USA > Kentucky > A history of Kentucky and Kentuckians; the leaders and representative men in commerce, industry and modern activities, Volume I > Part 43
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Attention is called to Professor Shaler's statement that the profound desire and pref- erence of Kentucky was that "the withdraw- ing states should be allowed to go in peace." Those who remember that dark era in our history, will recall that Horace Greeley, a Re- publican and the greatest editor of that time, urged that the government "let the erring sis- ters go in peace."
It is the belief of this writer that had this advice of Kentucky and of Mr. Greeley been accepted by the government, the "erring sis- ters" as the latter termed them, would have long since returned to the Union, with slavery dead by the common consent of all the peo- ple, and that thus the horrors of internecine strife. the shedding of brother's blood by brother, the tremendous national debt and the horrors of Reconstruction might have been averted. There are those who took part on the one side or the other in that great contest,
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who will not agree with this conclusion; who beneath the flag of this country and be a still believe that the question of human slav- ery brought to the front an "irrepressible con- flict" which could be solved alone by the shed- ding of fratricidal blood, and to these the writer grants that right of opinion which he claims for himself. Whether they are right and he is wrong, does not matter now. The great battle has been fought; slavery is dead, and the writer of these words gives thanks to the God of Nations that no man can stand
slave. No former Confederate soldier, wor- thy of the name and of the uniform he wore and honored, but will agree with this senti- ment. And every true Kentucky soldier, no matter what the uniform he wore, but is proud, as was Professor Shaler, the Union officer, of the splendid record made by Ken- tucky's soldiers on every field where they ap- peared, it is believed will subscribe to this sentiment.
CHAPTER XLVII.
CRITTENDEN'S PROPOSED COMPROMISE-COMPROMISE REJECTED KENTUCKY'S EFFORTS FOR PEACE-ROBERT ANDERSON, OF KENTUCKY-KENTUCKY'S STANCH UNIONISM-PEACE, BUT NOT COERCION-EXTRAORDINARY LEGISLATIVE SESSION OF '61-SUPPORTS VIRGINIA PEACE CONFERENCE-COLONELS JACOB AND WOLFORD-SPECIAL SESSION CONTINUED- TYPICAL BRECKINRIDGE FAMILY-ACTIVE WAR AT LAST-ANDERSON DROPS FROM SIGHT -GOVERNOR BETWEEN Two FIRES-KENTUCKY'S STATUS IN THE UNION-HER "MEDIAT- ING NEUTRALITY"-REASSEMBLING OF 1861 LEGISLATURE-CRITTENDEN AS MEDIATOR -KENTUCKY HOUSES DISAGREE-PROCLAMATION OF MEDIATION-LEGISLATURE'S IMPRES- SIVE ADJOURNMENT-THE PARTING OF THE WAYS.
Those were gloomy days when on the first Monday in December, 1860, congress assem- bled. Not for many years to come was an- other congress to assemble in Washington with every state represented. The record of the intervening years was to be written in crimson letters upon the battlefields of a di- vided country, and before the representatives of many of the states then present would in their own persons or those of their successors, again be seated there, a great war would be fought and a veritable saturnalia of thievery be inaugurated in certain of the states under the name of Reconstruction, when the carpet- bagger and the "scalawag," combining with the negro just released from bondage and the cotton field, would saddle upon stricken states financial burdens under which they yet stag- ger though the sun of prosperity has again shone upon them.
When the congress met President Buch- anan, beset by such conditions and difficulties as no president before him had known, found himself at sea, the chart and compass of the constitution not affording him apparently a safe way out of the troubles that daily grew around him. The southern states, or certain
of them, made no secret of their intention to secede from the Union. In his message to congress he recognized these conditions, but, while declaring that the right of secession did not exist within the states, he found no au- thority in the Federal government to prevent it. While it may have added to his fame to have taken a firmer stand against secession, it would not have prevented it. The extreme southern states were determined; their minds had long been made up and they cherished the hope that the border states, such as Kentucky, Missouri and Maryland, would be one with them in the determination to withdraw from the Federal Union.
