USA > Kentucky > History of the 3d, 7th, 8th and l2th Kentucky C.S.A > Part 2
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HISTORY OF THE 3D, 7TH, 8TH AND 12TH KENTUCKY.
ception and the elimination of slavery, for the maintenance of which the South fought because it was made the particular issue upon which her right to regulate her domestic concerns was assailed, it is a ques- tion whether the effect of the war has not been to strengthen instead of to weaken the doctrine of Jefferson as to the relative rights and duties of the State and Federal governments, barring the right of de- termining 'the mode and measure of redress.'"
At no time have the rights of the States been more clearly defined than now, some of the strongest decisions affirming them having been rendered since the war. In an address delivered at Owensboro, Ky., in 1908, Rev. William Stanley, among other things, said: "Those who are unfamiliar with Northern methods, and those who arrived at rash and false conclusions by the false statements of pseudo historians, would be transfixed with amazement when assured by indisputable records of absolutely authentic history that the very people who have denounced and stigmatized the Southern people as 'hot-headed, igno- rant enthusiasts,' 'traitors to government and apostate to principle,' and as those who 'precipitated a most unholy war,' had themselves so long and persistently committed the very acts they were charging upon others. And still the wonder grows when we find that the Northern States uniformly sought to vindicate a score of threats and inchoate acts of secession and nullification by their unquestioned rights as sovereign States. Only the propriety of this claim, but never the legal- ity, was ever questioned, in or out of Congress, until the verge of the Civil war. Nothing is more evident than that actual secession was so often averted by concessions from the patriotic, conservative Southern States, which, ever loyal to the government, contemplated with horror the thought of a dissolution from the Union." This statement may seem to some so startling and radical as to demand ample proof.
The historian, S. P. Lee, tells us that: "Previous to the act of South Carolina, on several occasions, some of the Northern States had threatened to withdraw from the Union, and had passed laws refusing to obey-'nullifying' certain acts of Congress." The occasion of these repeated threats and acts are plainly foreshadowed in the fact of very early jealously and antagonism of the New England and other North- ern States toward the Southern. North and South were terms easily fixed in the political vocabulary.
In the Constitutional Convention, Mr. Madison said: "It seems now to be pretty well understood that the real difference lies, not be- tween the large and the small, but between the Northern and Southern States."
The historian, Bancroft, speaking of a period a few days later, says: "An ineradicable dread of the coming power of the Southwest lurked in New England, especially in Massachusetts." The historian, Plumer, says : "Even in 1786, during the Confederacy, the.New Eng- land States threatened to secede, and Rhode Island actually seceded from the Confederacy, and withdrew her delegates from the Congress." The same author informs us that : "As early as 1792 and 1794, all dissatisfied with measures of government looked to a separation of the States as a remedy for oppressive grievances." Also, in 1796,
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CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO SECEDE.
Massachusetts declared that if Jay's negotiations for closing the Mis- sissippi for twenty-five years were not adopted, it was "high time for the New England States to secede from the Union and form a Con- federacy by themselves."
Says Plumer : "In 1796 to 1800, leaders set on foot and continued an open propaganda for the dissolution of the Union."
Lieutenant-Governor Wolcott, voicing the will of his State, de- clared : "I sincerely declare that I wish the Northern States would separate from the Southern the moment that Jefferson should be elected."
We are told, also, that in 1803, at the time of the Louisiana pur- chase through the influence of Jefferson: "The air was full of threats of secession." The Northern States objected to the purchase, because "it would give the South a preponderance which would last for all time," and that "the admission of the Western Country into the Union would compel the Eastern States to establish an Eastern Empire."
Henry Adams, historian, says: "In 1803, the purchase of Lou- isiana revived the old dissolution projects."
Plumer gives the names of Northern leaders, in 1805, "whose purpose was to dissolve the Union.
Josiah Quincy, on the floor of Congress, exclaimed with relation to the Louisiana Purchase: "If this bill passes, it is virtually a dis- solution of the Union; and as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for a separation, amicable if can be, violently if we must." Not a member of Congress, then, even hinted a question as to this avowed right of secession.
At this time the General Assembly of Connecticut, in justifica - tion of nullifying legislation, in a formal address declared: "The United States is not a national but a confederate republic." The high- est court of Massachusetts sanctioned this view.
In 1807 "the Embargo Act was nullified by the people east of the Hudson River." Lee's History tells us that "in 1809 Massachusetts issued an official call of all commercial States to send delegates to consider a Union of Eastern Commonwealths against the Federal Gov- ernment."
Of the "Essex Junto" of 1810 the same historian tells us: "Their prime object was dissolution of the General Government, and separa- tion of the States."
The renowned Hartford Convention of twenty delegates, from five States, framed resolutions of such import as to justify seceding or not seceding as events turned out. Harrison Gray Otis was sent by this convention to Washington to report back whether the hour had come for New England's secession. The treaty of peace ended the matter before the report could be made.
