S^H 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 013 760 140 
 
 ralitu ill 18B1," 
 
"Kentucky Neutrality lu 1861." 
 
 --^A PAPERk^ 
 
 READ BEFORE THE 
 
 OHIO COMMANDERY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 /AilitaF^ Opslep of tl^e Lfoyal Ifeaion, 
 
 OF ITIE 
 
 UNITED STATES, 
 
 BfiNj. f. SSfiYfiNSON, 
 
 Late Surgeon {Major) 2 2d Kcntncky Volwilccr Jnfaniry. 
 
 June 2d, 1886. 
 
 CINCINNATI. 
 
 H. C. SHERICK & CO. 
 
 1886. 
 
< 
 
 
 IN EXCHANGE 
 
 JAN 5 . 1915 
 
KENTUCKY NEUTRALITY IN 1861. 
 
 What is now known on the map as the State of Ken- 
 tucky was, during our Revolutionary struggle, an appanage 
 of the then colony of Virginia ; and in the year 1777 it was 
 organized by the House of Burgess as a county under the 
 name of Kentucky, and it was allowed two representatives 
 in the House of Burgess. In 1781 three counties were 
 organized out of the one — Fa3'ette, Jefferson, and Lincoln — 
 with two representatives assigned to each county, the ter- 
 ritory still retaining its designation as Kentucky, but losing 
 its organization as a county. At the close of the Revolu- 
 tionary War, Virginia was encumbered with a heavy debt, 
 contracted mainly in the common defense of the Nation. 
 
 The vast body of land north of the Ohio River —an 
 empire in extent — claimed by Virginia to be within her 
 chartered limits, she with singular magnanimity surren- 
 dered to the National Government — in trust — as a fund out 
 of which the general indebtedness, contracted during the 
 war, should be paid. Out of this grant five States have 
 grown up, viz. : Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and 
 Wisconsin. The lands of Kentucky were reserved by Vir- 
 ginia to aid in the liquidation of the debt to her own 
 citizens. 
 
 In pursuance of this policy the Land Office of the State 
 was opened at Richmond, where patents were granted to 
 all who were able and willing to pay a nominal price per 
 acre, and then undergo the fatigue and additional expense of 
 a survey of the tract. A certificate of survey was required 
 at the land office at Richmond to perfect the title. The State 
 
— 4 — 
 
 made no surveys, nor was it responsible for the accuracy 
 of any made. It established no meridian line and no point 
 of departure for surveys. If the wit of man had been taxed 
 to devise a scheme to delude and defraud the unwary, none 
 more fertile could have been adopted. 
 
 Fabulous stories of the fertility and beauty of the new 
 territory open for settlement spread over all the land, and 
 a steady stream of emigrants poured in, much the larger 
 portion of it from Virginia, each head of a family carrying 
 with him a land patent, with authority to locate and survey 
 any vacant or unoccupied land he might fancy. 
 
 The inevitable result of this loose method of business 
 was reaped in after years in numerous land suits, when it 
 was found that all the more valuable portions of the State 
 was shingled with conflicting patents and interlapping lines 
 of survey three or four times over. 
 
 The courts first held that the oldest patent carried the 
 land, but afterward, under the Occupying Claimant Laws 
 of the State, the same courts decided that a junior patent 
 with twenty years of occupancy held to the extent of its 
 survey and claim. 
 
 From 1781 to 1792 the influx of population into Ken- 
 tucky was very great, and through all those years there 
 was warm contention between the mother State and the 
 dependent territor}^ as to the right of the latter to apply to 
 Congress for admittance into the Union as a co-equal 
 State. 
 
 Kentucky was, in 1792, admitted as a State — first-born 
 of the new Nation — from the vast territory west of the 
 Allegheny range, and by the irony of fate it was made first 
 among sister States to sound the tocsin of revolt against the 
 Nation. With no rights withheld or denied, with no 
 wrongs impending, the Legislature, in 1798, passed a 
 series of resolutions which were primarily intended as a 
 flank movement on the Presidential oflice ; they were 
 adopted as a party shibboleth, and afterward elevated into 
 the dignity of a commentary on the Constitution, as of 
 
— 5 — 
 
 more vital worth and force than the original text. This 
 root of bitterness — "source of unnumbered woes " — Ken- 
 tucky inherited from her mother State, Virginia. 
 
 The influence of Virginia in controlling the political 
 action of Kentucky is shown in this, that in twenty-two 
 quadrennial elections for Governor of the State, from 1792 
 to 1863 inclusive, eleven of them, half the whole number, 
 were Virginians by birth and education ; and of the seven 
 Governors born in Kentucky, six of them were of Virginia 
 parentage ; of the remaining four, two were born in Mary- 
 land, and one each in Pennsylvania and South Carolina. 
 When Virginia took snutY, Kentucky sneezed. 
 
 Divided Public Sentiment. 
 
