USA > Kentucky > A history of Kentucky and Kentuckians; the leaders and representative men in commerce, industry and modern activities, Volume I > Part 56
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people may claim that it was the black and not the white slaves whom they relieved from the bonds of slavery.
On January 25, 1866, the Kentucky legisla- ture adopted the following joint resolution :
"Whereas, it is represented that Major General Clinton B. Fisk, head of the Freedman's Bureau of Kentucky, did, on the 18th instant deliver an address in Cincinnati, Ohio, in which he made, among others, these statements :
"'Only the day before yesterday in Lexington, Kentucky, thirteen discharged colored soldiers stood on the streets, in full sight of Henry Clay's monu- ment, with their bodies lacerated; their backs bleed- ing from the cruel lash; their heads cut to the scalp, and one or two of them with their eyes put out. And what for, do you suppose? Simply for going to their former masters and asking for their wives and chil- dren. I appealed to the civil authorities in their be- half and was told that there was no law in Kentucky to help them. I heard there of a slave to be sold on a certain day and I made an arrangement with the master commissioner to buy him myself, as the last slave sold in Kentucky.'
"And whereas, it is believed that those statements have no foundation in fact and are calculated to place the people of Kentucky in a false light before the country :
"Therefore, be it resolved, that a committee be appointed of two from the house and one from the senate, to proceed immediately to Lexington, and as- certain the truth or falsity of the statements."
This joint resolution was adopted and Sena- tor William A. Dudley and Representatives Benjamin F. Buckner and John M. Armstrong, all good Union men and as fine representatives of the best class of Kentuckians, as could be found in the state, were appointed as the pro- posed committee. After a thorough investiga- tion, this committee reported to the general assembly on February 15th, "that the charges made by General Fisk are false and slander- ous ; they are but a continuation of the system of misrepresentation to which the people of this state have been exposed for several years," etc. The temptation to apply to Fisk and his kind a shorter and uglier word than that used by the committee must have been almost
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irresistible to the gentlemen who composed it, as it is to this writer. Fisk was not manly enough to withdraw his false statement and was such a craven that the severe statement by which the committee characterized his utter- ance, had no effect upon him. He had accom- plished his purpose and had put into circula- tion in the northern states, a baseless story to further enrage them against the southern peo- ple, then prostrate at the feet of those who had conquered them.
Any one who lived in Kentucky during the days when the Freedman's Bureau was in supreme control, will recall this man Fisk and his like creatures, who made life a hell for white men, Union and Southern men alike.
After the promulgation of the alleged adop- tion of the thirteenth amendment, the people of Kentucky promptly accepted it. February 14, 1866, the general assembly agreed to acts concerning the negro citizens of the state, con- ferring certain civil rights, relieving them from former disabilities as slaves, making them sub- ject to the same punishment as the white peo- ple for crime; authorizing schools for their children, and appropriating for the education of colored children all taxes collected from the colored people.
On February 17, 1866, the legislature claim- ing to have "enacted laws for the colored race, characterized by justice and humanity, suited to their present condition and necessary for their welfare," by resolution requested the president of the United States to cause the re- moval of the Freedman's Bureau from the State and also to revoke his order suspending the writ of habeas corpus in Kentucky. The president did neither of these things, and the Freedman's Bureau long remained as a menace to the white people, and without advantage to the negroes.
While probably 25,000 colored troops were recruited in the state, not one of them was credited to Kentucky's quota, but every man of them went to the credit of some northern states, mostly in New England, in order to Vol. 1-25.
lighten the draft in those states. But all that happened a long time ago and no one need to be unhappy about it now. Perhaps those su- perlatively good people up in New England concluded that as they had brought the first negro slaves into the country, they had the right to make use of them afterwards.
In 1871, the Kentucky legislature made legal in all the courts of the State the testimony of the negroes, who had formerly not been per- mitted to testify in any court of justice.