In 1812 the North opposed, and the South fought, the war. At this time Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire not only re- fused to answer the call of the government for troops, but the Supreme Court of Massachusetts and the Governor of Connecticut declared that "the government had not a right to call out troops."
At this time the renowned Timothy Dwight, President of Yale
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HISTORY OF THE 3D, 7TH, 8TH AND 12TH KENTUCKY.
College, voicing the prevailing sentiment of both literary men and politicians in New England, said : "Sooner would ninety-nine of one hundred of our inhabitants separate from the Union than plunge them- selves in this abyss of ruin."
In 1814, while the Capitol at Washington was burning, the gov- ernment on the verge of bankruptcy, and struggling in the throes of a great war, Vermont withdrew her troops, New Hampshire sent a memorial declaring her right to secede, and New England raised the cry : "The flag of five States."
When Texas was annexed, in 1844, the same spirit was again manifested. The Legislature of Massachusetts declared that it "was not bound to recognize the annexation of Texas."
John Q. Adams, Freeman Smith, and other Congressmen from Northern States, declared, in a joint letter, that "the annexation of Texas would justify a dissolution of the Union and would lead to that result."
As we have stated that the threats of secession were so uniformly vindicated by the avowal of the right, we will, in addition to the proofs already incidentally adduced, quote one more of the many that might be readily presented. In 1845 the Joint Standing Committee of Fed- eral Relations, in the Massachusetts Legislature, reported: "When Massachusetts is asked to violate the fundamental provisions of the Constitution, as well as her own, she unhesitatingly throws herself back on her rights as an independent State. She cannot forget that she had an independent existence and a Constitution before the Union was framed. She will not suffer them to be wrested from her by any power on earth."
In nothing has the South been so maligned and traduced, and history so ruthlessly distorted as with reference to slavery. "Anti- slavery was of no serious consequence, even among the philanthropists of the North, until seized upon as an instrument of agitation." "Phil- anthropy might have sighed and fanaticism have howled for centuries in vain, but for the hope of office and the desire of public plunder, on the part of men who were neither philanthropists nor fanatics." Then, anti-slavery propagandists at home and emissaries abroad drew horrid pictures of slaves writhing beneath the cruel lash, and side by side the Northern saints lifting their hands in holy horror. On their banners they deceitfully inscribed the talismanic word, "Liberty," a word which ever appeals to the human heart. Thus all christendom abroad was arrayed against the South, and the hearts of the ignorant and fanatical fired at home. The contagion spread until Northern soldiers were made to believe they were fighting for the sacred cause of freedom. Yet worse, by the indifference and tardiness of the South in procuring a true and faithful history, that false impression still largely holds abroad, and ever lingers among Southern youth, who are led to believe that we fought not wisely but wondrously well, and that our grievous sin in peace can only be condoned by our matchless valor in war. The simple facts of history are our perfect vindication. These will show the startling facts that the Northern, and especially the New England States, were solely responsible for the introduction
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CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO SECEDE.
of slavery, and by their united and persistent opposition prevented the Southern States from abrogating this institution, which was at an early date held by the South to be a menace, a horror, and a grievous sin; and that the Southern States succeeded at last in the face of determined opposition from the New England States, in arresting the importation of slaves. A mere epitome of the facts will suffice for this purpose. We will cull these facts chiefly from "The Old South," by Thomas Nelson Page, as they are there very correctly and succinctly stated, and more especially as Mr. Page's book has been recognized, even by Northern critics, as authentic, and the author has been wel- comed and honored in political, literary and social circles of the first rank in the North.
"The first American slaver, the 'Desire,' was built and equipped at Marblehead, Mass., in 1636. One hundred and seventy ships at one time were engaged in this trade from Rhode Island alone; one hundred and ten gallons of rum being the price of a slave. Not one slave ship was ever built, equipped, manned, sailed or owned by the people of the Southern States; nor did the South ever furnish one sailor for such purpose. Slavery subsisted in every Northern State at one time, and was only abolished for economic reasons. The slaves were sold South, or else manumitted often when the Southern market was glutted, or, as in Virginia, closed by law against further im- portation. Long after slavery was abolished in New England, and after the Southern States were piling protest on protest, and act on act, to inhibit the slave trade, New England shippers, in violation of law, piled their hellish traffic between the African coast and the slave-hold- ing countries.
"The scathing protest against slavery and the slave trade, incor- porated originally by Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Inde- pendence, was withdrawn because it gave offence to the New England States. It was the New England colonies, in Articles of Confederation in 1643, that provided the first 'Fugitive Slave Law.' The first attempt to destroy the slave trade was in Virginia, in 1778, enacting a law forbidding the importation of slaves by land or water, under penalty of $5,000 from the seller and $2,500 from the buyer, and freedom to the slave.
