E 458 
 
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 AN ADDRESS 
 
 BY THE 
 
 HOK JOSEPH HOLT, 
 
 X) THE PEOPLE OF KENTUCKY, 
 
 DELIVERED AT LOUISVILLE. JULY 13th, 1861; 
 
 A LSO 
 
 MIS LETTER TO J. F. SPEED, ESQ. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 JAMES G. GREGORY, 
 
 (SUCCESSOR TO W . A . TOWSSESD & CO.,) 
 
 KG. 46 WALKER STEEET. 
 1861. 
 
PROSPECTUS 
 
 ELEGANT HOUSEHOLD EDITION 
 
 Works of Charles Dickens, 
 
 Illustrated from Drawings made expressly for this Edition, 
 
 Bv F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. 
 
 Executed on Steel, in Pure Line and Etching, by Eminent Engravers. 
 
 The subscriber will commence, March 1st, 1861, the issue of 
 an entirely new edition of Dickens' Novels, from new stereotype 
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 Dickens' Works the most perfect series of books ever issued in Ameri- 
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 trated Edition of Cooper's Novels have been so distinguished, snd 
 the drawings by John Gilbert, the foremost of English artists (this 
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 NO. 46 WALKER STREET, N. Y. 
 
THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 HON. JOSEPH HOLT, 
 
 TO THE PEOPLE OF KENTUCKY, 
 
 DELIVERED AT LOUISVILLE, JULY 13th, 1861; 
 
 ALSO 
 
 HIS LETTER TO J. F. SPEED, ESQ. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 JAMES G. GREGORY, 
 
 (6CCCESSOK TOW. A. TOWNS END & CO..) 
 
 NO. 46 WALKER STREET. 
 1861. 
 
" .1 / 
 
 .VI 
 
 
 C A. ALTOKD. PRINTER. 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. JOSEPH HOLT. 
 
 Mr. Holt was next introduced to the audience by Hon. Henry Pirtle, 
 who addressed him a few words of welcome. 
 
 Then taking the stand, amid prolonged cheers, Mr. Holt spoke as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 Judge Pirtle : I beg you to be assured that I am most thankful for this dis- 
 tinguished and flattering welcome, and for every one of the kind words which 
 have just fallen from your lips, as I am for the hearty response they have 
 received. Spoken by anybody and anywhere, these words would have been 
 cherished by me ; but spoken by yourself and in the presence and on behalf 
 of those in whose midst I commenced the battle of life, whose friendship I 
 have ever labored to deserve, and in whose fortunes I have ever felt the live- 
 liest sympathy, they are doubly grateful to my feelings. I take no credit to 
 myself for loving and being faithful to such a government as this, or for ut- 
 tering, as I do, with every throb of my existence, a prayer for its preserva- 
 tion. In regard to my official conduct, to which you have alluded with such 
 earnest and generous commendation, I must say that no merit can be accorded 
 to me beyond that of having humbly but sincerely struggled to perform a 
 public duty, amid embarrassments which the world can never fully know. 
 In reviewing what is past, I have and shall ever have a bitter sorrow, that, 
 while I was enabled to accomplish so little in behalf of our betrayed and suf- 
 fering country, others were enabled to accomplish so much against it. You 
 do me exceeding honor in associating me in your remembrance with the hero 
 of Fort Sumter. There is about his name an atmosphere of light that can 
 never grow dim. Surrounded with his little band, by batteries of treason and 
 by infuriated thousands of traitors, the fires upon the altar of patriotism at 
 which he ministered, only waxed the brighter for the gloom that enveloped 
 him, and history will never forget that it was from these fires that was kin- 
 dled that conflagration that now blazes throughout the length and breadth of 
 the land. Brave among the bravest, incorruptible and unconquerable in his 
 loyalty, amid all the perplexities and trials and sore humiliations that beset 
 him, he well deserves that exalted position in the affections and confidence of 
 
4 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 
 
 the people that he now enjoys; and while none have had better opportuni- 
 ty of knowmg tins than myself, so I am sure that none could have a prouder 
 joy in bearing testimony to it than I have to-night 
 
 Fellow-Citizens: A few weeks since, in another form, I ventured freely 
 to express my views upon those tragic events which have brought sorrow to 
 every hearthstone and to every heart in our distracted country, and it is not 
 my purpose on this occasion to repeat those views, or to engage in any ex- 
 tended discussion of the questions then examined. It is not necessary that 
 I should do so, since the argument is exhausted, and the popular mind is per- 
 fectly familiar with it in all its bearings. I will, however, with your permis- 
 sion, submit a few brief observations upon the absorbing topics of the dav, 
 and if I do so with an earnestness and emphasis due alike to the sincerity of 
 my convictions and to the magnitude of the interests involved, it is trusted 
 that none will be offended, not even those who may most widely differ from 
 
 Could one, an entire stranger to our history, now look down upon the 
 South, and see there a hundred or a hundred and fifty thousand men march- 
 ing in hostile array, threatening the capture of the capital and the dismem- 
 berment of the territory of the republic; and could he look again and see 
 that this army is marshalled and directed by officers recently occupying dis- 
 tinguished places in the civil and military service of the country; and further 
 that the states from which this army has been drawn appear to be one vast 
 seething cauldron of ferocious passion, he would very naturally conclude that 
 the government of the United States had committed some great crime against 
 its people, and that this uprising was in resistance to wrong and outrages 
 which had been borne until endurance was no longer possible. And yet no 
 conclusion could be further from the truth than this. The government of the 
 United States has been faithful to all its constitutional obligations For 
 eighty years it has maintained the national honor at home and abroad and 
 by its prowess, its wisdom, and its justice, has given to the title of an Amer- 
 ican citizen an elevation among the nations of the earth which the citizens of 
 no republic has enjoyed since Rome was mistress of the world. Under its 
 administration the national domain has stretched away to the Pacific, and tha* 
 constellation which announced our birth as a people, has expanded from thir- 
 teen to thirty-four stars, all, until recently, moving undisturbed and undimmed 
 m their orbs of light and grandeur. The rights of no states have been in- 
 vaded; no man's property has been despoiled, no man's liberty abridged, no 
 man's life oppressively jeopardized by the action of this government. Under 
 its benign influences the rills of public and private prosperity have swelled 
 into rivulets, and from rivulets into rivers ever brimming in their fullness 
 and everywhere, and at all periods of its history, its ministrations have fallen 
 as gently on the people of the United States as do the dews of a Summer's 
 night on the flowers and grass of the gardens and fields. 
 
THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 5 
 
 Whence, then, this revolutionary outbreak ? Whence the secret spring of 
 this gigantic conspiracy, which, like some huge boa, had completely coiled 
 itself around the limbs and body of the republic, before a single hand was 
 lifted to resist it ? Strange, and indeed startling, as the announcement must 
 appear when it falls on the ears of the next generation, the national tragedy 
 in whose shadow we stand to-night, has come upon us because, in November 
 last, John C. Breckinridge was not elected President of the United States, 
 and Abraham Lincoln was. This is the whole story. And I would pray 
 now to know on what was John C. Breckinridge fed that he has grown so 
 great, that a republic founded by Washington and cemented by the best 
 blood that has ever coursed in human veins, is to be overthrown because, for- 
 sooth, he cannot be its President ? Had he been chosen we well know that 
 we should not have heard of this rebellion, for the lever with which it is being 
 moved would have been wanting to the hands of the conspirators. Even 
 after his defeat, could it have been guaranteed, beyond all peradventure, that 
 Jeff. Davis, or some other kindred spirit, would be the successor of Mr. Lin- 
 coln, I presume we hazard nothing in assuming that this atrocious move- 
 ment against the government would not have been set on foot. So much for 
 the principle involved in it. This great crime, then, with which we are grap- 
 pling, sprang from that "sin by which the angels fell" — an unmastered and 
 profligate ambition — an ambition that "would rather reign in hell than serve 
 in heaven" — that would rather rule supremely over a shattered fragment of 
 the republic than run the chances of sharing with others the honors of the 
 whole. 
 
 The conspirators of the South read in the election of Mr. Lincoln a de- 
 claration that the Democratic party had been prostrated, if not finally de- 
 stroyed, by the selfish intrigues and corruptions of its leaders ; they read, 
 too, that the vicious, emaciated, and spavined hobby of the slavery agitation, 
 on which they had so often rode into power, could no longer carry them be- 
 yond a given geographical line of our territory, and that in truth this factious 
 and treasonable agitation, on which so many of them had grown great by de- 
 bauching and denationalizing the mind of a people naturally generous and 
 patriotic, had run its course, and hence, that from the national disgust for 
 this demagog ueing, and for the inexorable law of population, the time had 
 come when all those who had no other political capital than this, would have 
 to prepare for retirement to private life, so far at least as the highest offices 
 of the country were concerned. Under the influence of these grim discour- 
 agements they resolved to consummate at once — what our political history 
 shows to have been a long-cherished purpose — the dismemberment of the 
 government. They said to themselves : " Since we can no longer monopo- 
 lize the great offices of the republic as we have been accustomed to do, we 
 will destroy it and build upon its ruins an empire that shall be all our own, 
 and whose spoils neither the North nor the East nor the West shall share 
 
