USA > Kentucky > A history of Kentucky and Kentuckians; the leaders and representative men in commerce, industry and modern activities, Volume I > Part 45
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In a letter to General Scott, then Command- er in Chief of the Army, dated May 17, 1861, Mr. Crittenden declared that Kentucky ac- quiesced in the governor's refusal to furnish troops to the Federal government "not be- cause she loved the Union less, but she feared that if she had parted with those troops, she would have been overwhelmed by the Seces- sionists at home and severed from the Union. It was to preserve our connection with the Union that induced us to acquiesce."
Subsequent events proved that Mr. Crit- tenden was in error in this statement. Ken- tuckians never have nor ever will hesitate to take position on any question even though war be involved. Great Kentuckian as he was, devoted to the Union as he was, he nor any other man, could say in May, 1861, what Kentucky would do in the war that was then at its inception. Not all the calls for troops from the Federal government ; not all the refusal to supply them by the governor of Kentucky, could have an effect upon the young men of Kentucky when "war had raised its horrid front." There can be no war to which the United States is a party, whether it be among its own people, which God forbid there
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should be ever again, or against a foreign foe, in which there will not be found in the fore- front the sons of Kentucky. They are the most warlike peaceable people on whom the sun shines, thus accounting for the fact that from the days of Indian conflict to those of the war with Spain, they have had their prom- inent place in every battlefield on which this country has hield a place.
MIcElroy, who is a most interesting histo- rian, labored under the disadvantage of hav- ing to take his story of the days of the war from others, being too young to have been a part of the events of which he writes. His sympathies are altogether with that side of the question which leaned towards the Union, and he sometimes appears unequal to the task of looking upon the other side of the picture. He quotes approvingly Mr. Crittenden's every utterance and it is a pleasure at this day, long after the grim visage of war has ceased to frown upon the country, to say that the latter did all within his power to avert the conflict between the sections though he never wavered in his devotion to the Union.
Quoting McElroy again, something irresist- ible, though one may not always agree with him, he is found saying: "Long and intimate connection with the Federal government had given to Mr. Crittenden a deep insight into national conditions. He knew the mind of the men who had recently been called to direct the affairs of the republic, and was able, as few Kentuckians of his day were able, to dis- count the wild tales, so generally current in Kentucky, of the dark plottings of the Fed- eral administration against the rights and liberties of the south. He did not believe. as many a man equally honest believed, that the aim of Lincoln's administration was the conquest and subjugation of the slaveholding states. 'The argument which has been so often used to disunite us,' he told the legis- lature of Kentucky, 'that the north hates the south and that the south hates the north-is
not true. The Almighty has not made us with hearts of such malignity as to hate whole classes of our countrymen for the sins of a few men.' He believed that, even at the eleventh hour, when the tramp of martial footsteps was already heard, peace might be restored by the gentle art of mediation, and he coveted for his own Commonwealth the honor of becoming the mediator. To the men of this generation, who can see both before and after, such a belief seems the vainest of delu- sions, but few men will question the sincerity and loyalty of this venerable statesman."
Mr. Lincoln had stated, it has been re- ported, in a conversation with Senator Garrett Davis, that he would make no military move- men against any state which did not offer armed resistance to the authorities of the United States. He is said to have also de- clared to Warner L. Underwood, of Kentucky, that while hoping that Kentucky would sus- tain the Union in her present difficulties, he woukl make no effort to compel her to do so. In his inaugural address, Mr. Lincoln had quoted with approval the words of the Repub- lican platform on which he had been elected: "We denounce the lawless invasion, by an armed force. of the government of any state or territory, no matter under what pretext. as among the gravest of crimes." This section of the Republican platform had no reference whatever to the conditions which later seemed to bring Kentucky within its provisions. It bore directly upon the strife then existing be- tween the people of Missouri and the settlers from the free states in the then territory of Kansas between whom an internecine strife was raging. After the struggle is ended and peace encompasses all our borders, there is nothing to be gained by a misrepresentation of the conditions existing when the war began. The truth and nothing but the truth should be and is the honest historian's aim.