"The first Colonization Society was organized in 1817, with Bush- rod Washington president and Henry Clay, John Mason, Andrew Jackson and others, vice-presidents. Then auxiliary societies were or- ganized all over Virginia. It was in the North, as late as 1833 to 1835, that Prudence Crandall, in Connecticut; Noyes Academy, in New Hampshire; George Thompson, the English evangelist, in Maine, and William Lloyd Garrison, in Boston, were mobbed because of abolition utterances or acts.
"From the inauguration of the government, the North had ever exhibited a growing jealousy because of the predominating power and influence of the South. To oppose this the North first resisted the extension of the Union. When, despite all her efforts, the territory was enlarged, she sought and obtained by diplomacy and threats such concessions and compromises upon the part of the South as should
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HISTORY OF THE 3D, 7TH, 8TH AND 12TH KENTUCKY.
ultimately secure to her the ascendancy. It was found, as a final re- sort, at the time of the Missouri Compromise, that a 'sentiment against slavery might be utilized as a lever to aid the North in its struggle for sectional supremacy.' "
As Thomas Nelson Page has so cogently expressed it: "By these acts it was strong enough to maintain its supremacy in the government, and its power was exercised to establish a system of protection which fostered the manufacturers of the North and imposed the principal burden of taxation upon the non-manufacturing South. Whilst the South governed the country, maintained her credit, extended her limits, fought her battles, and established her fame, the North secured protection, and under its influences waxed fat."
At length that abolition firebrand spread into conflagration. Four- teen States nullified the Fugitive Slave law without even a pretext of legal authority. The Constitution was openly spurned and despised, and there was not a hint of purpose to uphold that instrument or give equality to the States. The air was filled with shouts, anarchistic, iconoclastic, revolutionary, horrible. The rebellious utterances of Gar- rison, Seward, Burlingame, Wendell Phillips, Spaulding, Sumner, and a host of others are too recent and familiar to need and too repulsive to permit repetition. At last the North was in supreme power.
"The Southern States plainly saw that they could live more hap- pily, peacefully and securely apart from the North, unless some rea- sonable compromise might be effected. South Carolina quietly and unostentatiously exercised her unquestioned right of annulling her act by which she ratified the Constitution. An ill-disguised and covert act of coercion was displayed by sending armed ships to her port. The constitutional right of secession was denied, the unconstitutional right of coercion was avowed. South Carolina asserted her time - honored right. War was declared by the North."
But one alternative remained to the outraged Southern people. "Shall we tamely and ignominiously submit ; shall we forfeit the price- less jewels of conscious integrity and self-respect ; or shall we, without preparation, equipment, arms or funds, with inferior force, and an element of fearful peril in the negro at home, with all chances adverse, choose probable defeat rather than certain disgrace?"
The knightly Southerners with their intense individuality and lofty pride, fearing no being but their God, could reach but one decision. Then follows a memory too sacred for full utterance, a scene of which we can give but a dim outline, for no hand of uninspired artist can dare attempt to fill in the pictures.
The following chapters will only attempt to give a brief outline of the heroic struggle of a few engaged in the war for the independence of the South.
CHAPTER II.
Organization of the Third and Eighth Kentucky; Their Movement up to and including the Battle of Fort Donalson and Shiloh.
The Third Kentucky was organized at Camp Boone, Montgomery County, Tenn., about the 20th of July, 1861, with the following offi- cers : Loyd Tilghman, Colonel; Albert P. Thompson, Lieutenant- Colonel; Ben Anderson, Major; Captain Alford Boyd, Assistant Quartermaster ; Captain J. S. Byers, Assistant Commissary-Sergeant ; Doctor J. W. Thompson, Surgeon; Doctor J. B. Sanders, Assistant Surgeon. Colonel Tilghman was promoted to brigadier-general shortly after the organization and Thompson became colonel and Anderson lieutenant-colonel; Captain Johnson became major. They had been partially supplied with Belgian rifles, but owing to the scarcity of any kind of arms, numbers of them had to use the old flint-lock musket; they retained these arms up to and including the battle of Shiloh. The cartridge consisted of powder, one large ball about an ounce in weight, and three buck-shot; this proved to be a very efficient ammunition, as was demonstrated at Shiloh. The companies were officered as indi- cated in another place, by the muster rolls.
The Third was organized into a brigade with the Second, Fourth and Ninth Kentucky, and at first was under the immediate command of General S. B. Buckner.
Early in September, 1861, General Albert Sidney Johnston was put in command of the western department and General Buckner was put in command of a brigade of which some of the newly organized Kentucky regiments formed a part. Some time from the 12th to the 20th of September, General Johnston directed General Buckner to take the Kentuckians and other troops and move into Kentucky and establish his camp at Bowling Green. Some of the Third were with- out arms ; these were sent to Nashville to be armed and equipped. The detachment sent to Nashville, as soon as they were armed, were sent to Bowling Green to rejoin their command; regular camps were con- structed and the town fortified. In the meantime, the regiments were drilled every day, and soon became quite proficient in drill and manual of arms. There was not anything of especial importance occurred while the army was encamped at Bowling Green. