CLOSING STAGES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 335 
 
 the State. It would have been more reasonable and 
 certainly safer to let the discontented element of the 
 people, who were not as a class in favor of the rebel- 
 lion, but who were critical of the measures taken by 
 the government, have their ineffectual protest than to 
 still their voices by military force. 
 
 One of the most flagrant cases of interference with 
 purely political action, but only one of very many, was 
 that which took place in Frankfort on February 18, 
 1863. A convention of the so-called Democratic party, 
 composed of two hundred delegates, representing only 
 one third of the counties in the State, met to nominate 
 a State ticket. They represented that portion of the 
 people who were most in sympathy with the rebellion, 
 though they strenuously and honestly denied all thought 
 of secession. They were refused the use of the legis- 
 lative hall for their meetings by the then sitting Union 
 legislature, and were denounced by the Union papers 
 as secessionists. Acting on this public opinion, Colonel 
 Gilbert, commanding the forces at that point, proceeded 
 to break up the convention by military force, ordering 
 the members to go to their homes and to refrain from 
 all " seditious and noisy conversation." In this out- 
 rage on the civil law Colonel Gilbert appears to have 
 acted on his own responsibility, but his action was jus- 
 tified by his superiors. 
 
 This high-handed outrage had a great effect upon 
 public opinion in Kentucky. Even the legislature, 
 now composed almost altogether of violent Union men, 
 passed in the senate a series of resolutions to the effect 
 that such interference was not desired by the Union 
 men, and that it " was dangerous in its tendencies, and 
 should not pass unrebuked." ^ In the August election 
 1 Collins, i. p. 120. 
 
336 KENTUCKY. 
 
 there was the same interference on the part of the mil- 
 itary with the election. This last outrage had not even 
 the palliation of effectiveness ; it exasperated the Union 
 men without restraining the Confederate sympathizers. 
 Only a few polling places were under the control of the 
 troops. If the election had been perfectly free, it is 
 doubtful if the result would have been materially varied. 
 Its only effect was to arouse a very strong hostility to 
 the action of the Federal government, which in an ear- 
 lier stage of the war might have had disastrous conse- 
 quences. As it was, thousands of Union men, who had 
 given their property and their blood to the cause of 
 the constitution, feeling that the laws and privileges 
 for which they were fighting were in danger by the ac- 
 tion of the Federal officers, lost heart and their inter- 
 est in the struggle. They had supposed that they were 
 fighting not for the victory of armies, but for the main- 
 tenance of laws ; for the welfare of the country, and not 
 for the supremacy of a political party that appeared to 
 be willing to destroy the Commonwealth if it stood in 
 the way of its purposes. 
 
 So far from condemning this defection of spirit, which 
 undoubtedly came upon the people from the overthrow 
 of their election laws and the subordination of their 
 courts to the military arm, we should rather praise the 
 independence of mind of men who, in the midst of bat- 
 tle, could keep in their hearts this reverence for the 
 foundations of their political life. Although many who 
 retain the memories of the great conflict will doubtless 
 dispute this opinion, it will certainly be the verdict of 
 the time to come, when these events are dispassionately 
 considered. 
 
 This growing tide of antagonism to the methods ox 
 
TEE CLOSING STAGES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 337 
 
 the Federal government led to no serious resistance to 
 the Federal action. The people felt they were com- 
 mitted to their course, and continued upon it ; they sep- 
 arated their devotion to the constitution from their 
 intense and growing hatred to the Federal executive 
 that permitted these acts. 
 
 In the election of August General Thomas E. Bram- 
 lette, a gallant Union officer, was elected governor by a 
 vote of 67,586 to 17,344 for Charles E. Wickliffe, him- 
 self a proclaimed Union man, but of the ultra States 
 rights stamp. Despite the interference of the military 
 at the polls, the greater part of the secessionist vote was 
 given to Wickliffe. It is not likely that the vote of the 
 States rights candidate would have exceeded twenty 
 thousand if the election had been absolutely free, for as 
 it was the State polled nearly 84,000 votes, and this 
 with the number of the soldiers beyond the State in the 
 two armies made a vote greater than that of 1859, the 
 last before the war, which was 143,000. Quite sixty 
 thousand of the citizens were now beyond its limits or 
 dead on the many battle-fields. 
 
 We shall have to follow this growing hatred to the 
 interference of the military with the civil force in the 
 next chapter. For the moment we must turn to the 
 interesting military incidents of the year. Though 
 Kentucky was not in 1863 the pathway of great armies, 
 some of the greatest events of the war took place near 
 her borders, and the petit guerre with the raiding par- 
 ties went incessantly on. 
 
 On the 1st of January, 1863, General Rosecrans, who 
 was still endeavoring to regain the ground lost in Ten- 
 nessee during the preceding summer, had a four days' 
 engagement with General Bragg, known as the battle 
 
338 KENTUCKY. 
 
 of Stone River, or Murfreesboro. This long and com- 
 plicated action is beyond the field of this history, but 
 it is of especial interest to us for the reason that it 
 brought a larger loss to Kentucky than any other battle 
 of the war, except, perhaps, that at Shiloh. Of the 
 seventy-eight thousand men of the two armies engaged 
 in this long and terrible struggle, about sixteen thou- 
 sand were killed or wounded. The Kentucky troops 
 engaged probably amounted in all to about twelve 
 thousand men. The loss in Breckinridge's division of 
 the Confederate army, composed largely of Kentucky 
 troops, was over two thousand. The total loss of Ken- 
 tucky regiments on both sides was over twelve hundred 
 men, of which nine hundred and eleven were lost from 
 ten regiments in the Federal army. Like so many 
 other of these greater battles of the rebellion it was 
 nobody's victory, for while the Federals retained the 
 ground they were in no shape to profit by their success. 
 The American ground and the American nature are 
 both unfavorable for decisive battles. 
 
 Morgan's raids make the principal feature in the war 
 in ^^entucky during this year. They had now become 
 as successive as a tertian ague ; men counted time from 
 one raid to another. His brigade for this raid was 
 under command of his able subordinate Colonel Cluke, 
 returned to Kentucky after an absence of a month or so 
 in the latter part of February. As usual it marched in 
 separate columns in various directions, striking several 
 points, but meeting with such resistance that the suc- 
 cesses were very small, except the permanent gain the 
 Confederate cause received from the many thousand men 
 who had to be kept ready to meet the invasion. Cluke 
 thrice took Mount Sterling, eacli time capturing many 
 
THE CLOSING STAGES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 339 
 
 prisoners and some army stores, and destroyed a num- 
 ber of trains on the railways, but found the preparation 
 for his reception so good that he soon abandoned the 
 State. Cluke's management was very skillful, showing 
 him to be an apt pupil of his great master. 
 
 On the 24th of March the Confederate General Pe- 
 gram, with twenty-six hundred men, essayed the same 
 role of a raider. Advancing toward Richmond, he oc- 
 cupied Danville. His advance was disputed by Wol- 
 ford's Kentucky cavalry, — a singularly irregular but 
 often effective body of troops, — and he soon made a 
 hasty retreat. On the 30th he was forced to give battle 
 at Dutton Hill, in Pulaski County, where he was de- 
 feated by a force of half his number under the command 
 of General Q. A. Gilmore. It was evident that Pegram 
 was not fitted for the difficult work that he essayed, and 
 he was not afterwards troublesome to the State. The 
 inevitable failure of all the other Confederate cavalry 
 commanders when they tried raids in Kentucky shows 
 the singular genius of Morgan's command. 
 
 Morgan returned again to Kentucky in June, this 
 time bound on a distant and important errand. The 
 Confederate army was then upon its advance into Penn- 
 sylvania. It was necessary to make some diversion in 
 the West. If possible, this diversion was to persuade 
 the Federal leaders that the experiment tried in the 
 preceding year by Bragg was to be repeated. The 
 condition of the Confederate forces in the valley of the 
 Mississippi did not make it practicable for them to un- 
 dertake any effective large movements in Kentucky; 
 but this dauntless rider felt that if he could effect a 
 lodgment north of the Ohio he might be able to detain 
 a large number of troops in the West, who would other- 
 
340 KENTUCKY. 
 
 wise be employed against Lee,^ and bring the burden 
 of war upon States that had never felt the infliction. 
 Moreover, his movement in force would lead to an anx- 
 iety concerning the invasion of Kentucky. 
 
 Morgan started on his important errand with about 
 three thousand four hundred men. He did not at once" 
 make a straight way to his objective point, but spent 
 some time in various operations in the State, which were 
 probably designed to foster the idea that he was prepar- 
 ing the way for an invasion in force. On the 4th of July 
 he undertook to capture a force of four hundred men,^ 
 under Colonel 0. H. Moore, of the 25th Michigan, in- 
 trenched on a bluff in a bend of the Green River. On 
 his summons to surrender, the gallant Colonel Moore 
 answered that the " 4th of July was a bad day for sur- 
 renders, and that he would rather not." Several times 
 Morgan hurled his force against this little band, and in 
 the end withdrew with a loss of nearly one hundred, 
 including half a dozen valuable officers,^ among whom 
 were Colonel Chenault and Major Brent, who had been 
 extremely valuable to him. 
 
 After this defeat, hungering for the success that he 
 was so much accustomed to, he essayed the taking of 
 Lebanon, where after a stubborn fight he captured the 
 garrison of three hundred men of the 20th Kentucky, 
 losing in this action about fifty of his men. Again his 
 loss in officers was very heavy, among them his brother, 
 Lieutenant Thomas Morgan. He then struck Bards- 
 town, near by, where a force of twenty-six men, in- 
 
 1 Morgan's crossing of the Ohio seems to have been contrary to the 
 express orders of Bragg. See History of Morgan's Cavalry, p. 410. 
 
 2 This is the force as given by Duke. Collins gives Moore's force 
 as two hundred men. 
 
 3 See Collins, i. 125. 
 
THE CLOSING STAGES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 341 
 
 trenched in a barn, hekl a detachment of his force for 
 a day, until he brought artillery to bear upon them.^ 
 After these unprofitable experiments he set about his 
 more important errand. On the 8th he arrived at 
 Brandenburg, on the Ohio, about forty miles below 
 Louisville, where his artillery soon captured two steam- 
 ers, which he used to ferry his troops across the river. 
 Despite the resistance offered by the Indiana militia and 
 a small gunboat, his loss in crossing was very trifling. 
 A small scouting party under Captain Hines had pre- 
 viously explored the country in the neighboring parts of 
 Indiana, and found no Federal force to oppose him ex- 
 cejjt the militia. 
 
 Once upon the northern soil he began the most sin- 
 gular raid of the war. Moving a little north of the 
 Ohio River he turned to the east and began his accus- 
 tomed work of destroying all the railways that his 
 march intersected. At Cory don he captured five hun- 
 dred militia, after a short and slight resistance. He 
 had another skirmish at Salem, but so far there was no 
 vigorous opposition to his march. It became evident to 
 him, however, that his task was one of unusual hazard. 
 The telegraph dispatches, intercepted by his skillful 
 operators, showed that the country was rising, and that 
 he would therefore have to beat away large gather- 
 ings of militia, reinforced by regular troops from Ken- 
 tucky. There was no doubt of his ability to maintain 
 himself against any one such gathering, but in the suc- 
 cession of combats his force would be frittered away. 
 He therefore sought to return to the southern side of 
 the Ohio at the earliest possible opportunity. 
 
 The retreat of Lee from Pennsylvania had taken 
 1 Collins, i. p. 125. 
 
342 KENTUCKY. 
 
 away the object of liis raid, and the rapid rising of the 
 country made his task more perilous than it promised 
 at first to be. His determination to retire seems to 
 have been taken soon after he passed north of Louis- 
 ville. He tried the passage of the Ohio at Twelve Mile 
 Island with a detached force, but lost the men he sent 
 upon the scout. He next sought to cross five miles be- 
 low Cincinnati where the river was fordable, but his 
 scouts found this passage guarded by a force of artillery 
 and infantry which made the effort inadvisable. 
 
 There was now a capital stroke open to him, one that 
 could have easily been accomplished ; he could have 
 occupied Cincinnati, destroyed the government stores at 
 that point, and demanded a free passage for his force 
 into Kentucky as the price of the safety of the city. 
 The available force guarding the city did not equal the 
 numbers of his own command ; they were all infantry, 
 except two or three hundred mounted men. These 
 scanty troops were distributed over an area of at least 
 forty square miles of territory. He could have beaten 
 a part of this scattered force, or gone between its de- 
 tached positions, and in an hour he would have been 
 in a position to dictate his terms for crossing into Ken- 
 tucky. In place of this, although he knew that a sud- 
 den rise of the river gave passage to the Federal gun- 
 boats, he continued his ride to the east. His only 
 chance now was to ride so far up the Ohio that he could 
 get beyond the freshet that opened the way to the gun- 
 boats. 
 
 Each hour his danger increased ; six regiments of 
 Kentucky cavalry were now on his trail, and though he 
 swept the country of the fresh horses he could not keep 
 more than twelve hours' march ahead of them. The 
 
THE CLOSING STAGES OF THE CIVIL WAR. 343 
 
 rapidity of liis movement was marvelous. On one of his 
 marches, from Sunman to Williamsburg, his weary men 
 and horses made ninety miles in thirty-five hours, — a 
 speed in an enemy's country that it would be hard to 
 parallel in military history. Each time his scouts came 
 to the Ohio they found the Federal gunboats, and trans- 
 ports with troops, watching the crossings, giving him no 
 cliance of escape. 
 
 Finally, on July 18th, at Buffington Island, near the 
 mouth of the Kanawha, he turned at bay, and tried to 
 force a passage of the river. His men were exhausted 
 from their ride of over eleven hundred miles, and the 
 necessary wear of' mind that attends such expeditions. 
 After a brief resistance some companies of them sur- 
 rendered. A large part of his command tried to swim 
 the river, but the greater part of these were captured 
 by the 1st Kentucky regiment of Federal troops, and 
 many were killed in the water. Four companies only 
 escaped into Virginia. A portion of the command, in- 
 cluding their leader, deterred from crossing by the fate 
 of the others, continued their eastward march. Finally, 
 on the 26th, the remnant of this force was surrounded, 
 and forced to surrender. Morgan himself was taken, 
 and of all those who crossed the Ohio less than five 
 hundred escaped to the Confederacy.^ 
 
 Greatly to the disgrace of the Union arms the Fed- 
 eral commander refused to observe the cartel made by 
 Morgan with the officer who received their surrender. 
 The surrender was made to a Captain Burbeck, of the 
 Ohio militia, who doubtless exceeded his powers in ven- 
 turing to determine the conditions of capitulation ; still, 
 by all the usages of war, the Federal army was bound to 
 1 See Collins, i. p. 127. 
 
344 KENTUCKY. 
 
 observe the conditions made with the enemy by any 
 officer commanding a detachment of troops. Morgan 
 and his officers were imprisoned in the Ohio peniten- 
 tiary, and treated as convicts, a debasement of the cus- 
 toms of war for which General Burnside must be held 
 accountable. It is a satisfaction to all who have the 
 honorable spirit of soldiers, that goes so far to redeem 
 war, that these adroit fellows soon dug their way under 
 the walls of their prison and were again free.^ 
 
 Captain Hines, who planned the escape, was one of 
 the most remarkable characters in Morgan's command, 
 rich as that body was in gifted men.^ The party of 
 fugitives entered a railway train, rode to near Cincin- 
 nati, where they crossed to Kentucky. 
 
 1 They left their respects for their jailer, and a brief account of 
 their escape, giving in their note an account of the time and labor 
 spent in their mining operations. See Collins, i. 129. 
 
 2 Few would imagine that the present able and dignified head of the 
 Kentucky Court of Appeals, the chief justice of the Commonwealth, 
 was once the dauntless partisan commander, Captain Hines. For 
 years he was the head of any desperate enterprise that Morgan un- 
 dertook. After Morgan's final overthrow, he was engaged in other 
 enterprises of peril. He had charge of the projected, and nearly suc- 
 cessful, attempt at releasing the Confederates confined in Camp Doug- 
 las, near Chicago, arming them, and with them creating an army that 
 should be strong enough to force its way to the Confederacy. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE END OF THE WAR. 
 
 The desperation to which the people were brought 
 by the system of guerrilla raids cau hardly be described. 
 In the year 1864, there was not a county in the State 
 that was exempt from their ravages. The condition of 
 the Commonwealth reminds the historical student of 
 that which came with the Thirty Years' War in Ger- 
 many, and with the latter stages of the war between 
 king and parliament in England. It is the normal con- 
 dition when a country is harried by the discords of a 
 civil war, and especially when there are no longer large 
 armies in the field. 
 
 On the 4th of January, 1864, Governor Bramlette, 
 late a Federal officer, who at the outset of his political 
 life was opposed to such summary and unwarranted 
 action, took the singular responsibility of ordering the 
 arrest of the Confederate sympathizers, to be held as 
 hostages for the return of all persons captured and de- 
 tained by guerrillas. Great as was the need of protec- 
 tion from these freebooters, this proclamation was a 
 serious transgression of the laws which the governor 
 was sworn to maintain, and as such met the condem- 
 nation of a great part of the Union men. Afterwards 
 the legislature endeavored to secure the suppression of 
 this evil by providing more numerous and more effective 
 troops to be used for State defense. This legislature 
 
346 KENTUCKY. 
 
 voted the large sum of $5,000,000, for the purpose of 
 paying for the adequate internal defense of the State.-^ 
 
 On July 16th, General Burbridge, then commanding 
 in the State, issued a sanguinary order of reprisals, re- 
 quiring that whenever a citizen was killed by guerrillas 
 four prisoners chosen from this class of marauders were 
 to be taken to the place where the deed was done, and 
 in retaliation shot to death. Theoretically this princi- 
 ple of retaliation is, though severe, within the usages of 
 war. The difficulty was that it was never easy to de- 
 termine among a lot of prisoners who belonged to a 
 properly commissioned command, and who were simple 
 brigands. Under the order many executions took place, 
 some of men who probably were to be classed as Con- 
 federate soldiers. The brutal violence of this plan 
 made it extremely distasteful to all fair-minded people. 
 It was carried out without even the semblance of law 
 given by the proceedings of a court-martial. Nor had 
 it the sorry merit of success. It merely gave an addi- 
 tional bitterness to a contest that was becoming a re- 
 proach to the name of the race. 
 
 In the August election the interference of the mili- 
 tary with the polling was even more serious than in the 
 previous year. In the election period an extensive sys- 
 tem of military arrests was begun, designed to overawe 
 those who were disposed to criticise the action of the 
 military commanders. This system of provost marshal 
 government so disgusted the people that a majority of 
 them, though retaining their loyalty, could no longer 
 be trusted to vote for the candidates approved and al- 
 most nominated by the Federal commanders. Fortu- 
 nately, the election of the year was not of a general 
 1 Collins, i. 130. 
 
THE END OF THE WAR. 347 
 
 character, or the result would have given encourage- 
 ment to the rebellion, by showing that the Union men 
 were now divided into two distinct divisions : the smaller 
 part made up of those who were willing to go to any 
 extremity in their toleration of the arbitrary acts of a 
 provost marshal system that gave effect to the oppres- 
 sive and often brutal humor of the courts of war ; and 
 another larger part who, believing that the immediate 
 danger from the armed enemy was over, were disposed 
 to give their principal attention to the men who were 
 undermining the foundations of civil government within 
 the Commonwealth. 
 
 The only office of importance that was to be filled at 
 the August election of 1864 was that of judge of the 
 Court of Appeals for the Third District. Alvin Duvall 
 was a candidate for reelection ; his course as a jurist 
 was satisfactory to a large part of the people, and he 
 was renominated for the office. Although he had in no 
 public way indicated any sympathy with the rebellion, 
 he was not regarded as a strong Union man. If the 
 matter had been left to the people, it is likely that he 
 would have been defeated at the polls. But the mili- 
 tary authorities resolved to arrest him just before the 
 election, but he escaped from the State, and went be- 
 yond their control. They then ordered that he should 
 not be allowed to stand as a candidate, and put troops 
 at the polls to enforce this order, their aim being to 
 secure the election of M. M. Benton, whom the Fed- 
 eral officers had adopted as their candidate. To defeat 
 this end the conservative Union men nominated Judge 
 Robertson, telegraphing his nomination on the morning 
 of the election to the polling places. As the military 
 guards had no orders to refuse the tender of votes for 
 
348 KENTUCKY. 
 
 Judge Robertson, he was elected as a protest against 
 the arbitrary action of the military arm ; a large num- 
 ber of citizens testified their disgust by remaining away 
 from the polls. 
 
 This iniquitous system of interference with the civil 
 law had now pretty thoroughly separated the better 
 class of the Union men from all sympathies with the 
 Federal government. But worse was yet to come. In 
 all the campaigns and battles in Kentucky, there had 
 always been shown the utmost consideration for women 
 and children. The soldiers of both armies, be it said 
 to their great honor, were singularly considerate of them. 
 Even when the battles raged through the towns, as 
 they often did, the non-combatant class was tenderly 
 cared for. 
 
 But in 1864 the provost marshals of the State, mostly 
 men who were not soldiers in any proper sense, who 
 had none of the better traditions of war, began to arrest 
 and imprison women on charges of sympathy with the 
 rebellion, correspondence with the enemy, and the like. 
 Women with their children were banished from the 
 State to Canada under a guard of negro soldiers, or sent 
 to prison. Women whose children, brothers, and hus- 
 bands were in the Confederate army, or dead on its 
 battle-fields, were naturally given to uttering much trea- 
 son in their speech ; but it was a pitiable sight to see 
 the power of the Federal government turned against 
 these helpless sufEerers. 
 
 While this treatment of non-combatants, old men, 
 women, and children, and the interference of the Fed- 
 eral troops with elections, was the principal grievance 
 of the conservative Union men, there was another source 
 of trouble of a more truly political nature, which served 
 
THE END OF THE WAR. 349 
 
 to increase the disaffection of the Kentuckians with the 
 ways of the Federal government. 
 
 The Federal government liad engaged to leave slavery 
 as it found it in Kentucky and elsewhere. Although 
 there was a certain amount of disgust when the emanci- 
 pation proclamation came out, it did not in itself make 
 an enduring impression on the minds of the Union men ; 
 but when, in 1864, the government began to enlist 
 negro troops in Kentucky the people became greatly 
 excited over the matter. Up to this date the Common- 
 wealth had met the requisitions for troops to carry on 
 the war with a promptness and loyalty unsurpassed by 
 any other State. They naturally considered it as an 
 insult that their slaves, even though such in name only, 
 should be taken from them and put into the army with 
 their own volunteer soldiers. Although this state of 
 feeling will probably not commend itself as reasonable 
 to those who were born in non-slaveholding communi- 
 ties, it was very natural in the Kentuckians. To them 
 military service had always been an honorable occupa- 
 tion, open only to those of the masterful race. They 
 had refused to take into their service any recruits from 
 the free negroes of the State. This blow at their mili- 
 tary pride was keenly felt. 
 
 The action of the Federal government in this matter 
 of enlisting slaves was singularly vacillating ; again and 
 again the process was begun and abandoned on account 
 of remonstrances of the State authorities. It was an 
 unprofitable experiment ; the enlistment of white troops 
 was made difficult ; a few thousand blacks were se- 
 cured, but they never proved of much service to the 
 Federal army. The pure negro, though a fairly brave 
 fellow, wants the essential qualities that make a soldier. 
 
850 KENTUCKY. 
 
 His valor is of the passive sort, while the soldier needs 
 an active pugnacity. Negro troops will stand a fire 
 that they cannot return as well or better than whites ; 
 they will do well in distant liring, except that they are 
 almost invariably bad marksmen ; but they cannot make 
 a charge, and a small body of rebels coming swiftly 
 upon them with that ugly yell, which rings in the ears 
 of those who heard it at the distance of half a lifetime, 
 would break any line of them, however unshaken be- 
 fore. These remarks do not apply to mulattoes, or to 
 negroes bred in freedom ; such men seem to make fairly 
 good soldiers. 
 
 This bitterness between the conservative Union men 
 and the Federal commander grew to such height that 
 in September, 1864, there was grave danger of an ac- 
 tual revolt of the Kentuckians against their oppressors. 
 The State authorities were now fairly arrayed against 
 the Federal provost marshals and their following. Gen- 
 eral Hugh Ewing, commanding the district, had ordered 
 the county courts to levy a tax sufficient to arm and pay 
 fifty men in each county. His order was answered by 
 Governor Braralette, who, in a proclamation, forbade 
 the county courts giving effect to the order. Although 
 Governor Bramlette represented the ultra Union men, 
 there can be no doubt that he would have striven to 
 maintain his position by the use of force.^ Lincoln re- 
 voked Ewing's order, and so this critical point was 
 passed. At the same time an examination was ordered 
 into the conduct of certain knaves, who had for months 
 ruled Western Kentucky in a fashion that had not had 
 
 1 It is reported to the writer that Governor Bramlette was at this 
 time on the point of issuing a proclamation recalling the Kentucky 
 troops from the field. 
 
THE END OF THE WAR. 351 
 
 its parallel since the tyrannies of the Austrian Haynau. 
 A commission, composed of General Speed Fry and 
 Colonel John Mason Brown, checked the iniquities, and 
 made such a showing that General E. A. Paine, Colonel 
 H. W. Barry, of the 8th United States Negro Artillery, 
 and Colonel McChesney, of Illinois, and a number of 
 subordinate officers, were removed. It was charged 
 that they had been guilty of extreme cruelty and extor- 
 tion.^ 
 
 These blows at the system of inflictions were not suffi- 
 cient to do more than subdue, for a moment, the worst 
 forms of the evil. This was too deep seated for easy 
 remedy. General Burbridge had an overbearing spirit. 
 He gathered around him a set of advisers who, it was 
 asserted, acting as a secret inquisition, sent many Union 
 men into prison or banishment, simply because they 
 protested against the Federal outrages. A sort of fury 
 seemed to possess many men hitherto of good qualities 
 as citizens or soldiers.^ 
 
 So far from these brutal reprisals diminishing the 
 evils of the guerrilla warfare it grew each day to be a 
 more crying evil. The Home Guards, which before had 
 carried on a tolerably effective defense against these 
 bands, became disgusted with the inefficiency and oppo- 
 sition of the Federal commanders. A vast number of 
 
 1 See Collins, i. 141. 
 
 2 The partisan newspapers of the day inflamed the public mind by 
 reckless charges against the leaders of both parties- The Rev. Dr. 
 Robert J. Breckinridge, a devoted Union man, who did much to de- 
 termine the destinj^ of the Commonwealth in these trying days, Avas 
 especially selected for assault. Collins, who was animated by strong 
 pro-southern sentiments, accuses Dr. Breckinridge of brutal language 
 in reference to the Confederate sympathizers. (See Collins, vol. i. p. 
 142.) A careful inquiry has convinced the writer that this charge is 
 entirely unfounded. 
 
352 KENTUCKY. 
 
 bandit gangs, nominally in the Confederate army, but 
 really without any control from commissioned officers, 
 roamed over the State in all directions, robbing, mur- 
 dering, and burning as they went. It seemed for a 
 time as if civil government would be broken to pieces 
 by these two mortal foes to order, the guerrillas and 
 the provost marshals. Even the small bands of Federal 
 soldiers pursuing the guerrillas learned so far to imitate 
 their ways that Burbridge himself was compelled to 
 issue an order providing severe punishments for out- 
 rages by the Union troops. All these accumulating 
 evils showed how true was the instinct of the people 
 of Kentucky who strove to keep the machinery of their 
 civil system intact. There is a government by armies, 
 and a government by citizens, but the two can never 
 be blended without the utmost danger to the State. 
 
 It is the painful duty of the historian to go yet fur- 
 ther in the history of this pernicious system that was 
 developed by General Burbridge's agents. All that he 
 did in the effort to suppress the guerrillas and to clear 
 the State of treason may be set down as grave blunders 
 of a brave, well-meaning, though most misguided sol- 
 dier. The next series of acts had, it was generally be- 
 lieved, the purpose of improperly taking money from 
 the farmers of the State. 
 
 The first step, in this new class of inflictions, was to 
 order the farmers to sell their pigs to designated agents 
 at 2ifair price ; next Burbridge commanded that no pigs 
 should be sent out of the State without a special permit, 
 but should be sold to the aforesaid specified agents. 
 These agents offered a price considerably below that 
 paid in the Cincinnati market. The ostensible reason 
 of this action was that the Federal government had 
 
THE END OF THE WAR. 353 
 
 given a contract to certain parties in Louisville to fur- 
 nish one hundred thousand head of swine, and that if 
 the farmers were allowed to sell in their natural mar- 
 kets the contractors would not be able to obtain a suffi- 
 cient supply.^ 
 
 General Burbridge's agents supported this demand by 
 many threats of confiscation and other penalties. Nat- 
 urally the beginning of a system of confiscation of pri- 
 vate property aroused an even more general and furious 
 indignation than the mere political acts of oppression. 
 Here again the protests of the State government were 
 heard by Lincoln, and after about a month of wrestle 
 with the evil, Burbridge's famous " hog order " was re- 
 voked by the Federal government. Notwithstanding 
 the revocation of this order, General Burbridge was re- 
 tained in command for some months afterwards, but 
 the citizens were yet to suffer for some months under 
 this man more exasperating inflictions than came to 
 them from the honorable war of other years. There 
 can be no doubt that the people of Kentucky endured 
 far more outrage from the acts of the Federal provost 
 marshals than they did from all the acts of legitimate 
 war put together. 
 
 The military events of 1864, apart from the incessant 
 though trifling encounters with guerrillas, were limited. 
 The hard-pressed armies of the Confederacy could not 
 spare men to threaten Kentucky with invasion in force. 
 On the 25th of March Forrest attacked Paducah, on 
 the Ohio, at the mouth of the Tennessee. It was de- 
 fended by Colonel Hicks, with a part of the 16th Cav- 
 alry, a portion of the 122d Illinois, and a small body of 
 negro troops. Forrest exhibited his usual courage and 
 1 Collins, i. 145. 
 
35 i KENTUCKY. 
 
 his usual ill-juflgment iu some fierce assaults on Fort 
 Anderson, which was held by the intrepid Hicks, with 
 the aid of the gunboats Peosta and Paw-paw. For- 
 rest, after two days' battle, was finally beaten o£f with 
 great loss. The Federal loss was one hundred men. 
 
 The only otlier operation of importance was the last 
 raid of Morgan into the Commonwealth. He came with 
 a force of two thousand three hundred men. This time 
 he came by way of the eastern line of the State. He 
 slipped by Burbridge, who was watching for him in Pike 
 County, and quickly made his way to Mount Stirling, 
 whicli he captured, after a vigorous resistance, from 
 Captain Barlow, of the 40th Kentucky, who had but 
 seventy men. He next, with a part of his force, tried 
 to take Lexington, but, after some successes, was beaten 
 off by the 4th Kentucky cavalry. 
 
 Wliile engaged in foraging and burning bridges on 
 his old " stamping ground," his force was surprised in 
 the night by three brigades of Federal cavalry, under 
 the command of the gallant Colonel John Mason Brown, 
 which by a forced march of ninety miles in thirty hours 
 came up with a part of the Confederate force, though 
 Morgan was himself then near Lexington. In the con- 
 fusion and the darkness the Confederates escaped, after 
 losing about two hundred men. Burbridge's men, ex- 
 hausted by their long march, were in no condition for 
 pursuit. Morgan with his men, refreshed by his rest 
 near Lexington, pushed on to Cynthiana, where, with 
 his usual fortune, he was successful in capturing a train 
 with several hundred troops, who were looking for him. 
 The town was defended by a force of Home Guards, 
 who made a very obstinate resistance, fighting from 
 building to building until a large part of the town was 
 burned and severe punishment inflicted on the enemy. 
 
THE END OF THE WAR. 355 
 
 While one part of Morgan's force was engaged in the 
 battle at Cynthiana, another part was trying to get 
 possession of Frankfort. The latter place is strong by 
 nature of its environing hills, and had a few small forts 
 defending the approaches. The governor, the citizens, 
 and about two hundred and fifty troops made a brilliant 
 defense against two assaults, and repulsed the enemy. 
 On the 12th, Burbridge, who was as effective as a sol- 
 dier as he was incompetent in civil affairs, made another 
 forced march from Mount Sterling, and struck Mor- 
 gan's force with a superior number of cavalry. After an 
 hour's fight the whole of Morgan's force was broken, 
 with a heavy loss in killed and wounded and several 
 hundred prisoners. 
 
 Gathering the remnants of his command, shorn of 
 half of its original strength, Morgan fell swiftly back 
 through Eastern Kentucky into Southwestern Virginia. 
 Three months afterward, on September 4th, this re- 
 markable soldier was shot while endeavoring to escape 
 from a force that had surrounded the house, in East 
 Tennessee, in which he had lodged, at some distance 
 from his command. Tims ended the life of one of the 
 most remarkable soldiers that this country has ever pro- 
 duced. 
 
 The other military operations of importance were two 
 extensive raids by Burbridge and his mounted men into 
 Southwestern Virginia. These movements were in- 
 tended to break up the important salt works of that 
 country, which supplied the Confederacy with that nec- 
 essary element of their rations, and to destroy the lines 
 of communication that connected Richmond with the 
 Southwest. The forces engaged were principally com- 
 posed of mounted Kentucky troops. Their movements 
 
356 KENTUCKY. 
 
 had nothing of the brilliancy and dash of Morgan's 
 movements, yet they served to show how penetrable 
 was the once strong wall of the Confederacy. The work 
 was accomplished with no great loss of life on either 
 side, but the Confederacy received a telling blow upon 
 its resources of war. 
 
 Outside the State the successive great battles in Geor- 
 gia and Tennessee took a heavy toll of the life of Ken- 
 tucky that was in the armies of either side. The hun- 
 dreds of skirmishes with guerrillas and raiding parties 
 within the State were even more fatal than the regular 
 warfare. It is possible that 1864 was the most de- 
 structive year of the war to the citizens of Kentucky, 
 whether fighting in the armies or skirmishing by their 
 firesides. It is not possible to compute the loss of men 
 from these various forms of fighting, but it seems prob- 
 able that not less than five thousand were killed or 
 disabled by gunshot wounds within the year. 
 
 Strong as was this draft on the manhood of the State 
 the supply of troops continued. For a time, in the 
 worst fury of the wordy combat between the State and 
 the Federal authorities, the enlistments fell off and the 
 Federal government ordered a draft. 
 
 An effort was made to carry out this selection by lot 
 in certain counties, but it utterly failed to furnish men. 
 The conscripts to a great extent went into the guer- 
 rilla bands, and many hundreds joined the Confederate 
 army. A very large part of those chosen were found 
 to be suffering: from disabilities unfittinoj them for sol- 
 diers' work. At this time, at least four fifths of the 
 men fit for military life were in either army. Still the 
 effort at conscription stung the pride of the Kentucky 
 people, who could not bear the idea that it should go 
 
TnE END OF THE WAR. 357 
 
 into history that iu a war the people of the Common- 
 wealth were driven to the lines of battle. Many men' 
 who had been in the Confederate army, and had on one 
 ground and another returned to the State, enlisted in 
 order to relieve their State of this reproach. On Jan- 
 uary 1, 1865, the quota of the State was full. Out of 
 a total enrollment of 133,493, of military age, eighteen 
 to forty-five, the State had furnished and mustered into 
 the UnitM States service 76,335. About 7,000 more 
 enlisted, but were not mustered in, making a total of 
 about 83,000 men. Besides these there was a force 
 that may be counted as 10,000 men, who were engaged 
 as Home Guards, or, altogether, nearly one tenth of the 
 total population of the State. Add to this at least 
 40,000 men of military age out of the State in the mil- 
 itary service of the Confederacy, and we have a larger 
 per cent, of the population given to war than has ever 
 been furnished by any modern State in the term of 
 three years. 
 
 These estimates are given on the authority of Gen- 
 eral Finnell, Adjutant-General of Kentucky during the 
 last three years of the war. During these years of trial 
 the State furnished almost as many men to military 
 service as had ever voted in any election. It should 
 be remembered that these men were volunteers from 
 the citizens of the State, and that they were in no part 
 composed of the substitutes who formed so large a part 
 of the forces from the most of the Northern States. It 
 should also be borne in mind that at this time in her 
 history. Kentucky had for years been sending a large 
 part of her youth as colonists to the other States of 
 the Mississippi Valley. Thousands of them were in the 
 regiments of the other Western States. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 January, 1865, brought some lightening of the 
 clouds that had hung over the State for the previous 
 four years. President Lincoln annulled the iniquitous 
 orders concerning the limitations of trade in Kentucky, 
 and the Confederate government at last, and hardly 
 soon enough for their honor, took steps finally to disa- 
 vow the action of the guerrillas in the State. For many 
 months the regular troops of the Confederacy had re- 
 pudiated all connection with these outlaws, and even in 
 some cases had joined with the Home Guards in hunt- 
 ing them down. 
 
 The legislature met under circumstances of a very 
 exasperating nature. The lieutenant-governor and pres- 
 ident of the senate. Colonel Richard T. Jacob, a gal- 
 lant soldier in the Federal army, had been arrested and 
 sent into the Confederacy by General Burbridge, be- 
 cause he dared to criticise in a public manner the con- 
 duct of the Federal authorities in their management of 
 affairs in Kentucky. There is no sort of question that 
 this gallant officer and devoted Union man was abso- 
 lutely loyal to the national government; to it he had 
 given all that a devoted soldier can give, save his life. 
 At the same time Colonel Wolford, a partisan com- 
 mander, who had done excellent service with his regi- 
 ment of irregular cavalry, was subjected to the same 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 359 
 
 treatment. Even in his criticisms of the government ho 
 made it always clear that his resistance was to the 
 illegal action of the Federal authorities and not to tho 
 government which they disgraced. 
 
 Early in February, Lieutenant-Governor Jacob es- 
 caped from the Confederate lines and returned to his 
 place in the senate. This banishment of Jacob and 
 Wolford was followed by an order from General Bur- 
 bridge to his subordinates to resist the State govern- 
 ment, which was at that time trying to raise a sufficient 
 force of State troops to hunt down and crush out the 
 guerrilla bands. Burbridge not only sought to nullify 
 this action of the Commonwealth in raising new troops, 
 but ordered the muster-out of all the State troops now 
 in service. 
 
 Soon after the assembly of the legislature a commit- 
 tee was appointed to visit Washington and lay before 
 the President the deplorable condition of the Common- 
 wealth due to the conduct of Burbridge and his party. 
 The remonstrances of these ambassadors, and the atten- 
 tion which Burbridoje's acts had beojuu to attract in the 
 whole country, led to his removal from command, thus 
 relieving the State from the rule of a man who has been 
 well named the " military .Jeffreys " of the war. He 
 was replaced by General Palmer, a man of much better 
 temper, who, though he fell under the same evil influ- 
 ences which had guided Burbridge in his course, never 
 disojraced his callincf. 
 
 The people now began to act with more energy in 
 the suppression of the guerrilla warfare. The small 
 Confederate bands, from time to time within the State, 
 did not hesitate to treat them as public enemies. A 
 large part of the motive that led even decent citizens 
 
3G0 KENTUCKY. 
 
 to take up with these marauding bands, or to give them 
 aid and comfort, came from a spirit of protest against 
 the arbitrary acts of the Federal officers. As soon as 
 there seemed a chance that these evils were about to be 
 mitigated, the people felt like regaining for themselves 
 a better public security, and took efficient steps for their 
 protection. 
 
 In February the thirteenth amendment to the Fed- 
 eral Constitution was presented to the legislature for ac- 
 tion. This amendment provided for the unconditional 
 abolition of slavery within the United States, but did 
 not secure any compensation for the value of the slaves 
 within the loyal States. The subject was referred to 
 the judiciary committee of the State senate. Two re- 
 ports were made : one, the majority, favoring the rejec- 
 tion of the amendment ; the other its acceptance, with 
 the request that Congress give compensation for the 
 value of slaves held by owners who were loyal to the 
 government during the rebellion. The majority re- 
 port was accepted, both in the senate and house : in the 
 former by a vote of twenty-one to thirteen ; in the latter 
 by fifty-six to twenty-eight. The thirteenth amendment 
 was soon after adopted by the requisite number of 
 States, and in this way slavery quietly lost its legal po- 
 sition, though its life had been practically extinguished 
 by the events of the war. 
 
 There was among Kentuckians a certain sense of dis- 
 gust that this amendment should have been adopted 
 through the vote of " reconstructed " Southern States, 
 with governments essentially fictitious. Still, despite 
 the evident injustice arising from this appropriation of 
 their property without process of law, not much at- 
 tention was paid to the matter. The evil that came 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 361 
 
 from the overthrowing of their labor system and the 
 disappearance of property valued for taxation at over 
 $100,000,000 in 1860, and at that time worth at least 
 double this amount, was forgotten in the anticipation of 
 a happy end of greater ills. As at the outbreak of the 
 war slavery had a small place in the public mind, so this 
 last step in its overthrow found the people with only a 
 languid interest in its pecuniary importance. 
 
 When, on April 13th, Johnston's army surrendered 
 to Sherman, an almost universal cry of joy went up 
 from the people of Kentucky. The past losses and 
 trials were forgotten. Although the better part of its 
 population was dead, wounded, or worn out by the fa- 
 tigues of hard campaigns, which generally leave chronic 
 troubles that are often more destructive to vitality than 
 those of sword or ball, a wonderful uplift of hope came 
 upon the people. At the moment, they thought all 
 their trials over. None imagined that the war was to 
 draw consequences in its train that would keep them 
 disturbed for many years to come. 
 
 This sense of strength and new life manifested itself 
 in many ways. Even before the war was finished, but 
 when the movement of Sherman to Savannah showed 
 that the end was at hand, the legislature passed an act 
 accepting the gift of the Federal government to found 
 an agricultural school, and arranged at the same time 
 to add to it the other departments necessary to make 
 a school that would have some of the qualities of a 
 university. Some intelligent citizens, led by Colonel 
 J. B. Bowman, arranged for the consolidation of the 
 old Transylvania University with a college then at 
 Harrodsburg, known as the Kentucky University, which, 
 with the agricultural college, were to be placed at Lex- 
 
362 KENTUCKY. 
 
 ington, in the old Transylvania buildings, and in the 
 neighboring county. The whole was added to by sub- 
 scriptions among the people, amounting to $200,000, 
 made while the State was still struggling with the guer- 
 rilla bands, and trying to save its social order from the 
 peril these disturbances brought upon it. Provision 
 was made for an increase of the school taxes in the 
 local districts. In many other ways the Commonwealth 
 now showed its recuperative power. 
 
 It was some time before the old troubles with ma- 
 rauding bands were quieted, but the State forces indus- 
 triously hunted them down, and the more decent mem- 
 bers of these gangs at once crept back to civil life. 
 
 By the 1st of July the State was so secured in its 
 position that with perfect safety the Federal troops 
 could have been withdrawn from the State, and the civil 
 government left to go its appointed way. This was, 
 unhappily, not to be. The appetite for military methods 
 had gained a YQvy strong hold in the United States. 
 The armies came home, and went again to their fields 
 and firesides, or, where these were no more, began again 
 to create for themselves places in the world. There 
 were no better and more peaceful citizens than the vet- 
 erans of the two armies, and no relations were ever 
 more friendly than those between the men who learned 
 to respect each other's manliness in a war that tried 
 them well. Yet it suited the purpose of a political body 
 that had fattened on the system of passes and permits 
 and the other profitable complications of the Civil War, 
 to maintain in time of peace a system that had its only 
 justification in the hard conditions of war, if it can find 
 justification at all. 
 
 If Lincoln had survived we may well believe that his 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 363 
 
 admirable good sense, which enabled him to help his 
 native State whenever he could see her trouble, would 
 have removed these barriers to the tide of peace and 
 good will that came like a flood upon the people. His 
 death and his replacement by a cheap and small-minded 
 man brought on the last and most painful stage of tlie 
 struggle, that in which a disarmed and war-worn peo- 
 ple were driven to light for the elementary rights of 
 good government against the tyrannous exactions of a 
 political junta which was insensible to the nobility of 
 the victory. 
 
 Fortunately for Kentucky it was not possible for the 
 party in power to sink the State to the depths of po- 
 litical degradation into which all the rebellious States 
 were at once plunged. There was no valid pretense at 
 hand for overthrowing the machinery of the State gov- 
 ernment, though there was every evidence of a desire 
 to do so. Her sufferings were trifling compared with 
 those of the States in that hell on earth, the recon- 
 structed South; still, as we shall see, even Kentucky 
 had a time of purgatorial existence, which delayed the 
 period of quiet and left a mass of painful memories 
 that will hardly ever be forgotten. 
 
 The first evidence that the FederaJ authorities were 
 unwilling to accept the end of the war as the begin- 
 ning of peace came in the August election of 1864. 
 The expatriation laws passed in former years being still 
 in force, the returned Confederates were not, in the 
 terms of the law, citizens of Kentucky, and were not 
 allowed to vote. Governor Bramlette suitably warned 
 the officers of election within the State to this effect by 
 means of a proclamation. This act of expatriation had 
 been declared unconstitutional by two judges of the 
 
3^4 KENTUCKY. 
 
 State courts, and there was a general feeling that as 
 the war was over the legislation on which this exclu- 
 sion rested was revoked by the issue of the war.^ This 
 was properly a State question, and the impropriety of 
 Federal interference was clear ; yet in this election many 
 polling places were surrounded b}^ Federal soldiers, who 
 undertook to purge the poll. In some cases negro sol- 
 diers were used for this exasperating work, apparently 
 with the intention of making the act as offensive as pos- 
 sible. 
 
 The result of this interference with the polls was to 
 still further widen the breach between the Radical and 
 Conservative parties. There was only one State officer, 
 a treasui-er, to be elected, and for this office the Conser- 
 vative candidate had 42,187, and his opponent, a more 
 radical Union man, 42,082. The size of the vote in a 
 contested election shows that the ex-rebel element did 
 not take part in it. Two Conservative congressmen 
 were elected to four Radical members, and the com- 
 plexion of the State legislature was utterly changed. 
 The senate now stood twenty Conservatives to eighteen 
 Radicals, a majority of the latter holding over from the 
 last election, while the house stood sixty Conservatives 
 to forty Radicals. In this remarkable political revolu- 
 tion we behold the work of Burbridge and his like. 
 In two years they did what neither the Confederate 
 solicitations nor arms could do ; they had driven the 
 people not out of their affection for the cause of the 
 national constitution, but out of all sympathy with the 
 ways of its representatives then in power. 
 
 A more complete or more wholesome political dis- 
 content never affected the Kentucky people. A con- 
 1 See Collins, i. p. 163. 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 365 
 
 test into which they had entered with really noble emo- 
 tions had degenerated into a petty political game. They 
 felt that their vast sacrifices had brought them sore evils 
 for reward. 
 
 The good humor arising from the end of the war 
 was still further disturbed by innumerable interferences 
 with every form of civil life. These cases are far too 
 numerous for separate noting. This may serve as a 
 sample : A preacher of the Methodist Church was im- 
 prisoned because he opposed a union between the North 
 and South wings of his church, and was detained in 
 confinement without trial until October, 1865 ; for al- 
 though the war was over, martial law was maintained 
 in Kentucky. Every petty officer commanding a post 
 had summary jurisdiction over the persons of the peo- 
 ple, which he could exercise to gratify private malice 
 or to increase his sense of personal importance. 
 
 When, on November 30th, the other border States 
 were relieved from the suspension of the right of habeas 
 corpus, this writ was not restored to Kentucky.^ Two 
 
 1 The long continuance of the suspension of the habeas corpus act 
 in Kentucky, after it had been restored to the other border States, is 
 to be explained by the fact that the Republican party secured sub- 
 stantial control of the other States, while Kentucky, though she had 
 been the only one of the slave-holding States that had shown a very 
 decided loyalty to the Federal cause, had eluded all the efforts of the 
 Republican leaders to cajole or coerce her into its fold. They chose 
 to assume that Kentucky was at this time disloyal, hostility to their 
 party and disloyalty being then to their minds synonymous terms. At 
 this time the Republican party was principally in the control of men 
 who had no knowledge of the war, no sympathy with its sufferings or 
 its nobler emotions. They had received great political, and often great 
 pecuniary, profit from its events. Unhesitatingly they stigmatized as 
 disloyal the Commonwealth which had given as large a share of its 
 life and treasure to maintain the Union as any other State, which had 
 borne patientlv and unflinchingly the most grievous burdens of the 
 struggle, and liad in fact clung more closely tc th3 traditions of the 
 Union than any other part of the country. 
 
366 KENTUCKY, 
 
 years had now elapsed since this writ was suspended ; 
 the people had borne with the loss of this, the dearest 
 right of a free people, during the trials of actual war 
 impatiently at times, but on the whole with becoming 
 calmness ; now, when the State was free from disturb- 
 ances which the civil law could not control, this vassal- 
 age to the military arm became intolerable. 
 
 At this stage of their troubles new evils developed in 
 the conduct of the P'reedman's Bureau. This organiza- 
 tion was probably necessary in the States that had been 
 in the rebellion, but there was nothing in the relations 
 between the negro and the white races in Kentucky that 
 made it necessary to extend its operations to that State. 
 
 The first work of the bureau was well calculated to 
 breed difficulty. An act of Congress, passed after the 
 emancipation jjroclamation, which, as is well known, did 
 not affect slavery in Kentucky, provided that the wives 
 and children of negroes enlisted in the United States 
 army should be free. This act was clearly unconstitu- 
 tional, as it deprived people of property without due 
 process of law. There were many thousand women 
 and children in Kentucky belonging in the families of 
 black soldiers. The Freedman's Bureau undertook to 
 compel the owners of these people to pay them wages 
 for all the time that had elapsed since the enlistment of 
 their fathers and husbands. The first suit was brought 
 against the distinguished Garrett Davis, senator from 
 Kentucky, one of the most resolute Union men in the 
 State, one who may be ranked with those who had done 
 the most for the Union cause. These prosecutions were 
 entirely fruitless, save in the further irritation of the 
 people, which seems to have been their whole purpose. 
 
 When the legislature met in December, 1865, it was 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 867 
 
 found to be more reactionary than it was supposed to 
 be at the time of the election. It at once proceeded to 
 clear away the whole of the legislation that alienated 
 and disfranchised those lately in the Confederate army. 
 By twenty-one to fifteen in the senate, and sixty-two 
 to thirty-three in the house, it repealed the law that 
 consigned to the penitentiary those Confederate soldiers 
 who invaded the State. It repealed the expatriation 
 act by a vote of twenty-two to twelve in the senate, and 
 sixty-two to thirty-three in the house.-^ All the other 
 laws passed to disqualify or punish persons for sympa- 
 thy with the rebellion were swept away. There can be 
 no question of the wisdom of this action ; the returned 
 Confederates included a very vakiable portion of the 
 State life, and their restoration to citizenship dictated by 
 a sound statesmanship had only good consequences. The 
 dangers arising from the animosities of the war were at 
 once done away with, and the breaches that were made 
 in the society of the rebellious States by the continued 
 disfranchisement of its citizens were avoided. It was 
 an absolutely safe measure, considered even from the 
 point of view of Federal politics. The experience of 
 the Confederate soldiers in the years gone by had de- 
 stroyed all desire of resistance to the Federal authority. 
 It is doubtful if these men had been polled after their 
 return to Kentucky whether they would have voted for 
 a peaceable secession of the Confederate States. The 
 problem of secession had been worked out to the end ; 
 the result was generally accepted by the soldiers of 
 the Confederacy as final. 
 
 To have maintained the isolation of these returned 
 Confederates would have been an act of political mad- 
 1 Collins, i. 1G6. 
 
368 KENTUCKY. 
 
 Less, and in receiving them in friendliness, the State of 
 Kentucky did an act that unfortunately was not imi- 
 tated by the Federal government. AVhen in the centu- 
 ries to come the historian looks over the graves of all 
 those who took part in the Civil War, and sees their 
 acts cleared of all the cloud of prejudice that even now 
 envelops them, we must believe that these acts of rec- 
 onciliation will stand forth as the noblest features in 
 the history of this Commonwealth. He will see in them 
 the best possible evidence of the civil strength, of the 
 State making and State preserving power, of this peo- 
 ple. He will certainly note the fact that the Union 
 party in a border State, when passions were infuriated 
 in the presence of immediate war, had a higher element 
 of reason in their action than was found in the whole 
 Federal Union, the greater and dominant part of which 
 saw nothing of war except in the mind's eye. 
 
 The last important problem left by the war was the 
 question of negro testimony in the courts. The old 
 slavery laws in Kentucky limited the testimony of the 
 negro in many ways ; white mt^n could not be convicted 
 of grave crime by their evidence. These laws should 
 have been at once repealed, and it is clearly to the dis- 
 credit of the State that they remained upon the statute 
 books until 1872, though negro testimony was admitted 
 by the courts in 1871.^ There is, however, some ex- 
 cuse for this delay. The Freedman's Bureau had con- 
 stituted itself the keepers of the whole negro popula- 
 tion, and had in an unfortunate way removed them 
 from the control of the ordinarj^ civil law of the State. 
 To the appeal for the abrogation of the statute the peo- 
 ple answered. Do away with this interference with the 
 1 Collins, i. 214. 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 369 
 
 neoToes and we will give them equal position before the 
 law. When in 1872 the end of this system of super- 
 vision of the negro population by the Freedmau's Bu- 
 reau was abandoned, the resistance to the complete as- 
 similation of the negro with the white in all matters of 
 the law came about. The negro has been found to be 
 a very trustworthy witness, and none regret his full 
 admission to the courts. 
 
 The frictions between the provost marshals and the 
 Freedmau's Bureau on the one side, and the irritated 
 and resisting people on the other, bred a spirit of law- 
 lessness that came up after the first trouble with the 
 guerrillas had nearly passed away. This series of dis- 
 turbances is commonly known as the Ku Klux out- 
 rages: as is well known these troubles were common 
 to the whole South. They were less serious in Ken- 
 tucky than elsewhere. 
 
 It is diificult to ascertain the precise motive of this 
 outbreak of violence, but as nearly as it can be deter- 
 mined it was as follows : The sudden closing of the war 
 left a considerable amount of social rubbish within tlio 
 State, both white and black. The negroes, as a rule, 
 behaved exceedingly well in their unaccustomed condi- 
 tion, accepting their new lot of citizenship in an excel- 
 lent spirit ; but a portion of them, especially those who 
 had been employed in the army as teamsters and as 
 camp servants, proved very troublesome. Nearly the 
 whole of this part of the negro people had gathered 
 into small separate settlements away from their orig- 
 inal homes, and were under the influeuce of a bad class 
 of white leaders. This demoralized condition of the 
 lower classes of blacks led to a large amount of steal- 
 ing ; no farmer could keep his sheep or pigs from their 
 24 
 
870 KENTUCKY. 
 
 furtive hands ; usually the thieving was not accompanied 
 by violence, but in sonae cases the trouble was more se- 
 rious. In many counties the negroes organized them- 
 selves into marauding bands ; there were a number of 
 outrages upon women, an oilense that had always been 
 particularly abhorrent to the people of Kentucky, and 
 which they have always visited with condign punish- 
 ment. 
 
 In its beginning, at least in Kentucky, the Ku K4ux 
 K Ian was probably designed to restrain and punish these 
 transgressions. It doubtless in the outset did certain 
 rude and effective justice. Its cheap mystic accompani- 
 ments were certainly well designed to strike terror to 
 the superstitious blacks. When it had accomplished the 
 little good that was possible to a system so fundamen- 
 tally evil, it fell into the hands of the most wretched 
 class of the population, the very element it was designed 
 to overthrow, and became a great curse to society. 
 
 For a time the Ku Klux organization defied the 
 power of the civil law ; the secrecy of the action and 
 the terrorism exercised on witnesses, made it impossible 
 to apply adequate punishment through the courts. 
 
 Beofinninoj in 18G6, this evil svstem continued in in- 
 termittent action until 1873. Like most social evils in 
 a vigorous state, this system finally brought about its 
 own remedy. For years the country folk tolerated the 
 outrages for the profit that they brought to them ; their 
 pigs were safer, even if the common people of the 
 realm did suffer a bit. The old dislike of lawlessness, 
 common to well organized societies, was lessened by the 
 long time of strife. For several years the Ku Klux 
 vented its outrages upon the essentially criminal class, 
 the rough justice of many of their actions made the 
 
TUE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 371 
 
 mass of the people pardon their worst crimes. Finally, 
 there came a general sense that they were going too 
 far, and that they should no longer be tolerated. When 
 this feeling became general they were speedily crushed 
 out. With the Ku Klux disappeared the last remnant 
 of the greater ills that came in the train of the war. 
 
 Regarding the Ku Klux system and the Freedman's 
 Bureau as the closing evils of the war, we may accept 
 1873 as the last year of that great revolution, which 
 began in 1860, moved swiftly to the state of war, raged 
 for four years with a fury of thought, words, and ac- 
 tions unequaled in any struggle of the race, and then 
 for eight years left its wreckage to trouble men weary 
 with the nobler part of their great labor. 
 
 That part of the development of Kentucky which 
 can be in any proper sense termed historic ended in 
 1873, with the sweeping away of the last cloud left by 
 the war ; all the rest of its life is still in the process of 
 evolution. Before we turn to consider the present con- 
 dition of the State let us bring before our minds the 
 outline of these years of rapid change through which 
 this people had just passed. In 1860, when after in- 
 finite debate Kentucky slowly came to the remarkable 
 resolution that she would bar her doors to the great 
 storm that was about to move heaven and earth about 
 her, the Commonwealth was still a mediieval society in 
 all its essential qualities ; the institution of slavery had 
 acted like a pickle to preserve unchanged much of the 
 notions that belonged in other centuries of the race's 
 life. Her very resolution to stand aloof in a war in 
 which the nineteenth century fought against the sev- 
 enteenth, shows that the people, despite an intense in- 
 terest in politics, had not come to a point of view 
 
372 KENTUCKY. 
 
 whence they could see where their social life stood in 
 the world. They were as much out of the world of 
 their day as if they had been shut in on every side by 
 mountain heights ; a clean-blooded, land-loving, fairly 
 thrifty lot, they had, through their activities, not suf- 
 fered any of the degradation that comes to other races 
 from their connection with slaves. They had escaped 
 the poverty of their beginnings, and had attained to an 
 almost ideal abundance of the primal needs of civili- 
 zation. Their physical condition was probably better 
 than that of any other population in the world. This 
 is shown by the statistics of the Sanitary Commission. 
 
 This beneficent society not only did an admirable 
 work of charity during the war, but it left a valuable 
 body of fact in its carefully made measurements of two 
 hundred and fifty thousand men. These measurements 
 were so tabulated as to separate men from different 
 parts of the country. The results were carefully col- 
 lated and classed by the distinguished mathematician, 
 Dr. B. A Gould, now well known as the astronomer 
 of the Argentine Republic. From this excellent digest 
 of results of the measurements made by the commission 
 the extracts given in the accompanying table are taken. 
 Dr. Gould's results give the measurements of troops 
 from Tennessee and from Kentucky, but as those from 
 Kentucky were doubtless far more numerous than those 
 from Tennessee, for the reason that the Federal re- 
 cruits from Tennessee were relatively few in number, 
 we may safely regard these tables as representing the 
 physical conditions of the Kentucky people. (See table 
 on page 373.) 
 
 Moreover, the general physical status of the popula- 
 tion in Kentucky and Tennessee is much alike, though 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 373 
 
 A Table of Measurements of American White Men compiled from Re- 
 port of the Sanitary Commission, made from Measurements of the 
 United States Volunteers during the Civil War. By B. A. Gould. 
 
 Mean Height. 
 
 Nativity. 
 
 New England 
 
 N. Y., N.J.,Penn. . . . 
 Ohio, Indiana .... 
 Micii., Mo., Illinois . . 
 Seaboard Slave States . . 
 Kentucky, Tenn. . . . 
 Free States west of Miss. R. 
 British Maritime Provinces 
 
 Canada 
 
 England 
 
 Scotland 
 
 Ireland 
 
 Germany 
 
 Scandinavia 
 
 No. of 
 men. 
 
 152,370 
 
 273,026 
 
 220,796 
 
 71,196 
 
 '56,334 
 
 3,811 
 
 6,320 
 
 31,698 
 
 30,037 
 
 7,313 
 
 83,128 
 
 89,021 
 
 6,782 
 
 
 67.834 
 67.-529 
 68.1691 
 67.822 
 
 68'.665 
 67.419 
 67.510 
 67.086 
 66.741 
 67.258 
 66.951 
 
 139.89 
 
 140.83 
 145.37 
 141.78 
 140.99 
 149.85 
 
 143.59 
 141.35 
 137.61 
 137.85 
 139.18 
 140.37 
 148.14 
 
 Mean Cir- 
 
 CUMFERi;j;CE 
 
 OF Chest. 
 
 4; ci 
 
 II Iris 111 
 
 i-i »-i 3 
 
 3 a o 
 .s o ^ 
 
 36.71 
 3^.06 
 37.53 
 37.29 
 36.64 
 37.83 
 37.53 
 37.13 
 37.14 
 36.91 
 37.57 
 37,54 
 37.20 
 39.39 
 
 
 34.11 
 
 34.38 
 34.95 
 34.04 
 34.23 
 35.30 
 34.84 
 34.81 
 34.35 
 34.30 
 34.69 
 35.27 
 34.74 
 35.37 
 
 22.02 
 22.10 
 22.11 
 22.19 
 21.93 
 22.32 
 21.97 
 22.13 
 22.11 
 22.16 
 22.23 
 
 22.09 
 22.37 
 
 C cj 
 •^ O) 
 
 C.S 
 
 r-fl 
 
 £ a 
 
 295 
 237 
 486 
 466 
 1600 
 848 
 184 
 237 
 177 
 103 
 178 
 84 
 106 
 221 
 
 1 Slave States, not including Kentucky and Tennessee. 
 
 all who know the two States will doubtless agree with 
 the assertion that the Kentucky people are physically 
 the more vigorous of the two.^ It should also be no- 
 
 1 Tennessee has been so unfortunate as to receive a large amount of 
 blood derived from the settlements made in the seventeenth century 
 on the waters of Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds. These people were 
 imported from various parts of Europe by a land compan3^ A por- 
 tion of the population was excellent, but the mass of it was b}' far the 
 worst of any brouj^jht to America under English auspices. 
 
 From these settlements has come the greater part of the "sand 
 hillers," "crackers," "dirt eaters," "red necks," and other oppro- 
 briously named varieties of poor Avhites in the South. Kentucky has 
 been so fortunate as to escape any large share of this population. 
 Still, any one, whose eye is trained to recognize this streak of blood, 
 can occasionally identify families derived from it, especially along 
 the southern border of the State. The western march of this unhappy 
 mongrel people passed south of Kentucky. They may be traced 
 across the country from the Carolina coast to Central Arkansas and 
 Southern Missouri. 
 
374 KENTUCKY. 
 
 ticed that the Confederacy received the youth and 
 strength from the richest part of the Kentucky soiL 
 The so-called Blue Grass soil sent the greater part of its 
 men of the richer families into the Confederate army, 
 while the "U^iion troops, though from all parts of the 
 State, came in greatest abundance from those who dwelt 
 on thiniiejc* soils, where the people were of a less ex- 
 uberant type of body. It is most likely that the aver- 
 ages given in the tables would have been distinctly 
 greater if they had included the thirty or forty thousand 
 men who went into the rebel army. Even without 
 these corrections the form of the men, as determined by 
 the measurement of fifty thousand troops, is surprising. 
 Their* average height is nearly an inch greater than that 
 of tli^ New P^ngland troops, they exceed them equally 
 in girth of chest, and the circumference of head is also 
 very much larger. In size they come up to the level 
 of the picked regiments of the northern armies of Eu- 
 rope. Yet these results are obtained from what was a 
 levy en masse, for such in effect is a call to arms that 
 takes more than one in ten of the total population. 
 
 Although of fighting ancestrj^ this people had not 
 been generally inured to war for more tlian a genera- 
 tion. They proved, however, to be excellent material 
 for the varied work of soldiers. Of the hundred and 
 thirty thousand or more Kentucky men who bore arms 
 during the Civil War a very good report can be given. 
 Both as infantry and cavalry they did exceedingly effec- 
 tive service in both armies. The Kentucky troops in 
 the Confederate army being fewer in number, and from 
 the richer and more educated part of the State, were as 
 a whole a finer body of men than the Federal troops 
 from the Commonwealth. The rebel exiles were the 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 375 
 
 first running from the press, and naturally had the pe- 
 culiar quality of their vintage more clearly marked than 
 the later product. We find in this remarkable body 
 of men a great capacity at once for dash and for en- 
 durance. The force under Morgan, which owed its pe- 
 culiar excellence more to the quality of the men and 
 subordinate commanders than to the distinguished leader, 
 developed a new feature iu the art of war; vigilance, 
 daring, fertility of resource, a race-horse power of hurl- 
 ing all the husbanded force of body and mind into a 
 period of ceaseless activity, were necessary for these 
 wonderful raids. It is commonly supposed that the 
 French are the masters of light cavalry operations, but 
 all the history of its famous cavalry does not afford such 
 a record as may be found in one of Morgan's many 
 raids. ^ The reader, unless perchance his experience aid 
 him, will not be able to imagine the native force and 
 endurance that is required for such work. To break 
 through the lines of the enemy, to live for weeks in an 
 atmosphere of battle, lighting and destroying by day 
 and marching by night, makes a life that only men of 
 very tough fibre can endure. If we desire evidence that 
 the men of Kentucky were of good condition, we can 
 perhaps find the best proof of it in the history of the 
 light cavalry brigades that they furnished to the Con- 
 federate army. 
 
 The history of the Federal brigades of mounted 
 troops makes almost as good a showing for these quali- 
 ties. They lacked subordinate officers of Morgan's type. 
 
 1 The reader will find himself repaid by a reading of the excellent 
 History of Morgan's Cavalry, b}' General Basil W. Duke, a soldier 
 not second to his chief in ability, and to whom a large part of the 
 efficiency of that command was due. 
 
876 KENTUCKY. 
 
 There were many excellent men among her officers, 
 but no one brigade had such lieutenants as Basil Duke, 
 Hines, Howard Smith, Grigsby, and a host of other ex- 
 traordinary men that led his forces.-^ A curious feature 
 in the history of Morgan's command was that it was 
 officered and controlled almost entirely by persons of no 
 military education, — Grigsby, who came into it late in 
 the service, being the only West Pointer in the force. 
 The nearly uniform failure of civilian commanders in 
 the larger operations of the war is in striking contrast 
 with the admirable success of untrained men in tills pe- 
 culiar field of action. 
 
 The success of the Kentucky troops in the infantry 
 service was as marked as that of the mounted arm. Of 
 their soldierly quality and endurance a part of the his- 
 tory of the First Kentucky Confederate Brigade, given 
 in outline in the foot-note, must serve as a sample.^ 
 
 1 That these men who made Morgan's brigade so able were not mere 
 madcap soldiers is proven by the subsequent history' of those who 
 survived their perilous and weary service. Basil Duke is now a dis- 
 tinguished lawyer; Hines, the chief justice of Kentucky; Howard 
 Smith was long the auditor of Kentucky, and is now its railway 
 commissioner; Grigsb}', now dead, worn out by his wounds, was a 
 prominent legislator and a most valuable citizen; a host of other 
 names could be added to these. 
 
 2 The following statement concerning the history of this brigade 
 during the campaign of 18G4 was given me by my friend, General 
 Fayette Hewett, now auditor of the Commonwealth, who was adjutant 
 of the command: — 
 
 "On the 7th of May, 1864, the Kentucky Brigade marched out of 
 Dalton, 1,140 strong. The hospital reports show that, up to Septem- 
 ber 1, 1,860 wounds were taken by the command. This includes the 
 killed ; but many were struck several times in one engagement, in 
 which case the wounds were counted as one. In two battles over 
 fifty-one per cent, of all engaged Avere killed or wounded. During 
 the whole campaign there were not more than ten desertions. The 
 campaign ended with 240 men able to do duty; less than fifty were 
 without wounds." 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 377 
 
 It will be seen from this record, that in the long 
 fighting retreat of Johnston's army this command did 
 a work unparalleled in the history of retreats in the 
 face of continued defeat. In one hundred days this 
 little war-worn band, all that was left from the wreck 
 of a score of battles, numbering at the outset of the 
 retreat only 1,140 men, took 1,860 mortal or serious 
 wounds ; in two actions they lost over fifty per cent, of 
 all en orated, and at the end, with but two hundred and 
 forty fit for duty, there were but ten men who could be 
 reckoned as deserters. The reader should remember 
 that this campaign came at a time when the hope of 
 the Confederate armies was well-nigh gone, and that 
 tkey were fighting amid despair. The custom in the 
 Federal army of making composite brigades, each con- 
 taining regiments from several States, makes it impos- 
 sible to cite any instances of endurance among these 
 troops that can be compared with that of the First 
 Confederate Kentucky Brigade. Still, the history of 
 individual regiments will show that practically the same 
 qualities belonged in many of the commands. It could 
 be made clear, if space allowed the showing, that the 
 best fighting material came from the richest and most 
 elevated population of the Commonwealth, — those dis- 
 tricts where education was the most general, and where 
 the commands contained a large proportion of men who, 
 by family and training, were the most natural leaders of 
 action. 
 
 The destruction of life that took place during the 
 war is not easily traceable. The returns of the adju- 
 tant-general show only the deaths reported to him. 
 They do not include the loss from death or wounds, the 
 hundreds of small fights between the Home Guards 
 
378 KENTUCKY. 
 
 and other irregular troops, and tlie raiding parties of the 
 enemy. It is likely that the deaths by wounds in the 
 two Kentucky armies amounted to at least ten thou- 
 sand, and, as in all modern warfare, the loss on the bat- 
 tle-field was small compared with that which came from 
 disease. This loss by disease was particularly heavy in 
 the Kentucky troops, for the reason that the medical 
 inspection of the troops was very slight ; a vast number 
 of boys and old men were taken into service, and among 
 these the death rate is always large. In the cemetery 
 at Anderson ville alone there are the bodies of four hun- 
 dred and ninety - two Federal soldiers from Kentucky- 
 regiments, not counting those who enlisted in the regi- 
 ments of other States. It is probable that in the two 
 armies the State lost not less than twenty thousand by 
 unreported disease ; to these must be added a vast army 
 of men who, though living, stood beside their graves, 
 shorn of their limbs, afflicted with internal disease bred 
 by camp and march, or prematurely aged by the swift 
 expenditure of force that such war demands. We will 
 not be amiss in estimating that one half the manhood 
 of the generation that had its centre of life in the sixth 
 decade of this centur}'- was swept away or rendered un- 
 serviceable to the Commonwealth by the events of the 
 war. A large part of the loss of life took j^lace in small 
 engagements that have no place in our histories. From 
 a manuscript summary of the history of the war, from 
 the pen of my friend Captain L. R. Hawthorne, it ap- 
 pears that there were one hundred and thirty-eight com- 
 bats within the borders of the State. 
 