6 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 
 
 with us." Deplorable and humiliating as this certainly is, it is but a re- 
 hearsal of the sad, sad story of the past. We had, indeed, supposed that 
 under our Christian civilization we had reached a point in human progress, 
 when a republic could exist without having its life sought by its own off- 
 spring ; but the Catilines of the South have proved that we were mistaken. 
 Let no man imagine that because this rebellion has been made by men re- 
 nowned in our civil and military history, that it is, therefore, the less guilty 
 or the less courageously to be resisted. It is precisely this class of men who 
 have subverted the best governments that have ever existed. The purest 
 spirits that have lived in the tide of times, the noblest institutions that have 
 arisen to bless our race, have found among those in whom they had most 
 confided, and whom they had most honored, men wicked enough, either se- 
 cretly to betray them unto death, or openly to seek their overthrow by law- 
 less violence. The republic of England had its Monk; the republic of 
 France had its Bonaparte; the republic of Rome had its Caesar and its 
 Catiline, and the Saviour of the world had his Judas Iscariot. It cannot 
 be necessary that I should declare to you, for you know them well, who 
 they are whose parricidal swords are now unsheathed against the republic 
 of the United States. Their names are inscribed upon a scroll of infamy 
 that .can never perish. The most distinguished of them were educated by 
 the charity of the government on which they are now making war. For 
 long years they were fed from its table, and clothed from its wardrobe, and 
 had their brows garlanded by its honors. They are the ungrateful sons of a 
 fond mother, who dandled them upon her knee, who lavished upon them the 
 gushing love of her noble and devoted nature, and who nurtured them from 
 the very bosom of her life ; and now, in the frenzied excesses of a licentious 
 and baffled ambition, they are stabbing at that bosom with the ferocity with 
 which the tiger springs upon his prey. The President of the United States 
 is heroically and patriotically struggling to baffle the machinations of these 
 most wicked men. I have unbounded gratification in knowing that he has 
 the courage to look traitors in the face, and that, in discharging the duties 
 of his great office, he takes no counsel of his fears. He is entitled to the 
 zealous support of the whole country, and, may I not add without offence, 
 that he will receive the support of all who justly appreciate the boundless 
 blessings of our free institutions ? 
 
 If this rebellion succeeds it will involve necessarily the destruction of our 
 nationality, the division of our territory, the permanent disruption of the re- 
 public. It must rapidly dry up the sources of our material prosperity, and 
 year by year we shall grow more and more impoverished, more and more 
 revolutionary, enfeebled, and debased. Each returning election will bring 
 with it grounds for new civil commotions, and traitors, prepared to strike at 
 the country that has rejected their claims to power, will spring up on every 
 side. Disunion once begun will go on and on indefinitely, and under the in- 
 
THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 7 
 
 fluence of the fatal doctrine of secession, not only will states secede from 
 states, but counties will secede from states also, and towns and cities from 
 counties, until universal anarchy will be consummated in each individual 
 who can make good his position by force of arms, claiming the right to defy 
 the power of the government. Thus we should have brought back to u s 
 the days of the robber barons with their moated castles and marauding re- 
 tainers. This doctrine when analyzed is simply a declaration that no phys- 
 ical force shall ever be employed in executing the laws or upholding the 
 government, and a government into whose practical administration such a 
 principle has been introduced, could no more continue to exist than a man 
 could live with an angered cobra in his bosom. If you would know what 
 are the legitimate fruits of secession, look at Virginia and Tennessee, which 
 have so lately given themselves up to the embrace of this monster. There the 
 schools are deserted ; the courts of justice closed ; public and private credit 
 destroyed ; commerce annihilated, debts repudiated ; confiscations and spo- 
 liations everywhere prevailing ; every cheek blanched with fear, and every 
 heart frozen with despair ; and all over that desolated land the hand of in- 
 furiated passion and crime is waving, with a vulture's scream for blood, the 
 sword of civil war. And this is the Pandemonium which some would have 
 transferred to Kentucky. 
 
 But I am not here to discuss this proposition to-night. I wish solemnly 
 to declare before you and the world, that I am for this Union without con- 
 ditions, one and indivisible, now and forever. I am for its preservation at 
 any and every cost of blood and treasure against all its assailants. I know 
 no neutrality between my country and its foes, whether they be foreign or 
 domestic ; no neutrality between that glorious flag which now floats over us, 
 and the ingrates and traitors who would trample it in the dust. My prayer 
 is for victory, complete, enduring and overwhelming, to the armies of the 
 republic over all its enemies. I am against any and every compromise that 
 may be proposed to be made under the guns of the rebels, while, at the 
 same time, I am decidedly in favor of affording every reasonable guarantee 
 for the safety of Southern institutions, which the honest convictions of the 
 people — not the conspirators — of the South may demand, whenever they shall 
 lay down their arms, but not until then. The arbitrament of the sword has 
 been defiantly thrust into the face of the government and country, and there 
 is no honorable escape from it. All guarantees and all attempts at adjust- 
 ment by amendments to the constitution are now scornfully rejected, and 
 the leaders of the rebellion openly proclaim that they are fighting for their 
 independence. In this contemptuous rejection of guarantees, and in this 
 avowal of the objects of the rebellion now so audaciously made, we have a 
 complete exposure of that fraud which, through the slavery agitation, has 
 been practised upon the public credulity for the last fifteen or twenty years. In 
 the light of this revelation, we feel as one awakened from the suffocating 
 
8 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 
 
 tortures of a nightmare, and realize what a baseless dream our apprehen- 
 sions have been, and of what a traitorous swindle we have been made the 
 victims. They are fighting for their independence ! Independence of what ? 
 Independence of those laws which they themselves have aided in enacting ; 
 independence of that constitution which their fathers framed and to which 
 they are parties and subject by inheritance ; independence of that beneficent 
 government on whose treasury and honors they have grown strong and 
 illustrious. When a man commits a robbery on the highway, or a murder in 
 the dark, he thereby declares his independence of the laws under which he 
 lives, and of the society of which he is a member. Should he, when ar- 
 raigned, avow and justify the offence, he thereby becomes the advocate of 
 the independence he has thus declared; and, if he resists by force of arms 
 the officer, when dragging him to the prison, the penitentiary, or the gallows, 
 he is thereby fighting for the independence he has thus declared and advo- 
 cated ; and such is the condition of the conspirators of the South at this mo- 
 ment. It is no longer a question of Southern rights, which have never been 
 violated, nor of security of Southern institutions, which we know perfectly 
 well have never been interfered with by the general government, but it is 
 purely with us a question of national existence. In meeting this terrible 
 issue which rebellion has made up with the loyal .men of the country, we 
 stand upon ground infinitely above all party lines and party platforms — 
 ground as sublime as that on which our fathers stood when they fought the 
 battles of the revolution. I am for throwing into the contest thus forced 
 upon us all the material and moral resources and energies of the nation, in 
 order that the struggle may be brief and as little sanguinary as possible. 
 It is hoped that we shall soon see in the field half a million of patriotic 
 volunteers, marching in columns which will be perfectly irresistible, and, 
 borne in their hands — for no purpose of conquest or subjugation, but of pro- 
 tection only — we may expect within nine months to see the stars and 
 stripes floating in every Southern breeze, and hear going up, wild as the 
 storm, the exultant shout of that emancipated people over their deliverance 
 from the revolutionary terror and despotism, by which they are now tor- 
 mented and oppressed. The war, conducted on such a scale, will not cost 
 exceeding four or five hundred millions of dollars ; and none need be startled 
 at the vastness of this expenditure. The debt thus created will press but 
 slightly upon us; it will be paid and gladly paid by posterity, who will make 
 the best bargain which has been made since the world began, if they can se- 
 cure to themselves, in its integrity and blessings, such a government as this, 
 at such a cost. But, if in this anticipation we are doomed to disappoint- 
 ment ; if the people of the United States have already become so degenerate 
 — may I not say so craven — in the presence of their foes as to surrender up 
 this republic to be dismembered and subverted by the traitors who have 
 reared the standard of revolt against it, then, I trust, the volume of Ameri- 
 
THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 9 
 
 can history will be closed and sealed up forever, and that those who shall 
 survive this national humiliation will take unto themselves some other name, 
 — some name having no relation to the past, no relation to our great ances- 
 tors, no relation to those monuments and battle-fields which commemorate 
 alike their heroism, their loyalty, and their glory. 
 
 But with the curled lip of scorn we are told by the disunionists that in 
 thus supporting a Republican administration in its endeavors to uphold the 
 constitution and the laws, we are "submissionists," and when they have 
 pronounced this word, they suppose they have imputed to us the sum of all 
 human abasement. Well, let it be confessed; we are "submissionists," and 
 weak and spiritless as it may be deemed by some, we glory in the position 
 we occupy. For example: the law says, "Thou shalt not steal;" we sub- 
 mit to this law, and would not for the world's worth rob our neighbor of his 
 forts, his arsenals, his arms, his munitions of war, his hospital stores, or any 
 thing that is his. Indeed, so impressed are we with the obligations of this 
 law, that we would no more think of plundering from our neighbor half a 
 million of dollars because found in his unprotected mints, than we would 
 think of filching a purse from his pocket in a crowded thoroughfare. Write 
 us down, therefore, "submissionists." Again: the law says, "Thou shalt 
 not swear falsely ;" we s»bmit to this law, and while in the civil or military 
 service of the country, with an oath to support the constitution of the United 
 States resting upon our consciences, we would not for any earthly considera- 
 tion engage in the formation or execution of a conspiracy to subvert that 
 very constitution, and with it the government to which it has given birth. 
 Write us down, therefore, again, "submissionists." Yet again: when a 
 President has been elected in strict accordance with the form and spirit of 
 the constitution, and has been regularly installed into office, and is honestly 
 striving to discharge his duty by snatching the republic from the jaws of a 
 gigantic treason which threatens to crush it, we care not what his name may 
 or may not be, or what the designation of his political party, or what the 
 platform on which he stood during the presidential canvass ; we believe we 
 fulfil in the sight of earth and heaven our highest obligations to our country,, 
 in giving to him an earnest and loyal support in the struggle in which he is 
 