 The restraining influence of three men of Kentucky — Mr. 
 Clay", Mr. Crittenden, and Rev. Dr. R. J. Breckenridge — 
 did more to hold the State true to her National obligations 
 than all others combined. In the long, persistent, and un- 
 yielding fight of Mr. Clay against all forms of disloyalty 
 and disunion, he had the earnest and hearty co-operation 
 of Mr. Crittenden. A single expression in one of the last 
 speeches made by Mr. Clay in the Senate of the United 
 S'ates, "I owe a supreme allegiance to the Government of 
 the United States, a subordinate allegiance to my State," 
 sounded like the bugle-blast of boots and saddles to call his 
 adherents into line. And just at the most critical period, in 
 the spring and early summer of 1861, Dr. R. J, Brecken- 
 ridge addressed to the people of Kentucky a series of 
 essays of unanswered, of unanswerable cogency, urging 
 them to stand by the Nation, and to fill all just requisitions 
 for men and means to suppress the rebellion. 
 
 Mr. Clay was in his grave, but one of his sons and two 
 of his grandsons were in the rebel armies. Mr. Crittenden, 
 devoted as he was to the perpetuity of the Nation, had a 
 son in each of the hostile armies. Of Dr. R. J. Brecken- 
 ridge's sons, two were in the Union, and two in the rebel 
 
— 6 — 
 
 armies. Judge J. R. Underwood, who had been a repre- 
 sentative in Congress, for eight years on the Appellate 
 Bench, and then for six years Senator in Congress, was 
 loyal to the Nation. Two of his sons were in arms aiding 
 the rebellion. 
 
 Daniel Breck, formerly member of the Legislature and 
 of Congress, and Judge of the Circuit and Appellate Courts, 
 stood by the Nation. His sons all were arrayed in arms in 
 behalf of rebellion. The Shelbys, the Garrards, the Scotts, 
 the Marshalls, the Hardins, the Helms, the Deshays, the 
 Johnsons, the Wickliffs, all of them leading, wealthy, and 
 influential families, were divided in sentiment and feeling, 
 and subsequently had representatives in both National and 
 Rebel armies. The Letchers, the Owsleys, the Harlans, 
 the Goodlows, were all of them loyal. 
 
 What was true of leading families was equally true of 
 all classes and grades of society throughout the State. 
 
 Convention to Form a New Constitution in 1849. 
 
 In 1849 a convention was called to remodel the Consti- 
 tution. Additional guarantees were demanded for the con- 
 servation of slavery. 
 
 The party favoring a system of gradual emancipation 
 formulated their platform as advocates of an open clause pro- 
 vision permitting the Legislature at an indefinite time in the 
 future to pass an ordinance of emancipation. They took 
 nothing by their motion, as they were compelled on the 
 stump to avow themselves as favorable to such an ordi- 
 nance. They met the fate usually accorded to men who 
 have not the courage of their convictions — a disastrous 
 defeat. 
 
 In a body of one hundred men, but one man — Silas 
 Woodson, of Knox County — appeared as an advocate of an 
 open clause, and after events proved him to have been 
 unworthy of such an honor. He emigrated to Missouri, 
 and in the troublous Kansas and Nebraska times he was a 
 
chief among- " border ruffians," and at the close of the war 
 was elected Governor of the State. 
 
 The convention met, deliberated long, discussed every 
 phase of governmental policy and power broached by man, 
 and finall}- established slavery on a firm and immutable 
 basis by Sections 2 and 3 in the Bill of Rights. 
 
 The sections were drawn and presented to the conven- 
 tion by the Hon. Garratt Davis, and they were just as 
 potent guarantees in the maintenance of slavery as was the 
 clerical bull in suppressing the comet. 
 
 Here the}' are : 
 
 " Sec. 2. That absolute arbitrary power over the lives, 
 liberty, and property of freemen exists nowhere in a re- 
 public, not even in the largest majority. 
 
 "Sec. 3. Theright of property is before and higher than 
 any constitutional sanction, and the right of an owner of a 
 slave and its increase is the same, and as inviolable as the 
 right of the owner of any property whatever." 
 
 These sections are but a dalliance with words, and were 
 intended to beguile and mislead the unwary. They are 
 based on the robber plea, 
 
 "They may take who have the power, 
 And they may keep who can." 
 
 If the right of property is before and higher than any 
 constitutional sanction, how happens it that the most sacred 
 of all property rights — the right of man to himself — maybe 
 violated by constitutional sanction? The whole theory is 
 a palpably absurd dogma, in violation of natural and gov- 
 ernmental rifjhts. 
 
 As a fitting commentary of the text, I extract from a 
 bill presented by Mr. Davis — the same Mr. Davis — to the 
 Senate of the United States, December 26, 1861. [See 
 Congressional Globe. ^ 
 
 "A bill declaring all persons to be alien enemies who 
 have taken any part in the government of the so-called 
 Southern Confederate States, or any operations or business 
 
connected with it, and all persons who have joined the 
 army or navy, or any military organization or naval expe- 
 dition of said Confederation, or gotten up by its authority, 
 or in its name against the United States, and all persons 
 giving aid and comfort to said Confederation in the war 
 which it is now waging against the United States, and all 
 such persons to have forfeited to the United States their 
 whole property and estate of every description, including 
 debts, choses in action, and every legal and equitable right, 
 whether in possession or expectancy," — a perfect drag net. 
 