 The loss of property was proportionately as great as 
 the loss of life. In 1<S62, despite the inflation of the 
 currency, the auditor's report showed a falling off of 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 379 
 
 over fifty million dollars, a large part of the total value 
 at the preceding census. In 1865 the whole valuation 
 of the slave property, which, in 1860, was estimated 
 at over a hundred million dollars, had entirely disap- 
 peared. The other elements of wealth, though measured 
 in a currency that was inflated to the amount of fifty 
 per cent., had greatly diminished. Although the war as 
 carried on in Kentucky had been on the whole a sin- 
 gularly decent struggle, the actual destruction of prop- 
 erty was very large. Nearly all the live stock was swept 
 away. A considerable part of the houses had been 
 burned ; cattle and other stock had disappeared without 
 compensation ; fences were gone, and the forest, quick 
 to recover its grasp on the rich soil, had changed vast 
 districts of fertile fields into thickets that had to be re- 
 won to the plough. Nor did the vast expenditure of 
 money that took place in the rear of the Federal army 
 prove of much advantage to Kentucky. At the time 
 when the farmers might have profited by high prices, 
 the able-bodied men were in the armies, and the greater 
 part of their fields were tilled, only for scanty bread, by 
 the hands of women, children, and the aged men. Al- 
 though Kentucky suffered less than her rebellious sisters 
 of the South, the shock to the Commonwealth arising 
 from the conjoined loss of life and property defies ex- 
 pression in words, nor do the ordinary accidents of so- 
 ciety supply any analogy. When a city is burned its 
 men remain ; a commercial crisis destroys neither the 
 men nor the productive power of a State ; a pestilence 
 leaves the real pro[)erty untouched ; but the destruction 
 of a long continued civil war is a thing by itself com- 
 bining all the evils which an ordinary society can suffer, 
 and adds to those a new element of ruin in the over- 
 throw of the precious trust in civil government. 
 
380 KENTUCKY. 
 
 There was a pause of exhaustion after this time of 
 trial that lasted for years, but it was not deep or long 
 compared with the periods of inaction that in other 
 countries have followed destructive civil wars. Still, 
 when the reader asks why Kentucky and the o<-her 
 Southern States have remained so relatively inactive 
 for the twenty years that have elapsed since the sur- 
 render of the Confederate armies, he may find his an- 
 swer in the physical trials, the destruction of life, en- 
 ergy, and property, that the catastrophe of the Civil 
 War brought upon the States that bore the real burden 
 of the disaster ; not the burden of taxation and of death 
 alone, but added to these all the burdens of actual war. 
 
 The political history of Kentucky, which has been 
 treated in connection with the history of the Civil War, 
 is evidently the most curious chapter. The other really 
 Southern States, with the exception of Missouri, show 
 in their speedy secession the influence of the mob spirit 
 which at once separates a community from the tradi- 
 tions of order upon which the development of a society 
 depends. The most important point in the history of 
 Kentucky is the fact that she alone escaped the con- 
 tagion of excitement that swept her sister States into a 
 hasty rebellion. The reasons for this happy deliverance 
 are, as we have found, hard to describe. They may, 
 however, be summed up in the following propositions. 
 
 First, the Kentucky population had been brought 
 into a spirit of conservatism by their unhappy expe- 
 rience with the results of rash political action. The 
 episode of the old and new courts, and the financial dif- 
 ficulties out of which that trouble grew, was a very val- 
 uable education of the public mind. It was the good 
 fortune of Kentucky to be led out of this wilderness of 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 381 
 
 evil politics by men of strong conservative instincts, 
 who had the power of imparting their motives to a very 
 sympathetic people ; chief among these conservators was 
 Henry Clay. 
 
 The influence of this interesting man in national poli- 
 tics has turned out to be smaller than it seemed at tlie 
 time of his death to be, but his generous, though com- 
 promising, spirit had a singularly wholesome effect 
 upon a people overmuch inclined to rash political ac- 
 tion. If we could accurately determine the origin of 
 the singular deliberativeness that marked the Ken- 
 tucky people during the Civil War, we should doubtless 
 find that Clay's influence was of great moment in the 
 determination of their attitude. 
 
 Next we should note the fact that Kentucky at this 
 time was singularly rich in men of decided political 
 capacity, and of fair training, if not in the science, at 
 least in the art, of politics. The curious independence 
 of the early stations and settlements led to the develop- 
 ment of the political habit in many hundreds of fami- 
 lies. While in the more Southern States the tendency 
 of the life was to give the leadership into the hands 
 of a few dominant families, in Kentucky the influences 
 combined widely to diffuse the qualities of leadership. 
 When many of the most distinguished families in Ken- 
 tucky pronounced for secession, there still remained an 
 ample supply of natural leaders to take charge of the 
 resistance to that project which actuated the masses of 
 the people. 
 
 In this problem of 1860, as in all other forms of polit- 
 ical action, there was the utmost diversity of opinion. 
 It is hardly too much to say that each thinking man 
 was in his thoughts a party by himself, and only in his 
 
882 KENTUCKY. 
 
 actions a member of one of the two great political divis- 
 ions that mark American politics. 
 
 This singular diversity of judgment w^as of much 
 profit in the great trial, for it served to make a stam- 
 pede into secession impossible. The secession party 
 beat itself to pieces against this mass of diversified opin- 
 ion ; its small, but singularly compact and able force, 
 that in other States drove the passive body of the peo- 
 ple before it, made no real impression on the critical 
 and contentious army of independent minded men who 
 could neither be frightened into obedience, nor excited 
 to premature violence. The first Confederate assault 
 upon the State constitution was fairly broken by the 
 steadfast disputation that it encountered. Against that 
 babel of tongues its vigorous onset went to pieces. 
 
 The project of neutrality also grew out of this ex- 
 ceeding diversity of opinion. It is likely that when 
 neutrality was determined on not nciore than one tenth 
 of the white people could have been classed as seces- 
 sionists, probably not more than that number as unqual- 
 ified Union men, — that is, men who were willing to 
 take the ground the Union men occupied after the eman- 
 cipation proclamation. By far the larger part of the 
 population were of a mind to do their duty by the Union 
 as long as the constitution was respected. There was 
 ever a strong love of the Federal government, but it 
 was not the blind devotion of the followers of the Stu- 
 arts for their king, but a sober affection for the magnifi- 
 cent ideal of the American Union. The strongest sense 
 of instinctive loyalty which existed in this eminently 
 practical people was given to the State, where it histor- 
 ically and naturally belonged. 
 
 The intensity of the loyalty to the State differs very 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 383 
 
 much in the various American Commonwealths. In 
 some of these communities where there has been little 
 local history, the national idea is predominant. In 
 others, where the population is coherent and homoge- 
 neous, and circumstances have given a large sphere of 
 action to the State, the sense of devotion to the Common- 
 wealth is very strong. This was tlie case in Kentucky, 
 as is shown by the previous brief account. This State 
 had worked out its history in a singularly separate and 
 independent way. The fathers and grandfathers of the 
 generation that was active in 1860 had built the struct- 
 ure of the Commonwealth through great trials, and with 
 deeds of which their descendants were justly and hon- 
 orably proud. In the prospective wreck of the Federal 
 Union, which filled the people with the deepest regret, 
 their first and proper care was to save their own com- 
 munity from overwhelming calamity. Out of this feel- 
 ing came the neutrality project. It gave a period for 
 observation during the swiftly developing, but at first 
 obscure, motives of the more Southern States. 
 
 As soon as it became evident that there was cohe- 
 sion enough in the Northern States of the broken Union 
 to give a chance of holding the frame-work of the nation 
 together, so that its total wreck could be avoided, the 
 Kentucky people steadily inclined more and more away 
 from the cause of the Confederacy. The very unanimity 
 and want of deliberation of the action of the secedinof 
 Southern States destroyed day by day the sympathy 
 born of the kinship of the people. When the provoca- 
 tion to resistance was given by Polk's action in seizing 
 Columbus and Zollicoffer's invasion, it was welcomed as 
 a reason for casting their lot with the Northern States. 
 
 As soon as this momentous step was taken, the people 
 
384 KENTUCKY. 
 
 of Kentucky were as a whole as decided as they here- 
 tofore had been considerate. The speed with which they 
 filled their quota of troops, and the rapidity with which 
 they provided money for the Federal needs, despite the 
 fact that their State was the seat of war and had sent 
 an army of over forty thousand men to the Confederacy, 
 is remarkable. No other State in the Union gave pro- 
 portionately so much or so freely to the contribution of 
 men and money to the cause of the Union. Besides 
 this inestimable contribution to the needs of the Union, 
 the State had at all times a local force that was pro- 
 vided for domestic needs. The total contribution of 
 Kentucky to the Federal army amounted to over eighty- 
 six thousand men, exclusive of eleven thousand negroes 
 enlisted into the United States army within the State. 
 
 The State Guard and Home Guard forces not counted 
 in this estimate amounted in the average to not less than 
 ten thousand men. Adding to it the men in the Con- 
 federate army, the whole contribution to the conflict 
 amounted to a levy en masse on the population, and 
 gives the State a just claim to having furnished to the 
 Civil War more men, in proportion to its population 
 and the duration of the struggle, than were ever fur- 
 nished by any Commonwealth in any modern war. 
 
 No sooner had the war fairly begun than the people 
 became aware that there were grave dangers menacing 
 their civil law from the rash and tyrannical conduct of 
 the military commanders of the Federal army. With- 
 out abating the energy of their efforts to second the 
 military work of the Federal government, they, with 
 equal determination and judgment, fought against this 
 evil. They made little evident headway in this battle, 
 — they were stemming an overwhelming flood of govern- 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 385 
 
 mental ills, — but they had the profit of then- opposi- 
 tion in the conscientious and determined protest against 
 the iniquitous system that strove to govern them by 
 military juntas. They at least preserved their rever- 
 ence for the system of civil government, and when the 
 war ended they had the social order for which they 
 struggled essentially unimpaired by the nefarious acts 
 of those who should have been their friends. 
 
 The result of this strenuous though orderly struggle 
 with the excesses of the military spirit and the wild 
 legislation of the Republican Congress was to drive the 
 State into intense political antagonism to the party that 
 had the control of the government. This has unjustly 
 been assumed to prove the essential sympathy of the 
 Kentucky people with the Southern cause. No one who 
 is at all conversant with the inner history of Kentucky 
 can fail to see the error of this idea. The best sol- 
 diers of the Federal party, those who struck the hard- 
 est blows at the Confederacy, were the leaders in the 
 antagonism to the militarism that was forced upon them. 
 General Bramlette, one of the boldest and most effective 
 of .the original Union men, was a radical Republican 
 in his humor when he came to the governorship, yet 
 we find him driven into the fiercest antagonism against 
 these methods. Colonels Jacob and Wolford, and a 
 host of other good soldiers, were ready to do battle with 
 one hand against the rebellion, and with the other to 
 combat for the life of the civil law. While the Re- 
 publican party in Congress was led by men who knew 
 nothing of war, and was mostly supported by those to 
 whom the war brought no immediate ills, this people, 
 with the battle about their firesides, had a double com- 
 25 
 
386 KENTUCKY. 
 
 bat to wage. That they did not falter in either duty 
 is much to their credit. 
 
 When the war ended, the parties in Kentucky were 
 reorganized on new lines. The conduct of the Repub- 
 licans in regard to the civil rights of the State during 
 the active period of the struggle, the disgust arising 
 from the emancipation of the slaves without compensa- 
 tion to loyal owners, the acts of the Freedman's Bureau, 
 and other proceedings hostile to the governmental in- 
 tegrity of the State, arrayed an overwhelming majority 
 of the people on the Democratic, which was then the 
 Conservative, side. 
 
 Perhaps the most satisfactory feature in the close of 
 the Civil War was the really quick restoration of the 
 civil order in the State and the perfect reunion of the 
 divided people. The prompt and complete abrogation 
 of the severe penalties laid upon the Confederate sol- 
 diers and sympathizers greatly contributed to this speedy 
 return to the conditions of peace. In this course the 
 people of Kentucky set an excellent but unheeded ex- 
 ample to the Federal govern ment. By this action they 
 avoided all risks of having a large part of their citizens 
 parted in spirit from the life and work of the Common- 
 wealth. This reconciliation was helped by the fact that 
 both Federals and Confederates had played a manly 
 part in the struggle. Not only had the soldiers in both 
 parties shown themselves to be brave and manly men in 
 the field, but the Kentucky troops on both sides had 
 done all in their power to make war decent and hon- 
 orable, and to lighten its burdens on non-combatants. 
 They could wear their laurels and live their lives to- 
 gether without shame. 
 
 What was left of the forty thousand who went away 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 387 
 
 into the Southern service came back to their place in the 
 State sadder and wiser men, yet the better citizens for 
 their dearly bought experience. We search in vain for 
 any evidence of hatred or even dislike among these men 
 who were so lately in arms against each other. In all 
 the walks of life, in the courts and in the legislature, 
 as well as in the relations of kindred, we find these old 
 enemies going together to their work of repairing the 
 ruin that war had brought on the State. Fighting at 
 times their battles over again in good-natured talk, but 
 each dearer to the other for the fearful parting of the 
 war. 
 
 The historian will always admire this episode of rec- 
 onciliation. Something of it is now seen in the wiping 
 out of enmity that came to the whole country after the 
 deplorable reconstruction troubles of the South. In 
 Kentucky, however, it came at once ; there was no period 
 of doubt, no hesitation in the return of peace. The 
 spring of 1865 did not quicken the seed in the fields 
 more speedily than it did the affection of these once 
 parted children of Kentucky. 
 
 The financial management of the Commonwealth dur- 
 ing the war next demands consideration. We have 
 given this part of the history of Kentucky some atten- 
 tion up to the time of the outbreak of the rebellion. 
 We have seen that the conservative education of the 
 people had been in good part due to their early expe- 
 riences in matters of finance, and that this training had 
 led them to a singularly careful course in the matter of 
 financial legislation and State expenditure. At the out- 
 set of the war the State owed $4,729,234.03 ; of this 
 $1,381,832.03 was the "school bond," a debt only in 
 name. In 1884 the nominal debt is $1,879,110.19, of 
 
388 KENTUCKY. 
 
 which $1,698,716.19 is the "school bond," or the sum 
 on which the State agrees to pay interest to the com- 
 mon schools. 
 
 At various times during the war the Commonwealth 
 was forced to borrow large sums of money to defray 
 the expenses of placing the Federal troops in the field 
 and maintaining her local forces ; in this work she ad- 
 vanced to the Federal government over three million 
 eight hundred thousand dollars. During and at the 
 close of the war, there was received from the sale of the 
 State's share in the assets of certain banks that closed 
 their business, a large sum of specie, which was promptly 
 sold at high prices and applied to the liquidation of her 
 debt. The Federal government slowly repaid the three 
 millions which had been advanced by Kentucky for war 
 purposes. Thus, though the debt increased rapidly dur- 
 ing the war, so carefully was it provided for by sinking 
 funds and a strict economy in public expenditures, that 
 in 1873 the State was in effect entirely out of debt. 
 The only qualifications of this statement are as follows : 
 The constitution provides that the State permanently 
 owes to the school fund a debt of about two million of 
 dollars in one bond. This was an ingenious way of 
 securing the receipt of a school revenue from any chance 
 of reckless legislation, and is not properly to be regarded 
 as a debt. Besides this the Commonwealth owed, and 
 in part still owes, the sum of $331,000 for bonds not 
 due or payable. In order to have the sense of freedom 
 from debt clear to the bucolic mind of Kentucky, a de- 
 posit of $350,000 in- United States bonds was made in 
 the New York bank where the State bonds were paya- 
 ble. This extraordinary precaution to clear away even 
 the shadow of obligation to creditors is a singular proof 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 389 
 
 of the financial conscience of this people, as well as of 
 their rather original metliods in finance. 
 
 At no time during the Civil War, nor at any other 
 time, have the bonds of Kentucky been defaulted in in- 
 terest or in principal. At no time during the war was 
 the State sorely pressed for money; the State banks and 
 the citizens, principally the former, readily took the loans 
 which were issued by the Commonwealth at their face 
 value, trusting for their repayment to the sagacity and 
 honesty with which her State treasury had always been 
 managed, and apparently with no fear that the State 
 itself would be imperiled by the struggle. Even when 
 the government of the State was driven from the capital 
 the people never for a moment lost their confidence in 
 its promises to pay. This absolute trust of the people 
 in their Commonwealth, even in the midst of war, is by 
 no means the least important feature in the history of 
 the time. It is in striking contrast with the lack of 
 confidence in the ultimate Federal success, shown by the 
 people of this country in their unwillingness to take 
 the United States loans except at an extreme deprecia- 
 tion of their face value. 
 
 It may be remarked that this low price of the United 
 States bonds is a clear evidence of the general doubt in 
 the eventual result of the war ; it shows that the judo-- 
 ment that the Union had gone to pieces, which was the 
 basis of the Kentucky effort for neutrality, was the 
 opinion of the business world, that best of all judges 
 in such matters, as well as of the Union men of this 
 country. 
 
 The business condition of Kentucky during the Civil 
 "War was better than it would have been if the State 
 had been the seat of large manufacturing industries- 
 
890 KENTUCKY. 
 
 No country can withstand the shock of war so well as 
 those that rely mainly on the soil for their support. A 
 little tilling will give bread, and if left fallow the soil 
 often has a profit from it. 
 
 This was the strength of the whole South. The 
 negroes were generally indisposed to change their hab- 
 its of labor, and they, with the old men and women, 
 were sufficient to keep up the little tillage of the fertile 
 soil necessary for food supply. With an average of 
 fifty thousand men in the Federal service under pay, 
 there was enough money to replace deficiencies arising 
 from the neglect of the larger part of the fields. The 
 result was that all suffering from famine, all impairment 
 of the native strength of the people arising from de- 
 ficient food, were avoided. 
 
 Great as was the destruction of the material basis of 
 civilization, immeasurable as was the loss from the bat- 
 tle-fields and hospitals, the war left untouched the fpun- 
 dations of the State, its vigor of blood and its fertility 
 of soil. It is doubtful if any Commonwealth ever es- 
 caped from such perils with so little in the way of vital, 
 irremediable injury. 
 
 This glance at the history of Kentucky during the 
 Civil War may lead us to a better understanding of the 
 strength that inheres in the American State, when it 
 has learned to live its individual life and to trust in its 
 native institutions. In a period of national disaster, 
 when the organization of the Federal government was 
 for a while shaken to pieces, this unit of that structure 
 holding firmly to its local government, even more firmly 
 for the sense that the higher state had fallen to pieces, 
 formed a bulwark to the cause of good government. 
 
 But for the sense of devotion to the State constitu- 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 391 
 
 tion and government th;it belonged in this people, the 
 pro-slavery excitement would doubtless have enabled 
 the secession element to sweep it into association with 
 the seceding section. Undoubtedly the sense of States 
 rights somewhat facilitated the action of the secession 
 party in the Southern Commonwealths, and made it 
 possible for them to be forced on the wave of the 
 slavery agitation out of their allegiance to the Union. 
 But its influence in this work has been exaggerated. 
 In that contest the real battle was between antago- 
 nistic civilizations. States rights was only the nominal 
 ground of the struggle, though to many it seemed the 
 real ground. 
 
 Kentucky was the only Southern State where the 
 principles of States rights found a due expression in 
 this political excitement. She alone resolved to debate 
 the question as a State, and to keep her action within 
 the limits of her constitutional provisions. It was this 
 sense of duty, by their own State laws, that gave time 
 for the deliberate thought that ended in keeping the 
 Commonwealth out of the rebellion. But for this sense 
 of duty of the people of Kentucky by their Common- 
 wealth, it seems pretty certain that the war would have 
 come upon the North with much more difficult condi- 
 tions, and the issue might have been very different from 
 its happy end. With the Confederate battle line on the 
 Ohio, and a hundred thousand more men behind it, who 
 can say that the North would have won ? 
 
CHAPTER XXL 
 
 THE NEW COMMONWEALTH. 
 
 We have in the prece(^ing chapters disposed of all 
 the trains of action that have worked out their prin- 
 cipal effects in Kentucky ; we must now pass from the 
 historical to the present life of the Commonwealth. 
 On this subject it will not be possible to say much 
 without going beyond the narrow limits of this sketch 
 of the State's history. But as the existing life is the 
 child of that which is historical, we must not leave it 
 untouched. 
 
 After the period of the Civil War there came a time 
 of stagnation which is hardly yet passed away. Thus 
 while the Northern States were moving forward on the 
 way of wealth, profiting by the expansion that the war 
 had given to their trade, while they were secured from 
 the material losses of actual war, this Commonwealth 
 has been relatively dormant, resting from the exhaus- 
 tion of the great struggle, separating itself from the 
 wreck of the olden time, and trying to find the clews to 
 the new life before it. It was to shake off the theories 
 of life proper to the seventeenth century and take on 
 the ideas of the nineteenth. 
 
 Despite this natural torpor, after four years of tre- 
 mendous struggle that used up the material and vital 
 resources of a generation, there has been a good share 
 of recuperative activity exhibited by the Commonwealth. 
 
TEE NEW COMMONWEALTH. 393 
 
 In 1873 the State set about the task of studying its re- 
 sources by reconstituting its geological survey. An in- 
 quiry into its mineral wealth was begun in 1854 and 
 continued until 1860, when the premonitions of war 
 caused the State to set about the most rigid economy, 
 and to discontinue all enterprises except those that had 
 reference to immediate needs. This new survey has 
 been maintained for twelve years at a very considerable 
 cost. In the same period no other State except Penn- 
 sylvania, which has many times the wealth of Ken- 
 tucky, has expended so much in this class of inquiries. 
 Not only has the work been directed to the economic 
 inquiries into the resources of the State, but the legis- 
 lature has willingly approved a large amount of purely 
 scientific work, which has no other end than the exten- 
 sion of those branches of learning which have an intel- 
 lectual profit alone. Since the war, over two hundred 
 thousand dollars has been spent in this important work 
 of studying the nature and resources of the Common- 
 wealth. 
 
 The question of immigration has received a very care- 
 ful consideration . both from the people at large and 
 from their representatives. The quickest form of profit 
 attainable by a State is gained by the immigration of 
 well-trained and laborious people from other lands. 
 Each adult man is, on the average, worth to society 
 not less than three thousand dollars, and a part of his 
 value goes at once into the property of every land- 
 owner in the place where he settles. 
 
 For a generation this tide of foreign life, frightened 
 from those inviting fields by slavery, has drifted by the 
 northern border of Kentucky, going to the west and 
 north to fertilize and enrich the States of the North- 
 
394 KENTUCKY. 
 
 west. Many Kentuckians have earnestly desired to 
 take the means of soliciting this immigration to the 
 Slate ; still, the majority has always been against any 
 effort in the way of direct persuasion to induce the set- 
 tlement of these people within the Commonwealth. 
 Within the last five years the legislature has instituted 
 a bureau of immigration, charged with the work of dis- 
 seminating intelligence concerning the resources of the 
 Commonwealth. It has refused to use a system of 
 agents to solicit the coming of immigrants, in the way 
 that a number of the newer States of the Northwest 
 have done ; some results are now coming from this ac- 
 tion. A good many colonies of English and German 
 and Swiss people have been founded in the State 
 within the last five years, and tlieir uniform prosperity 
 has shown that the State affords very large opportuni- 
 ties for agricultural immigrants. 
 