The legislature still pursued the ignis fatuus of neutrality, and imagined that peace could
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be controlled by the meetings of Commission- ers. The Union members proposed the ap- pointment of six men, three of whom should represent the Bell-Douglas element and three the Breckinridge party. "These appoint- ments were to be approved by the legislature, but those named were not to be members of that body, and were to meet and agree upon some definite course of action to be followed by the legislature with reference to the great questions then disturbing the nation, and it
The Unionist Commissioners positively re- fused to assent to this proposition and it was, after discussion, abandoned. The second proposition to the effect that the legislature be advised to declare that Kentucky would stand neutral in the conflict between the Fed- eral and the Confederate governments, was unanimously adopted. It was also agreed to advise the legislature to create a military board of five persons, whose duty it should be to provide a military organization adequate
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S BIRTHPLACE, NEAR HODGENSVILLE, KENTUCKY
was agreed in caucus meetings of the respect- ive parties in the legislature, to carry out, by legislative action, whatever program the six arbiters should recommend."
These arbiters met in conference May II, 1861. John C. Breckinridge, Beriah Magoffin and Richard Hawes were the representatives of the Breckinridge wing of the Democratic party. John J. Crittenden, Archibald Dixor and Samuel S. Nicholas represented the Unionists. Mr. Breckinridge and his col- leagues proposed that the legislature call a Sovereignty Convention to decide whether or not Kentucky should secede from the Union.
to the needs of the commonwealth. Let it be understood that this latter action was unan- imous.
After receiving the report of this commis- sion and scores of petitions praying for a neu- tral stand, the legislature on May 16, 1861, considered a report presented by the Com- mittee on Federal Relations, which asked the adoption of the following resolutions :
"Considering the deplorable condition of the coun- try and for which the state of Kentucky is in no way responsible, and looking to the best means of pre- serving the internal peace and securing the lives,, liberty and property of the state, therefore;
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"Be it resolved, by the senate and house of repre- sentatives, that this state and the citizens thereof should take no part in the Civil war now being waged, except as mediators and friends to the belligerent parties, and that Kentucky should, during the con- test, occupy the position of strict neutrality."
The Union members of the house sustained the report, showing that they had not yet abandoned the hope of preventing civil war. But the senate would have none of it. Cap- tain Thomas Speed in the "Union Cause in Kentucky" says: "With these resolutions, there was no concurrence by the senate, and therefore they only reflect the mind of one body." Admirable a man as was Captain Speed, he was afflicted with the incapacity of all the men who have written from the Union side in Kentucky, to see that there was anoth- er side of the great question then pending, and that there were men of prominence in Kentucky who were sympathizers with the south and who gave assurance of that sympa- thy later with their lives.
While the senate with its Unionist majority, small but effective, would not agree to the 1esolutions of the house, it yet felt it neces- sary to make a declaration of its position, declaring that Kentucky would not sever its connection with the National government, nor would she take up arms for either of the bel- ligerent parties, at the same time offering the services of the state as a mediator "to bring about a just and honorable peace."
There is something pathetic about these efforts of Kentucky to avert civil war. Lov- ing the Union of the republic as she did and having an affection for the southern states equally strong, the state could behold a con- flict between the sections with no feelings other than of the most poignant regret and though her efforts to bring about peace are viewed in the light of after events almost with levity, there was nothing in those efforts in 1861 which did not breathe the most serious intent.
The two houses of the general assembly,
each in its own way, had asserted the prin- ciple of neutrality and of mediation, to neither of which the two belligerents paid any special attention. May 20, 1861, the governor issued his proclamation warning all other states, whether separate or united, and especially the United States and the Confederate States, to abstain from any movement upon the soil of Kentucky, or the military occupation of any place whatever within her lawful boundary, until authorized by invitation or permission of the legislative and executive authorities. This neutral position, he explained, was assumed in the hope that Kentucky might soon have an opportunity to become a successful mediator between the two belligerents.