 Nor are we at all disturbed by the flippant taunt that in thus submitting 
 to the authority of our government we are necessarily cowards. We know 
 whence this taunt comes, and we estimate it at its true value. We hold that 
 there is a higher courage in the performance of dtity than in the commission 
 of crime. The tiger of the jungle and the cannibal of the South Sea Islands 
 have that courage in which the revolutionists of the day make their especial 
 boast; the angels of God and the spirits of just men made perfect have had,, 
 and have that courage which submits to the laws. Lucifer was a non-sub- 
 missionist, and the first secessionist of whom history has given us any 
 
10 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 
 
 account, and the chains which he wears fitly, express the fate due to all who 
 openly defy the laws of their Creator and of their country. He rebelled be- 
 cause the Almighty would not yield to him the throne of heaven. The 
 principle of the Southern rebellion is the same. Indeed, in this submission 
 to the laws is found the chief distinction between good men and devils. A 
 good man obeys the laws of truth, of honesty, of morality, and all those laws 
 which have been enacted by competent authority for the government and 
 protection of the country in which he lives ; a devil obeys only his own fero- 
 cious and profligate passions. The principle on which this rebellion pro- 
 ceeds, that laws have in themselves no sanctions, no binding force upon the 
 conscience, and that every man, under the promptings of interest, or passion? 
 or caprice, may, at will, and honorably too, strike at the government that 
 shelters him, is one of utter demoralization, and should be trodden out as you 
 would tread on a spark that has fallen on the roof of your dwelling. Its un- 
 checked prevalence would resolve society into chaos, and leave you without 
 the slightest guarantee for life, liberty, or property. It is time that, in their 
 majesty, the people of the United States should make known to the world 
 that this government, in its dignity and power, is something more than a 
 moot court, and that the citizen who makes war upon it is a traitor, not only 
 in theory but in fact, and should have meted out^o him a traitor's doom. 
 The country wants no bloody sacrifice, but it must and will have peace, cost 
 what it may. 
 
 Before closing, I desire to say a few words on the relations of Kentucky to 
 the pending rebellion ; and as we are all Kentuckians here together to-night, 
 and as this is purely a family matter, which concerns the honor of us all, I 
 hope we may be permitted to speak to each other upon it with entire free- 
 dom. I shall not detain you with observations on the hostile and defiant 
 position assumed by the governor of your state. In his reply to the requi- 
 sition made upon him for volunteers under the proclamation of the President, 
 he has, in my judgment, written and finished his own history, his epitaph 
 included, and it is probable that in future the world will little concern itself 
 as to what his excellency may propose to do, or as to what he may propose 
 not to do. That response has made for Kentucky a record that has already 
 brought a burning blush to the cheek of many of her sons, and is destined to 
 bring it to the cheek of many more in the years which are to come. It is a 
 shame, indeed a crying shame, that a state with so illustrious a past should 
 have written for her, by her own chief magistrate, a page of history so ut- 
 terly humiliating as this. But your legislature have determined that during 
 the present unhappy war the attitude of the state shall be that of strict neu- 
 trality, and it is upon this determination that I wish respectfully but frankly 
 to comment. As the motives which governed the legislature were doubt- 
 less patriotic and conservative, the conclusion arrived at cannot be con- 
 demned as dishonorable ; still, in view of the manifest duty of the state and 
 
THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 11 
 
 of possible results, I cannot but regard it as mistaken and false, and one 
 which may have fatal consequences. Strictly and legally speaking, Ken- 
 tucky must go out of the Union before she can be neutral. Within it she is 
 necessarily either faithful to the government of the United States, or she is 
 disloyal to it. If this crutch of neutrality, upon which her well-meaning but 
 ill-judging politicians are halting, can find any middle ground on which to 
 rest, it has escaped my researches, though I have diligently sought it. Neu- 
 trality, in the sense of those who now use the term, however patriotically 
 designed, is, in effect, but a snake in the grass of rebellion, and those who 
 handle it will sooner or later feel its fangs. Said one who spake as never 
 man spake, "He who is not with us is against us ;" and of none of the con- 
 flicts which have arisen between men or between nations, could this be more 
 truthfully said than of that in which we are now involved. Neutrality nec- 
 essarily implies indifference. Is Kentucky indifferent to the issue of this 
 contest? Has she, indeed, nothing at stake? Has she no compact with her 
 sister states to keep, no plighted faith to uphold, no renown to sustain, no 
 glory to win ? Has she no horror of that crime of crimes now being com- 
 mitted against us by that stupendous rebellion which has arisen like a tem- 
 pest-cloud in the South ? We rejoice to know that she is still a member of 
 this Union, and as such She has the same interest in resisting this rebellion 
 that each limb of the body has in resisting a poignard whose point is aimed 
 at the heart. It is her house that is on fire ; has she no interest in extin- 
 guishing the conflagration ? Will she stand aloof and announce herself neu- 
 tral between the raging flames and the brave men who are periling their 
 lives to subdue them ? Hundreds of thousands of citizens of other states — 
 men of culture and character, of thought and of toil — men who have a deep 
 stake in life, and an intense appreciation of its duties and responsibilities, 
 who know the worth of this blessed government of ours, and do not prize 
 even their own blood above it — I say, hundreds of thousands of such men 
 have left their homes, their workshops, their offices, their counting-houses, 
 and their fields, and are now rallying about our flag, freely offering their all 
 to sustain it, and since the days that crusading Europe threw its hosts upon 
 the embattled plains of Asia, no deeper, or more earnest, or grander spirit 
 has stirred the souls of men than that which now sways those mighty masses 
 whose gleaming banners are destined ere long to make bright again the 
 earth and sky of the distracted South. Can Kentucky look upon this sub- 
 lime spectacle of patriotism unmoved, and then say to herself: " I will spend 
 neither blood nor treasure, but I will shrink away while the battle rages, and 
 after it has been fought and won, I will return to the camp, well assured 
 that if I cannot claim the laurels, I will at least enjoy the blessings of the 
 victory ?" Is this all that remains of her chivalry — of the chivalry of the land 
 of the Shelbys, the Johnsons, the Aliens, the Clays, the Adairs, and the 
 Davises ? Is there a Kentuckian within the sound of my voice to-night, who 
 
12 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 
 
 can hear the anguished cry of his country as she' wrestles and writhes in the 
 olds of this gigantic treason, and then lay himself down upon his pillow with 
 this thought of neutrality, without feeling that he has something in his 
 bosom which stings him worse than would an adder ? Have we, within the 
 brief period of eighty years, descended so far from the mountain heights on 
 which our fathers stood, that already, in our degeneracy, we proclaim our 
 blood too precious, our treasure too valuable to be devoted to the preserva- 
 tion of such a government as this ? They fought through a seven years' 
 war, with the greatest power on earth, for the hope, the bare hope, of being 
 able to found this republic, and now that it is no longer a hope nor an ex- 
 periment, but a glorious reality, which has excited the admiration and the 
 homage of the nations, and has covered us with blessings as "the waters 
 cover the channels of the sea," have we, their children, no years of toil, of 
 sacrifice, and of battle even, if need be, to give, to save it from absolute de- 
 struction at the hands of men who, steeped in guilt, are perpetrating against 
 us and humanity a crime, for which I verily believe the blackest page of 
 the history of the world's darkest period furnishes no parallel? Can it 
 be possible that in the history of the American people we have already 
 reached a point of degeneracy so low, that the work of Washington and 
 Franklin, of Adams and Jefferson, of Hancock and Henry, is to be 
 overthrown by the morally begrimed and pigmied conspirators who are now 
 tugging at its foundations ? It would be the overturning of the Andes by 
 the miserable reptiles that are crawling in the sands at their base. 
 
 But our neutral fellow-citizens in the tenderness of their hearts say: 
 " This effusion of blood sickens us." Then do all in your power to bring it 
 to an end. Let the whole strength of this commonwealth be put forth in 
 support of the government, in order that the war may be terminated by a 
 prompt suppression of the rebellion. The longer the struggle continues, the 
 fiercer will be its spirit, and the more fearful the waste of life attending it. 
 You therefore only aggravate the calamity you deplore by standing aloof 
 from the combat. But again they say, " we cannot fight our brethren." 
 Indeed. But your brethren can fight you, and with a good will, too. "Wick- 
 edly and wantonly have they commenced this war against you and your in- 
 stitutions, and ferociously are they prosecuting it. They take no account of 
 the fact that the massacre with which they hope their swords will, ere long, 
 be clogged, must be the massacre of their brethren. However much we 
 may bow our heads at the confession, it is nevertheless true that every free 
 people that have existed have been obliged, at one period or other of their 
 history, to fight for their liberties against traitors within their own bosoms, 
 and that people who have not the greatness of soul thus to fight, cannot long 
 continue to be free, nor do they deserve to be so. 
 