 There is much to say for this qualified attitude of 
 Kentucky towards immigrants. There is something 
 undignified in the battle for the newly-landed immi- 
 grants at Castle Garden, and the solicitation of immi- 
 grants in Europe which is carried on by some of the 
 Northwestern States. There is much that is perilous 
 to a new American State in the accumulation of such 
 aliens within its bounds. Kentucky has had the good 
 fortune to inherit a nearly pure English blood. Aside 
 from the diminishing negro population, the blood of the 
 people is of a singularly unmixed origin. Her success 
 in meeting the strains of the Civil War could not have 
 been secured if its people had not had this singular 
 unity of race and the solidarity of motive that it brought 
 with it. While there are doubtless evils that come from 
 this predominance of English stock and the consequent 
 
THE NEW COMMONWEALTH. 395 
 
 uniformity of the motive of the people, leading as it 
 does to a certain acceptance of existing conditions, there 
 are other dangers, and graver, which come from the 
 confusion of motives in the States that have a large 
 foreign population, that are much more menacing to 
 society. 
 
 While Kentucky is lagging behind in mere physical 
 growth as compared with the other States, there is a 
 rationality in the motive that leads to tliis slow going. 
 It may fairly be asked that the verdict as to the policy 
 of attracting immigrants by excessive inducements be 
 deferred until the results of the experiment have been 
 obtained, until the time comes for comparing the con- 
 ditions of such a Commonwealth with the mixed blood 
 of other States. Besides the want of immigration that 
 arises from the unwillingness to seek their contribution 
 of new blood by solicitation, there are other barriers 
 that have hindered the coming of immigrants into Ken- 
 tucky. The European immigrant is generally unwillino- 
 to enter into competition with negro labor; although 
 Kentucky has but a small and diminishing proportion 
 of black people, although there are large parts of the 
 State entirely without negroes, the name of a slave 
 State clings like a cloud over her reputation, and leads 
 many people to go to other more distant and less fer- 
 tile lands for their homes. There is, moreover, a prac- 
 tical obstacle arising from the difficulty with the land 
 titles in Kentucky. The peculiarities of the patent sys- 
 tem have already been noted, and the fact set forth 
 that while this system was of great value to the State 
 in the process of its settlement, it left the land titles 
 of the less occupied districts in a very uncertain state. 
 In the most populous parts of the Commonwealth, time 
 
396 KENTUCKY. 
 
 and the courts have settled the questions of boundaries 
 and ownerships ; but in the eastern part, and generally 
 in the regions where the lands are low priced enough to 
 encourage immigration, there is often a cloud of doubt 
 over the land titles that is vexatious to the stranger. 
 
 All these influences have acted to retard the accumu- 
 lation of population within the boundaries of the Com- 
 monwealth, and to leave its people to a greater extent 
 unmixed with new European blood than in any North- 
 ern State. These hindrances are rapidly disappearing. 
 The negroes are leaving the fields and gathering into 
 the towns. The process of litigation is rapidly ma-king 
 an end of the difficulties concerning land titles, so that 
 in a very few years these obstacles will pass away. 
 
 The census statistics given in the Appendix will show 
 the fact that there was decided evidence of the recuper- 
 ation from the effects of the war at the time when the 
 census statistics of 1880 were gathered. In all the im- 
 portant arts there was a gain ; and we may accept it as 
 proven that all the material losses of the war had then 
 been more than made good. The greatest and most re- 
 grettable retardation in the advance of the State has 
 been in the system of education. 
 
 The public school system of Kentucky has never 
 been in a satisfactory condition compared with the 
 Northern communities, though, measured against the 
 other Southern States, the showing is very good. The 
 trouble has been that the scattered position of the pop- 
 ulation has made the gathering of the children for 
 school purposes a very difficult matter ; and next, that 
 the standard of education has been low, an evil that 
 Kentucky has shared along with the rest of the South- 
 ern States. New England started with a highly edu- 
 
THE NEW COMMONWEALTH. 397 
 
 cated clergy and bar, and their educated character has 
 been maintained with occasional exceptions ; the clergy 
 and bar of Kentucky have had little more than profes- 
 sional trainings ; they have done their special work 
 well, because of the native force and earnestness of 
 their minds, but they have not acted as supporters of 
 public education among the people, as the men of their 
 class have done in New England. 
 
 There has always been a good old Saxon sense of the 
 value of education. The earlier acts of the legislature 
 abound in efforts to found schools ; again and again, even 
 in times of grave difficulty, the State has made great 
 efforts to develop a good system of education. The 
 constitution now in force made a permanent provision, 
 in the form of a bond from the State, to pay a sum to 
 the schools, which in its time was the laro^est contribu- 
 tion made by any Southern or Western State. This 
 liberal help from the State, though meant for a benefac- 
 tion, has been on the whole a curse to the educational 
 system of the State ; it made it possible to maintain 
 some semblance of a school in QYerj precinct of the 
 Commonwealth for a few months in the year without 
 any contribution from the local taxes. It taught the 
 people to look to the State, rather than to themselves, 
 for the maintenance of education. Here, more than 
 anywhere else, we see the vicious system of county 
 government by which the South is cursed, — an evil 
 that even as much as slavery has served to retard its 
 advancement in educational methods. 
 
 As is well known the important unit of government 
 in all these States is the county, always a large area, 
 averaging several hundred square miles in surface. All 
 the political life centres about the county seat of this 
 
898 ) KENTUCKY. 
 
 county. Usually in Kentucky this " court house," as 
 it is called, is on the average a dozen miles away from 
 the home of the citizen ; except he be a political leader 
 or a man of the law, he only visits the county seat at 
 long intervals and for matters of a large political na- 
 ture. He votes at his precinct, generally at the school- 
 house in his school-district ; but this school-district is 
 practically an administrative district with reference to 
 the school alone. Its concerns are absolutely sepa- 
 rated from the other affairs of the Commonwealth. All 
 the political activity gathers about the county court 
 house, where school affairs have no place in the discus- 
 sions ; all the matters that concern the schools are at- 
 tended to by a small board of elected trustees. 
 
 In this system of county government there are no 
 assemblies in which the people meet to discuss the af- 
 fairs that most concern their life. The precious seed of 
 the Folkmote, which was preserved in New England in 
 the town system, never existed in the Virginia system 
 of government. The political life is limited to the hear- 
 ing of stump speeches, very interesting and profitable 
 debates on the questions of large politics, but little help- 
 ful in such humdrum matters as schools, roads, and 
 bridges. The result is that the life of the people went 
 out to questions about the Resolutions of '98, the Mis- 
 souri Compromise, and other national matters, and there 
 has been little care for the equally precious local life. 
 The result is that there have always been thousands of 
 men in Kentucky hardly able to read or write who 
 could enlighten a Yankee farmer on questions of na- 
 tional politics, but who had never given a thought to 
 the district school. This absence of a good system of 
 local government is the most serious difficulty in all the 
 
THE NEW COMMONWEALTH. 399 
 
 States of the American Union outside of New Eng- 
 land.i 
 
 While the elementary schools of the State have re- 
 mained little cared for save by the State gift, which is 
 barely enough to keep them alive, there have been nu- 
 merous efforts to develop a higher education. Very early 
 in the history of the State provision was made for the 
 foundation of certain academies. In the beginning of 
 the century the impulse towards higher education led to 
 the establishment at Lexington of an excellent school 
 called Transylvania University. This college had a 
 short but brilliant career. In its time it had some very 
 scholarly men among its teachers, and it trained a gen- 
 eration of fair students. It perished, however, under 
 the malign influence of sectarian education. Each re- 
 ligious sect strove to keep those born into its fold from 
 the risk of contamination by its brother Christians. 
 Schools for Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians 
 sprang up over the State, each with the name of col- 
 lege, but with generally little more than the system or 
 resources of good high schools. It is the same dreary 
 history which we read in the other parts of the Mis- 
 sissippi Valley; divide and be conquered by poverty 
 seem to have been the issue of all the efforts for a , 
 higher education in that region. 
 
 One of these schools, that of the Presbyterians at 
 Danville, though always poor in all but the spirit of 
 scholarship, has done on the whole excellent work. 
 
 1 It is an interesting fact that the New England States are the only 
 CommoHAvealths that have secured that principle of local government 
 which is the soul of the " State rights " doctrine. This has been given 
 Ihcm by their system of division into towns. Despite their longing 
 for a local system of control, the Southern States have missed the true 
 wav to it. 
 
400 KENTUCKY. 
 
 For more than fifty years Centre College has shown 
 by its many well-trained graduates how well this peo- 
 ple could profit by an extended higher education. If 
 the efforts to create a university in Kentucky had led 
 to the enriching of this excellent school, the State 
 might now have an institution of higher learning wor- 
 thy of its people. 
 
 It was not until the last year of the Civil War that 
 any effort was made to create a school of high grade 
 deserving the name of a university. In 1864, Colonel 
 J. B. Bowman, a public spirited citizen, began an effort 
 to bring together the nucleus of a true university. The 
 newly given Agricultural College fund, arising from the 
 grant of government lands, the remnants of the dead 
 Transylvania University, and various other fragments, 
 were skillfully patched together into a school of much 
 promise. No sooner was it well started than in 1875 
 a fierce religious war broke out within its walls. At 
 the end of five years this most promising effort to create 
 a university came to an end, leaving the State without 
 a single institution strong enough to carry the burden 
 of the higher modern education. The State Agricul- 
 tural and Mechanical School and the old Centre Col- 
 lege are the only institutions that have more than the 
 semblance of life and growth. 
 
 The educational problem is by far the most serious 
 of all the difficulties before this State. The neglect of 
 education has gone so far that it jeopardizes the future 
 influence of the people in the affairs of the nation. 
 Hitherto the natural talents of the people, given them 
 by the admirable accidents of selection that secured to 
 the Commonwealth the most vigorous blood of America, 
 have served them well, have enabled them to keep a 
 
THE NEW COMMONWEALTH. 401 
 
 permanent place in all the arts of war or peace. As 
 long as the native strength of this people, unhelped by 
 training, was matched against equally untrained people 
 from the other Western States, there was no State in 
 the Mississippi Valley that had anything like the power 
 of giving able men for all needs that was manifested 
 in Kentucky. This is seen in the history of legisla- 
 tion, trade, and war in the decades of this century down 
 to the end of the rebellion. In the war Kentucky pro- 
 duced more good soldiers than any other equal popu- 
 lation of the West, and at the present moment she has 
 a large number of her sons in important public posi- 
 tions ; but these men, with rare exception, have owed 
 their promotion to the gifts of nature, unhelped by 
 education. The time when men could win without the 
 aid of training is rapidly passing away. It can hardly 
 be hoped that the native talent of this people will ena- 
 ble them much longer to keep the lead in the race for 
 dominance. In another generation they will certainly 
 be left behind by their less well endowed but more 
 aptly trained competitors, unless they meet the needs 
 of education with the same courage and self-sacrifice 
 with which they have faced the other dangers and diffi- 
 culties of their development. 
 
 We may accept the fact that it will not be possible 
 to create an adequate macliinery like the New England 
 town system, which can take charge of the schools and 
 support them from local contributions. Even the ad- 
 venturous Jefferson, who well knew and much admired 
 the advantages of this New England system, never ven- 
 tured to plan the introduction of this system of town 
 government in the South. Nothing is so difficult as to 
 alter the methods of local government of a country. 
 2(i 
 
402 KENTUCKY. 
 
 There is hardly a case in history where these govern- 
 mental units of the State, once firmly placed, have been 
 much changed by enactments. Inasmuch as there is no 
 hope of developing good schools by local support, it will 
 be necessary to maintain the public schools by the di- 
 rect action of the State. To do this well will require 
 at least the doubling of the revenue available for sup- 
 porting the State school system in its primary grades. 
 
 The condition of the civil law in Kentucky at the 
 present time demands especial consideration, for the rea- 
 son that there is a large amount of misconception con- 
 cerning the matter. It is commonly supposed that this 
 is a region where crimes meet with lax punishment and 
 where people are much given to uncontrolled violence. 
 
 It is not to be denied that there is a good deal of 
 ordinary homicide in Kentucky. This is not a new 
 feature in the life of the State, or of the race to which 
 its people belong ; it dates as far back as the time of 
 settlement. Men of the type of people who made the 
 State in the olden day were not as a rule gentle nat- 
 ured ; they had a full share of that brutal English stuff 
 in them which has given their kindred the control of 
 the world. This homicidal humor was no invention of 
 Kentucky ; it was in the fierce blood of their ancestors. 
 The first generation of Kentuckians grew amid a war 
 with savages, a war that knew no refinements, when 
 prisoners were rarely taken, and when the enemy's 
 wounded were killed or left to die uncared for. All 
 personal quarrels were settled by fighting, — sometimes 
 by a rough and tumble contest, or, in more serious cases, 
 with a duel. Until within a few years it was common 
 at the election places on the polling days for any one 
 to declare himself the " best man on the ground," with 
 
THE NEW COMMONWEALTH. 403 
 
 the offer to " lick " any one who denied it. Some one 
 was pretty sure to take up the challenge ; then the an- 
 taojonists would have a fiojht as unlimited in its condi- 
 tions as that between two dogs. Among the better 
 classes the contests were always with the form of the 
 duel. So extensive was this practice that it became a 
 very serious evil. As early as 1814 all judicial officers 
 and attorneys at law were required to take an oath that 
 they had not had anything to do with a duel since a cer- 
 tain date, and that they would not engage in any during 
 their term of office.^ 
 
 At other and later times various acts prescriptive of 
 this method of settling disputes were passed with very 
 severe penalties attached. Gradually the practice of 
 dueling was pretty thoroughly broken up, but in its 
 place came the greater evil of " shooting at sight." 
 M'en who had a serious dispute would send each other 
 word that when they met they would have it out with 
 their pistols or their knives. Although homicide of 
 this nature was murder in the eye of the law, the jury 
 that tried the murderer were always inclined to regard 
 the offense as palliated by the " notice," so no one was 
 severely punished for the crime. The laws against duel- 
 ing were much in advance of the public sentiment of 
 the people, which has always held to the opinion that 
 certain personal wrongs were to be avenged with the 
 life of the enemy. So in place of the regulated murder 
 of the duel this legislation gave the public the much 
 more savage and demoralizing street fight. 
 
 This evil is only to be explained by the relative low 
 value that this people have hitherto set upon life. In 
 all primitive civilizations life is little valued. It is only 
 1 Collins, i. p. 27. 
 
404 KENTUCKY. 
 
 in communities where the enforcement of the law has 
 gone on uniformly for a long time that men learn to 
 give life a supreme place among the goods of the world. 
 The combatant habit of old times has been kept in ex- 
 istence in Kentucky, while all the other circumstances 
 of civilization have grown as they have done in the rest 
 of the world. There are many signs that this disgrace- 
 ful survival of an ancient bloodthirstiness is diminish- 
 ing, and is soon to pass away. It is the last remnant 
 of the " Elizabethan spirit" in the South. 
 
 In considering the question of homicide in Kentucky, 
 it should be remembered that, although the j^ersonal 
 combats are frequent, other forms of outrage against 
 the person are of very rare occurrence. Murder for 
 money is almost unknown, and is swiftly and sternly 
 punished. The ugly category of violent crimes against 
 women, so common in more cultivated communities, 
 has scarcely a place in its history, and such outbreaks 
 of degraded passion arouse to perfect fury this commu- 
 nity, which has not yet been brought to consider a com- 
 bat to the death between men as out of the order of 
 nature. 
 
 For many years there was no small trouble arising 
 from the disposition to replace the regular working of 
 the law by the spasmodic justice of Judge Lynch's 
 courts. This evil has been in good part overcome. 
 Ever since the closing of the war the State authorities 
 have shown a commendable anxiety to put down all 
 such outrages. Wlienever there has seemed a risk of 
 lynching, troops have been furnished to guard the pris- 
 oners. Only a year ago a battalion of State troops, 
 guarding a wretched murderer, were compelled to fire 
 on a mob at Ashland, Kentucky. In resisting these 
 
THE NEW COMMONWEALTH. 405 
 
 lynchers, who were endeavoring to board a steamer in 
 which the culprit was being taken to a j^hice of safety, 
 a dozen lives, partly those of innocent spectators, were 
 lost. Such terrible lessons will soon make an end of 
 this class of misdemeanors, which are as much con- 
 demned by the serious people as they are in any other 
 society. 
 
 The disturbances of this description have mainly been 
 limited to the easternmost part of the State ; certain 
 counties in Eastern Kentucky, noticeably the county of 
 Breathitt, have been the seat of the principal mob out- 
 rages. In this region there are certain blood feuds, the 
 heritage of the Civil War ; in these feuds the decent 
 citizens have been settling accounts with members of 
 guerrilla bands who committed outrages in the Civil 
 War. On the one side are arrayed those who fought 
 in the two armies and their descendants ; on the other, 
 a clan of outlawish folk who belonged to neither side. 
 This isolated reo;ion has been more or less ens^aored in 
 the settlement of these old disputes ever since the close 
 of the Civil War. The district has suffered much loss 
 of life in this chronic struggle ; it seems at length to be 
 over; the dangerous element has been "eliminated'* 
 by the use of the rifle, or has taken itself away to other 
 lands. The small remainder of the folk who hold the 
 ground celebrated last year the return of peace by 
 building a large school-house at the county seat. Even 
 in the worst days of this " Breathitt War," when the 
 courts, if held at all, were under a heavy military guard, 
 the county was safe to peaceable citizens and to trav- 
 elers of all degree, except those who could be suspected 
 of being on the lookout for illicit distillers. Yet the 
 people in this district are, in the main, a manly, frank- 
 
406 KENTUCKY. 
 
 natured folk, and were always ready to interrupt their 
 occupations to entertain the wayfarer who demanded 
 their hospitality. 
 
 These fierce, bloodthirsty qualities will spe^lily dis- 
 appear before the softening process of civilization ; all 
 experience shows us that an appetite for open combat, 
 blood feuds, and other savageries of this sort, often co- 
 exist with admirable qualities of head and heart. In 
 this people they certaiidy are associated with generous 
 natures, and a siugular freedom from the lower vices 
 that are fouiid among many less unruly peoples. The 
 condition of these " hill people " has much to remind 
 us of the Scotch Highlanders a century ago ; in a gen- 
 eration that folk passed from a rather lawless people 
 to quiet citizens. As soon as roads are made into their 
 wilderness, so that they can make money, avarice, that 
 master passion of the race, will soon subdue this archaic 
 vice of violence. 
 
 The civil law of Kentucky, in its application to prop- 
 erty, is in excellent condition ; justice is quickly and 
 cheaply rendered. The same sound commercial instinct 
 that led the people sooner than any other Western State 
 to a good system of banking, has served to keep them in 
 a good way in their property law. There is now an 
 intermediate court between the circuit and appellate 
 court, but this arrangement has only been voted on 
 trial for the term of four years. The next and final 
 step in litigation is to the appellate court ; the repu- 
 tation of this court, among jurists, is not what it was 
 in the days before the judges were elected by the peo- 
 ple ; it has, however, always been confidently looked 
 to for justice, even under circumstances of great polit- 
 ical excitement and wide-spread prejudice. 
 
THE NEW COMMON WEALTH. 407 
 
 In its motives the Kentucky law still retains much 
 of the old British humor ; it is full of the traditions of 
 the country whence it came. It is interesting to note 
 that the last instance of a prisoner profiting by the 
 heneficium clericale, or benefit of clergy, occurred in a 
 Kentucky court. The case was as follows : a negro 
 was on trial for the crime of rape before Judge Richard 
 Buckner, in the Circuit Court of Glasgow, in Barren 
 County. As the offense was against a white woman, 
 the prisoner had to meet the bitter prejudice of the 
 jury. A verdict of guilty, which carried with it the death 
 penalty, was returned, though, in the opinion of the 
 judge, the man was clearly innocent of the crime. The 
 benefit of clergy was as yet unrepealed in Kentucky, 
 and in it the sagacious judge found a way of escape 
 from the task of sending to the gallows a man whom 
 he believed to be innocent. He directed the prisoner's 
 counsel to ask the benefit of clergy for his client. Then 
 he directed the clerk of the court to test the prisoner in 
 reading the Constitution of the United States ; he hav- 
 ing proven that he could read, the court ordered him 
 to be burned in the hand and discharged from custody. 
 In 1847 the legislature abolished the benefit of clergy.^ 
 
 The moral condition of the State in regard to matters 
 of which the law takes imperfect cognizance is satis- 
 factory. The vices of gambling and drunkenness, once 
 grave evils, have very greatly diminished since the close 
 of the Civil War. The evil of intemperance in drink has 
 undergone a very singular diminution within ten years. 
 There is probably no State in the Union where the 
 
 1 Colonel John Mason Brown, of Louisville, informs me that he has 
 examined into the record of this incident, and that the facts are as 
 given above. 
 
408 KENTUCKY. 
 
 recent betterment in this respect has been greater. It 
 is interesting to note that this improvement has. been in- 
 digenous, and that it has not been accomplished through 
 any process of law ; there is a statute that permits the 
 local divisions, called precincts, to prohibit the sale of 
 spirits, if they elect so to do. This method of suppres- 
 sion is here and there in use, but it has not been gen- 
 erally adopted. The cessation of intemperance is a spon- 
 taneous and apparently permanent reaction against the 
 excesses of early days ; coming swiftly and silently, it 
 constitutes one of the most interesting changes of the 
 social practice that has ever taken place in any Amer- 
 ican community. 
 
 Lastly, we may note the fact that the State has as 
 yet escaped the degradation of the marriage relation, 
 arising from the extreme increase of divorce that is so 
 rapidly becoming a menacing evil in other States. Ex- 
 cept among the negroes the family relations seem to be 
 in a very satisfactory condition. 
 
 As a whole the social order of this Commonwealth, 
 considering the fierce impulses derived from its early 
 life, is in an eminently satisfactory condition. The his- 
 tory of the Commonwealth gives us one of the most 
 encouraging chapters in the histor}^ of our English race ; 
 it shows us that its blood, entirely separated for two 
 centuries from its parent influences, can carry on its 
 development on the American soil, undiminished in 
 vigor, and true to its original motives. 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 THE RESOLUTIONS OF 1798. 
 
 The Resolutions of 1798, as is well known, were intended 
 as a protest against the unconstitutional action of the Fed- 
 eral Congress m enacting the alien and sedition laws. In 
 this protest the States of Virginia and Kentucky intended 
 not only to manifest their deep displeasure on account of 
 the passage of these acts, but to give publicity to the inter- 
 pretation which they put upon the Federal Compact. On this 
 account these resolutions have a great political importance. 
 
 The original record of the Kentucky Resolutions was lost 
 by fire, and for many years it has been believed by the stu- 
 dents of the history of that Commonwealth that no atteste^ 
 copy of the original was in existence. 
 
 Knowing that a copy of the document had been sent to 
 the Governor of Massachusetts, it seemed to me worth while 
 to search for it in the archives of the secretary's office of 
 that Commonwealth. The search was kindly undertaken by 
 the present secretary, Henry B. Pierce Esq., and fortunately 
 resulted in the discovery of the copy given below. 
 
 The document is neatly printed, and in a perfect state of 
 preservation. It may therefore fairly be taken as an exact 
 copy of the original. 
 
 KENTUCKY LEGISLATURE. 
 
 In the House of Representatives, November 10, 1798. 
 
 The House, according to the standing order of the day, 
 resolved itself into a Committee of the Whole on the state 
 
ilO APPENDIX. 
 
 of the Commonwealtli, Mr. Caldwell in the chair. And after 
 some time spent therein the Speaker resumed the chair, and 
 Mr. Caldwell reported that the Committee had, according 
 to order, had under consideration the Governor's Address, and 
 had come to the following Resolutions thereupon, which he 
 delivered in at the clerk's table, where they were twice read 
 and agreed to by the House. 
 