The Ku-Klux, who had found a field for their operations in the southern states, never had a respectable representation in Kentucky where there was no need for them, if, indeed, there had ever been a need for them anywhere. Some outrages had been perpetrated against negroes in several districts of Kentucky, which, in every case, had been attributed to returned Confederate soldiers, though, in no instance, had this ever been proven to be true. In 1873, the legislature passed a bill providing severe penalties against those who confederated for the purpose of intimidating or inflicting in- juries upon others. This statute still prevails. Though the former Confederates had been charged with the commission of outrages against the colored people, it is a historical fact that the first men indicted in the state under the act were neither Kentuckians nor former Confederates, but men who had come from east Tennessee into Todd County after the close of the war, in which at least one of them had served in the Union army. They were properly sentenced to the penitentiary on conviction, and from that day to this the col- ored man has been as safe in Kentucky as the white man. His children have as good schools as the white children; no discrimination is shown in the distribution of the school fund, and peace prevails everywhere between the two races. The man who should attempt to stir up discord between the white and black people in Kentucky, would find this state a good one to get out of, and that quickly.
CHAPTER LIV.
KENTUCKY OFFICERS IN THE WARS-THE SPLENDID KENTUCKY PRIVATE-DEFECTS OF UNION RECORDS-SAD AND TERRIBLE WAR RECKONING-FUTILE ATTEMPT TO KEEP WAR ISSUES ALIVE-KENTUCKY POLITICS AFTER THE WAR-MILITARY INTERFERENCE-THE SOLDIER'S "GOOD ANGEL"-GRADUAL DEPARTURE OF MILITARY AUTHORITIES-OBNOXIOUS WAAR ACTS REPEALED KENTUCKY'S QUICK RECONCILIATION-KENTUCKY MEMBERS OF THE FORTIETH CONGRESS - HELM-STEVENSON ADMINISTRATION - CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS MADE OPERATIVE-STEVENSON SUCCEEDS MCCREERY-NEGRO TESTIMONY LEGALIZED.
In the twenty-fifth anniversary number of the Louisville Times, issued December 31, 1909. appeared the following appreciation of those Kentuckians who have attained high ranks in the army : "In looking back through history's honor roll of valorous men who dis- tinguished themselves in war are scores whose memory will always be kept green by Kentuck- ians because they were Kentuckians, and by bravery and loyalty did high honor to their native state. In all the annals of war there were none more courageous in trying times of sectional or international strife. Ken- tucky gave to the soldiery of both land and sea, men who stand out preeminent on the pages of history for their sturdiness, bravery and unswerving fealty to the cause they espoused. Kentuckians, in war as in peace, are esteemed for their high ideals of honor, and few of them have left records that may not be re- counted to posterity as an honor to themselves and to Kentucky. In the great struggles of 1812, the war with Mexico, and the Civil con- flict, Kentucky sent a full quota into the strife and all gained a full share of glory. A Ken- tuckian is a soldier in all that constitutes a soldier. He has the respect of his superior officer if in the ranks and the love and esteem
of the ranks, if he is a superior. He is known as fearless in battle, loyal to the last drop of his blood, and enduring to conquer any hard- ship."
KENTUCKY OFFICERS IN THE WARS.
Of Kentucky's soldiers of high rank in the earlier wars, the following are named :-
In the wars with the Indians and the War of 1812, the following high officers are en- titled to the fullest honors :
Major General George Rogers Clark.
Major General George Croghan.
Major General Joseph Desha.
Major General Thomas Jessup.
Major General John Adair.
In the war with Mexico, Major General Zachary Taylor. Major General William O. Butler.
In the War between the States, on the Fed- eral side were the following native Kentuck- ians, who attained the rank of Major General : Thomas L. Crittenden ; Cassius M. Clay ; John A. McClernand ; Ormsby M. Mitchell ; William Nelson; Thomas J. Wood; D. McReynolds ; John M. Palmer; Frank P. Blair; Lovell H. Rousseau.
Brigadier Generals: Jere Boyle; Daniel W.
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Lindsay; Robert Anderson ; William M. Bir- ney; James E. Blythe ; S. G. Burbridge ; Green Clay Smith; John T. Croxton ; Speed Smith Fry ; Theophilus T. Garrard; Edward H. Hob- son ; James S. Jackson ; Richard W. Johnson ; Benjamin F. Loan; Eli Long; Thomas Mar- shall ; James M. Shackelford ; William P. San- ders; William T. Ward; Lewis D. Watkins; Walter C. Whitaker.
In the Confederate army the following at- tained high rank :
General Albert Sidney Johnston.