The message of Mr. Buchanan, in the then inflamed state of the public mind, was the ob- ject of bitter attack. Kentucky through her venerable and able senator, John J. Critten- den, ever hopeful of a peaceful solution of the great question at issue, praised the peace- ful tone of the message while not wholly ap- proving all of its features. Mr. Crittenden longed for peace, since, with prophetic eye, he saw what war would mean not only to Kentucky but to the whole country. He pleaded for a judicial rather than a passionate
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attitude in his efforts to stay the awful storm about to break upon the country, declaring the Union to be worthy of great sacrifices and great concessions. To the senate, he said : "I trust there is not a senator here who is not willing to yield and to compromise much in order to preserve the government and the Un- ion." The sentiment of his speech to the sen- ate is shown in these fragmentary sentences : "I will waive any remarks I might have been disposed to make on the message. I do not agree that there is no power in the president to preserve the Union. To say that no state has the right to secede and that it is a wrong to the Union, and yet that Union has no right to interpose any obstacles to its secession seems to me altogether contradictory."
Subsequently, Mr. Crittenden in a second speech in the senate, showed the depth of his heart interest in the spirit of compromise. He had stood with the illustrious Clay in fa- vor of compromise measures when the storm was gathering, and, now that it was about to break upon the country, he still hoped to avert it and prevent its ravages. On December 18, 1860, he explained his plan to the senate and here McElroy's "Kentucky in the Nation's History" is quoted. Senator Crittenden said : "I have endeavored by these resolutions to meet all these questions and causes of discon- tent by amendments to the constitution of the United States, so that the sentiment if we can happily agree on any, may be permanent and leave no cause for future controversy. These resolutions propose then, in the first place, in substance the restoration of the Missouri Compromise, extending the line throughout the territories of the United States to the east- ern border of California, recognizing slavery in all the territory south of that line and pro- hibiting slavery in all the territory north of it; with a proviso, however, that when any terri- tories, north or south, are formed into states, they shall then be at liberty to exclude or ad- mit slavery as they please. and that, in one
case or the other, it shall be no objection to their admission into the Union.
"I propose also that the constitution shall be so amended as to declare that congress shall have no power to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, so long as slavery exists in the states of Maryland and Virginia, and that they shall have no power to abolish slav- ery in any of the places under their special jurisdiction within the southern states.
"These are the constitutional amendments which I propose. There are other proposi- tions in relation to grievances and in relation to controversies which I suppose are within the jurisdiction of congress and may be re- moved by the action of congress. I propose in regard to legislative action, that the Fugi- tive Slave law, as it is commonly called, shall be declared by the senate to be a constitu- tional act in strict pursuance of the constitu- tion. I propose to declare that it has been de- cided by the supreme court of the United States to be constitutional, and that the south- ern states are entitled to a faithful and com- plete execution of that law, and that no amendment shall be made hereafter to it which will impair its efficiency.
"I have further provided that the amend- ments to the constitution which I here pro- pose, and certain other provisions of the con- stitution itself, shall be unalterable, thereby forming a permanent and unchangeable basis for peace and tranquility among the people."
Turning then to the southern senators, Mr. Crittenden asked: "Can you ask more than this? Are you bent on revolution ; bent on disunion? God forbid it! I cannot believe that such madness possesses the American people. This gives reasonable satisfaction. I can speak with confidence only of my own state. Old Kentucky will be satisfied with it and she will stand by the Union and die by the Union. if this satisfaction be given."
After his impassioned appeal to his brother southern senators, Mr. Crittenden miglit well
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have turned to the extremists among the north- ern senators and asked them, too: "Can you ask more than this? Are you bent on revolu- tion ; bent on disunion ?" From them had they answered from the depths of their hearts, that answer would have been that they welcomed dissolution and disunion, could they by these destroy slavery. By no means does the bur- den of the war rest upon the south. For years there was a party in the north bent upon the destruction of slavery by whatever means, and it hailed the day when it had goaded the south into armed opposition to its methods and its studied incentives to the conflict which followed the election and inauguration of Mr. Lincoln.