Thus Kentucky stood as a buffer between the seceding southern states and those which remained loyal to the Union. The two houses of the general assembly, each in its own way, and the governor by his proclamation, stood pledged to the impossible idea of neutrality, with one section of the Union in arms against the other section, which was rapidly arming against it. However alluring may have seemed the prospect in 1861, it appears today to have been the nearest grasping at straws where there were really no straws. There was war, only war, and Kentucky, to her ulti- mate sorrow, speedily disovered this and paid for the knowledge in the blood of thousands of her sons.
Again let McElroy be heard : "With a leg- islature which had been chosen in 1859, before the question of secession had become dominant, the discreet policy to be followed by the friends of the Union, was a waiting policy, in view of their firm faith in the loyalty of the voting population of the state and the pol- icy of armed neutrality for the purpose of mediation, made it unnecessary for the state to face at once the question of joining the Confederacy, or adhering to the Union. It represents, therefore, a victory for the Union cause in Kentucky. What this meant to the
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Union cause in the nation is only speculation, but Lincoln, himself, as his most authoritative biographers tell us, had 'from the beginning, felt that Kentucky would be a turning weight in the scale of war' and it is safe to say that had she gone over to the ranks of secession she might have carried with her a force which would have greatly increased the seriousness of the problem which confronted the National government. 'If Kentucky had gone when Virginia went,' says General Buckner, 'it seems probable that Missouri and Maryland would both have followed her,' in which event, as General Franklin once expressed it, 'the war might have gone to the Lakes instead of to the Gulf.' "
The legislature which had been in session for nearly eighteen months, adjourned sine die May 24, 1861, having fixed upon the first Monday in September as the day on which the legislature to be chosen on the first Mon- day in August should meet. Ordinarily, in those days, the legislature met on the first Monday in December following its election, but these were extraordinary days and custom gave way to the exigencies of the moment. Notwithstanding the seriousness of the situ- ation which had confronted them and the wide divergence of views, the members of this general assembly are said to have retained among themselves the most kindly and gener- ous relations. One of their number who was later to become a member of the Confederate congress and a brigadier general in the army of the new government, a most generous and courtly gentleman, said afterwards: "When the final session closed, as its members parted and clasped hands in adieu, they bade each other God speed-well knowing that commis- sions in the Federal army were already signed for many, and that for many more Confed- erate soldiers were waiting as leaders; know- ing too, that when they met again to argue the question it would be at the assize of blood." Can any read this and wonder
that Kentucky pleaded for peace; that again and again she offered to mediate between the contending factions of a distracted country ? Neutrality was impossible; to tender it along with mediation may have seemed to both the north and the south as absurd, but it was not so deemed by Kentucky; the good old state shuddered at the thought that her stal- wart young sons were to meet on the "battle's perilous edge" and give up their lives in sup- port of the belief they cherished.
The hour had struck, and now men took their position, father against son; brother against brother. Surely never more cruel war than this has been fought since that "War of the Roses," when our English progenitors met each other in battle array. Collins, in his "Outline History of Kentucky" says: "Topographical position, or peculiarity of property, seemed to have no influence in the decision. The planters of the tobacco region cultivating their fields exclusively by slave labor, turned their backs upon their planta- tions and went to range themselves in the Federal army; while from the northern bor- der, entirely denuded of its slave population, men who had never owned a slave and whose most valuable possessions lay in Ohio, Indi- ana and Illinois, committed their families to God's keeping and rode away into the south- ern lines."
Garrett Davis, a senator from Kentucky, in a letter to General McClellan, presents anoth- er view, saying : "The sympathy for the south and the inclination to secession among our people, is much stronger in the south- western corner of the state than it is in any other part, and as you proceed toward the upper section of the Ohio river and our Vir- ginia line, it gradually becomes weaker until it is almost wholly lost."