 There is not, and there cannot be, any neutral ground for a loyal people 
 between their own government and those who, at the head of armies, are 
 
THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 13 
 
 menacing its destruction. Your inaction is not neutrality, though you may 
 delude yourselves with the belief that it is so. With this rebellion confronting 
 you, when you refuse to co-operate actively with your government in subdu- 
 ing it, you thereby condemn the government, and assume towards it an atti- 
 tude of antagonism. Your inaction is a virtual indorsement of the rebellion, 
 and if you do not thereby give to the rebels precisely that "aid and comfort" 
 spoken of in the constitution, you certainly afford them a most powerful en- 
 couragement and support. That they regard your present position as friendly 
 to them, is proved by the fact that, in a recent enactment of the Confederate 
 Congress confiscating the debts due from their own citizens to those of loyal 
 states, the debts due to the people of Kentucky are expressly excepted. Is 
 not this significant? Does it leave any room for doubt that the Confederate 
 Congress suppose they have discovered, under the guise of your neutrality, 
 a lurking sympathy for their cause which entitles you to be treated as friends, 
 if not as active allies ? Patriotic as was the purpose of her apprehensive 
 statesmen in placing her in the anomalous position she now occupies, it can- 
 not be denied that Kentucky by her present attitude is exerting a potent in- 
 fluence in strengthening the rebellion, and is, therefore, false alike to her 
 loyalty and to her fame. You may rest well assured that this estimate of 
 your neutrality is entertained by the true men of the country in aU the states 
 which are now sustaining the government. Within the last few weeks how 
 many of those gallant volunteers who have left home and kindred and all 
 that is dear to them, and are now under a Southern sun, exposing them- 
 selves to death from disease and to death from battle, and are accounting 
 their lives as nothing in the effort they are making for the deliverance of 
 your government and theirs ; how many of them have said to me in sadness 
 and in longing, "Will not Kentucky help me ?" How my soul would have 
 leaped could I have answered promptly, confidently, exultingly, " Yes, she 
 will." But when I thought of this neutrality my heart sank within me, and 
 I did not and I could not look those brave men in the face. And yet I could 
 not answer, "No." I could not crush myself to the earth under the self- 
 abasement of such a reply. I therefore said — and may my country sustain 
 me — " I hope, I trust, I pray, nay, I believe Kentucky will yet do her duty." 
 
 If this government is to be destroyed, ask yourselves are you willing it 
 shall be recorded in history that Kentucky stood by in the greatness of her 
 strength and lifted not a hand to stay the catastrophe ? If it is to be saved, 
 as I verily believe it is, are you willing it shall be written that, in the immeas- 
 urable glory which must attend the achievement, Kentucky had no part ? 
 
 I will only add, if Kentucky wishes the waters of her beautiful Ohio to be 
 dyed in blood — if she wishes her harvest fields, now waving in their abun- 
 dance, to be trampled beneath the feet of hostile soldiery, as a flower-garden 
 is trampled beneath the threshings of the tempest — if she wishes the homes 
 where her loved ones are now gathered in peace, invaded by the proscriptive 
 
14 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 
 
 fury of a military despotism, sparing neither life nor property — if she wishes 
 the streets of her towns and cities grown with grass, and the steamboats of 
 her rivers to lie rotting at her wharves, then let her join the Southern Con- 
 federacy ; but if she would have the bright waters of that river flow on in 
 their gladness — if she would have her harvests peacefully gathered to her 
 garners — if she would have the lullabies of her cradles and the songs of her 
 homes uninvaded by the cries and terrors of battle — if she would have the 
 streets of her towns and cities again filled with the hum and throngs of busy 
 trade, and her rivers and her shores once more vocal with the steamer's 
 whistle, that anthem of a free and prosperous commerce, then let her stand 
 fast by the stars and stripes, and do her duty and her whole duty as a mem- 
 ber of this Union. Let her brave people say to the President of the United 
 States: " You are our chief magistrate ; the government you have in charge, 
 and are striving to save from dishonor and dismemberment, is our govern- 
 ment ; your cause is indeed our cause ; your battles are our battles ; make 
 room for us, therefore, in the ranks of your armies, that your triumph may 
 be our triumph also." 
 
 Even as with the Father of us all I would plead for salvation, so, my 
 countrymen, as upon my very knees, would I plead with you for the life, aye 
 for the life, of our great and beneficent institutions. But if the traitor's knife, 
 now at the throat of the republic, is to do its work, and this government is 
 fated to add yet another to that long line of sepulchres which whiten the 
 highway of the past, then my heartfelt prayer to God is, that it may be writ- 
 ten in history, that the blood of its life was not found upon the skirts of 
 Kentucky. 
 
LETTER OF HON. JOSEPH HOLT. 
 
 "Washington, Friday, May 81, 1861. 
 J. F. Speed, Esq. 
 
 My Dear Sir : The recent overwhelming vote in favor of the Union 
 in Kentucky has afforded unspeakable gratification to all true men throughout 
 the country. That vote indicates that the people of that gallant state have 
 been neither seduced by the arts nor terrified by the menaces of the revolu- 
 tionists in their midst, and that it is their fixed purpose to remain faithful to 
 a government which, for nearly seventy years, has remained faithful to 
 them. Still it cannot be denied that there is in the bosom of that state a 
 band of agitators, who, though few in number, are yet powerful from the 
 public confidence they have enjoyed, and who have been, and doubtless will 
 continue to be, unceasing in their endeavor to force Kentucky to unite her 
 fortunes with those of the rebel Confederacy of the South. In view of this 
 and of the well-known fact that several of the seceded states have by fraud 
 and violence been driven to occupy their present false and fatal position, I 
 cannot, even with the encouragement of her late vote before me, look upon 
 the political future of our native state without a painful solicitude. Never 
 have the safety and honor of her people required the exercise of so much 
 vigilance and of so much courage on their part. If true to themselves, the 
 stars and stripes, which, like angel's wings, have so long guarded their 
 homes from every oppression, will still be theirs ; but if, chasing the dreams 
 of men's ambition, they shaU prove false, the blackness of darkness can but 
 faintly predict the gloom that awaits them. The legislature, it seems, has 
 determined by resolution that the state, pending the present unhappy war r 
 shall occupy neutral ground. I must say, in all frankness, and without desiring 
 to reflect upon the course or sentiments of any, that, in this struggle for the exis- 
 tence of our government, I can neither practise nor profess nor feel neutrality- 
 I would as soon think of being neutral in a contest between an officer of justice 
 and an incendiary arrested in an attempt to fire the dwelling over my head; for 
 the government whose overthrow is sought, is for me the shelter not only of home, 
 kindred and friends, but of every earthly blessing which I can hope to enjoy on 
 
16 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 
 
 this side of the grave. If, however, from a natural horror of fratricidal strife, 
 or from her intimate social and business relations with the South, Kentucky 
 shall determine to maintain the neutral attitude assumed for her by her leg- 
 islature, her position will still be an honorable one, though falling far short of 
 that full measure of loyalty which her history has so constantly illustrated. 
 Her executive, ignoring, as I am happy to believe, alike the popular and 
 legislative sentiment of the state, has, by proclamation, forbidden the gov- 
 ernment of the United States from marching troops across her territory. 
 This is in no sense a neutral step, but one of aggressive hostility. The 
 troops of the Federal Government have as clear a constitutional right to pass 
 over the soil of Kentucky as they have to march along the streets of "Wash- 
 ington ; and could this prohibition be effective, it would not only be a viola- 
 latiou of the fundamental law. but would, in all its tendencies, be directly in 
 advancement of the revolution, and might, in an emergency easily imagined, 
 compromise the highest national interests. I was rejoiced that the legisla- 
 ture so promptly refused to endorse this proclamation as expressive of the 
 true policy of the state. But I turn away from even this to the ballot-box, 
 and find an abounding consolation in the conviction it inspires, that the pop- 
 ular heart of Kentuck} r , in its devotion to the Union, is far in advance alike 
 of legislative resolve and executive proclamation. 
 
 But as it is well understood that the late popular demonstration has rather 
 scotched than killed rebellion in Kentucky, I propose inquiring, as briefly 
 as practicable, whether in the recent action or present declared policy of 
 the administration, or in the history of the pending revolution, or in the 
 objects it seeks to accomplish, or in the results which must follow from it, 
 if successful, there can be discovered any reasons why that state should 
 sever the ties that unite her with a Confederacy in whose councils and upon 
 whose battle-fields she has won so much fame, and under whose protection 
 she has enjoyed so much prosperity. 
 
 For more than a month after the inauguration of President Lincoln, the 
 manifestations seemed unequivocal that his administration would seek a 
 peaceful solution of our unhappy political troubles, and would look to time 
 and amendments of the Federal Constitution, adopted in accordance with its 
 provisions, to bring back the revolted states to their allegiance. So marked 
 was the effect of these manifestations in tranquilizing the border states and 
 in reassuring their loyalty, that the conspirators who had set this revolution 
 on foot took the alarm. Wliile affecting to despise these states as not sufficiently 
 intensified in their devotion to African servitude, they knew they could never 
 succeed in their treasonable enterprise without their support. Hence it wa$ 
 resolved to precipitate a collision of arms with the federal authorities, in the 
 hope that under the panic and exasperation incident to the commencement of 
 a civil war, the border states, following the natural bent of their sympathies, 
 would array themselves against the government. Fort Sumter, occupied by a 
 
THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 17 
 
 feeble garrison, and girdled by powerful if not impregnable batteries, afforded 
 convenient means for accomplishing their purpose, and for testing also their 
 theory, that blood was needed to cement the new Confederacy. Its provis- 
 ions were exhausted, and the request made by the President, in the interests 
 of peace and humanity, for the privilege of replenishing its stores, had been 
 refused. The Confederate authorities were aware — for so the gallant comman- 
 der of the fort had declared to them — that in two days a capitulation from 
 starvation must take place. A peaceful surrender, however, would not have 
 subserved their aims. They sought the clash of arms and the effusion of 
 blood as an instrumentality for impressing the border states, and they 
 sought the humiliation of the government and the dishonor of its flag as a 
 means of giving prestige to their own cause. The result is known. With- 
 out the slightest provocation, a heavy cannonade was opened upon the fort, 
 and borne by its helpless garrison for hours without reply ; and when, in 
 the progress of the bombardment, the fortification became wrapped in flames, 
 the besieging batteries, in violation of the usages of civilized warfare, in- 
 stead of relaxing or suspending, redoubled their fires. A more wanton or 
 vncked war was never commenced on any government whose history has been 
 written. Contemporary with and following the fall of Sumter, the siege of 
 Fort Pickens was and still is actively pressed ; the property of the United 
 States government continued to be seized wherever found, and its troops, by 
 fraud or force, captured in the state of Texas, in violation of a solemn com- 
 pact with its authorities that they should be permitted to embark without 
 molestation. This was the requital which the Lone Star State made to 
 brave men, who, through long years of peril and privation, had guarded its 
 frontiers against the incursions of the savages. In the midst of the most 
 active and extended warlike preparations in the South, the announcement 
 was made by the Secretary of War of the seceded states, and echoed with 
 taunts and insolent bravadoes by the Southern press, that Washington City 
 was to be invaded and captured, and that the flag of the Confederate States 
 would soon float over the dome of its Capitol. Soon thereafter there followed 
 an invitation to all the world — embracing necessarily the outcasts and despe- 
 radoes of every sea — to accept letters of marque and reprisal, to prey upon 
 the rich and unprotected commerce of the United States. 
 