The Senate "Committee of Thirteen" raised on motion of Senator Lazarus W. Powell, of Kentucky, to consider measures of compro- mise and pacification, comprised among its members both the Kentucky senators, an un- usual but a deserved honor. To this commit- tee, Mr. Crittenden presented his resolutions as above outlined. Most of the Democratic senators thought that they saw in them an op- portunity for the successful adjustment of the pressing sectional differences, but the Re- publican members considered them as yielding too much to the south and they were rejected. The day for concessions, for compromises, in- deed for statesmanship had passed; the day for the mailed hand of the soldier was dawn- ing, and not all the senates that have sat from the beginning of constitutional government, could avert the strife about to burst upon our country.
It is idle now to speculate upon the answer of the country to the Crittenden Compromise. had it been submitted to the people. Rhodes in his "History of the United States" de- clares: "No doubt can now exist and but little could have existed in January, 1861, that if the Crittenden Compromise plan had been submitted to the people, it would have car- ried in the northern states by a great major-
ity; that it would have obtained the vote of almost every man in the border states, and that it would have received the preponderat- ing voice of all the cotton states but South Carolina."
Perhaps these conclusions of Mr. Rhodes are correct and that the Republican senators who opposed the Crittenden Compromise, knew the conditions to be as he describes them, and therefore opposed the compromise in the Committee of Thirteen.
The Cincinnati Enquirer of July 3, 1861, declares that "the whole south, save South Carolina, would have adopted Crittenden's Compromise. It is written down in stern and inexorable history that the Republican party would not accept these propositions." Presi- dent Buchanan's friends are said to have at- tempted to persuade Mr. Lincoln to approve Mr. Crittenden's compromise proposals. Mr. Lincoln is said to have replied: "I am for no compromise which asserts or permits the extension of the institution (of slavery) in soil owned by the nation."
The resolutions of Mr. Crittenden, when presented to the senate, were rejected by a majority of thirteen. On the 8th of January, 1861. the anniversary of the battle of New Orleans. ever since 1815 known in Kentucky as "Jackson's Day." a convention of Constitu- tional Union men, made up of representatives of both the leading parties in Kentucky, met in Louisville and endorsed the Crittenden Compromise, deploring the existence of a Un- ion which could only be held together by armed power. Nine days later the state leg- islature was convened in extraordinary ses- sion by a call from Governor Magoffin. On assembling, a resolution was adopted inviting a national convention to consider measures of peace and conciliation. The legislature also declared "the unconditional disapprobation of Kentucky of the employment of force in any form against the seceding states."
At a later date, when resolutions had given
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way before the stern demands of arms, men who had together voted for the adoption of these resolutions, met each other on the field of battle wearing the uniforms of the oppos- ing forces.
On January 25th, the general assembly adopted a resolution calling upon congress t call a national convention to consider amend- ments to the federal constitution in acord- ance with the fifth article of that instrument. On the 29th of the same month, they ap- pointed six commissioners to a Peace Confer- ence to be held in Washington February 4th. This convention assembled, remained in ses- sion twenty-three days and adjourned with- out having reached any results looking to- wards peace.
Kentucky had done her part in every effort to that end. Crittenden and Powell in the United States senate; the leading men of all parties in convention at Louisville; the gen- eral assembly at Frankfort; the Peace Com- missioners at the Kentucky Peace convention of twenty-one states, at Washington. all these had vainly sought for peace ; had offered from their wisdom and from their hearts, every con- cession possible to be made to avert the hor- rors of civil war, and all without avail. There was not a man of those Kentuckians who had given their best efforts in the interests of peace who did not recognize what war would mean to Kentucky; they knew that families would be sundered; that father would oppose son upon the field; that brother would meet brother in hostile array and that for these rea- sons, the usual horrors of war would be a thousand-fold intensified for Kentucky. Hence they sought peace by offering compromise; they sought peace by offering everything save honor, and when the die was cast, when war had come, Kentucky's sons made their choice and going with the colors of their hearts, won new honors and renown upon a thousand bat- tlefields which they hallowed by their blood; and today, Kentucky, proud of her soldier
sons, regardless of the uniforms they wore, holds them in grateful remembrance and like the heroic mother of old, points proudly to them, saying: "These are my jewels."