 I. Resolved, that the several States composing the United 
 States of America, are not united on the principle of unlim- 
 ited submission to their general government ; but that by 
 compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the 
 United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a 
 general government for special purposes, delegated to that 
 government certain definite powers, reserving each State to 
 itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-govern- 
 ment ; and that whensoever the general government assumes 
 undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of 
 no force : That to this compact each State acceded as a 
 State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to it- 
 self, the other party : That the government created by this 
 compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the ex- 
 tent of the powers delegated to itself ; since that would have 
 made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of 
 its powers ; but that as in all other cases of compact among 
 parties having no common Judge, each party has an equal 
 
 / right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode 
 and measure of redress. 
 
 II. Resolved, that the Constitution of the United States 
 having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, 
 counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United 
 States, piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, 
 and offenses against the laws of nations, and no other crimes 
 whatever, and it being true as a general principle, and one of 
 the amendments to the Constitution having also declared 
 " that the powers not delegated to the United States by the 
 Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved 
 to the States respectively, or to the people," therefore also 
 the same act of Congress passed on the 14th day of July, 
 1798, and entitled " An act in addition to the act entitled an 
 act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United 
 States ; " as also the act passed by them on the 27th day of 
 June, 1798, entitled " An act to punish frauds committed on 
 the Bank of the United States " (and all other their acts 
 
APPENDIX. 411 
 
 which assume to create, define, or punish crimes other than 
 those enumerated in the Constitution), are altogether void 
 and of no force, and that the power to create, define, and 
 punish such other crimes is reserved, and of right appertains 
 solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within 
 its own Territory. 
 
 III. Resolved, that it is true as a general principle, and is 
 also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the 
 Constitution that " the powers not delegated to the United 
 States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, 
 are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people ; " 
 and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom 
 of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the 
 United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the 
 States, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right 
 remain, and were reserved to the States, or to the people : 
 That thus was manifested their determination to retain to 
 themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of 
 speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening 
 their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot 
 be separated from their use should be tolerated rather than 
 the use be destroyed ; and thus also they guarded against all 
 abridgment by the United States of the freedom of relig- 
 ious opinions and exercises, and retained to themselves the 
 right of protecting the same, as this State, by a law passed 
 on the general demand of its citizens, had already pro- 
 tected them from all human restraint or interference : And 
 that in addition to this general principle and express dec- 
 laration, another and more special provision lias been made 
 by one of the amendments to the Constitution which expressly 
 declares, that " Congress shall make no law respecting an 
 establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise 
 thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," 
 thereby guarding in the same sentence, and under the same 
 words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press, 
 insomuch, that whatever violates either, throws down the 
 sanctuary which covers the others, and that libels, false- 
 hoods, defamation equally with heresy and false religion, are 
 withheld from the cognizance of Federal tribunals. That 
 therefore the act of the Congress of the United States passed 
 on the 14th day of July, 1798, entitled " An act in addition 
 to the act for the punishment of certain crimes against the 
 United States," which does abridge the freedom of the press, 
 is not law, but is alto£rether void and of no effect. 
 
412 APPENDIX. 
 
 IV. Resolved, that alien friends are under the jurisdiction 
 and protection of the laws of the State wherein they are ; 
 that no power over them has been delegated to the United 
 States, nor prohibited to the individual States distinct from 
 their power over citizens ; and it being true as a general 
 principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution 
 having also declared that " the powers not delegated to the 
 United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the 
 States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the peo- 
 ple," the act of the Congress of the United States passed on 
 the 22d day of June, 1798, entitled " An act concerning 
 aliens," which assumes power over alien friends not dele- 
 gated by the Constitution, is not law, but is altogether void 
 and of no force. 
 
 V. Resolved, that in addition to the general principle as 
 well as the express declaration, that powers not delegated 
 are reserved, another and more special provision inserted in 
 the Constitution from abundant caution has declared, " that 
 the migration or importation of such persons as any of the 
 States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be 
 prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808." That 
 this Commonwealth does admit the migration of alien friends 
 described as the subject of the said act concerning aliens ; 
 that a provision against prohibiting their migration is a pro- 
 vision against all acts equivalent thereto, or it would be nu- 
 gatory ; that to remove them when migrated is equivalent to 
 a prohibition of their migration, and is therefore contrary to 
 the said provision of the Constitution, and void. 
 
 VI. Resolved, that the imprisonment of a person under 
 the protection of the laws of this Commonwealth on his fail- 
 ure to obey the simple order of the President to depart out 
 of the United States, as is undertaken by the said act enti- 
 tled " An act concerning aliens," is contrary to the Consti- 
 tution, one amendment to which has provided, that " no per- 
 son shall be deprived of liberty without due process of 
 law," and that another having provided " that in all criminal 
 prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a public 
 trial by an impartial jury, to be informed of the nature and 
 cause of the accusation, to be confronted with the witnesses 
 against him, to have compulsory process for obtaining wit- 
 nesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for 
 his defense," the same act undertaking to authorize the Pres- 
 ident to remove a person out of the United States who is 
 under the protection of the law, on his own suspicion, with- 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 413 
 
 out accusation, without jury, without pubhc trial, without 
 confrontation of the witnesses against him, without having 
 witnesses in his favor, without defense, without counsel, is 
 contrary to these provisions also of the Constitution, is there- 
 fore not law, but utterly void and of no force. That trans- 
 ferrin o- the power of judging any person who is under the 
 protection of the laws, from the courts to the President of the 
 United States, as is undertaken by the same act concerning 
 aliens, is against the article of the Constitution which pro- 
 vides, that " the judicial power of the United States shall be 
 vested in courts, the judges of which shall hold their offices 
 durino- good behavior," and that the said act is void for that 
 reason also ; and it is further to be noted, that this transfer 
 of judiciary power is to that magistrate of the general gov- 
 ernment who already possesses all the executive, and a quali- 
 fied negative in all the legislative powers. 
 
 VII. Resolved, that the construction applied by the gen- 
 eral government (as is evinced by sundry of their proceed- 
 ings) to those parts of the Constitution of the United States 
 which delegate to Congress a power to lay and collect taxes, 
 duties, imposts, and excises ; to pay the debts, and provide 
 for the common defense, and general welfare of the United 
 States, and to make all laws which shall be necessary and 
 proper for carrying into execution the powers vested by the 
 Constitution in the government of the United States, or any 
 department thereof, goes to the destruction of all the limits 
 prescribed to their power by the Constitution : That words 
 meant by that instrument to be subsidiary only to the execu- 
 tion of the limited powers ought not to be so construed as 
 themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part so to be taken 
 as to destroy the whole residue of the instrument : That the 
 proceedings of the general government under color of these 
 articles will be a fit and necessary subject for revisal and 
 correction at a time of greater tranquillity, while those speci- 
 fied in the preceding resolutions call for immediate redress. 
 
 VIII. Resolved, that the preceding Resolutions be trans- 
 mitted to the Senators and Representatives in Congress from 
 this Commonwealth, who are hereby enjoined to present the 
 same to their respective Houses, and to use their best en- 
 deavors to procure, at the next session of Congress, a repeal 
 of the aforesaid unconstitutional and obnoxious acts. 
 
 IX. Resolved, lastly, that the Governor of tliis Common- 
 wealth be, and is hereby authorized and requested to com- 
 municate the preceding Resolutions to the Legislatures of the 
 
414 APPENDIX. 
 
 several States, to assure them that this Commonwealth con- 
 siders Union for specified National purposes, and particularly 
 for those specified in their late Federal Compact, to be 
 friendly to the peace, happiness, and prosperity of all the 
 States : that faithful to that compact according to the plain 
 intent and meaning in which it was understood and acceded 
 to by the several parties, it is sincerely anxious for its preser- 
 vation : that it does also believe, that to take from the States 
 all the powers of self-government, and transfer them to a 
 general and consolidated government, without regard to the 
 special delegations and reservations solemnly agreed to in 
 that compact, is not for the peace, happiness, or prosperity 
 of these States : And that, therefore, this Commonwealth is 
 determined, as it doubts not its co-States are, tamely to sub- 
 mit to undelegated and consequently unlimited powers in no 
 man or body of men on earth : that if the acts before speci- 
 fied should stand, these conclusions would flow from them ; 
 that the general government may place any act they think 
 proper on the list of crimes and punish it themselves, whether 
 enumerated or not enumerated by the Constitution as cog- 
 nizable by them : that they may transfer its cognizance to 
 the President or any other person, who may himself be the 
 accuser, counsel, judge, ancl jury, whose suspicions may be 
 the evidence, his order the sentence, his officer the execu- 
 tioner, and his breast the sole record of the transaction : that 
 a very numerous and valuable description of the inhabitants 
 of these States being by this precedent reduced as outlaws 
 to the absolute dominion of one man, and the barrier of the 
 Constitution thus swept away from us all, no rampart now 
 remains against the passions and the powers of a majority of 
 Congress, to protect from a like exportation or other more 
 grievous punishment the minority of the same body, the leg- 
 islature, judges, governors, and counselors of the States, nor 
 their other peaceable inhabitants who may venture to reclaim 
 the constitutional rights and liberties of the State and people, 
 or who for other causes, good or bad, may be obnoxious to 
 the views or marked by the suspicions of the President, or 
 be thought dangerous to his or their elections or other inter- 
 ests, public or personal : that the friendless alien has indeed 
 been selected as the safest subject of a first experiment, but 
 the citizen will soon follow, or rather has already followed : 
 for, already has a sedition act marked him as its prey : that 
 these and successive acts of the same character, unless ar- 
 rested on the threshold, may tend to drive these States into 
 
APPENDIX. 415 
 
 revolution and blood, and will furnisli new calun>nies against 
 Republican governments, and new pretexts for those who 
 wish it to be believed, that man cannot be governed but by a 
 rod of iron : that it would be a dangerous delusion were a 
 confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for 
 the safety of our rights : that confidence is everywhere the 
 parent of despotism : free government is founded in jealousy 
 and not in confidence ; it is jealousy and not confidence 
 wliich prescribes limited Constitutions to bind down those 
 whom we are obliged to trust with power : that our Consti- 
 tution has accordingly fixed the limits to which and no fur- 
 ther our confidence may go ; and let the honest advocate of 
 confidence read the alien and sedition acts, and say if the 
 Constitution has not been wise in fixing limits to the govern- 
 ment it created, and whether we should be wise in destroy- 
 ing those limits ; let him say what the government is if it 
 be not a tyranny, which the men of our choice have conferred 
 on the President, and the President of our choice has as- 
 sented to and accepted over the friendly strangers, to whom 
 the mild spirit of our country and its laws had pledged hos- 
 pitality and protection : that the men of our choice have 
 more respected the bare suspicions of the President than the 
 solid rights of innocence, the claims of justification, the sa- 
 cred force of truth, and the forms and substance of law and 
 justice. In questions of power then let no more be heard of 
 confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the 
 claims of the Constitution. That this Commonwealth does 
 therefore call on its co-States for an expression of their sen- 
 timents on the acts concerning aliens, and for the punish- 
 ment of certain crimes herein before specified, plainly declar- 
 ing whether these acts are or are not authorized by the 
 Federal Compact. And it doubts not that their sense will 
 be so announced as to prove their attachment unaltered to 
 limited government, whether general or particular, and that 
 the rights and liberties of their co-States will be exposed to 
 no dangers by remaining embarked on a common bottom 
 with their own: That' they will concur with this Common- 
 wealth in considering the said acts as so palpably against the 
 Constitution as to amount to an undisguised declaration, that 
 the compact is not meant to be the measure of the powers of 
 the general government, but that it will proceed in the exer- 
 cise *over these States of all powers whatsoever : That they 
 will view this as seizing the rights of the States and consoli- 
 dating them in the hands of the general government with a 
 
416 APPENDIX. 
 
 power assumed to biud the States (not merely in cases made 
 Federal) but in all cases whatsoever, by laws made, not with 
 their consent, but by others against their consent : That this 
 would be to surrender the form of government we have 
 chosen, and to live under one deriving its powers from its 
 own will, and not from our authority ; and that the co-States, 
 recurring to their natural right in cases not made Federal, 
 will concur in declaring these acts void and of no force, and 
 will each unite with this Commonwealth in requesting their 
 repeal at the next session of Congress. 
 
 Edmund Bullock, S. H. R. 
 John Campbell, S. S. P. T. 
 Passed the House of Representatives Nov. 10, 1798. 
 
 Attest: Thomas Todd, C. H. K 
 In Senate, Nov. 13, 1798, unanimously concurred in. 
 
 Attest : B. Thruston, Clk. Sen. 
 Approved Nov. 16, 1798. 
 
 James Garrard, G. K. 
 By the Governor. 
 
 Harry Toulmin, 
 
 Secretary of State. 
 
 Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 
 Secretary's Depart3IEnt, Boston, October 20, 1884. 
 
 A true copy of the original, on file in this Department. 
 Witness the Seal of the Commonwealth. 
 
 Henry B. Pierce, 
 [L. S.] Secretary, 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 The following tables are taken from the statistics of the 
 tenth census of the United States. They are intended to 
 give the reader a basis on which to criticise some of the gen- 
 eral statements in the foregoing pages, and not as a statistical 
 account of the Commonwealth, a task that is beyond the pur- 
 pose of this very limited book. 
 
 The reader who desires to extend his knowledge of the 
 
APPENDIX. 417 
 
 statistics of the State should consult the tables of the last 
 census. The following indications will aid him in an effort 
 to understand the movements of population to and from Ken- 
 tucky. In volume 1, p. 417, of the statistics of the tenth 
 census he will find a map showing the residence of the na- 
 tives of Kentucky in that as well as other States. This will 
 show how large has been the emigration from Kentucky to 
 the Northwestern States. The map on page 273 of the same 
 volume shows the relative amount of the foreign-born popula- 
 tion in Kentucky and the States bordering it on the north : — 
 
 TABLE I. 
 
 Native White Population of Kentucky distributed accord- 
 ing TO State or Territory of Birth. 
 
 PLACE OF BIRTH. NUMBER. 
 
 United States 1,317,725 
 
 Kentucky 1,149,994 
 
 Alabama 1,502 
 
 Arkansas 1,024 
 
 California 125 
 
 Connecticut 340 
 
 Delaware 153 
 
 Florida 68 
 
 Georgia 1,807 
 
 Illinois 5,522 
 
 Indiana 18,104 
 
 Iowa 802 
 
 Kaiii^as 335 
 
 Louisiana 962 
 
 Maine 261 
 
 Maryland 1,950 
 
 Massachusetts 787 
 
 Michigan 385 
 
 Minnesota 82 
 
 Mississippi . . . .- 1,417 
 
 Missouri 4,887 
 
 New Hampshire 181 
 
 New Jersey 701 
 
 New York 3,715 
 
 North Carolina 8,946 
 
 Ohio 26,769 
 
 27 
 
418 APPENDIX. 
 
 Table I. continued. 
 
 Pennsylvania 5,952 
 
 South Carolina 1,211 
 
 Tennessee 46,828 
 
 Texas . 624 
 
 Vermont 252 
 
 Virginia 30,193 
 
 West Virginia 1,677 
 
 Wisconsin 240 
 
 District of Columbia 187 
 
 TABLE II. 
 
 Showing Number of those Born in Kentucky Resident in 
 OTHER States and Territories. 
 
 Alabama . . « 2,624 
 
 Arkansas 18,039 
 
 California 7,851 
 
 Colorado 3,786 
 
 Connecticut 155 
 
 Delaware 45 
 
 Florida 668 
 
 Georgia 1,136 
 
 Illinois 61,920 
 
 Indiana 73,928 
 
 Iowa 12,920 
 
 Kansas 32,978 
 
 Louisiana 6,564 
 
 , Maine 42 
 
 Maryland 422 
 
 Massachusetts 502 
 
 Michigan 1,732 
 
 Minnesota 2,151 
 
 Mississippi 7,844 
 
 ■ Missouri 102,799 ^ 
 
 Nebraska 4,034 
 
 Nevada 578 
 
 New Hampshire 47 
 
 New Jersey 483 
 
 New York 1,720 
 
 North Carolina 365 
 
 Ohio 32,492 
 
APPENDIX. 419 
 
 Table II. continued. 
 
 Oregon 2,754 
 
 PennsA'lvania 1 829 
 
 Rhode Island 7g 
 
 South Carolina I94 
 
 Tennessee 24 868 
 
 Texas 34,121 
 
 Vermont 28 
 
 Virginia 2,087 
 
 West Virginia 4 351 
 
 Wisconsin 1 4IO 
 
 TABLE III. 
 
 Showing the Nativities of Foreign-Born Population in 
 Kentucky. 
 
 Austria proper 142 
 
 Belgium IO5 
 
 Canada 1^010 
 
 Denmark 73 
 
 Baden 2,668 
 
 Bavaria 3^352 
 
 Hamburg 95 
 
 Hanover 2 264 
 
 Hessen 1,381 
 
 Nassau 187 
 
 Oldenburg 610 
 
 Prussia 6,657 
 
 Saxony . 522 
 
 Wiirtemberg 1,368 
 
 Germany, not specified 11,212 
 
 England 4^100 
 
 Ireland 18,256 
 
 Scotland 982 
 
 Wales 394 
 
 Holland 262 
 
 Italy 370 
 
 Poland 124 
 
 Russia 63 
 
 Sweden 95 
 
 Switzerland 1 130 
 
 Total 59^517 
 
420 APPENDIX. 
 
 TABLE IV. 
 
 Native Colored Population of Kentucky according to 
 State or Territory of Birth. 
 
 Kentucky 252,618 
 
 Alabama 352 
 
 Arkansas 112 
 
 Georgia 364 
 
 Illinois 152 
 
 Indiana 341 
 
 Louisiana 282 
 
 Maryland 307 
 
 Mississippi 566 
 
 Missouri 530 
 
 North Carolina 792 
 
 Ohio 346 
 
 Pennsylvania 80 
 
 South Carolina 319 
 
 Tennessee 7,558 
 
 Texas 117 
 
 Virginia 6,322 
 
 "West Virginia 59 
 
 "Wisconsin 78 
 
 Total American born 271,448 
 
 The foregoing tables show the origin and in a general way 
 the distribution of the Kentucky people. It should be no- 
 ticed that when in the census tables the number of immi- 
 grants from any other State, or the Kentuckians settling in 
 any other State, are less in number than fifty they have no 
 place in the table, though counted in the totals. 
 
 The most important conclusion to be drawn from these 
 tables is that Kentucky has received a much less considerable 
 number of people from other countries than she has sent to 
 other States of this Union. In 1880 the total number of per- 
 sons born in Kentucky and then resident beyond the State 
 amounted to about 380,000, while those born in other States 
 of this Union and resident in Kentucky amounted to about 
 168,000. In other words, Kentucky has of late been sending 
 out more than twice the number of persons that she has re- 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 421 
 
 ceived from the other American States. In the early decades 
 of the century the proportion of these two movements was 
 even more diverse. 
 
 Next we note that the greater part of this immigration 
 into Kentucky has been from immediately adjacent States. 
 Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, Missouri, and Virginia have fur- 
 nished more than half the total number. On the other hand, 
 the emigrating Kentiickians have as a whole gone to more 
 remote States. 
 
 The relatively little emigration of the negroes is also 
 well shown by these tables. It will be seen that less than 
 twenty thousand of the blacks, or about one fourteenth of the 
 population, were born in other States. 
 
 TABLE V. 
 Population of Kentucky during the Last Ten Decades. 
 
 
 1880. 
 
 1870. 
 
 1860. 
 
 1850. 
 
 1840. 
 
 1830. 
 
 1820. 
 
 1810. 
 
 1800. 
 
 1790. 
 
 1,648,690 
 
 1,321 ,C 11 1 1,155,684 
 
 982,405 
 
 779,828 
 
 687,917 
 
 564,135 
 
 406,511 
 
 220,955 
 
 73,677 
 
 
 It will be seen from the foregoing table that the rate of 
 increase has been remarkably steady for the decades since 
 1810. The most noticeable difference being in 1830-40, 
 when the emigration to the Western States was very great. 
 The disturbances of the Civil War made but a slight inter- 
 ruption. 
 
 Table VI. shows that the negroes and whites in Kentucky 
 are almost equally fecund, the negroes having a slight but 
 unimportant superiority m the number of births in the thou- 
 sand; but among the negroes the proportion of male and 
 female children is almost exactly the same, or 208 to 207, 
 while among the whites the males exceed the females at 
 birth in the proportion of 126 to 122. This proportion is 
 approximately maintained through life. 
 
 Between ten and fifteen years of age an important change 
 is observed: the negro children of that age form less than 
 
422 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 H 
 
 Iz; 
 
 s 
 
 o 
 
 Is 
 
 a 
 
 20,732 
 
 19,870 
 
 16,813 
 
 14,628 
 
 15,198 
 
 11,464 
 
 8,044 
 
 7,381 
 
 5,944 
 
 4,747 
 
 4,183 
 
 2,242 
 
 2,434 
 
 1,337 
 
 1,196 
 
 583 
 
 447 
 
 166 
 
 116 
 
 51 
 
 102 
 
 g 
 g 
 
 6 
 
 3DC»lOCO<M^r-(C0>OCDC0OTJOCOrHCOC0;^lOOl;^ 
 
 g s ^ §i;^ 5 is g„s|S ^ s„j§;-5 8 s s s ^ ■" =^ 
 
 O oTl-^-* ^"o t~ CO lO '*"•*" IN Cvj ,1 r-T 
 
 s 
 
 3 
 
 o 
 
 OCOCOrHOOOO-<*iaiCOCDr-IOl.OI-.giOpr-Jpra 
 
 r-f 
 
 
 t 
 
 a. 
 
 i 
 a 
 
 C0O35Cn3i:-1.0(Ml~l-!M-*0^.rH(M 0,CO^iO r-l 
 
 |¥^¥s~i5rs¥^ s ;^ s =* "= ~ ^ 
 
 i 
 
 ■^ 
 s 
 
 105,343 
 
 100,137 
 
 88,386 
 
 73,270 
 
 68,594 
 
 52,736 
 
 43,106 
 
 37,438 
 
 30,033 
 
 25,026 
 
 23,440 
 
 16,494 
 
 13,852 
 
 9,113 
 
 6,154 
 
 3,300 
 
 1,563 
 
 559 
 
 131 
 
 39 
 
 16 
 
 i| 
 
 1 
 
 206,717 
 
 197,187 
 
 173,312 
 
 147,232 
 
 138,563 
 
 103,974 
 
 84,611 
 
 74,693 
 
 59,810 
 
 49,800 
 
 44,644 
 
 30,963 
 
 25,755 
 
 17,292 
 
 11,440 
 
 6,384 
 
 3,200 
 
 1,137 
 
 305 
 
 91 
 
 49 
 
 C5 
 
 
 1 
 
 a 
 
 122,106 
 
 116,920 
 
 101,739 
 
 88,590 
 
 85,167 
 
 62,675 
 
 49,549 
 
 44,636 
 
 35,721 
 
 29,521 
 
 25,407 
 
 16,711 
 
 14,337 
 
 9,516 
 
 6,482 
 
 3,667 
 
 2,084 
 
 774 
 
 299 
 
 103 
 
 135 
 
 1 
 CO 
 00 
 
 1 
 
 (M S5 O lO_l^ "^COCOCOr-IOiOIM'Or-IOOCOCOr-l 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 l-iOOCOCOCMC01-c3^ooo^iOt~t-COOt-cOT-liO 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 Under 5 years . 
 5 to 9 years 
 10 to 14 years 
 15 to 19 years 
 20 to 24 years 
 25 to 29 years 
 30 to 34 years 
 35 to 39 years 
 40 to 44 years . 
 45 to 49 years 
 50 to 54 years 
 55 to 59 years 
 60 to 64 years 
 65 to 69 years 
 70 to 74 years 
 75 to 79 years 
 80 to 84 years 
 85 to 89 years 
 90 to 94 years 
 95 to 100 years 
 
 100 and over 
 
 Is 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 m 
 
 one nintli of the total of that race, while the white children 
 of that age amount to over one eighth of the total population 
 of their blood. Between the ages of twenty-five and twenty- 
 nine the same feature is not discernible; the negroes then have 
 established themselves in their conditions, and afterwards 
 have a promise of longevity quite equal to the whites. 
 