Lieutenant Generals, Simon Bolivar Buck- ner ; John B. Hood ; Richard Taylor.
Major Generals: John C. Breckinridge ; George B. Crittenden; Gustavus W. Smith, William Preston ; John H. Morgan.
Brigadier Generals: Daniel Adams ; Abram Buford; George B. Cosby; Basil W. Duke ; Henry M. Giltner ; Roger W. Hanson; James M. Hawes; Ben Hardin Helm; George B. Hodge; Claiborne F. Jackson; Joseph H. Lewis; Hylan B. Lyon; Thomas H. Taylor ; Lloyd Tilghman; John S. Williams ; Humph- rey Marshall.
In the war with Spain, Col. John B. Castle- man, commanding the First Kentucky Volun- teer Infantry, was promoted to be a brigadier general in the volunteer service.
It is possible that some names have been omitted from the honor-roll of Kentucky's leading soldiers, as here given, a fact which gives the author much concern, but an effort has been made to include the name of each general officer of Kentucky birth who served in either the Federal or the Confederate army. Should any have been omitted, those of his kindred who come after him can console them- selves that his good service had already in- scribed his name upon a Roll of Honor whether his name be here written or not. It is a matter for pride upon the part of every Kentuckian that in the long list of soldiers of high rank here named in the two armies, but one ever brought reproach upon the great State of his birth.
And, leaving out of consideration the offi- ccrs, it may also be said of the men in the ranks that they acquitted themselves with honor to themselves and the State of their nativity. It was frequently said by officers of high rank in the two armies during the war, that many of the men in the ranks were fitted to command, as indeed, in some emergencies, they did, and always creditably. The Kentuck- ian is a born soldier, as has been more than once intimated or directly stated in this work, and he has proven the statement on every field of battle where he has appeared-and he is rarely missing from the fields in which his country is interested.
Col. Stoddard Johnston's "Confederate Mili- tary History," says: "Whatever may be said of the character of the men whom Kentucky furnished to the Confederate army, the Federal statistics of the war show that, judged by all the known physical tests, the Federal troops from Kentucky excelled those of all other States." In the "History of Kentucky" by Professor N. S. Shaler, published in the Com- monwealth series, is exhibited a table of meas- urements of American white men compiled from the reports of the Sanitary Commission, made from measurements of the United States volunteers during the war by C. A. Gould. In it is given the nativity of nearly one million men who served in the Federal army during the war; their height, weight, circumference of chest, and head and the proportion of tall men in each one thousand. An analysis of the table shows that Kentucky and Tennessee, which are grouped together, exceed, in each particular, those of every other state and foreign country, except that Scandinavia shows an excess of .05 of an inch in the cir- cumference of the head. There was no such test made as to the physical proportions of the Kentuckians in the Confederate armies, but the testimony of Professor Shaler, a native Kentuckian, who was a gallant Federal soldier, and who, for more than a quarter of a century filled the chair of Agassiz at Harvard Univer-
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sity, as to the other merits of the Confederates from Kentucky, is well worth noting in this connection. Professor Shaler has noted the fact that Kentucky was peopled more directly by people of pure English blood and had less proportion of foreign-born population than any other state in the Union, the statistics of the Eleventh Census showing less than sixty thou- sand out of a total of nearly two millions. He then says on the subject under consideration : "The exiles who braved all consequences and forced their way through the lines to form Morgan's cavalry, the First Kentucky brigade of infantry, the commands of Marshall and others, and the earliest volunteer Federal regi- ments, were probably the superior element of these Kentucky contributions to the war. They were the first runnings of the press, and natur- ally had the peculiar quantity of their vintage more clearly marked than the later product, when the mass became more turgid with con- scripts, substitutes and bounty volunteers. Had the measurements and classified results ap- plied only to the representative native element, the standard of average manhood would have been shown to be perceptibly higher. Though the ancestors of these soldiers had been fighting people, yet for forty years their children had known and followed only the peaceful pur- suits of agriculture, and the industries of trade peculiar to the commonwealth with the limited exception of the Mexican war interlude, which made an inconsiderable draft of a few thou- sand volunteers during its brief existence. They may be said to have been wholly unused to the spirit and untutored in the arts of war. Yet their record of bold and daring skill, of heroic courage, and of indomitable endurance, was equal to that of the best troops on either side of the combatants in this great civil war, and certainly unsurpassed by the soldiers of Europe of the present or any past age. Take for illustration on one side the force of Mor- gan, and we find in this remarkable body of men great capacity at once, for dash and en-