The idea that there could be a war in this country with Kentucky out of it, had some- thing of the grotesque about it. As if to em- phasize this fact, Major Robert Anderson, born in Jefferson county about ten miles from Louisville, was ordered to the command of the United States forces at Fort Moultrie in Charleston harbor in November, 1860. Sub- sequent events brought this officer into com- mand at Fort Sumter when the first gun of the war was fired; thus Kentucky, which had sought immunity from war through her plea for neutrality. was actually one of the impor- tant participants in the very first action of the war she vainly hoped to escape. "It is Fate" says the mystic of the Far East, when trou- ble encircles him, and the people of Ken- tucky, loving the union of their fathers and the south of their kindred, might well be par- doned if in this extremity, they had folded their arms and, with the stoicism of the sav- ages whom they had evicted from their orig- inal homes, had declared: "Let Fate do its worst; we will follow the dictates of our hearts and consciences."
History was made rapidly in those days. December 27. 1860, Major Anderson spiked the guns at Fort Moultrie, burned the inner works of the fort, and transferred the garri- son to Fort Sumter on an island at the mouth of Charleston harbor. In response to an in- quiry from the secretary of war as to why this movement was made, Major Anderson replied : "I abandoned Fort Moultrie because I was certain that if attacked, my men must have been sacrificed and the command of the harbor lost. If attacked, the garrison would never have surrendered without a fight." Mc- Elroy, falling into the unsupported charges against John B. Floyd, secretary of war in the cabinet of Mr. Buchanan, says that Floyd at
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this time "was using his high office in the in- terest of the cause of disunion." It is easy to make such charges as this, but more diffi- cult to establish them. McElroy makes no effort to prove the correctness of this claim and one is left to believe or disbelieve it, as his sympathies may be with the people of the south or with the Union. In the absence of anything beyond mere assertions written years after the incidents involved, one may be ex- cused from subscribing to the correctness of the charges of which there is no substantial proof.
While commissioners from South Carolina were in Washington seeking in vain for a conference with Mr. Buchanan, the possible fate of the Crittenden Compromise measures was causing suppressed excitement in Ken- tucky. The people of the state, regardless of past political affiliations, thought, very justly, that at such a crisis as now confronted the Union, these measures should come out of committee and be openly debated in the sen- ate. They believed, as they had a right to be- lieve, that they were entitled to know who fa- vored and who opposed this effort to save the Union intact and thus evade the horrors of an internecine war. Perhaps a majority of the people, while believing abstractly in the right of secession, were too ardently devoted to the Union of their fathers to vote for a separa- tion from that Union. Mr. Justice Harlan, of the supreme court of the United States, one of Kentucky's most distinguished sons, who had commanded a regiment of troops in the Federal army, said at a later period: "I confidently assert that there was no moment during the war when a decided majority of the people of Kentucky were not unalterably op- posed to a dissolution of the Union under all circumstances and whatever might be the re- sult to the institution of slavery."
Notwithstanding this statement from one of her sons, who has for so many years hon- ored his native state upon the highest judi-
cial tribunal in the world, it is nevertheless a fact that when the people of Kentucky sought at the polls to register their will, they were confronted with bayonets and paid the penalty of a free expression of their will, in arrest and imprisonment.
The historian of today is impressed with conflicting emotions typical of the conditions of the period of which he writes. The views of Mr. Justice Harlan, entitled to the highest respect, have just been stated. Gen. George B. Hodge, of the Confederate army, a Ken- tuckian, says of this period and of the people of the state: "Their loyalty was nearly akin to the religious faith which is born in child- hood, which never falters during the excite- ments of the longest life and which at last, enables the cradle to triumph over the grave. The mass of them did not reason about it. The Union was apotheosized. The suggestion of its dissolution was esteemed akin to blas- phemy, to advocate or speculate about it was to be infamous."
But before an appeal to arms, Kentucky, schooled by Henry Clay, who sought by com- promise to bring the dissonant sections of the Union to agreement, and whose successor, Mr. Crittenden, endeavored by the same efforts to prevent a dissolution of the Union-Ken- tucky would have every effort to that end put to the test. In the Crittenden resolutions, the people of the state believed they saw a peace- able and an honorable solution of the great questions confronting them. It was not the men who had voted for Bell and Everett or for Douglas and Johnson who alone hoped for this consummation. The men who had sup- ported Breckinridge and Lane were as pro- foundly interested as those who had opposed that ticket. These men knew that if the su- preme test of war came they would find them- selves in the ranks of one of the armies as soldiers confronting their own kindred in the opposing army. No other state had so seri- ous, so poignant a question to decide. The
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great heart of Kentucky was torn by conflict- ing emotions, and one who was a minor part of the movements of that day finds it difficult to transcribe here the emotions of the people who found themselves divided along personal as well as political lines.