 As far as statistics go the principal differences between 
 the races in Kentucky seem to be : that the negroes have 
 a larger proportion of female births, a larger infant mortal- 
 ity, and, after middle age, a greater expectation of life, 
 though the well-known fancy of old blacks for claiming a 
 greater age than they have attained doubtless vitiates this 
 part of the statistics. 
 
 TABLE VII. 
 
 Table showing the Relative Production as compared with 
 Other States, of Certain Agricultural Staples in Ken- 
 tucky, IN Successive Decades. 
 
 
 1840. 
 
 1850. 
 
 1860. 
 
 1870. 
 
 Wheat 
 
 First 
 
 Ninth 
 
 Ninth 
 
 Eii?hth 
 
 Maize 
 
 Second 
 
 First 
 
 
 Sixth 
 
 Rve 
 
 Fourth 
 
 
 Fifth 
 
 Fifth 
 
 Tobacco 
 
 Second 
 
 Second 
 
 Second 
 
 First 
 
 Flax 
 
 Third 
 
 First 
 
 Third 
 
 Eighth 
 
 Hemp 
 
 Cotton 
 
 
 First 
 
 First 
 
 First 
 
 Eleventh 
 
 
 
 Twelfth 
 
 Swine 
 
 Second 
 
 Second 
 
 Fourth 
 
 Fifth 
 
 Mules 
 
 Second 
 
 Second 
 
 Second 
 
 Third 
 
 Value of home (or house- 
 
 
 
 
 
 hold) manufactures . 
 
 Third 
 
 
 Second 
 
 Third 
 
 This table shows the degree to which the climate and soil 
 of Kentucky are adapted to a varied agriculture. It will be 
 observed that in each decade the Commonwealth is foremost 
 among the States of the American Union in the production 
 of some one or more staples. 
 
H^i 
 
 LIST OF KENTUCKY HISTORIES AND BOOKS RE- 
 LATING TO THE SUBJECT, ALPHABETICALLY 
 ARRANGED.i 
 
 ^ Allen, William B. A History of Kentucky. Louisville. 1872. 
 V Arthur, T. S., and W. H. Carpenter. The History of Ken- 
 tucky. Philadelphia. 1852. 
 
 ' Atherton, William. Narrative of the Sufferings and Defeat 
 of the Northwest Army under General Winchester. Frankfort. 
 1842. 
 N""' Bishop, Robert H. An Outline of the History of the Church 
 in Kentucky. Lexington. 1824. 
 
 Bradford, John. Sketches of Kentucky in a Series of Articles 
 in the Kentucky Gazette. Lexington. 1826. 
 
 Breckinridge, W. C. P. Address delivered at the Centennial 
 Celebration of the Settlement of Breckinridge County. Frank- 
 fort. 1882. 
 V'^ Brown, John Mason. An Oration delivered on the Occasion of 
 the Centennial Anniversary of the Battle of the Blue Licks. 
 Frankfort. 1882. 
 
 ^Butler, Mann. A History of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. 
 Louisville. 1834. 
 
 Do. Second edition. Cincinnati. 1836. 
 Do. Sketch of Louisville in the Directory of 1832. Louis- 
 ville. 1832. 
 
 ^' Carfeday, Ben. The History of Louisville. Louisville. 18.52. 
 '^ Carpenter, T. The Trial of Colonel Aaron Burr. 3 vols. 
 Washington. 1807. 
 ' ^ Clark, George Rogers. Sketch of his Campaign in Illinois. 
 Cincinnati. 1869. 
 •^ Collins, Lewis. History of Kentucky. Covington. 1847. 
 
 1 This list has been furnished by R. T. Durrett, Esq., of Louisville, 
 Kentucky. 
 
LIST OF KENTUCKY HISTORIES. 425 
 
 '^ Collins, llichard H. History of Kentucky. 2 vols. Coving- 
 ton. 1874. 
 
 Craik, Rev. James. Historical Sketches of Christ's Church. 
 Louisville. 1862. 
 
 v^Dana, E. Geographical Sketches of the Western Country. 
 Cincinnati. 1819. 
 
 Darien, Joseph Hamilton. View of the President's Conduct. 
 Frankfort. 1807. 
 
 v^ Darnell, Ellas. A Journal containing an Accurate and Inter- 
 esting Account of the Hardship, etc., of the Kentucky Volunteers. 
 Philadelphia. 1854. 
 v/* Davidson, Robert. History of the Presbyterian Church in 
 
 Kentucky. New York. 1847. 
 \y Do. An Excursion to the Mammoth Cave. Lexington. 1840. 
 "v^Deering, Richard. Louisville in 18.59. Louisville. 1859. 
 v Drake, Daniel. Pioneer Life in Kentucky, a Series of Remi- 
 niscential Letters. Cincinnati. 1870. 
 
 VDuke, Basil W. History of Morgan's Cavalry. Cincinnati. 
 1867. 
 
 ^^urrett, Reuben T. The Life and Writings of John Filson, 
 the first Historian of Kentucky. Louisville and Cincinnati. 1884. 
 '^Filson, John. The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State 
 of Kentucke. Wilmington. 1 784. 
 >v/Do. Stockdale edition. London. 1793. 
 ^^Do. Campbell edition. New York. 1793. 
 
 Fitzroy, Alexander. The Discovery, Purchase, and Settlement 
 of the Country of Kentucky. London. 1786. 
 ^ Flint, Timothy. Indian Wars of the West. Cincinnati. 1833. 
 ^' Hall, James. Sketches of History, Life, and Manners in the 
 West. 2 vols. Philadelphia. 1835. 
 "^ Hutchins, Thomas. A Topographical Description of Virginia, 
 etc. London. 1778. 
 
 Imlay, Gilbert. A Topographical Description of the Western 
 Territory of North America. London. 1792. 
 • Do. Second edition. London. 1793. 
 V ■ Do. Third edition. London. 1797. 
 
 Joblen, M., & Co. Louisville, Past and Present. Louisville. 
 1875. 
 
 ^Johnston, Wm. Preston. The Life of General Albert Sidney 
 '■'Johnston. New York. 1878. 
 
426 LIST OF KENTUCKY HISTORIES, 
 
 \/ Kentucky. The Biographical Encyclopaedia. Cincinnati. 
 
 1878. 
 v/ Kentucky. Decisions of the Court of Appeals by Hughes, 
 Sneed, Hardin, Bibb, and A. K. Marshall. 
 
 Kentucky, Journal of House and Senate, first Session of the 
 Leiiisiature, June, 1792. Lexington. 1792. 
 \y Kentucky. Report of Debates in Convention of 1849. Frank- 
 fort. 1849. 
 
 Kentucky. Resolutions of 1798-99. Frankfort. 1798-99. 
 ^ Littell, William. Political Transactions in and concerning 
 
 Kentucky. Frankfort. 1806. 
 ^ Do. Laws of Kentucky. 5 vols. Frankfort. 1809-1819. 
 v^-' Lloyd, James T. Steamboat Directory and Disasters on the 
 Western Waters. Cincinnati. 1856. 
 
 Marshall, Humphrey. The History of Kentucky. Frankfort. 
 1812. 
 ^ Do. Second edition. 2 vols. Frankfort. 1824. 
 V McAfee, Robert. History of the Late War. Lexington. 1816. 
 ^ McClurg^ John A. Sketches of Western Adventure. Mays- 
 ville. 1832. '<^/9-'^ 
 
 Do. Dayton, O. 1854. ' ' -• 
 
 Do. Covington, Ky. 1872. 
 v McDonald, John. Biogra])hical Sketches of General Nathaniel 
 Massie, etc. Cincinnati. 1838. 
 
 "^ McM^ESfreysy H. Sketches of Louisville and its Environs. Louis- 
 ville. 1819. 
 
 ^ Metcalf, Samuel L. A Collection of Some of the most Inter- 
 esting Narratives. Lexington. 182L 
 X/ Morehead, James T. An Address in Commemoration of the 
 
 First Settlement of Kentucky. Frankfort. 1840. 
 V Morris, Robert. The History of Freemasonry in Kentucky. 
 Louisville. 1859. 
 ■s/ Parraud, M. Histoire de Kentucke. Traduit de I'anglois de 
 
 M. John Filson. Paris. 1785. 
 " \/ Persmrp-WHi. History of Fayette County, Ky. Chicago. 
 1882. 
 -/ Do. History of Bourbon, Scott, Harrison, and Nicholas Coun- 
 ties, Ky. Chicago. 1882. 
 
 Pioneer Life in the West. Philadelphia. 1858. 
 V Robertson, David. Reports of the Trials of Colonel Aaron 
 Burr. 2 vols. Philadelphia. 1808. 
 
LIST OF KENTUCKY HISTORIES. 427 
 
 Rafinesque, C. S. Ancient History, or Annals of Keutucky. 
 Frankfort. 1824. 
 
 ♦^ Eanck, George W. History of Lexington. Cincinnati. 1872. 
 s/ Redford, A. H. The History of Methodism in Kentucky. 3 
 vols. Nashville. 1868. 
 V*^ Do. Western Cavaliers. Nashville. 1876. 
 ^y Robertson, George. Scrap Book of Law, Politics, Men, etc. 
 Lexington. 185.5. 
 
 v/ Smith, Colonel James. An Account of the Remarkable Oc- 
 currences in his Life. Lexington. 1799. 
 
 Do. A Treatise on Indian Wars. Paris. 1812. 
 v^^ Smith, M. A Complete History of the late American War. 
 
 Lexington. 1816. 
 k/' Spalding, M. J. Sketches of the Life, Times, and Character of 
 
 the Right Reverend Benedict Joseph Flagel. Louisville. 1852. 
 \y' Do. Sketches of the Early Catholic Missions of Kentucky. 
 Louisville. 1844. 
 
 Taylor, John. A History of the Baptist Churches. Frank- 
 fort. 1823. 
 
 v/ Toulmin, Harry. A Description of Kentucky. London. 1792. 
 v^ Voyage au Kantoukey et sur les Bords du Genesee. Paris. 
 1821. 
 
 Webb, Ben. J. The Centenary of Catholicity in Kentucky. 
 Louisville. 1884. 
 
 ^Wilkinson, James. Memoirs of my Own Times. 3 vols. Phil- 
 adelphia. 1816. 
 n/ Williams, L. A., & Co. History of the Obio Falls Cities. 2 
 vols. Cleveland. 1882. 
 
 ^' Withers, Alexander S. Chronicles of Border Warfare. Clarks- 
 burg. 1831. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abolition of slavery, 197-199. 
 Abolition, first political campaign for, 
 
 217. See, also, Anti-Slavery . 
 Adair, Governor, 179. 
 Adams, J. Q., speech of, on Kentucky, 
 
 198. 
 Admission of Kentucky into Federal 
 
 Union, 167. 
 Alien and sedition acts, 140. 
 Alien and sedition, protest against, 
 
 143. 
 Alleghany Mountains, effects of, 14, 
 
 54 
 Allen, Colonel, ICO. 
 Anderson, General R., 266, 
 Anderson, General R., proclamation 
 
 of, 266. 
 Anderson, Fort, attack on, 354. 
 Angostura (Buena Vista), battle of, 
 
 20G. 
 Anti-slavery, first movements of par- 
 ty, 122, 148. See, also, Abolition. 
 Aristocracy, fear of, 127, 140. 
 Arms, purchase of, in 1861, 246. 
 Ashland, mob at, 404. 
 Augusta, battle of, 315. 
 
 Bank of Kentucky, 176. 
 
 Bank of Louisville, 188. 
 
 Bank of the Commonwealth, 177, 187. 
 
 Banking system, origin of, 149. 
 
 Banks in 1818, 176. 
 
 Banks in 1857, 220. 
 
 Banks, charters annulled, 177. 
 
 Banks, plan of, 190. 
 
 Banks, value of, to State, 191. 
 
 Baptists, first, in Kentucky, 118. 
 
 Baptists' place in Kentucky history, 
 
 157. 
 Bardstown, fight at, 340. 
 Barlow, Captain, 354. 
 Barry, Colonel H. W., 351. 
 Barry, William T., 180. 
 Barter, system of, 173. 
 Beech Grove, Fort, 274. 
 Bell and Everett, 234. 
 
 Benefit of clergy, 407. 
 
 Benham, General, 206. 
 
 Benton, M. M., 347. 
 
 Blue Licks, battle of, 89. 
 
 Boiling, R. R., 234. 
 
 Boone, Camp, 258. 
 
 Boone, Daniel, explorer, 64. 
 
 Boone emigrates, 150. 
 
 Boone seeks help, 156. 
 
 Boonesborough, assaults on, 74, 78. 
 
 Boonesborough convention, 69. 
 
 Boonesborough laws, 69. 
 
 Boonesborough, plan of Fort, 75. 
 
 Boone's Station, 69. 
 
 Border State compromises, 241. 
 
 Bowman, J. B., 361. 
 
 Boyle, General, 322. 
 
 Boyle, Judge, 180. 
 
 Bradford, Colonel (Dr.) J. T., 315. 
 
 Bragg, General, enters Kentucky, 291- 
 
 294. 
 Bragg at Perryville, 306. 
 Bramlette, Governor, 337, 345, 350. 
 Brandenburg, Morgan crosses Ohio 
 
 river, 341. 
 Breckinridge, John, 233, 234. 
 Breckinridge expelled from United 
 
 States Senate, 273. 
 Breckenridge, Dr. R. I., 351. 
 Breckinridge, William C. P., vi. 
 Brownie, Colonel, vi., 351, 354, 407. 
 Browne, Darnel, 245. 
 Buckner, General, 247, 261. 
 Buell, General, at Shiloh, 284. 
 Buell, battle of Perryville, 306. 
 Buell enters Louisville, 30i. 
 Buell, retreat of, 300. 
 Buell, retirement of, 317. 
 Buena Vista, battle of, 203. 
 Buffalo trails, 58. 
 Burbridge, General, 346, 351, 355. 
 Burial customs, 156. 
 Burr, Aaron, 150, 152. 
 Burt, Major, 340. 
 Butler, General, 110. 
 Butler, Maun, v. 
 
430 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Cemetery, state, 213. 
 
 Cheatnam, General, 307. 
 
 Chenault, Colonel, 3iO. 
 
 Cherokee Indians, 70. 
 
 Chickasaw Indians, 81. 
 
 Churchill, General, 292. 
 
 Cincinnati, siege of, 298. 
 
 Civil government, struggle for, 358. 
 
 Civil War, attitude in, 23G. 
 
 Clarke, George Rogers, 79, 81. 
 
 Clarke, as French general, 128. 
 
 Clarke, Judge, decision of, 179. 
 
 Clay, candidate for President, 193. 
 
 Clay, defeat of, 194. 
 
 Clay, influence of, 18G, 381. 
 
 Clay, Cassius M., 217, 218. 
 
 Clay, Henry, defense of Burr, 153. 
 
 Clay, Colonel Henry, death of, 210. 
 
 Clay, Colonel Henry, Jr., 201. 
 
 Cleburne, General, 192. 
 
 Climate of Kentucky, 224. 
 
 Cobb, How^ell, speech of, 249. 
 
 Collins, Lewis, iv. 
 
 Collins, R. H., iv. et passim. 
 
 Commercial advance, 22G. 
 
 Commonwealth, problems of, 121. 
 
 Constitution, first, 121. 
 
 Constitution, important points, 122. 
 
 Constitution, first revision of, 145. 
 
 Constitution, second revision of, 213. 
 
 Con-stitution, difiiculty of changing, 
 
 210. 
 Constitution, Federal, Thirteenth 
 
 Amendment, 3C0. 
 Convention, for separation, 96. 
 Convention, general seces? ion, 102. 
 Convention to form a Constitution, 
 
 107. 
 Coombs, Leslie, 234. 
 County system, 397. 
 Court party, intent of, 106. 
 Court, Supreme, power of, 123. 
 Courts of justice, early, 112. 
 Corydon, capture of, by Morgan, 341. 
 Crittenden, General, 307. 
 Crittenden, Senator, 238. 
 Cumberland Gap, 285. 
 
 Daxmlle, convention at, 102. 
 
 Danville political club, 113. 
 
 Davis, General J. C, 318. 
 
 Debt of Kentucky to Virginia, 1. 
 
 Debts, power to make limited, 215. 
 
 Democratic clubs, 126. 
 
 Democratic party, position of, in 1860, 
 
 232. 
 Depew, Charles, employed by Genet, 
 
 128. 
 Dosha, Governor, 180. 
 Divorce, 408. 
 Dixon, Archibald, 217. 
 Donelson, Fort, 277. 
 
 Draft for trooBs, failure of, 356. 
 Dueling, 403. " 
 Duke, General, v. 
 Dunmore, Lord, 67. 
 Durrett, R. T., 426. 
 Duval, Allen, 347. 
 
 East India Compant, effect of, on 
 
 Virginia, 4. 
 Elections, interference with, 334, 346. 
 Emancipation convention of 1850, 231. 
 Emancipation proclamation, 332. 
 Emigration from Kentucky, 155, 222. 
 Erie, Lake, battle of, 165. 
 Estell's Station, 82. 
 Evans, Lewis, map of Kentucky, 61. 
 Ewing, General, 350. 
 Explorations of Kentucky, 57. 
 
 Fallen Timbers, battle of, 130. 
 Falmouth, fight at, 317. 
 Fayette County, 81. 
 Fecundity of Kentucky people, 223. 
 Federal Congress, address to, 104. 
 Federal Congress, tax of, 174. 
 Federal Congress, troops, call for, 242. 
 Federal Congress, attitude towards 
 
 slavery, 331. 
 Filscn, John, iv. 
 Financial management during civil 
 
 war, 387. 
 Fincastle Countv, Virginia, 79. 
 Finnell, Adjutant-General, 267, 268. 
 First Kentucky Confederate brigade, 
 
 376. 
 Fitch, John, 174, 175. 
 Floyd, General, 278. 
 Forrctt, General, 353. 
 Fortifications, previous methods, 75. 
 Frankfort, attack on, 303. 
 Franklin, abortive State of, 94. 
 Freeclman's Bureau, 366. 
 French ReA'olution, 148. 
 Fry, General Speed, 351. 
 
 Garrard, 268. 
 
 Genet, Citizen, 127, 128. 
 
 Geological Survey, first, 228. 
 
 German settlers in Virginia, 11. 
 
 Gilbert, Colonel, 335. 
 
 Gilnian, General, 339. 
 
 Girty, Simon, 83. 
 
 Gooding, General, 307. 
 
 Goodloe, W. C, vi. 
 
 Gould, B. A., 372. 
 
 Grant, General, at Paducah, 251. 
 
 (rrant, General, at Donelson, 277. 
 
 Greer., General, vi. 
 
 Greenup, Christopher, 114. 
 
 Guerrillas, 325. 
 
 Haldeman, W. N.,271. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 431 
 
 Hinson, Colonel, 258. 
 Hardee, General, 304. 
 Harris, General, 300. 
 Harrison, Colonel, 258. 
 Harrison, General, 159, 192. 
 Harrod, James, 67. 
 Harrodsburg, 67. 
 Harrodsburg, assault on, 73. 
 Hawes, Governor (secession), 303. 
 Hawthorne, L. R., 378. 
 Henderson, Colonel, 69, 75. 
 Henderson & Co., 08. 
 Henry, Fort, loss of, 27G. 
 Heth, General, 296, 297. 
 Hewitt, Fayette, vi. 
 Hicks, Colonel, 253. 
 Hines, Captain (Judge), 341. 
 Holder, Captain, 83. 
 Home Guards, 207. 
 Houston, General Felix, 193. 
 Hull's surrender, 158. 
 
 Illinois, expedition to, 79, 163. 
 
 Immigration, 81, 108. 
 
 Immigration, attitude of Kentucky to, 
 
 396. 
 Independence, spirit of, 106. 
 Indians, hmuanity of, 109. 
 Indians, treaty with, 98. 
 Inglis, Mary, captivity, 61. 
 Innis, Henry, 104. 
 
 Jacksox, General Antjrew, 185. 
 
 Jackson, General James, 308. 
 
 Jay, John, 100. 
 
 Jefferson, Fort, 81. 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, 81. 
 
 Johnson, G. W., 271. 
 
 Johnson, Joseph, 361. 
 
 Johnson, R. M., 193. 
 
 Johnston, General A. S., 108, 193, 261- 
 
 2t53, 283. 
 Johnston, Colonel J. Stoddard, 295, 
 
 320. 
 Johnston, "W. P., 201. 
 
 Kentucky Acadejiy, 139. 
 
 Kentucky, area of, 24. 
 
 Kentucky, agricultural products, 32. 
 
 See, also, Appendir. 
 Kentucky, absence of Federal aid in, 
 
 52. 
 Kentucky, buffalo in, 46. 
 Kentucky, behavior of troops, 163. 
 Kentucky coal-beds, 38. 
 Kentucky caverns, 42. 
 Kentucky, civil law in, 402. 
 Kentucky contingent in Mexican War, 
 
 201. 
 Kentucky, conditions at settlement, 27. 
 Kentucky, dueling in, 403. 
 Kentucky earthquakes, 44. 
 28 
 
 Kentucky, elevation of, 24. 
 Kentucky, English race not enfeebled 
 
 in, 23. 
 Kentucky and Federal government, 
 
 131. 
 Kentucky, first Kentuckians, 45. 
 Kentucky, French explorations, 48. 
 Kentucky, geology of, 35. 
 Kentucky, health of people, 32. • 
 Kentucky, Indians in, 45. 
 Kentucky, immigration to, 79. 
 Kentucky iron ores, 38. 
 Kentucky land system, 49. 
 Kentucky, loss of life in Civil War, 
 
 380. 
 Kentucky, mammoth, 41. 
 Kentucky, mountains of, 26. 
 Kentucky mound builders, 45. 
 Kentucky, peculiarities of origin, 22. 
 Kentucky petroleum, 39. 
 Kentucky, position of people in 1861, 
 
 253. 
 Kentuclcy, physical conditions, 24. 
 Kentucky prairie land, origin of, 29. 
 Kentucky, qualities of early people, 
 
 111. 
 Kentucky salt licks, 41. 
 Kentucky saltpetre, 43. 
 Kentucky, separation from Virginia, 
 
 104. 
 Kentucky, strategic position, 275. 
 Kentucky, sympathy with Texas, 200. 
 Kentucky County divided from Fin- 
 castle, 73. 
 Kentucky, Mammoth Cave, 42. 
 
 Lebanon captured by Morgan, 290, 
 
 340 
 Legislature of 1861, 241, 247. 
 Legislature, Confederate, 251. 
 Legislature, conservative action of, 
 
 205. 
 Legislature, intermittent session, 
 
 272. 
 Legislature repeals expatriation acts, 
 
 307. 
 Legislature, resolutions of 1801, 242. 
 Legislature, session in Louisville, 322. 
 Lewis, Colonel, 160. 
 Lexington club, 128. 
 Lexington, business of, in 1817, 176. 
 Lincohi, President, 285, 358, 362. 
 Lincoln County, 81. 
 Literary fund, 178. 
 Little, "William, v. 
 Lpiching, 403. 
 Lj-tle, General, 306. 
 