 Two propositions more antagonistic in character — 
 emanating from the same pen — cannot be found in all the 
 domains of legal lore. By the first Mr. Davis hoped to 
 arrest all discussion of the slavery question in Kentucky, 
 and by the latter to frighten rebels from further aggressive 
 warfare on the nation. 
 
 Professor Shaler, in his recent history of Kentucky, 
 represents the discussion of the slavery question of that day 
 as temperate in character. Was it so when Cassius Clay's 
 press was taken down by a mob at Lexington and shipped 
 to Cincinnati? Was it so when Bailey's press and type 
 were sunk to the bottom of the river at Newport? Was it 
 so when an eminent legal gentleman of this city was made 
 the victim of a shameful outrage on the streets of Covington 
 for defending a fugitive slave woman in the courts here, as 
 was his right? 
 
 The grandest, the most imposing exhibition of aerial 
 warfare is that of the storm cloud and the electric element. 
 I can recall no displays of nature that more aptly illustrates 
 the action of the slavery sentiment and feeling in Kentucky 
 at that period. It zig-zagged its way through all the frame- 
 work of society, scorching, burning, tearing, and rending 
 communities into opposing and hostile factions, each armed 
 with gleaming sword and burning brand, read}' for mortal 
 fray. 
 
— 9 — 
 Kentucky in 1859. 
 
 At the general election of 1859, Beriah Magoffin was 
 chosen Governor, and the same wave of popular sentiment 
 that carried him into the executive chair took with him a 
 majority ot the Legislature of his political sentiment. 
 
 On the outbreak of rebellion in 1861, the executive 
 branch of the Government of Kentucky was found to be in 
 full sympathy and accoixl with it, as is proven by the re- 
 sponse of the Governor to President Lincoln's call for 
 troops to aid in its suppression : 
 
 Frankfort, Ky., April 16, 1861. 
 Hon. Simon Cameron, Secretary at War : 
 
 Your dispatch is received. In answer, I say emphatically that 
 Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of sub- 
 duing our sister Southern States, 
 
 B. MAGOFFIN, 
 Governor of Kentucky. 
 
 That was the official response to a legal and proper call 
 from his official superior, who was but exercising an irre- 
 missible duty. 
 
 The response was curt and blunt enough to indicate the 
 feelings and purpose of His Excellency, but it was not so 
 curt as the spontaneous verbal response — as reported by 
 the papers of the day on reading the telegram — " Tell old 
 Abe to go to hell, and I'll go to my dinner." 
 
 Kentucky State Militia. 
 
 In the olden times Kentucky had a system of military 
 enrollment and drill which was a burlesque on tactics, 
 subordination, and duty. It had no useful results ; its chief 
 defect was to fill the land with hosts of be-feathered and 
 epauletted officers, who were worthless, inefficient, and in- 
 competent to set a squadron in the field. For fifteen 3ears 
 before the rebellion it had gone into the stage of " innoc- 
 uous desuetude." 
 
— lO 
 
 The Legislature of '59-'6o amended the military laws of 
 the State, consolidated all the independent uniform com- 
 panies of the State into one organization, under the name 
 of the Kentucky State Guard, and the arms and equip- 
 ments for this body — between twelve and fifteen thousand 
 strong — were drawn from the National armories with the 
 deliberate intention to use them against the Nation. , 
 
 Simon Boliver Buckner was made Inspector-General of 
 the State, and Commander-in-Chief of all State troops, and 
 this body formed the nucleus of all the rebel force that went 
 into rebellion from Kentucky, John H. Morgan's command 
 being the first detachment to abandon the State. 
 
 Let the following letter say what manner of man Simon 
 Boliver Buckner proved himself to be : 
 
 -Bowling Green, Ky., Sept. 19, 1861. 
 Mr. George W. Triplett : 
 
 My Dear Sir — Yours is received. Lock No. i must be de- 
 stroyed. I rely on our friends at Owensboro to do it; not an hour 
 must be lost. The destruction is a great deal to me in crippling 
 our adversary. Assemble our friends without delay in sufificient 
 force to accomplish the object. If possible, it should be done in 
 such a way as to leave a strong current through the lock, which will 
 empty the dam. Provide everything in advance. Do not fail ; it 
 is worth an effort. S. B. BUCKNER. 
 
 [Without his Official Signature.] 
 
 This letter, together with his unconditional surrender of 
 Fort Donelson, will preserve his name from oblivion. 
 
 The General Assembly. 
 
 Resolutions passed by the General Assembl}^ of Ken- 
 tuck}^ Januar}^ 21, 1861 : 
 
 "1st. That the General Assembly has heard with pro- 
 found regret of the resolutions of the States of New York, 
 Ohio, Maine, and Massachusetts, tendering to the Presi- 
 dent men and money to be used in coercing sovereign 
 States of the South into obedience to the Federal Govern- 
 ment. 
 
— II — 
 
 " 2d. And declaring, and so notifying them, that when 
 those States should send armed forces to the South for such 
 purpose, the people of Kentucky, uniting with their brethren 
 of the South, will as one man resist invasion of the soil of 
 the South at all hazards, and to the last extremity." 
 
 Thus it will be seen that the Executive and Legislative 
 Departments of the State Government were fully committed 
 to hostility to the Government of the Nation, and it will 
 also be seen that the military power of the State, together 
 with all the arms of the State, were in the hands of a man 
 prompt to resort to any and every means of aggressive war- 
 fare on the nation. The day of the publication of the 
 Buckner-Triplett letter I was in Frankfort and a witness to 
 the consternation occasioned by its premature publication, 
 as it fully unmasked the rebel policy. They were willing 
 to abide by neutrality so long as it subserved their designs, 
 but the instant it failed to do so the}- disregarded it. 
 
 A Personal Reminiscence. 
 
 My elder brother was at that time managing editor of 
 the Frankfort Yeoman, the most pronounced, outspoken 
 rebel sheet in the State. I called at his office and was 
 directed to his room. 
 
 " How are 3'^ou, Ben? What has brought you to the 
 capital just now?'' 
 
 "To tender m}'^ services as a surgeon in the arm}^" 
 was my reply. 
 
 " You had better go home and attend to the interests of 
 your family. The South can not be conquered. I wish," 
 said he, " to talk with you seriousl}-. Here we will be sub- 
 jected to constant interruption. Will you walk out with 
 me?" 
 
 We walked the streets of Frankfort and defined our 
 separate positions. He was my senior in years. 1 had 
 ever regarded him as my senior in all things. It comes to 
 most men once at least in a lifetime to assert their person- 
 
12 
 
 ality, and that period reached me then and there. His first 
 remark to me was that he was sorry to find me ready to 
 join in an aboHtion war to overthrow slaver3^ My response 
 to him was, " Tom, stop just there. You have known me 
 for years as a slave-owning, anti-slavery man, and now I 
 have to say that, so far as I am personally concerned, slavery 
 may be damned. Try another tack." Then the eftbrt 
 was to convince me that ten millions of people standing on 
 their own soil, united and determined, could not be con- 
 quered . 
 
 "You assume," said I, "more than I will grant. All 
 their union is that enforced by despotic power ; break that, 
 and the frame -work of the rebellion will tumble to pieces ; 
 but, setting that aside, the Government has been most 
 wantonly assailed, and must, if it hopes to live and have 
 the respect of the world, vindicate its dignity and rights." 
 " How vindicate rights," said he, "with a soldiery that will 
 not fight?" Looking over the country and the battles 
 fought, and naming Bull Run, Ball's Bluft', and Big Bethel 
 — others he did not mention — he said he had reached the 
 conclusion that the Nation had no leaders fit for command, 
 and that Yankee soldiers had no iron m their blood. To 
 which I responded : " If you mean to impute cowardice to 
 an entire section of the Nation, I am sorry to say to you 
 that partisan rancour has usurped the seat of justice and 
 of judgment in your mind, and we had better adjourn our 
 discussion." I reminded him that our grandfather had 
 been asoldier in the Revolutionary struggle, that our father 
 had shouldered his musket in the War of 1812, and said to 
 him that I would be bastard to their blood when I failed 
 to follow in their footsteps. 
 
 At this stage of our controversy we had reached the 
 front of a leading hardware house in the city. He stepped 
 into the store and returned in half a minute with a beauti- 
 ful pearl-handled pocket-knife, and said: "Now, Ben, we 
 can't agree on these questions, let us agree to disagree ; but 
 I hope you will accept this little gift as a pledge of personal 
 
— 13 — 
 
 amity between us," and he laid the implement in the palm 
 of my hand. 
 
 Looking at the gift, an incident of the long past was re- 
 called to my memory. When he was twelve and I was 
 ten, a negro girl living in the family came into the family 
 room one winter morning, and with smiling face said : 
 " Massa Tom, I'se got a volentine, and I wants you to read 
 the writins on it fur me." It was but two lines : 
 
 " If you loves me as I loves you, 
 No knife can cut our loves in two." 
 
 The lines instantly popped into my mind, and I re- 
 peated them. The memory of the long past incident and 
 its pat application at the moment served to assuage any ris- 
 ing acerbity of feeling, and we had our laugh over it. We 
 met as brothers ever should on the level, and we parted as 
 brothers ever should on the square — he to pursue his 
 course, and I mine. 
 
 He was a man of extensive and varied reading ; he 
 wielded a facile and trenchant pen ; on the platform and 
 on the hustings he was an able debater. His knowledge 
 of the political history of the nation and of its leading men 
 was not surpassed by any one in all the land. He was the 
 trusted friend of Clay, of Crittenden, and of Corwin ; but 
 when the supreme hour of the nation's peril and agony 
 came, he abandoned the teachings of those great leaders 
 of men. " Madness ruled the hour." 
 
 He lived long enough to know that at Island No. lo, at 
 Memphis, and at New Orleans, the Fresh-water Navy of 
 the Confederacy had been annihilated ; long enough to 
 know that at Vicksburg and at Port Hudson the bi-section 
 of the Confederacy had been made complete and perma- 
 nent, and that henceforth the Father of Waters would flow 
 to the gulf unvexed by the rage of man. He lived to know 
 that at Gettysburg the serried hosts of rebellion had been 
 hurled back to their Virginia stronghold, 
 
 — "With hideous ruin and combustion." — 
 
— 14 — 
 
 He lived to know that at Chickamauga and at Chatta- 
 nooga a long, long stride had been taken in the tri-section 
 of the Confederacy. He lived to know that the nation had 
 found leaders fit for command, and that those leaders had 
 found soldiers with iron in their blood, and that those 
 commanders and soldiers had driven cold iron deep into 
 the vitals of the Confederacy. And then he died. All his 
 hopes were blasted, " The silver cord was loosed ; the 
 golden bowl was broken at the fountain." He had many 
 noble, generous, and magnanimous traits of character, and 
 my tongue shall cleave to the roof of my mouth before I 
 shall attempt to d'isparage them. 
 
 SLAyERY — Per Se. 
 
 Slavery in its economic and financial aspects exercised 
 quite as controlling an influence on societ}^, as in its political 
 relations it did on partisan policy. 
 
 The census report of i860 gives the total population of 
 Kentucky at 1,155,684 persons, and the slave population 
 at 225,483 persons ; nearly one-fifth of the total population 
 were slaves ; and "the same report fixes the value of slave 
 property in the State at a little under one-fourth of the total 
 value of all property in the State. Assuming the average 
 value of each slave to have been $400 in i860, it gives 
 $90,093,200 as their money value at that time. That 
 Mr. Lincoln, two years later, when slave property had 
 greatly depreciated, should have offered three hundred 
 dollars for each slave emancipated is, I think, conclusive 
 evidence that my estimate is not too high. Mr. Lincoln's 
 offer, under authority of an act of Congress, was sixty-seven 
 millions six hundred and forty-four thousand and nine 
 hundred dollars. Either sum was large enough to contend 
 for by men already spoiling for a fight. 
 
 At the outbreak of the rebellion I was a slave owner, 
 made such by the accidents of birth and marriage, and 
 under the laws of descent ; but no man ever heard from me 
 any justification of slavery. lever held it to be an un- 
 
— 15 — 
 
 mitigated wrong. In 1849 I acted with the emancipation 
 party, and in 1865 ^ issued an address to the voters of 
 Boone County, Ky., from which I read: 
 
 TO THE VOTEES OF BOONE COUNTY, KENTUCKY. 
 
 At the earnest solicitation of a number of original Union 
 men of the county, I hereby announce myself a candidate to re- 
 present Boone County in the lower branch of the Legislature of 
 Kentucky. I have accepted the position with the distinct under- 
 standing that I shall not be expected to engage in an active per- 
 sonal canvass of the county ; domestic considerations imperatively 
 forbid my doing so. Respect for the people demands from me a 
 full and explicit declaration of the principles which have heretofore, 
 and will in the future, govern my political action. I will endeavor 
 to make it so plain that there shall be no grounds for present 
 misrepresentation or future misunderstanding. 
 
 I am now, as I have been from the beginning of our political 
 troubles, unconditionally in favor of maintaining the unity, the 
 integrity, and the perpetuity of the Government of the United 
 States, over all the national domain. Because — 
 
 ist. My political education taught me that " I owe a supreme 
 allegiance to the General Government, a subordinate one to my 
 State ;" and as a corollary therefrom, that secession is treason. 
 
 2d. I have never received any wrong from the National 
 Government, but, on the contrary, and always, protection to 
 person and property. 
 
 3d. I have never been able to conceive of any wrongs in the 
 . Government comparable to those which, in my judgment, are in- 
 evitable from disunion. 
 
 On the slavery question I seek no concealments, and will re- 
 sort to no subterfuges to secure votes. As an abstract question of 
 justice and right, it is indefensible. In its politico-economical 
 aspects, the highest official authority of the State — Governor Bram- 
 lette — has pronounced it not only worthless, but burdensome ; and in 
 this judgment most men now concur. In its social and domestic 
 relations, its concubinage, its debaucheries, its enforced ignorance, 
 its cruelties, its disregard of the natural ties of parent and offspring 
 — all its inseparable incidents — it is abhorrent to the instinct and 
 judgment of the just-thinking portion of mankind. Since first en- 
 
— i6 — 
 
 dowed with the power of thought and reflection, I have ever held 
 the integrity of the Government as of infinitely more worth than 
 slavery. 
 
 In 1849, being then a slave owner, I voted in favor of a 
 system of gradual emancipation in Kentucky. The propriety of 
 that vote has been vindicated on every battle-field of the rebel- 
 lion. Had that policy then prevailed, it would have given a 
 guaranty to the world that slavery was in process of extinction ; 
 it would have taken from the disloyalists of the State the potent 
 argument of a community of interests with those seeking a dis- 
 memberment of the nation; it would have deprived them of the 
 question of a natural boundary afforded by the great river which 
 sweeps along our Northern limits; and it would probably have 
 prevented a war which has swept into the vortex of ruin the 
 material resources of eleven States of the Union, and which has 
 draped the entire land in mourning. 
 