durance. Its leader, suddenly improvised from the ranks of citizenship, not only organized, aligned and led this splendid squadron, but possessed the intuitive genius to develop a new feature in the art of war, in which was a rare combination of vigilance, daring, fertility of resource, and an impetuous power of hurling all the husbanded force of body and mind into a period of ceaseless activity. Theirs was the capacity to break through the lines of the enemy, to live for weeks in an atmosphere of battle, fighting and destroying by day, and marching by night, deploying in front of the enemy or attacking his lines and posts far in the rear ; a life that only men of the toughest and finest fiber could endure; yet this force owed its peculiar excellence is much to thie qualities of the men and the subordinate offi- cers as to the distinguished leader. Such a list of superior subordinate commanders as Basil Duke, D. Howard Smith, Grigsby, Cluke, Breckinridge, Alston, Hines, Steele, Gano, Castleman, Chenault, Brent and others, was perhaps found in no other brigade of Kentucky Cavalry. Yet at the head of their brigades and regiments of Federal Cavalry, such leaders as Col. Frank Wolford, Col. Richard T. Jacob, Col. Hobson, Gen. Green Clay Smith, and others of the same fine fighting qualities, showed soldiership of a high order and their commands of Kentucky farmer boys showed qualities of a high order, and their commands proved to be the most effective Union cavalry of the war. The fighting of the Federal regi- ments of Kentucky infantry and cavalry throughout the great campaigns and battles of the war, showed the men to be possessed of the highest soldierly qualities; but so merged were they on the great Union armies, and so little of distinctive Kentucky history has been collated or published of these that we find it difficult to illustrate with the recount of their exceptional services."
The writer has experienced the difficulty above referred to by Professor Shaler, and if
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the charge be made against him that undue prominence has been given to the movements of Kentucky Confederate commands, the ex- planation lies in the fact that in the Confeder- ate service the Kentucky troops were, as a rule, brigaded together and the history of one regiment of infantry or of cavalry, was, in effect, the history of other Kentucky regi- ments belonging to the same arm of the ser- vice. In the Federal army, the Kentucky regiments were not placed in one or more brigades or divisions, as they should have been, and their individual history cannot, therefore, he arrived at. It is also true that the survivors of these gallant Federal regiments have not gathered the facts of their splendid service as they should have done, and their records of honorable endeavor cannot therefore be given with that fullness to which they are entitled. This fact has been elsewhere referred to in this work, and the hope is expressed that it is not too late for some competent authority to place upon record the story of the aid given to the Union cause by Kentucky's volunteer soldiers.
Recurring again to Professor Shaler's his- tory, other quotations are made. Of the most distinguished Kentucky command in the Con- federate service he says : "The most marked example of the character and success of the Kentucky troops in the Confederate infantry service, has been given us in the well-pre- served history and statistics of the First Ken- tucky Infantry Brigade. We have already noted the daring and gallantry of these troops in the battles of Shiloh. Donelson, Baton Rouge and other conflicts, to Dalton, Georgia., in May, 1864. On the authority of Gen. Fayette Hewitt, this bridage marched out of Dalton eleven hundred and forty strong on the 7th of May. 1864. The hospital reports show that up to September Ist, not quite four months, eighteen hundred and sixty wounds were taken by this command. This includes the killed, but many were struck several times
in one engagement, in which case, the wounds were counted as one. In two battles over fifty-one per cent of all were killed or wounded. During the time of this campaign there were no more than ten desertions. The campaign ended with two hundred and forty men able for duty ; less than fifty were with- out wounds. It will be remembered that this campaign was at a time when the hopes of the Confederate armies were well-nigh gone and they were fighting amid the darkness of despair."
Professor Shaler adds, that excluding the loss in many smaller fights, between the home guards and other irregular troops and the raiding parties of the Confederates: "It is estimated that in the two regular armies, the state lost approximately thirty-five thousand men by wounds in battle and by disease in hospitals and elsewhere, contracted in battle. To these may be added several thousand whose lives were sacrificed in the state from irregular causes.