 Magoffin, Governor, 233, 264, 321. 
 Major, S. I. M., vi. 
 Manson, General, 291, 293. 
 Manufactures, early, 175. 
 
432 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Marshall, H., General, 201, 210, 248. 
 
 Marshall, H., Senator, 104, 122, v. 
 
 Maryland, 21. 
 
 Mason Comity, 108. 
 
 Massachusetts, quarrel with, 185. 
 
 McCarty, Clinton, 234. 
 
 McCook, General, 307. 
 
 McKee, Colonel, 201, 210. 
 
 Measurements of men, 373. 
 
 Meigs, Fort, 164. 
 
 Methodists, first, 118. 
 
 Methodists, revival, 147. 
 
 Mexican War, 202. 
 
 Miami expedition, 91. 
 
 Michaux, F. A., 175. 
 
 Military law, evils of, 335. 
 
 Mills, Colonel, 161. 
 
 Mills, Judge, 180. 
 
 Mississippi, question of navigation, 99, 
 
 120. 
 Mitchell, General, 307. 
 Monetary crisis 1837, 189. 
 Monetary crisis lc57, 220. 
 Monetary system, 172. 
 Money, cut, 191. 
 Money for Civil War, 263. 
 Money, Spanish, 173. 
 Monterey, battle of, 203. 
 Moore, Colonel O. H.,340. 
 Morgan, General George H., 313. 
 Morgan, General John H., 210, 258, 
 
 282, 288, 289, 290, 326, 329, 338, 342, 
 
 343. 
 Morgan, Lieutenant Thomas, 341. 
 Mount Stirling, 338. 
 
 Negro testimony in the courts, 368. 
 
 Nelson, General, 248, 273, 291. 
 
 Neutrality in Civil War, 237, 249, 252, 
 381. 
 
 New Orleans, 167, 171. 
 
 Nicholas, Colonel George, 121. 
 
 North Carolina and State of Frank- 
 lin, 96, 
 
 Oaths, degradation of, 322. 
 
 Ohio, Indian fights in, 109. 
 
 Old and new court, controversy, 180. 
 
 Old and new court, final decision, 
 
 182. 
 Old and new court, effects of decision, 
 
 183. 
 " Old and New," magazine articles in, 
 • 200. 
 
 Onslow, Judge, 180. 
 
 Pack saddle, use of, 58. 
 
 Parties, division according to soil, 232. 
 
 Patriot (journal), 181. 
 
 Payne, General E. A., 351. 
 
 Pegram, General, invades Kentucky, 
 
 Perryville, battle of, 304. 
 Pierce, H. B., Appendix. 
 Pioneers, life of, 116, 117. 
 Point Pleasant, battle of, 67. 
 Political club, 113. 
 Political club, debates of, 114, 115. 
 Polk, General Leonidas, takes Co- 
 lumbus, 250. 
 Population in 1790, 108. 
 Population in 1810, 155. 
 Powell, Lazarus W., 217. 
 Power, Thomas, Spanish agent, 132. 
 Presbyterians, first, in Kentucky, 118. 
 Proctor, General (British), 162. 
 Provost marshal, 321, 333, 348. 
 Public works, 189. 
 
 QuAirriES of early Kentuckians, 111. 
 
 Raisin, battle of, ICO. 
 
 Reconciliaticn in 18C5, 361. 
 
 Relief and anti-relief parties, 179. 
 
 Relief party, removal of, in 1840, 190. 
 
 Religious condition of pioneers, 118. 
 
 Resolutions of 1798, 141, and Appen- 
 dix. 
 
 Resolutions of 1798, effort to repeal, 
 146. 
 
 Revolutionary War, soldiers from, 21. 
 
 Richmond, battle of, 291. 
 
 Robertson, Judge, 347. 
 
 Robinson, Camp Dick, 248. 
 
 Robinson, Governor, 321. 
 
 Roman Catholics, 118. 
 
 Roman Catholics, community in Nel- 
 son County, 119. 
 
 Rosecrans, General. 338. 
 
 Rowan, John, 180. 
 
 &T. ASAPHS, 67. 
 
 St. Clair's defeat, 110. 
 
 Salem, fight at, 341. 
 
 Sailing, J., 59. 
 
 Sanitary commission, 372. 
 
 Schoepff, General, 268. 
 
 School system, 396. 
 
 Scott, Colonel, 292. 
 
 Scott, General, 219. 
 
 Sebastian, Judge, 133, 154. 
 
 Secession resolutions of '98, 144. 
 
 Secession spirit of 1790 and 1861, 107. 
 
 Secession, Wilkinson's scheme, 98. 
 
 Separation from Virginia, 93, 94. 
 
 Sevier, Governor, 96. 
 
 Shawanee Indians, 60. 
 
 Shelby, Governor, 124, 128. 
 
 Sheridan, General, 300. 
 
 Sherman, General W. T., 268. 
 
 Shiloh, battle, 283. 
 
 Shiloh, Kentucky loss, 285. 
 
 Slavery, abolition of, 197. 
 
 Slavery, conditions of, 196. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 433 
 
 Slavery, effects, 217, 224. 
 
 Slavery, increase of, 195. . 
 
 Slavery (auti-), 122, 148^ ^'^ 
 
 Slaves, enlistment of, ^• 
 
 Slaves, inattention to value of, in 1861, 
 
 254. 
 Smith, Captain James, 64. 
 Smith, General Kirby, 291, 313. 
 Southern rights party, 232. 
 Sovereignty convention, 240, 270. 
 Spain, treaty with, 132. 
 Spaniards, possessions of, 99. 
 Spanish intrigues, 132. 
 Speculation in 1830-1837, 188. 
 Speed, Thomas, 113. 
 State guard, 246, 257. 
 States rights convention, 313. 
 Steamboats, 174. 
 Stephenson, General, 313. 
 Stone River, battle, 338. 
 
 Tax, Federal, 194. 
 
 Taylor, General, 201, 203, 213. 
 
 Tecumseh, 164, 166. 
 
 Texas annexation, 200. 
 
 Texas, war of, 193. 
 
 Thames, battle of, 165. 
 
 Thomas, General, 274, 301. 
 
 Thompson, Christopher, 180. 
 
 Thompson, E. P., history by, 258. 
 
 Tilghman, General, 247, 277. 
 
 Tippecanoe, battle, 155. 
 
 Tirrill, General, 306. 
 
 Transylvania University, 283,361, 400. 
 
 Troops, call for, 264. 
 
 Troops, organization of, 281. 
 
 Troops, joining Bragg, 324. 
 
 IJNrrED States Bank, 187. 
 
 ViRGiNTA, awakening of, after 1790, 18. 
 
 Virginia, claim on northwestern 
 lauds, 53. 
 
 Virginia compared with New England, 
 3. 
 
 Virginia, character of settlers, 8. 
 
 Virginia, dissolution of first company, 
 7. 
 
 Virginia, education, 16. 
 
 Virginia, effects of Alleghany Moun- 
 tains, 14. 
 
 Virginia, early explorations, 57. 
 
 28 
 
 Virginia, geographical condition, 9. 
 Virginia, organization of society, 14. 
 Virginia, pastors an<i religious spirit, 
 
 16. 
 Virginia, planting of, 6. 
 Virginia, population compared with 
 
 Massachusetts, 11. 
 Virginia, reasons for desiring western 
 
 colonies, 55. 
 Virgmia, separation of Kentucky 
 
 from, 93. 
 Virginia, sources of population, 11. 
 Virginia, willingness of, for partition, 
 
 102. 
 
 Walker, Rev. Thomas, explorer, 59. 
 
 Wallace, General, at Cincinnati, 299. 
 
 War of 1812, 158. 
 
 War, Mexican, 200. 
 
 War, Civil, begimiiug of, 231. 
 
 War, Civili attitude in, 236. 
 
 Wayne, Fort, relief of, 159. 
 
 Wayne, General, victory of, 130. 
 
 Ways from Virginia to Kentucky, 58. 
 
 Webster, General, 306. 
 
 West, Edward, 174, 175. 
 
 Whigs, indecision on the slavery ques- 
 tion, 217. 
 
 Wild Cat Mountain, battle of, 268. 
 
 Wilder, General, battle of importance, 
 296. 
 
 Wilkinson, trading treaty, 101. 
 
 Wilkinson, General, forms secession 
 party, 98. 
 
 Wilkinson, General, first trial of, 137. 
 
 Wilkinson, General, second trial of, 
 139. 
 
 William and Mary College, 17. 
 
 Williams, Johns., 201. 
 
 Williams, John S., at Cerro Gordo, 
 212. 
 
 Williams, John S., at Ivy Mountain, 
 269. 
 
 Winchester, General, 161. 
 
 Withers, Colonel, 258. 
 
 Women, imprisonment of. 348. 
 
 Wood, Colonel, explorer, 59. 
 
 Woolford, Colonel, 268, 339. 
 
 Wyandotte Indians, attack by, 82. 
 
 ZoLLicoFER, General, 250, 262, 268, 
 274.* 
 
9lmerttan Commoit\j)ealtf)0» 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 HORACE E. SCUDDER. 
 
 A series of volumes narrating the history of such 
 States of the Union as have exerted a positive influ- 
 ence in the shaping of the national government, or 
 have a striking political, social, or economical history. 
 
 The commonwealth has always been a positive force 
 in American history, and it is believed that no better 
 time could be found for a statement of the life inher- 
 ent in the States than when the unity of the nation 
 has been assured ; and it is hoped by this means to 
 throw new light upon the development of the country, 
 and to give a fresh point of view for the study of 
 American history. 
 
 This series is under the editorial care of Mr. Hor- 
 ace E. Scudder, who is well known both as a student 
 of American history and as a writer. 
 
 The aim of the Editor will be to secure trustworthy 
 and graphic narratives, which shall have substantial 
 value as historical monographs and at the same time 
 do full justice to the picturesque elements of the sub- 
 jects. The volumes are uniform in size and general 
 style with the series of " American Statesmen " and 
 ''American Men of Letters," and are furnished with 
 maps, indexes, and such brief critical apparatus as 
 add to the thoroughness of the work. 
 
 Speaking of the series, the Boston yournal says: 
 " It is clear that this series will occupy an entir«ly new 
 place in our historical literature. Written by compe- 
 tent and aptly chosen authors, from fresh materials, 
 in convenient form, and with a due regard to propor- 
 tion and proper emphasis, they promise to supply 
 most satisfactorily a positive want." 
 
The series, so far as arranged, comprises the follow- 
 ing volumes : — 
 
 NOW READY. 
 
 Virginia. A History of the People. By John Esten 
 Cooke, author of "The Virginia Comedians," 
 "Life of Stonewall Jackson," "Life of General 
 Robert E. Lee," etc. 
 
 Oregon. The Struggle for Possession. By William 
 Barrows, D. D. 
 
 Maryland. By William Hand Browne, Associate 
 of Johns Hopkins University. 
 
 Kentucky. By Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, S. D., 
 Professor of Palaeontology, Harvard University, re- 
 cently Director of the Kentucky State Survey. 
 
 IN PREPARATION. 
 
 California. By Josiah Royce, Instructor in Philoso- 
 phy in Harvard University. 
 
 Kansas. By Leverett W. Spring, Professor in Eng- 
 lish Literature in the University of Kansas. 
 
 Connecticut. By Alexander Johnston, author of a 
 "Handbook of American Politics," Professor of 
 Jurisprudence and Political Economy in the Col- 
 lege of New Jersey. 
 
 Pennsylvania. By Hon. Wayne McVeagh, late At- 
 torney-General of the United States. 
 
 Tennessee. By James Phelan, Ph. D. (Leipsic). 
 
 South Carolina. By Hon. William H. Trescot, au- 
 thor of " The Diplomacy of the American Revolu- 
 tion." 
 
 New York. By Hon. Ellis H. Roberts. 
 
 Michigan. By Hon. T. M. Cooley, LL. D. 
 
 Missouri. By Lucien Carr, M. A., Assistant Curator 
 of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology. 
 
 Others to be announced hereafter. The history of 
 each State occupies a single volume. Each volume, 
 with Maps, i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. 
 
PRESS NOTICES. 
 
 "VIRGINIA." 
 
 Mr. Cooke has made a fascinating volume — one which it will 
 be very difficult to surpass either in method or interest. If all 
 the volumes of the series ["American Commonwealths"] come 
 up to the level of this one — in interest, in broad tolerance of 
 spirit, and in a thorough comprehension of what is best worth 
 telling — a very great service will have been done to the reading 
 public. True historic insight appears through all these pages, 
 and an earnest desire to do all parties and religions perfect jus- 
 tice. The story of the settlement of Virginia is told in full. . . . 
 It is made as interesting as a romance. — The Critic (New York). 
 
 It need not be said that it is written in a fascinating style, and 
 animated by a spirit of strong love for the author's native State, 
 and pride in its history. It should be said further that it brings 
 out many an obscure or forgotten bit of history, and makes real 
 an epoch which is familiar to very few. — New York Evening Post. 
 
 No more acceptable writer could have been selected to tell the 
 story of Virginia's history. Mr. Cooke is a graceful writer, and 
 thoroughly informed in reference to his subject. He writes from 
 a full mind, gained not from the point of view of the book-maker, 
 but from a deep love for Virginia and her people. He has mas- 
 tered his subject, and tells the story in a delightful way. — Edw 
 cational Journal of Virginia (Richmond, Va.). 
 
 Mr. Cooke has succeeded, without going out of the domain of 
 history, in making his narrative attractive. We do not remember 
 ever to have read the story of colonial times as the story of the 
 people, their privations, their difficulties, their conflicts with sav- 
 ages without and corruption and idleness within, so graphically 
 told as it is in these pages. — Christian Union (New York). 
 
 It comes up to full compliance with the severe requisitions of 
 modern philosophical method. . . . Readers who feel that they 
 have already had a surfeit of American colonial history will find 
 their appetites reviving by contact with this delightfully written 
 work. — Boston Transcript. 
 
 Mr. Cooke is to be congratulated on his little history. It is 
 fresh, bright, and full of the most fascinating and dramatic scenes. 
 It is a book of which not only Virginia, but the whole country, 
 may well be proud. — Philadelphia Press. 
 
"OREGON." 
 
 The long and interesting story of the struggle of five nations 
 for the possession of Oregon is told in the graphic and reliable 
 narrative of William Barrows. ... A more fascinating record 
 has seldom been written. . . . Careful research and pictorial skill 
 of narrative commend this book of antecedent history to all inter- 
 ested in the rapid march and wonderful development of our 
 American civilization upon the Pacific coast. — Springfield Repub- 
 lican. 
 
 There is so much that is new and informing to the reading 
 world embodied in this little volume that we commend it with 
 enthusiasm. It is written with great ability and in a pleasing 
 style, a vein of humor rippling along its pages and imparting an 
 agreeable and appetizing flavor to the varied descriptions. . . . 
 The book is worthy of careful perusal by all who claim to be 
 intelligent concerning the rich and progressive country beyond 
 the Rocky Mountains. — Magazine of American Histojy (New 
 York). 
 
 This work is more than historical. It is full of information 
 with regard to the old territorial life, the fur hunting and trading, 
 the habits of the people, the romance of immigration, and kindred 
 topics. It is so readable that in this respect it will surprise those 
 who regard history as inevitably dull. . . . We commend this 
 book for its style, its information, and its great practical value. — 
 Christiajt Advocate (New York). 
 
 Mr. Barrows writes simply but vigorously and with the thor- 
 ough mastery of his subject only to be derived from observation 
 of passing events and study of those that had passed before he 
 appeared among the actors in the drama he describes. Many of 
 his chapters are thriilingly interesting. — Philadelphia Evening 
 Bulletin. 
 
 It will take its place as an authority on the topics discussed, 
 ^nd the people of Oregon cannot but be thankful that it has been 
 written. — The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon). 
 
 *^* For sale by all Booksellers. Sejtt by mail, post-paid, on re- 
 ceipt of price by the Publishers, 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., Boston, Mass. 
 
9lmericatt g)tatesmen. 
 
 A Series of Biographies of Men conspicuous in the 
 Political History of the United States. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 JOHN T. MORSE, Jr. 
 
 The object of this series is not merely to give a 
 number of unconnected narratives of men in Ameri- 
 can political life, but to produce books which shall, 
 when taken together, indicate the lines of political 
 thought and development in American history, — 
 books embodying in compact form the result of ex- 
 tensive study of the many and diverse influences 
 which have combined to shape the political history of 
 our country. 
 
 The series is under the editorship of Mr. John T. 
 Morse, Jr., whose historical and biographical writmgs 
 give ample assurance of his special fitness for this 
 task. The volumes now ready are as follows : — 
 
 John Quincy Adams. By John T. Morse, Jr. 
 Alexander Hamilto7i. By Henry Cabot Lodge. 
 John C. Calhoun. By Dr. H. von Holst. 
 Afidrew Jackson. By Prof. W. G. Sumner. 
 John Randolph. By Henry Adams. 
 ya77ies Monroe. By Pres. Daniel C. Oilman. 
 Thomas Jefferson. By John T. Morse, Jr. 
 Daniel Webster. By Henry Cabot Lodge. 
 Albert Gallatin. By John Austin Stevens. 
 James Madison. By Sydney Howard Gay. 
 John Adams, By John T. Morse, Jr. 
 
 IN PREPARATION. 
 Henry Clay. By Hon. Carl Schurz. 
 Sa?nuel Adams. By John Fiske. 
 Martin Van Buren. By Hon. William Dorsheimer. 
 
 Others to be announced hereafter. Each biography 
 occupies a single volume, i6mo, gilt top. Price $1.25. 
 
ESTIMATES OF THE PRESS. 
 
 "JOHN QUINCY ADAMS." 
 That Mr. Morse's conclusions will in the main be those of 
 posterity we have very little doubt, and he has set an admirable 
 example to his coadjutors in respect of interesting narrative, 
 just proportion, and judicial candor. — New York Evening Post. 
 The work is done in a vigorous and every way admirable 
 manner, which it is not too much to say touches the high mark 
 of impartial but appreciative history. — Independent (New 
 York). 
 
 Mr. Morse has written closely, compactly, intelligently, fear- 
 lessly, honestly. — New York Times. 
 
 "ALEXANDER HAMILTON." 
 
 The biography of Mr. Lodge is calm and dignified through- 
 out. He has the virtue — rare indeed among biographers — 
 of impartiality. He has done his work with conscientious care, 
 and the biography of Hamilton is a book which cannot have 
 too many readers. It is more than a biography ; it is a study 
 in the science of government. — St. Paul Pioneer-Press. 
 
 Mr. Lodge's portrait of Hamilton is carefully, impartially, and 
 skilfully painted, and his study of the epoch in which Hamil- 
 ton was dominant is luminous and comprehensive. — Philadel- 
 phia North American. 
 
 "JOHN C. CALHOUN." 
 
 Dr. von Hoist's volume is certainly not the least valuable of 
 the three that constitute the series, so far as it has at present 
 progressed ; and of the series, as a whole, it may be said that 
 if the succeeding volumes are of the same high order of excel- 
 lence as those that have already appeared they will serve a 
 valuable purpose, not only as exemplifying American statesmen, 
 but as a means of training in statesmanship. — Boston yournal. 
 
 Nothing can exceed the skill with which the political career 
 of the great South Carolinian is portrayed in these pages. The 
 work is superior to any other number of the series thus far, and 
 we do not think it can be surpassed by any of those that are to 
 come. The whole discussion in relation to Calhoun's position 
 ts eminently philosophical and just. — The Dial (Chicago). 
 
"ANDREW JACKSON." 
 Prof Sumner has written what we think may rightly be called 
 an impartial li£e of perhaps the strongest personality that was 
 ever elected President, and yet he has not made his story dull. 
 He has all in all, made the justest long estimate of Jackson 
 
 that has had itself put between the covers of a hook. -New 
 York Times. 
 
 Professor Sumner's account and estimate of Andrew Jackson 
 as a statesman is one of the most masterly monographs that we 
 have ever had the pleasure of reading. It is calm and clear. - 
 Providence Journal. _ . 
 
 A book of exceptional value to students of politics. — Cc^«- 
 
 gregationalist (Boston). 
 
 "JOHN RANDOLPH." 
 The book has been to me intensely interesting. I have be,", i 
 especially struck by the literary and historical merit of the first 
 two chapters : they are terse ; full of picture, suggestion, life ; 
 with fine strokes of satire and humor. The book is rich in new 
 facts and side lights, and is worthy of its place in the already 
 brilliant series of monographs on American Statesmen. _ i 
 heartily congratulate Mr. Morse over the solid success the series 
 has already won. - Prof. Moses Coit Tyler. 
 
 Remarkably interesting. ... The biography has all theele- 
 ments of popularity, and cannot fail to be widely read.-^ar/- 
 
 ford Courant. ,^ , ^ •/ 
 
 A most lively and interesting volume. - New York Tribune. 
 
 "JAMES MONROE." 
 
 In clearness of style, and in all points of literary workman- 
 ship, from cover to cover, the volume is well-nigh perfect. 
 There is also a calmness of judgment, a correctness of taste 
 and an absence of partisanship which are too frequently want- 
 ing in biographies, and especially in political biographies. - 
 American Literary Churchman (Baltimore). 
 
 At last the character of this distinguished statesman has re- 
 ceived justice at the hands of the historian. His biographer 
 has written the most satisfactory account of the life of this il^ 
 lustrious man which has been given the coniMxy.-^ San Fran- 
 
 Cisco Btdlelin. ,, . , 
 
 A volume which gives an excellent and well-proportioned 
 outline of the eminent statesman's q^xcqx.— Boston Journal. 
 
"THOMAS JEFFERSON." 
 
 The requirements of political biography have rarely been met 
 so satisfactorily as in this memoir of Jefferson. . . , Mr. Morse 
 has shown himself amply competent for the task, and he has 
 given us a singularly just, well-proportioned and interesting 
 sketch of the personal and political career of the author of the 
 Declaration of Independence. — Boston Jourjial- 
 
 The book is exceedingly interesting and readable. The at- 
 tention of the reader is strongly seized at once, and he is carried 
 along in spite of himself, sometimes protesting, sometimes 
 doubting, yet unable to lay the book down. — Chicago Standard. 
 
 "DANIEL WEBSTER." 
 
 The massiveness of Mr. Lodge's subject, the compass and 
 high significance of many of the single themes with which he 
 has had to labor, and the voluminous amount of the material 
 requiring his critical study would seem to have demanded a 
 singular skill of compression in bringing the results within this 
 small volume. Yet the task has been achieved ably, admirably, 
 and faithfully. — Boston Transcript. 
 
 It will be read by students of history ; it will be invaluable as 
 a work of reference ; it will be an authority as regards matters 
 of fact and criticism ; it hits the key-note of Webster's durable 
 and ever-growing fame ; it is adequate, calm, impartial ; it is 
 admirable. — Philadelphia Press. 
 
 "ALBERT GALLATIN." 
 
 The greater part of Mr. Stevens's frank, simple, and straight- 
 forward book is devoted to a careful narrative of Gallatin's 
 financial administration, and next in importance to this is the 
 excellent chapter devoted to Gallatin's brilliant diplomatic ser- 
 vices. The study of an honorable and attractive character is 
 completed by some interesting pages of personal and domestic 
 history. — New York Tribune. 
 
 It is one of the most carefully prepared of these very valu- 
 able volumes, . . . abounding in information not so readily ac- 
 cessible as is that pertaining to men more often treated by the 
 biographer. . . . The whole work covers a ground which the 
 political student cannot afford to neglect. — Boston Correspon- 
 dent Hartford Coicrant. 
 
 *#* For sale by all Booksellers. .Sent hy mail, post-paid, on receipt of 
 price by the Publishers, 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFyN-jMSro ^OMPJ^fYQBosTON. 
 

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