 In view of these events and threatenings, what was the duty of the chief 
 magistrate of the republic ? He might have taken counsel of the revolution- 
 ists and trembled under their menaces ; he might, upon the fall of Sumter, 
 have directed that Fort Pickens should be surrendered without firing a gun 
 in its defence, and proceeding yet further, and meeting fully the requirements 
 of the " let us alone" policy insisted on in the South, he might have ordered 
 that the stars and stripes should be laid in the dust in the presence of every bit 
 of rebel bunting that might appear. But he did none of these things, nor could 
 he have done them without forfeiting his oath and betraying the most sublime trust 
 2 
 
18 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 
 
 that has ever been confided to the hands of man. With a heroic fidelity to his con- 
 stitutional obligations, feeling justly that these obligations charged him with the 
 protection of the republic and its capital against the assaults alike of foreign and 
 domestic enemies, he threw himself on the loyalty of the country for support 
 in the struggle upon which he was about to enter, and nobly has that appeal 
 been responded to. States containing an aggregate population of nineteen 
 millions have answered to the appeal as with the voice of one man, offering 
 soldiers without number, and treasure without limitation for the service of the 
 government. In these states, fifteen hundred thousand freemen cast their 
 votes in favor of candidates supporting the rights of the South, at the last 
 presidential election, and yet everywhere, alike in popular assemblies and 
 upon the tented field, this million and a half of voters are found yielding to 
 none in the zeal with which they rally to their country's flag. They are not 
 less the friends of the South than before ; but they realize that the question 
 now presented is not one of administrative policy, or of the claims of the 
 North, the South, the East, or the West ; but is, simply, whether nineteen 
 millions of people shall tamely and ignobly permit five or six millions to 
 overthrow and destroy institutions which are the common property, and 
 have been the common blessings and glory of all. The great thoroughfares 
 of the North, the East, and the West, are luminous with the banners and glis- 
 tening with the bayonets of citizen soldiers marching to the capital, or to the 
 other points of rendezvous ; but they come in no hostile spirit to the South. 
 If called to press her soil, they will not ruffle a flower of her gardens, nor a blade 
 of grass of her fields in unkindness. No excesses will mark the footsteps of the 
 armies of the republic ; no institution of the states will be invaded or tampered 
 with, no rights of persons or of property will be violated. The known purposes 
 of the administration, and the high character of the troops employed, alike guar- 
 antee the truthfulness of this statement. When an insurrection was apprehended 
 a few weeks since in Maryland, the Massachusetts regiment at once offered 
 their services to suppress it. These volunteers have been denounced by the 
 press of the South as "knaves and vagrants," "the dregs and offscourings of 
 the populace," who would " rather filch a handkerchief than fight an enemy in 
 manly combat ;" yet we know here that their discipline and bearing are most 
 admirable, and, I presume, it may be safely affirmed, that a larger amount of 
 social position, culture, fortune, and elevation of character, has never been 
 found in so large an army in any age or country. If they go to the South, it 
 will be as friends and protectors, to relieve the Union sentiment of the seceded 
 states from the cruel domination by which it is oppressed and silenced, to unfurl 
 the stars and stripes in the midst of those who long to look upon them, and to 
 restore the flag that bears them to the forts and arsenals from which disloyal 
 hands have lorn it. Their mission will be one of peace, unless wicked and blood- 
 thirsty men shall unsheath the sword across their pathway. 
 
 It is in vain for the revolutioriists to exclaim that this is "subjugation." It is 
 
THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 19 
 
 so, precisely in the sense in which you and I and all law-abiding citizens are 
 subjugated. The people of the South are our brethren, and while we obey 
 the laws enacted by our joint authority, and keep a compact to which we all 
 are parties, we only ask that they shall be required to do the same. We be- 
 lieve that their safety demands this ; we know that ours does. We impose 
 no burden which we ourselves do not bear ; we claim no privilege or bless- 
 ing which our brethren of the South shall not equally share. Their country 
 is our country, and ours is theirs ; and that unity both of country and of gov- 
 ernment which the providence of G-od and the compacts of men have created, 
 we could not ourselves, without self-immolation, destroy, nor can we permit 
 it to be destroyed by others. 
 
 Equally vain is it for them to declare that they only wish " to be let alone," 
 and that, in establishing the independence of the seceded states, they do 
 those which remain in the old confederacy no harm. The free states, if al- 
 lowed the opportunity of doing so, will undoubtedly concede every guarantee 
 needed to afford complete protection to the institutions of the South, and to 
 furnish assurances of her perfect equality in the Union; but all such guaran- 
 tees and assurances are now openly spurned, and the only Southern right 
 now insisted on is that of dismembering the republic. It is perfectly certain, 
 that in the attempted exercise of this right, neither states nor statesmen will 
 be "let alone." Should a ruffian meet me in the streets, and seek, with his 
 axe, to hew an arm and a leg from my body, I would not the less resist him 
 because, as a dishonored and helpless trunk, I might perchance survive the 
 mutilation. It is easy to perceive what fatal results to the old confederacy 
 would follow, should the blow now struck at its integrity ultimately triumph. 
 We can well understand what degradation it would bring to it abroad, and 
 what weakness at home ; what exhaustion from incessant war and standing 
 armies, and from the erection of fortifications along the thousands of miles of 
 new frontiers ; what embarrassments to commerce from having its natural 
 channels encumbered 'or cut off"; what elements of disintegration and revolu- 
 tion would be introduced from the pernicious example ; and, above all, what 
 humiliation would cover the whole American people for having failed in their 
 great mission to demonstrate before the world the capacity of our race for 
 self-government. 
 
 While a far more fearful responsibility has fallen upon President Lincoln 
 than upon any of his predecessors, it must be admitted that he has met it with 
 piomplitude and fearlessness. Cicero, in one of his orations against Cati- 
 line, speaking of the credit due himself for having suppressed the conspir- 
 acy of that arch -traitor, said, " If the glory of him who founded Rome was 
 great, how much greater should be that of him who had saved it from over- 
 throw, after it had grown to be mistress of the world I" So may it be said 
 of the glory of that statesman or chieftain who shall snatch this republic 
 from the vortex of revolution, now that it has expanded from ocean to 
 
20 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 
 
 ocean — has become the admiration of the world, and has rendered the 
 fountains of the lives of thirty millions of people fountains of happiness. 
 
 The vigorous measures adopted for the safety of Washington, and the 
 government itself, may seem open to criticism, in some of their details, to 
 those who have yet to learn that not ouly has war, like peace, its laws, but 
 that it has also its privileges and its duties. Whatever of severity, or even 
 of irregularity, may have arisen, will find its justification in the pressure of 
 the terrible necessity under which the administration has been called to act. 
 When a man feels the poignard of the destroyer at his bosom, he is not 
 likely to consult the law books as to the mode or measure of his rights of 
 self-defence. What is true of individuals is, in this respect, equally true of 
 governments. The man who thinks he has become disloyal because of what the 
 administration has done, vjill probably discover, after a close examination, that 
 he was disloyal before. But for what has been done, Washington might ere 
 this have been a smouldering heap of ruins. 
 