 For the emasculated loyalty of 1861, which under the leader- 
 ship of Breckenridge and Magoffin, of Powell and Buckner, and 
 which proposed to stand mute and neuter in the presence of an 
 armed rebellion which was stabbing at the vitals of the nation, 
 I entertained neither respect nor sympathy. Neutrality with 
 them was treason masked. Every measure of the legal author- 
 ities, State or National, designed to crush the rebellion has had 
 my earnest, thorough, and radical support; and I am radical 
 still in my desire to extirpate from the land the seminal principle 
 of future rebellions, and also to compel all men who claim the 
 protection of a citizen under the national flag to acknowledge 
 their allegiance to the National Government. 
 
 If chosen your representative, I will vote in favor of the 
 amendment to the National Constitution forever forbidding slavery 
 in the national limits. 
 
 A political defeat on the issues presented, with conscious 
 loyalty, is with me more desirable than would be a triumphant 
 election entertaining feelings of hostility to the unity and perpetuity 
 of my government. Respectfully, 
 
 B. F. STEVENSON. 
 
 Burlington, Ky.,July22d, 1865. 
 
— 17 — 
 
 State Sovereignty, 
 
 On the iSth of December, 1861, two hundred men, re- 
 fugees from their homes, assembled at Russellville, Logan 
 County, Ky., and after one day of deliberation adopted a 
 constitution, which the}^ proclaimed as the Constitution of 
 the State; and under it they elected George W. Johnson, 
 of Scott County, Provisional Governor of the State. The 
 body also elected ten citizens of Kentuck}- as an Executive 
 Committee as follows : 
 
 1. Willis B. Machen, 6, Elijah Burnside, 
 
 2. John W. Crockett, 7. Horatio Bruce, 
 
 3. Phihp B.Thompson, 8. Eli M. Bruce, 
 
 4. James P. Bates, 9, James W. Moore, 
 
 5. James S. Chrisman, ' 10. George B. Hodge. 
 
 Geo. B. Hodge resigned, and S. S. Scott was appointed 
 in his stead. 
 
 In this body was vested all the legislative and executive 
 authority of the State. 
 
 The convention appointed Henry C. Burnett, William 
 Preston, and William E. Sims as commissioners to ne- 
 gotiate an alliance with the Confederate States. 
 
 As a result of that negotiation, Kentuck}^ was admitted 
 into the Confederacy December 10, 1861, by the following 
 ordinance : 
 
 "An act for the admission of the State of Kentucky into 
 the Confederate States of America as a member thereof. 
 
 "Sec. I. The Congress of the Confederate States of 
 America do enact that the State of Kentucky be and is 
 hereby admitted as a member of the Confederate States of 
 America on an equal footing with the other States of the 
 Confederacy. 
 
 "Approved December 10, 1861." 
 
 The following gentlemen were elected as Representa- 
 tives or Members of the Provisional Congress from Ken- 
 tucky : 
 
1. Henry C. Bui nette, 6. Thomas Johnson, 
 
 2. John Thomas, 7, Samuel H. Ford, 
 
 3. Theo. L. Burnette, 8. Thomas B. Monroe, 
 
 4. George W. Ewing, 9. John M. Elh'ott, 
 
 5. Daniel P. White, 10. George B. Hodge. 
 
 The council of ten divided the State of Kentucky into 
 twelve Congressional Districts, and provided for their 
 election by the State at large of persons to represent these 
 districts in the first permanent Congress of the Confederate 
 States. 
 
 Voting places were provided for, and on the designated 
 day an election was held in the counties within the lines 
 of the Confederate army, resulting in the choice of the 
 following : 
 
 1. Willis B. Machen, 7. Horatio W, Bruce, 
 
 2. John W. Crockett, 8. George B. Hodge, 
 
 3. Henry E. Read, 9. Eli M. Bruce, 
 
 4. George W. Ewing, 10. James W. More, 
 
 5. James S. Chrisman, 11. J. R. Breckenridge, Jr. 
 
 6. Theo, L. Burnette, 12. John M. EUiott. 
 
 These gentlemen took their seats in the first permanent 
 Congress of the Confederate Government, and all of them 
 voted to enforce the conscription throughout Kentucky. 
 
 The council of ten elected Henry C. Burnette and 
 William E. Simms to serve for six years in the Confederate 
 Senate ; and in due time proclamation was made that Ken- 
 tucky of her own free will and choice had joined the Con- 
 federacy, and was therefore a State in full membership. 
 This action was all of it a wanton and flagrant outrage on 
 all their professed principles of State sovereignty. Ken- 
 tucky had at the time a Governor de jure who was Gover- 
 nor de facto and in office ; she had a legally elected Legis- 
 lature then in session, and the}^ alone had the right to take 
 action in the premises. 
 
 The duplicity, the folly, and the fraud of the entire move- 
 ment was so transparent as only to have merited the con- 
 
— 19 — 
 
 tempt of the world, but for the grave complications which 
 speedily ensued. 
 