Collins was correct in his differentiation of the men who joined the two armies, but in- correct in other respects. Mr. Davis' state- ment to General McClellan was a far more
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correct definition of the sentiment of the peo- ple; for in the section of the state to which he refers, there were certain counties so pro- nounced in their sentiment of loyalty to the south, as to be called "the Little Confedera- cies." But it should not be understood that all the people in these or any other counties stood firm in support of the Confederacy or of the Union. The fact is that every county furnished men to each army. though certain sections, notably the mountains, were very loyal to the Union, while in other sections the majority of young men entering the ser- vice chose to follow the flag of the young Confederacy.
There was less of bitterness than would naturally be expected when the parting of the ways came to our distracted state. Boys who were playmates at school, parted with hearty handshakes and went their several ways to enlist beneath the flag of their choice. Life- long friends who held opposing views, sepa- rated with feelings of sadness and took up arms in the service of the Union or of the
Confederate states, as their sympathies de- manded. It was, indeed, for Kentucky, a fratricidal conflict. Yet when it was ended, those who survived; those who had in the one army or the other, done so much to uphold the honor of the flag they had followed, came back to clasp in friendly manner the hands they had held in farewell when they had gone their several ways to follow the flag of their choice. Kentuckians know how to fight ; they know too, when the fight is ended, and it was not unusual. after Appomattox, to find the "Yank" and the "Reb." if one may be par- doned for thus once referring to his former enemies and his comrades, conducting their business affairs together as partners, pro- foundly indifferent to the fact that but a few months before they had been classed as "ene- mies." And to the honor and the glory of Ken- tucky, the good feeling which then existed between her sons so recently in deadly con- flict with each other, is maintained to this day, and no man asks where another served if he be an honorable gentleman today.
CHAPTER XLVIIL.
LAST APPEAL FOR UNION-BUCKNER-MCCLELLAN CONFERENCE-UNIONISTS CARRY CONGRES- SIONAL ELECTIONS-LINCOLN-BUCKNER-CRITTENDEN CONFERENCE-SOME LEADING CON- FEDERATE SOLDIERS-SOME LEADING UNION SOLDIERS- KENTUCKY SOIL INVADED.
The Border Slave State Convention met at Frankfort three days after the adjournment of the legislature. There were seventeen del- egates present, of whom twelve represented Kentucky. These twelve were all Union men, the ticket representing the State, or Southern Rights idea, having been withdrawn before the election by the State Central Com- mittee. The deliberations of the convention, over which Mr. Crittenden presided, may be imagined without further statement. The resolutions adopted expressed continued faith in the already exploded idea of armed neutral- ity for the purpose of mediation, notwith- standing that the sons of Kentucky were even then flocking to the standards of the Union or of the Confederacy as their consciences dic- tated, and some of the members of the leg- islature which had just adjourned had al- ready put on the uniform of the army in which they had determined to serve.
Notwithstanding this, the convention made a last sorrowful appeal to the seceded states to re-examine the question of the necessity for their withdrawal from the Union. "If you find it has been taken without due consid- eration, as we verily believe," said these res- olutions, "then we pray you to return to vour connection with us, that we may be in the future, as in the past, one great powerful nation."
This was pathetic ; these old men pleading for the Union of their fathers already divided,
with the armies of the north and of the south confronting and ready to spring at the throats of each other; yet these men sought peace- peace for their distracted country ; peace that would prevent their sons from rending each other, peace that would not array families against each other, but would give us back the old Union for which the fathers had fought and died. One can have no feeling other that that of profound respect for these men in council, however futile their effort proved to be. Many of those whose for- tunes were cast with the Confederacy were descendants of men who had suffered with Washington at Valley Forge and triumphed with him at Yorktown, and who cherished a love for the flag of the Union, but whose sympathies were with their kindred, the peo- ple of the south ; and when the supreme mo- ment canie they had gone with their own peo- ple. Many thousands of others, equally the descendants of Revolutionary sires, had found their duty in the other direction and were aligned beneath the flag of the Union. There is no disposition here to decide between them, though the writer of these words has elsewhere in this work. stated that his alle- giance was to the south and that under its flag his service was rendered. But not to- day nor on any other day, since that war be- gan, nor on the day on which it ended, has he hesitated to give to those Kentuckians who fought under another flag. the meed of praise
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which is their honored due. In giving this honor, he considers that he speaks for every honorable Confederate soldier who, like him remained by his colors until they went down forever in defeat.