"There must be added to this sad reckoning of consequences the vast number of men who were shorn of their limbs, affiicted with inter- nal disease bred of camp and march, or aged by the swift expenditure of force that such war demands. Omitting many small encoun- ters and irregular engagements in which there was much loss of life, but which have no place in history, Capt. L. R. Hawthorne, in a manu- script summary of the history of the war, enumerates one hundred and thirty-eight com- bats within the borders of Kentucky."
And now, dismissing in large part the de- tails of Kentucky's part in the greatest of civil wars, the writer, with no trace of bitterness in his heart or mind for any section of our great and re-united country and with a pro- found reverence for the flag under which his forefathers fought, closes this chapter with the concluding words of "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate States," written by a great Kentuckian, a most misunderstood and much
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maligned man, Jefferson Davis, first and only president of the Confederate States: "The want of space has compelled me to omit a notice of many noble deeds both of heroic men and women. The roll of honor merely would fill more than the pages allotted to this work. To others I mtist leave the pleasant task of paying the tribute due to their associate patri- ots. In asserting the right of secession, it has not been my wish to incite to its exercise. I recognize that the war showed it to be imprac- ticable, but this did not prove it to be wrong ; and now, that it may not be again attempted
cians, there was discord of course. The struggle had been too serious to be quieted at once, and. to their shame be it said, there were a few political freebooters who were not ready for peace. In further turmoil they scented advantage to themselves ; in peace, they knew their occupation was gone. To the great credit of the state, there were but few of these fomentors of discord and their influence, small at any time, was speedily reduced to a ntillity. Legitimate political differences be- tween good men there were, of course, as there are today, and these men frowned on the
BIRTHPLACE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, NEAR HOPKINSVILLE
and that the Union may promote the general welfare, it is needful that the truth may be known, so that crimination and recrimination may forever cease, and then, as the basis of fraternity and faithful regard for the rights of the states, there may be written on the arch of the Union 'Esta Perpetua.' "
Kentucky escaped the horrors and indigni- ties that were heaped upon the extreme south- ern states under the name of Reconstruction. Comparative peace reigned when the war had ended : especially was this true of the contest- ants in that great struggle, who had enough of war and longed for peace. Among the politi-
efforts of the small fry to keep alive the prejudices born of the war. These latter crea- tures pointed to the distressing death of Mr. Lincoln at the hands of a half-mad assassin. when the war practically was at an end, as a proof that no man who had espoused the cause of the south should be trusted. In their poor sotils there was not sufficient enlightenment to teach them that the southern people knew that in the death of Mr. Lincoln their best friend in the Union had passed away, and that the strongest prop of their liberties had been re- moved when this great-hearted son of Ken- tricky went to his death. There is no man of
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reason in the state today who does not believe, in his heart, that had Mr. Lincoln lived the southern states would never have been trod- den under foot and robbed of their poor re- maining substance, as they were under those who succeeded him. Mr. Lincoln, rough of exterior but kind of heart as any gentle woman, had one idea predominant above all others. He wanted to save the Union, as it was his duty to save it if he could; that done, his great desire was to have the stricken southern states come back into their father's house and feel at home there. A madman's ยท bullet sent his great soul into eternity and the southern states into a hell, the horrors ot which not Dante's "Inferno" can surpass.
There was another and far better class in Kentucky than the pinchback politicians re- ferred to, and these were the sturdy, honest men who had steadfastly adhered to the Union cause throughout the war, whether that cause was in the sunshine or the shadow which sometimes almost obscured it. These men favored a full restoration of civil rights to the brave men who had fought and suffered for their convictions in the armies of the south ; they favored a return of civil authority over the military power-in fact, they wanted an immediate return to the normal condition of a state, and there was no reason why their de- sires should not be gratified.
The men who had favored the south; the men who had believed and who still believed, that the states had rights which the Federal government was bound to respect, remained quiet, awaiting results. They may or may not have been in the majority. Who shall say now that they were not since while the war was progressing they had been prevented by bay- onets, at the polls, from expressing their opin- ions. The Union men divided, for convenience sake, let them be referred to as Conservatives and Radicals.
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