 They have noted the course of public affairs to little advantage who sup- 
 pose that the election of Lincoln was the real ground of the revolutionary 
 outbreak that has occurred. The roots of the revolution may be traced back 
 for more than a quarter of a century, and an unholy lust for power is the 
 soil out of which it sprang. A prominent member of the band of agitators 
 declared in one of his speeches at Charleston, last November or December, 
 that they had been occupied for thirty years in the work of severing South 
 Carolina from the Union. When General Jackson crushed nullification, he 
 said it would revive again under the form of the slavery agitation, and we 
 have lived to see his prediction verified. Indeed, that agitation, during the 
 last fifteen or twenty years, has been almost the entire stock-in-trade of 
 Southern politicians. The Southern people, known to be as generous in 
 their impulses as they are chivalric, were not wrought into a frenzy of pas- 
 sion by the intemperate words of a few fanatical abolitionists ; for these 
 words, if left to themselves, would have fallen to the ground as pebbles into 
 the sea, and would have been heard of no more. But it was the echo of 
 those words, repeated with exaggerations for the thousandth time by South- 
 ern politicians, in the halls of Congress, and in the deliberative and popular 
 assemblies, and through the press of the South, that produced the exasper- 
 ation which has proved so potent a lever in the hands of the conspirators. 
 The cloud was fully charged, and the juggling revolutionists who held the 
 wires, and could at will direct its lightnings, appeared at Charleston, broke 
 up the Democratic convention assembled to nominate a candidate for the 
 presidency, and thus secured the election of Mr. Lincoln. Having thus ren- 
 dered this certain, they at once set to work to bring the popular mind of the 
 South to the point of determining in advance that the election of a Republican 
 president would be, per se, cause for a dissolution of the Union. They were 
 but too successful, and to this result the inaction and indecision of the bor- 
 
THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 21 
 
 der states deplorably contributed. When the election of Mr. Lincoln was 
 announced, there was rejoicing in the streets of Charleston, and doubtless at 
 other points in the South ; for it was believed by the conspirators that this 
 had brought a tide in the current of their machinations which would bear 
 them on to victory. The drama of secession was now open, and state after 
 state rapidly rushed out of the Union, and their members withdrew from 
 Congress. The revolution was pressed on with this hot haste in order that 
 no time should be allowed for reaction in the Northern mind, or for any ad- 
 justment of the slavery issues by the action of Congress or of the state legis- 
 latures. Had the Southern members continued in their seats, a satisfactory 
 compromise would, no doubt, have been arranged and passed before the ad- 
 journment of Congress. As it was, after their retirement, and after Con- 
 gress had become republican, an amendment to the constitution was adopted 
 by a two-thirds vote, declaring that Congress should never interfere with 
 slavery in the states, and declaring, further, that this amendment should be 
 irrevocable. Thus we falsified the clamor so long and so insidiously rung in 
 the ears of the Southern people, that the abolition of slavery in the states 
 was the ultimate aim of the Republican party. But even this amendment, 
 and all others which may be needed to furnish the guarantees demanded, 
 are now defeated by the secession of eleven states, which, claiming to be out 
 of the Union, will refuse to vote upon, and, in effect, will vote against, any 
 proposals to modify the federal constitution. There are now thirty-four 
 states in the confederacy, three-fourths of which, being twenty-six, must con- 
 cur in the adoption of any amendment before it can become a part of the 
 constitution; but the secession of eleven states leaves but twenty-three 
 whose vote can possibly be secured, which is less than the constitutional 
 number. 
 
 Thus we have the extraordinary and discreditable spectacle of a revolution 
 made by certain states, professedly on the ground that guarantees for the 
 safety of their institutions are denied them, and, at the same time, instead of 
 co-operating with their sister states in obtaining these guarantees, they de- 
 signedly assume a hostile attitude, and thereby render it constitutionally im- 
 possible to secure them. This profound dissimulation shows that it was not 
 the safety of the South, but its severance from the confederacy, which was 
 sought from the beginning. Cotemporary with, and in some cases preced- 
 ing, these acts of secession, the greatest outrages were committed upon the 
 government of the United States by the states engaged in them. Its forts, 
 arsenals, arms, barracks, custom-houses, post-offices, moneys, and, indeed, 
 every species of its property within the limits of these states, were seized 
 and appropriated, down to the very hospital stores for the sick soldiers. 
 More than half a million of dollars was plundered from the mint at New 
 Orleans. United States vessels were received from the defiled hands of 
 their officers in command, and, as if in the hope of consecrating official 
 
22 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 
 
 treachery as one of the public virtues of the age, the surrender of an entire 
 military department by a general, to the keeping of whose honor it had been 
 confided, was deemed worthy of the commendation and thanks of the conven- 
 tions of several states. All these lawless proceedings were well understood 
 to have been prompted and directed by men occupying seats in the capitol, 
 some of whom were frank enough to declare that they could not and would 
 not, though in a minority, live under a government which they could not 
 control. In this declaration is found the key which unlocks the whole of 
 the complicated machinery of this revolution. The profligate ambition of 
 public men in all ages and lands has been the rock on which republics have 
 been split. Such men have arisen in our midst — men who, because unable 
 permanently to grasp the helm of the ship, are willing to destroy it in the 
 hope to command some one of the rafts that may float away from the wreck. 
 The effect is to degrade us to a level with the military bandits of Mexico and 
 South America, who, when beaten at an election, fly to arms, and seek to 
 master by the sword what they have been unable to control by the ballot- 
 box. 
 
 The atrocious acts enumerated were acts of war. and might all have been 
 treated as such by the late administration ; but the President patriotically 
 cultivated peace — how anxiously and how patiently the country well knows. 
 While, however, the revolutionary leaders greeted him with all hails to his face, 
 they did not the less diligently continue to whet their sivords behind his back. 
 Immense military preparations were made, so that when the moment for striking 
 at the government of the United States arrived, the revolutionary states leaped 
 into the contest clad in full armor. 
 
 As if nothing should be wanting to darken this page of history, the seceded 
 States have already entered upon the work of confiscating the debts due from 
 their citizens to the North and North-west. The millions thus gained will 
 doubtless prove a pleasant substitute for those guarantees now so scornfully 
 rejected. To these confiscations will probably succeed soon those of lands 
 and negroes owned by citizens of loyal states; and, indeed, the apprehen- 
 sion of this step is already sadly disturbing the fidelity of non-resident pro- 
 prietors. Fortunately, however, infirmity of faith, springing from such a 
 cause, is not likely to be contagious. The war begun is being prosecuted by the 
 Confederate States in a temper as fierce and unsparing as that which character- 
 izes conflicts between the most hostile nations. Letters of marque and reprisals 
 are being granted to aU who seek them, so that our coasts will soon swarm 
 with these piratical cruisers, as the President has properly denounced them. 
 Every buccaneer who desires to rob American commerce upon the ocean, 
 can, for the asking, obtain a warrant to do so, in the name of the new repub- 
 lic. To crown all, large bodies of Indians have been mustered into the ser- 
 vice of the revolutionary states, and are now conspicuous in the ranks of the 
 Southern army. A leading North Carolina journal, noting their stalwart 
 
THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 23 
 
 frames and unerring markraanship, observes, with an exultation positively 
 fiendish, that they are armed, not only with the rifle, but also with the scalp- 
 ing-knife and tomahawk. 
 
 Is Kentucky willing to link her name in history with the excesses and 
 crimes which have sullied this revolution at every step of its progress ? Can 
 she soil her pure hands with its booty ? She possesses the noblest heritage 
 that God has granted to his children ; is she prepared to barter it away for 
 that miserable mess of pottage which the gratification of the unholy ambition 
 of her public men would bring to her lips ? Can she, without laying her face 
 . in the very dust for shame, become a participant in the spoliation of the 
 commerce of her neighbors and friends, by contributing her star, hitherto so 
 stainless in its glory, to light the corsair on his way ? Has the warwhoop 
 which used to startle the sleep of our frontiers, so died away in her ears that 
 she is willing to take the red-handed savage to her bosom as the champion of 
 her rights and the representative of her spirit ? Must she not first forget her 
 own heroic sons, who perished, butchered and scalped, upon the disastrous 
 field of Raisin? 
 
 The object of the revolution, as avowed by all who are pressing it forward 
 is the permanent dismemberment of the Confederacy. The dream of recon- 
 struction — used during the last winter as a lure to draw the hesitating or the 
 hopeful into the movement — has been formally abandoned. If Kentucky 
 separates herself from the Union, it must be upon the basis that the separ- 
 ation is to be final and eternal. Is there aught in the organization or admin- 
 istration of the government of the United States to justify, on her part, an 
 act so solemn and so perilous? Could the wisest of her lawyers, if called 
 upon, find material for an indictment in any or in all the pages of the history 
 of the republic ? Could the most leprous-lipped of its calumniators point to 
 a single state or territory, or community or citizen, that it has wronged or op- 
 pressed? It would be impossible. So far as the slave states are concerned, 
 their protection has teen complete, and if it has not been, it has been the fault of 
 their statesmen, who have had the control of the government since its founda- 
 tion. 
 
 The census returns show that during the year 1860, the fugitive slave law 
 was executed more faithfully and successfully than it had been during the 
 preceding ten years. Since the installation of President Lincoln, not a case 
 has arisen in which the fugitive has not been returned, and that, too, without 
 any opposition from the people. Indeed, the fidelity with which it was un- 
 derstood to be the policy of the administration to enforce the provisions of 
 this law, has caused a perfect panic among the runaway slaves in the free 
 states, and they have been escaping in multitudes to Canada, unpursued and 
 unreclaimed by their masters. Is there found in this, reason for a dissolu- 
 tion of the Union ? 
 