Going back, after this digression, to the question of Kentucky's mediating neutrality position, it may be stated that the Federal government now began to take notice of it, as was naturally to be expected. General Si- mon Bolivar Buckner, a Kentuckian, a grad- uate of West Point, who had won wounds, promotion and distinction in the war with Mexico, but who had retired from the army with an ample fortune, was the inspector gen- eral of the military forces of Kentucky. Ear- ly in June, 1861, General Buckner received from his former comrade-in-arms, . General George B. McClellan, an invitation to meet him in Cincinnati for a discussion of Ken- tucky's unique position of neutrality. To- gether with a friend, Samuel Gill, a Union man, then connected with the meager railroad service of Kentucky, General Buckner went to Cincinnati, where, says Gill, "we entered upon a free and unreserved expression of opin- ion in regard to many matters connected with the present political difficulties." The result of the discussion was an agreement upon the part of General McClellan, as to a definite policy with regard to Kentucky, an agreement which General Buckner regarded as binding upon the Federal government. It will, of course, be understood that General Buckner had not then taken service with the Confed- eracy, but acted solely in behalf of the state of Kentucky.
Again acknowledgement is made to McEl- roy's "Kentucky in the Nation's History" for the following report to the governor by Gen- eral Buckner in relation to this interview with General Mcclellan :
"HEADQUARTERS KENTUCKY STATE GUARD "Louisville, Ky., June 10, 1861.
"Sir: On the 8th instant at Cincinnati, I entered
into an agreement with Major General G. B. Mc- Clellan, Commander of the United States troops in the States north of the Ohio River, to the following effect :
"The authorities of the State of Kentucky are to protect the United States property within the limits of the State; to enforce the laws of the United States in accordance with the interpretations of the United States Courts as far as the law may be applicable to Kentucky, and to enforce, with all the power of the State, our obligations of neutrality as against the Southern States as long as the position we have assumed shall be respected by the United States.
"Gen. McClellan stipulates that the territory of Kentucky shall be respected on the part of the United States, even though the Southern States should occupy it; but in the latter case, he will call upon the authorities of Kentucky to remove the Southern forces from our territory. Should Kentucky fail to accom- plish this object in a reasonable time, Gen. McClellan claims the same right of occupancy given to the Southern forces. I have stipulated in that case to advise him of the inability of Kentucky to comply with her obligations and to invite him to dislodge the Southern forces. He stipulates that if he is success- ful in doing so, he will withdraw his forces from the State, as soon as the Southern force shall have been removed.
"This, he assures me, is the policy which he will adopt towards Kentucky. Should the administration hereafter adopt a different policy, he is to give me timely notice of the fact. Should the State of Ken- tucky hereafter assume a different attitude, he is, in like manner, to be advised of the fact.
"The well-known character of Gen. MeClellan is a sufficient guarantee for the fulfillment of every stipu- lation on his part.
"I am, sir, very respectfully "Your obedient servant "S. B. Buckner, Inspector General. "To His Excellency, B. Magoffin.
This was a formal recognition by the Fed- eral government through General McClellan, of the neutrality of Kentucky, but it was merely a rope of sand. In the midst of war the laws are silent, and an agreement made today with good intent. may, in the exigencies of war, be entirely diregarded tomorrow. Three days after the interview with General Buckner, the governor received from General
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McClellan a formal demand in the following terms :
CINCINNATI, June 11, 1861.
"Gov. B. Magoffin :-
"I have received information that Tennessee troops are under orders to occupy Island No. One, six miles below Cairo. In accordance with my under- standing with General Buckner, I call upon you to prevent this step. Do you regard the islands in the Mississippi River above the Tennessee line, as within your jurisdiction and if so which ones?
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