 Beriah Magoffin, writing of the body that assumed to 
 act for the State at large, says : " I condemn its action in 
 unqualified terms. Self-constituted as it was, and without 
 authority from the people, it can not be justified by similar 
 revolutionary acts in other States by minorities to over- 
 throw State Governments. I condemned their action, and 
 I condemn the action of this one." 
 
 General Burnside, when in command of the Department 
 of the Ohio, caused the arrest of Thomas C. Magraw in 
 Harrison County, Ky. He was arrested as a spy, tried as 
 a spy, convicted as a spy, and subsequently executed as a 
 spy. The rebel authorities made strenuous, persistent 
 efforts to save the man, claiming Kentucky to be a portion 
 of the Confederacy under the negotiation with the bogus 
 Commissioners above named, and claiming for Magraw 
 the right of citizenship, and as a consequence the right 
 to recruit soldiers for the rebel armies in the State ; and 
 also threatening reprisals should he be executed. Think, 
 Mr. President, what might have resulted if they had had 
 the nerve to have executed their threats. Reprisals would 
 have led to retaliation, and then three years later "our 
 good old mother " away down in Georgia, in bonnet, boots, 
 and gossamer, might have felt a most uncomfortable 
 tightening about the trachea. 
 
 Provisional Governors of Kentucky. 
 A Tragedy and a Farce. 
 George W. Johnson, Provisional — Rebel — Governor of 
 Kentucky, was killed in the ranks at Shiloh, and the council 
 of ten, in the exercise of its imperial functions, appointed 
 Richard Hawes, of Bourbon County, another refugee, to 
 the vacant position ; and he, keeping step with the rebel 
 army under Bragg, when he invaded Kentucky in 1862, 
 was made a puppet in the drama of a rebel organization of 
 the State Government. They had their glorification over 
 
20 
 
 the capture and occupancy of the seat of Government ; 
 their jubilant march in procession to the capital ; the in- 
 augural services were in progress ; the address was half read 
 through, when from the high hill commanding Frankfort a 
 salvo of national artillery gave notice to quit and march. 
 
 Humphrey Marshall had made one of the cavalcade, 
 and was a looker-on at the moment ; beside him stood Or- 
 lando Brown, a citizen of the town and a thorough 
 Unionist, a man whose daily drolleries and pleasantries 
 made life a joy to his associates ; they had been college 
 mates, and were warm personal friends. At the booming 
 of the cannon Marshall said, "There is our order to 
 leave." Brown said to him, "I have a little good 'Old 
 Bourbon ' at home ; go with me and try it before you go." 
 "I will," said Marshall, "go with you to your house and 
 drink of your whisky, and then I will go elsewhere; here 
 I have been playing a part in a damned farce." The cur- 
 tain was rung down on Hawes, and he was seen no more 
 in all the play. If to them it were all a farce, to how 
 many others did it not prove to be a solemn and grave 
 tragedy ? 
 
 What Kentucky Did in the War. 
 
 The more agreeable task remains for me to say what 
 Kentucky did to aid in the overthrow of rebellion. At the' 
 general election of 1861, a decided majority of Union men 
 were returned to both branches of the Legislature. 
 
 It met on the first Monday of September, and its first 
 decisive action was to order the withdrawal of the rebel 
 troops under command of Generals Polk and Zollicofier 
 from Kentucky at points where they had made menacing 
 lodgments. It ordered compliance with all requisitions 
 made by the President for troops ; and it also passed an act 
 granting the credit of the State to a loan for three millions 
 of dollars for the national treasury. 
 
 From this period all the demands made on Kentuck}^ 
 for troops to aid in crushing out the rebellion were promptly 
 complied with, notwithstanding forty thousand men, most 
 
— 21 
 
 of them in the bloom of youth — bold, dashing, vigorous 
 riders and raiders as ever wielded saber or leveled a lance — 
 had already left the State to engage in rebellion. 
 
 Companions of Ohio ; Companions of Indiana ; Com- 
 panions at large, was there not much in these complications 
 and involvements to palliate, if not to justify and demand 
 on the part of Kentucky pause and delay? 
 
 Professor Shaler in his history of Kentucky expresses 
 the opinion that if the State had joined the Confederacy by 
 the passage of an ordinance of secession, the final result of 
 the struggle would probably have had a different ending. 
 In that opinion I think he errs. Had Kentucky been made 
 the battle-ground for the Confederacy, the contest would 
 have closed much sooner than it did. The lines for the 
 maintenance of a defensive war in Virginia are very much 
 superior to those in Kentucky, and to have fought the battle 
 in the latter State would have required largely inci'eased 
 forces, as Virginia would never have consented to the aban- 
 donment of Richmond ; and dispersion of their forces would 
 have had with them the same disastrous results that it had 
 with national troops. 
 
 What would have been the final results of the triumph^ 
 of rebellion can at this day be only a matter of speculation. 
 
 What some of those claiming to be leaders in the move- 
 ment averred as their determined purpose, I do happen to 
 know. 
 