While awaiting action by the senate upon the Crittenden resolutions, a convention of men of all parties, met January 8th, in Louis- ville, and adopted the following resolutions :
"We recommend the adoption of the propositions of our distinguished Senator, John J. Crittenden, as a fair and honorable adjustment of the difficulties which divide and distract the people of our beloved country. We recommend to the legislature of the state to put the amendments of Senator Crittenden in form and submit them to the other states."
This protest, made in the name of over ninety thousand Kentuckians, as stated by McElroy (who fails to say whence came the authority for his statement that it was made "in the name of over ninety thousand Ken- tuckians") was unheeded, the United States senate a week later, disposing of the Critten- den resolutions, by adopting as a substitute therefor-a resolution declaring, "that the provisions of the constitution are ample for the preservation of the Union; that it needs to be obeyed rather than amended." The senators of the Northern states seemed to de- sire a war and as conditions appeared to put upon the southern states the onus of bringing about that war, they complacently sat in their places ; declined to accept any compromise, no matter what its terms, and calmly awaited an overt act upon the part of the south which they could claim as a justification of their own action or lack of action.
Y When the Kentucky legislature met in ex- traordinary session, on January 17th, Gover- nor Magoffin said in his message to that body : "The special purpose for which the legislature has been called into extra session is that you may consider the propriety of providing for
the election of delegates to a sovereignty con- vention to be assembled at an early day, to which shall be referred for full and final de- termination the future of Federal and inter- state relations of Kentucky. This common- wealth will not be an indifferent observer of the force policy-the seceding states have not, in their hasty and inconsiderate action, our approval, but their cause is our right and they have our sympathies. The people of Ken- tucky will never stand with arms folded while those states are struggling for their constitu- tional rights and resisting oppression, or being subjugated to an anti-slavery government. The idea of coercion when applied to great po- litical communities, is revolting to a free peo- ple, contrary to the spirit of our institutions, and, if successful, would endanger the liber- ties of the people."
The message further urged the legislature to strengthen the State Guard forces, already a decided military arm of the state and to take a stand against "the employment of force against the seccding states."
McElroy, the historian, and a very able one, himself a Kentuckian, seems to have been un- able to consider any other than the Federal side of the conditions existing at this period. Of Governor Magoffin's message he says : "Its tone indicates the very natural belief on the part of the governor, that a legislature which had chosen John C. Breckinridge to the United States senate would not hesitate to advocate the principles for which his party stood, although the people of their state, in their vote for president, had positively re- jected them." Mr. McElroy writes in the light of today ; in the light of after events and results. The words that are written here are in the light of the days, the events of which are given by one who was a part in an hum- ble way, of those events and who saw, with his own eyes, the results which followed.
Kentucky showed her indisposition to be considered inimicable to the Union during
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this session of the legislature when by a for- mal vote, it was ordered that the national flag be displayed over the capital during the ses- sion. This was really an unnecessary order as it was then as it had long been, the custom to display the colors upon the building when the legislature was in session. But the public was nervous, tense, sensitive, and every move- ment was closely scrutinized, every motive criticised. The national flag flew from the capital during the war, save for the brief pe- riod in 1862 when the Confederate army un- der General Bragg, occupied a considerable portion of the state. On January 21st, George W. Ewing, of Logan county, proposed two resolutions which are declared by McElroy as of "a dangerously menacing character." The first of these resolutions which received unan- imous support could not, therefore, have been menacingly dangerous, else it would not have received the votes of those who were known as Union members of the general assembly. This first resolution expressed strong disap- proval of the recent action of the states of New York, Ohio, Maine and Massachusetts in sending men and money to the president of the United States, "to be used in coercing cer- tain sovereign states of the south into obedi- ence to the Federal government."
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