 That the slave states are not recognized as equals in the Confederacy, has 
 
24 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 
 
 for several years been the cry of demagogues and conspirators. But what is 
 the truth ? Not only according to the theory, but the actual practice of the 
 government, the slave states have ever been, and still are, in all respects, 
 the peers of the free. Of the fourteen presidents who have been elected, 
 seven were citizens of slave states, and of the seven remaining, three repre- 
 sented Southern principles, and received the votes of the Southern people ; so 
 that, in our whole history, but four presidents have been chosen who can be 
 claimed as the special champions of the policy and principles jof the free 
 states, and even these so only in a modified sense. Does this look as if the 
 South had ever been deprived of her equal share of the honors and powers of 
 the government? The Supreme Court has decided that the citizens of the 
 slave states can, at will, take their slaves into all the territories of the United 
 States ; and this decision, which has never been resisted or interfered with 
 in a single case, is the law of the land, and the whole power of the govern- 
 ment is pledged to enforce it. That it will be loyally enforced by the present 
 administration, I entertain no doubt. A Eepublican Congress, at the late 
 session, organized three new territories, and in the organic law of neither was 
 there introduced or attempted to be introduced, the slightest restriction upon 
 the rights of the Southern emigrant to bring his slaves with him. At this 
 moment, therefore, and I state it without qualification, there is not a terri- 
 tory belonging to the United States into which the Southern people may not 
 introduce their slaves at pleasure, and enjoy their complete protection. Ken- 
 tucky should consider this great and undeniable fact, before which all the 
 frothy rant of demagogues and disunionists must disappear as a bank of fog 
 before the wind. But were it otherwise, and did a defect exist in our organic 
 law, or in the practical administration of the government, in reference to the 
 rights of Southern slaveholders in the territories, still the question would be a 
 mere abstraction, since the laws of climate forbid the establishment of slavery 
 in such a latitude ; and to destroy such institutions as ours for such a cause, 
 instead of patiently trying to remove it, would be little short of national in- 
 sanity. It would be to burn the house down over our heads merely because 
 there is a leak in the roof; to scuttle the ship in mid-ocean merely because 
 there is a difference of opinion among the crew as to the point of the compass 
 to which the vessel should be steered ; it would be, in fact, to apply the knife 
 to the throat instead of to the cancer of the patient. 
 
 But what remains ? Though, say the disunionists, the Fugitive Slave law 
 is honestly enforced, and though, under the shelter of the Supreme Court, 
 we can take our slaves into the territories, the Northern people will persist 
 in discussing the institution of slavery, and therefore we will break up the 
 government. It is true that slavery has been very intemperately discussed 
 in the North, and it is equally true that until we have an Asiatic despotism, 
 crushing out all freedom of speech and of the press, this discussion will prob- 
 ably continue. In this age and country all institutions, human and divine, 
 
THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 25 
 
 are discussed, and so they ought to be ; and all that cannot bear discussion 
 must go to the wall, where they ought to go. It is not pretended, however, 
 that the discussion of slavery, which has been continued in our country for 
 more than forty years, has in any manner disturbed or weakened the founda- 
 tion of the institution. On the contrary, we learn from the press of the se- 
 ceded states that their slaves were never more tranquil or obedient. There 
 are zealots — happily few in number — both North and South, whose language 
 upon this question is alike extravagant and alike deserving our condemna- 
 tion. Those who assert that slavery should be extirpated by the sword, and 
 fhose who maintain that the great mission of the white man upon earth is to 
 enslave the black, are not far apart in the folly and atrocity of their senti- 
 ments. 
 
 Before proceeding further, Kentucky should measure well the depth of the 
 gulf she is approaching, and look well to the feet of her guides. Before for- 
 saking a Union in which her people have enjoyed such uninterrupted and 
 such boundless prosperity, she should ask herself, not once, but many times, 
 why do I go, and where am I going? In view of what has been said, it 
 would be difficult to answer 'the first branch of the inquiry, but to answer the 
 second part is patent to all, as are the consequences which would follow the 
 movement. In giving her great material and moral resources to the support 
 of the Southern Confederacy, Kentucky might prolong the desolating struggle 
 that rebellious states are making to overthrow a government which they have 
 only known in its blessings; but the triumph of the government would 
 nevertheless be certain in the end. She would abandon a government strong 
 and able to protect her, for one that is weak, and that contains, in the very ele- 
 ments of its life, the seeds of distraction and early dissolution. She would adopt, 
 as the law of her existence, the right of secession — a right which has no founda- 
 tion in jurisprudence, or logic, or in our political history ; which Madison, the 
 father of the federal constitution, denounced; which has been denounced by 
 most of the states and prominent statesmen now insisting upon its exercise; 
 which, in introducing a principle of indefinite disintegration, cuts up all confed- 
 erate governments by the roots, and gives them over a prey to the caprices, and 
 passions, and transient interests of their members, as autumnal leaves are given 
 to the winds which blow upon them. In 1814, the Richmond Enquirer, then, 
 as now, the organ of public opinion in the South, pronounced secession to 
 be treason, and nothing else, and such was then the doctrine of Southern 
 statesmen. What was true then is equally true now. The prevalence of 
 this pernicious heresy is mainly the fruit of that farce called "state rights," 
 which demagogues have been so long playing under tragic mask, and which 
 has done more than all things else to unsettle the foundations of the re- 
 public, by estranging the people from the federal government, as one to be 
 distrusted and resisted, instead of being, what it is, emphatically their own 
 creation, at all times obedient to their will, and in its ministrations the 
 
26 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 
 
 grandest reflex of the greatness and beneficence of popular power that has 
 ever ennobled the history of our race. Said Mr. Clay: "I owe a supreme al- 
 legiance to the general government, and to my state a subordinate one." 
 And this terse language disposes of the whole controversy which has arisen 
 out of the secession movement in regard to the allegiance of the citizen. As 
 the power of the states and federal governnent are in perfect harmony with 
 each other, so there can be no conflict between the allegiance due to them ; 
 each, while acting within the sphere of its constitutional authority, is entitled 
 to be obeyed ; but when a state, throwing off all constitutional restraints, 
 seeks to destroy the general government, to say that its citizens are bound 
 to follow in its career of crime, and discard the supreme allegiance they owe 
 to the government assailed, is one of the shaUowest and most dangerous fal- 
 lacies that has ever gained credence among men. 
 
 Kentucky, occupying a central position in the Union, is now protected 
 from the scourge of a foreign war, however much its ravages may waste the 
 towns and cities upon our coasts, or the commerce upon our seas ; but as a 
 member of the Southern Confederacy, she would be a frontier state, and ne- 
 cessarily the victim of those border feuds and conflicts which have become 
 proverbial in history alike for their fierceness and frequency. The people of 
 the South now sleep quietly in their beds, while there is not a home in infat- 
 uated and miguided Virginia that is not filled with the alarms and oppressed 
 by the terrors of war. In the fate of the ancient commonwealth, dragged to 
 the altar of sacrifice by those who should have stood between her bosom and 
 every foe, Kentucky may read her own. No wonder, therefore, that she has 
 been so coaxingly besought to unite her fortunes ivith those of the South, and to 
 lay down the bodies of her chivalric sons as a breastwork, behind which the 
 Southern people may be sheltered. Even as attached to the Southern Confed- 
 eracy, she would be weak for all the purposes of self-protection, as compared 
 with her present position. But amid the mutations incident to such a help- 
 less and disintegrating league, Kentucky would probably soon find herself 
 adhering to a mere fiagment of the Confederacy, or it may be standing en- 
 tirely alone, in the presence of tiers of free states, with populations exceed- 
 ing, by many millions, her own. Feeble states, thus separated from power- 
 ful and warlike neighbors by ideal boundaries, or by fears as easily traversed 
 as rivulets, are as insects that feed upon the lion's lip — liable at every mo- 
 ment to be crushed. The recorded doom of multitudes of such, has left us a 
 warning too solemn and impressive to be disregarded. 
 
 Kentucky now scarcely feels the contribution she makes to support the 
 government of the United States, but as a member of the Southern Confed- 
 eracy, of whose policy free trade will be a cardinal principle, she will be bur- 
 dened with direct taxation to the amount of double, or, it may be, triple or 
 quadruple that which she now pays into her own treasury. Superadded to 
 this will be required from her her share of those vast outlays necessary for 
 
THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 27 
 
 the creation of a navy, the erection of forts and cnstom # -houses along a fron- 
 tier of several thousand miles ; and for the maintenance of that large stand- 
 ing army which will be indispensable at once for her safety, and for impart- 
 ing to the new government that strong military character which, it has been 
 openly avowed, the peculiar institutions of the South will inexorably demand. 
 
 Kentucky now enjoys for her peculiar institution the protection of the Fu- 
 gitive Slave law, loyally enforced by the government, and it is this law, 
 effective in its power of recapture, but infinitely more potent in its moral 
 agency in preventing the escape of slaves, that alone saves that institution 
 in the border states from utter extinction. She cannot carry this law with 
 her into the new Confederacy. She will, virtually, have Canada brought to 
 her doors in the form of free states, whose population, relieved of all moral 
 and constitutional obligations to deliver up fugitive slaves, will stand with 
 open arms, inviting and welcoming them, and defending them, if need be, at 
 the point of the bayonet. Under such influences, slavery will perish rapidly 
 pass away in Kentucky, as a ball of snow would melt in a summer's sun. 
 
 Kentucky, in her soul, abhors the African slave-trade, and turns away 
 with unspeakable horror anol loathing from the red altars of King Dahomey. 
 But although this traffic has been temporarily interdicted by the seceded states, 
 it is well understood that this step has been taken as a mere measure of policy for 
 the purpose of impressing the border states, and of conciliating the European 
 powers. The ultimate legalization of this trade, by a republic professing to be 
 based upon African servitude, must follow as certainly as does the conclusion from 
 the premises of a mathematical proposition. Is Kentucky prepared to see the 
 hand upon the dial-plate of her civilization rudely thrust back a century, and 
 to stand before the world the confessed champion of the African slave-hun- 
 ter ? Is she, with her unsullied fame, ready to become a pander to the ra- 
 pacity of the African slave-trader, who burdens the very winds of the sea 
 with the moans of the wretched captives whose limbs he has loaded with 
 chains, and whose hearts he has broken ? I do not, I cannot, believe it. 
 