 One of the council of ten was a citizen of my county ; 
 and his declarations were, first, that all the National terri- 
 tory south of the north line of Missouri, clear across 
 the continent to the Pacific Coast, should be Confederate 
 territory, and be forever dedicated to slavery ; and second, 
 that having in their possession all the mouths of the 
 Mississippi, they should be held sealed to the commerce 
 of the Northern States until its government by treaty 
 pledged itself to return to claimants all escaping slaves. And 
 this man was seriously in earnest. He was the first man 
 to leave the county to join the rebel arm}^ and he was 
 the last man to return to his family. 
 
— 22 — 
 
 The Father of Waters. 
 
 A navigable stream at its source, sprirtging from its 
 hundred lakes and lakelets, which like brimming urns are 
 pouring over their rims a ceaseless flow of water, limpid, 
 crystal pure as ever distilled from terrene matrix. Its 
 tributary streams, east and west, converging from the 
 Allegheny ridge, and from the sentinel peaks of the great 
 Rocky range, flowing thence to the gulf, and bearing 
 annually on its bosom more of the wealth of the world 
 than the Danube, the Ganges, and the Nile combined. 
 The Valley of the Mississippi, the richest heritage of man, 
 the fairest, the most fertile, the most habitable of all lands 
 within the temperate zones. Its streams of living men 
 are poured in from half the rotund world. 'Tis God's 
 alembic, in which the North-man, the Dane, the Swede, 
 the Teuton, the Celt, the Briton, the Frank, the Iberean, 
 the Italian will all of them be fused into a homogeneous 
 man, and who, reared and educated to know that liberty 
 does not mean license, and that law does mean order, 
 will present to the world the most benign government in 
 all the tide of time. And this fruition of hope the nation 
 was required to forego, that slavery, the reproach to 
 Christianity, the stain to humanity, might be made per- 
 petual. 
 
 All honor to the gallant soldier (Gen. Logan) who in 
 Richmond threw at the head of the rebel authorities the 
 declaration that " We will hew our way to the Gulf with 
 our swords," and preserve forever the free navigation of 
 the Mississippi River. 
 
 A Retrospect. 
 
 Fifty-three years since in this month of June John Ran- 
 dolph, of Roanoake, left his home in Virginia with broken 
 health in search of medical advice in the city of Brotherly 
 Love. He traveled like a prince of the realm, in his private 
 
— 23 — 
 
 conveyance with postilion, out-rider and body-servant. He 
 had been a power in the land. He was strictest among 
 strict constructionists, but for all the real or imaginary 
 wrongs of the country his appeal was to the courts of law. 
 His honors, all, he fairly won in the forum of debate. He 
 had not been the ward of the nation, nor had he fed at its 
 bountiful table, neither did he stab at its life. He was a 
 large slave owner, but his slaves he freed and provided for 
 their comfortable maintenance ; not at his command were 
 the dogs of war unleashed to ravin and rage throughout 
 the land. Not for his promotion to place and power were 
 the gates of death and hell thrown open wide, and kept 
 open through dreary years of bloodshed and carnage. His 
 private life had been pure and unstained by fraud or wrong. 
 He had his affairs of honor, but the prayer of David — 
 "Preserve me, O God, from blood guiltiness" — had 
 been vouchsafed to him. 
 
 When he met face to face with the grim monster — we 
 have all to meet — he called to his faithful, his ever-faith- 
 ful Jubal, " Jubal, bring me a sheet of paper and a pencil 
 — you will find them there," pointing with his long, skinny 
 attenuated finger, which had been potent as the speaker's 
 mace in the hall of Congress. They were brought. And 
 his last conscious effort was to pencil on the fair white sheet 
 a single word, thrice repeated — 
 
 "Remorse — Remorse — Remorse — " 
 
 and then he breathed his last. 
 
 The misuse of his great faculties, the neglect of his 
 many opportunities for usefulness, wrung his soul with 
 anguish. His manner of life, his many eccentricities had 
 been a mystery to the world. His death was an admoni- 
 tion. He whose life imparts wisdom to mankind, though 
 be lived not wisely, has lived not in vain. 
 
 Who among all the hosts of men engaged in the effort 
 to overthrow the nation, and who have gone to their long 
 homes, have expressed remorse for their great wrong? 
 
 Man can not sit in judgment on his fellow-man ; cer- 
 tainly not those engaged in opposing hosts, but it is in ac- 
 
— 24 — 
 
 cordance with Christian charity to hope when the last man 
 of all who were engaged in rebellion shall have taken 
 
 And when 
 
 ' His chamber in the silent halls of death," 
 
 'All their bones are dust 
 And all their good swords rust. 
 
 That in the general resurrection their 
 
 " Souls may rise with the just," 
 
 and be made guests of heaven. 
 
 And then, and then, in the great and glorious future of 
 the nation may some immortal bard, filled with righteous 
 indignation, rise up and reconstruct a new Dantean hell; 
 may he snatch from the forgetfulness of time, from the gloom 
 of the grave, from, the oblivion of the future, the names of 
 every active aider, abetter, and participant in rebellion, and 
 with pen of fire write them indelibly on the tablets of hell ; 
 this, as an everlasting memorial, admonition, and warning 
 to all future generations of man against another wicked 
 and wanton sacrifice of human lives at the shrines of sec- 
 tional aggrandizement and of personal ambition. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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