 For this catalogue of what Kentucky must suffer in abandoning her 
 present honored and secure position, and becoming a member of the Southern 
 Confederacy, what will be her indemnity? Nothing, absolutely nothing. 
 The ill-woven ambition of some of her sons may possibly reach the Presi- 
 dency of the new republic ; that is all. Alas ! alas ! for that dream of the 
 Presidency of a Southern republic, which has disturbed so many pillows in 
 the South, and perhaps some in the West, also, and whose lurid light, like a 
 demon's torch, is leading a nation to perdition ! 
 
 The clamor that in insisting upon the South obeying the laws, the great 
 principle that all popular governments rest upon the consent of the governed 
 is violated, should not receive a moment's consideration. Popular govern- 
 ment does,' indeed, rest upon the consent of the governed, but it is upon the 
 consent, not of all, but of a majority of the governed. Criminals are every day 
 
28 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 
 
 punished, and made to obey the . laws, certainly against their will, and no 
 man supposes that the principle referred to is thereby invaded. A bill passed 
 by the legislature, by the majority of a single vote only, though the con- 
 stituents of all who voted against it should be, in fact as they are held to be 
 in theory, opposed to its provisions, still is not the less operative as a law, and 
 no right of self-government is thereby trampled upon. The clamor alluded 
 to assumes that the states are separate and independent governments, and 
 that laws enacted under the authority of all may be resisted and repealed at 
 the pleasure of each. The people of the United States, so far as the powers 
 of the general government are concerned, are a unit, and laws passed by a 
 majority of all are binding upon all. The laws and constitution, however, 
 which the South now resists, have been adopted by her sanction, and the 
 right she now claims is that of a feeble minority to repeal what a majority 
 has adopted. Nothing could be more fallacious. 
 
 Civil war, under all circumstances, is a terrible calamity, and yet, from the 
 selfish ambition and wickedness of men, the best governments have not been 
 able to escape it. In regarding that which has been forced upon the gov- 
 ernment of the United States, Kentucky should not look so much at the 
 means which may be necessarily employed in its prosecution, as at the 
 machinations- by which this national tragedy has been brought upon us. 
 When I look upon this bright land, a few months since so prosperous, so 
 tranquil, and so free, and now behold it desolated by war, and the firesides 
 of its thirty millions of people darkened, and their bosoms wrung with an- 
 guish, and know, as I do, that all this is the work of a score or two of men, 
 who, over all this national ruin and despair, are preparing to carve with 
 the sword their way to seats of permanent power, I cannot but feel that 
 they are accumulating upon their soil an amount of guilt hardly equalled in 
 all the atrocities of treason and homicide that have degraded the annals of 
 our race from the foundations of the world. Kentucky may rest well assured 
 that this conflict, which is one of self-defence, will le pursued on the part of the 
 Government in the paternal spirit in which a father seeks to reclaim his erring 
 offspring. No conquest, no effusion of blood is sought. In sorrow, not in anger, 
 the prayer of cdl is, that the end may be reached without loss of life or waste of 
 property. Among the most powerful instrumentalities relied on for re-estab- 
 lishing the authority of the government, is that of the Union sentiment of 
 the South, sustained by a liberated press. It is now trodden to the earth 
 under a reign of terrorism which has no parallel but in the worst days of the 
 French revolution. The presence of the government will enable it to re- 
 bound and look its oppressors in the face. At present we are assured that 
 in the seceded states no man expresses an opinion opposed to the revolu- 
 tion but at the hazard of his life and property. The only light which is ad- 
 mitted into political discussion is that which flashes from the sword or gleams 
 from glistening bayonets. A few days since, one of the United State Sena- 
 
THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 29 
 
 tors from Yirginia published a manifesto, iu which he announces, with orac- 
 ular solemnity and severity, that all citizens who would not vote for seces- 
 sion, but were in favor of the Union — not should or ought to — but "must 
 leave the state." These words have in them decidedly the crack of the 
 overseer's whip. The Senator evidently treats Virginia as a great negro 
 quarter, in which the lash is the appropriate emblem of authority, and the 
 only argument he will condescend to use. However the freemen of other 
 parts of the state may abase themselves under the exercise of this insolent 
 and proscriptive tyranny, should the Senator, with his scourge of slaves, en- 
 deavor to drive the people of Western Virginia from their homes, I will only 
 say, in the language of the narrative of Gilpin's ride, 
 
 " May I be there to see 1" 
 
 It would certainly prove a deeply interesting spectacle. 
 
 It is true that before this deliverance of the popular mind of the South 
 from the tlireatenings and alarm which have subdued it can be accomplished, 
 the remorseless agitators who have made this revolution, and now hold its 
 reins, must be discarded alike from the public confidence and the public ser- 
 vice. The country in its agony is feeling their power, and we well under- 
 stand how difficult will be the task of overthrowing the ascendency they 
 have secured. But the Union men of the South — believed to be in the ma- 
 jority in every seceded state, except, perhaps, South Carolina — aided by the 
 presence of the government, will be fully equal to the emergency. Let 
 these agitators perish, politically, if need be, by scores, 
 
 " A breath can unmake them as a breath has made ;" 
 
 but destroy this republic, and 
 
 •' Where is that Promethean heat 
 That can its light relume '?" 
 
 Once entombed, when will the angel of the resurrection descend to the 
 portals of its sepulchre? There is not a voice which comes to us from the 
 cemetery of nations that does not answer: "Never, never!" Amid the tor- 
 ments of perturbed existence, we may have glimpses of rest and of freedom, 
 as the maniac has glimpses of reason between the paroxysms of his madness, 
 but we shall attain to neither national dignity nor national repose. We shall 
 be a mass of jarring, warring, fragmentary states, enfeebled and demoralized, 
 without power at home, or respectability abroad, and, like the republics of 
 Mexico and South America, we will drift away on a shoreless and ensan- 
 guined sea of civil commotion, from which, if the teachings of history are to 
 be trusted, we shall finally be rescued by the iron hand of some military 
 wrecker, who will coin the shattered elements of our greatness and of our 
 strength in a diadem and a throne. Said M. Fould, the great French states- 
 man, to an American citizen, a few weeks since : " Your republic is dead. 
 
30 THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 
 
 and it is probably the last the world will ever see. You will have a reign of 
 terrorism, and after that two or three monarchies." All this may be verified 
 should this revolution succeed. 
 
 Let us, then, twine each thread of the glorious tissue of our country's flag 
 about our heart-strings, and looking upon our homes and catching the spirit 
 that breathes upon us from the battle-fields of our fathers, let us resolve, 
 that, come weal or woe, we will, in life and in death, now and forever, stand 
 by the stars and the stripes. They have floated over our cradles, let it be our 
 prayer and our struggle that they shall float over our graves. They have 
 been unfurled from the snows of Canada to the plains of New Orleans, to the 
 halls of the Montezumas, and amid the solitudes of every sea ; and every- 
 where, as the luminous symbol of resistless and beneficent power, they have 
 led the brave and the free to victory and to glory. It has been my fortune to 
 look upon this flag in foreign lands, and amid the gloom of an oriental des- 
 potism, and right well do I know, by contrast, how bright are its stars, and 
 how sublime are its inspirations ! If this banner, the emblem for us of all 
 that is grand in human history, and of all that is transporting in human hope, 
 is to be sacrificed on the altars of a Satanic ambition, and thus disappear for- 
 ever amid the night and tempest of revolution, then will I feel — and who 
 shall estimate the desolation of that feeling ? — that the sun has indeed been 
 stricken from the sky of our lives, and that henceforth we shall be but wan- 
 derers and outcasts, with naught but the bread of sorrow and penury for our 
 lips, and with hands ever outstretched in feebleness and supplication, on 
 which, in any hour, a military tyrant may rivet the fetters of a despairing 
 bondage. May God in his infinite mercy save you and me, and the land we 
 so much love, from the doom of such a degradation. 
 
 No contest so momentous as this has arisen in human history, for, amid 
 all the conflicts of men and of nations, the life of no such government as 
 ours has ever been at stake. Our fathers won our independence by the 
 blood and the sacrifices of a seven years' war, and we have maintained it 
 against the assaults of the greatest power upon the earth ; and the question 
 now is, whether we are to perish b} r our own hands, and have the epitaph 
 of suicide written upon our tomb ? The ordeal through which we are pass- 
 ing must involve immense suffering and losses for us all, but the expenditure 
 of not merely hundreds of millions, but of billions of treasure, will be well 
 made, if the result will be the preservation of our institutions. 
 
 Could my voice reach every dwelling in Kentucky, I would implore its 
 inmates — if they would not have the rivers of their prosperity shrink away, 
 as do unfed streams beneath the summer heats — to rouse themselves from 
 their lethargy, and fly to the rescue of their country, before it is everlastingly 
 too late. Man should appeal to man, and neighborhood to neighborhood, 
 until the electric fires of patriotism shall flash from heart to heart in one 
 unbroken current throughout the land. It is a time in which the workshop, 
 
THE FALLACY OF NEUTRALITY. 31 
 
 the office, the counting-house, and the field, may well he abandoned for the 
 solemn duty that is upon us, for all these toils will but bring treasure, not 
 for ourselves, but for the spoiler, if this revolution is not arrested. 
 
 We are all, with our every earthly interest, embarked in mid-ocean on the 
 same common deck. The howl of the storm is in our ears, and " the lightning' 's 
 red glare is painting hell on the sky ;" while the noble ship pitches and rolls 
 under the lashings of the waves, the cry is heard that she has sprung a leak at 
 many points, and that the rushing waters are mounting rapidly in the hold. The 
 man who, in such an hour, will not work at the pumps, is either a maniac 
 or a monster. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 JOSEPH HOLT. 
 
ELEGANTLY ILLUSTRATED EDITION 
 
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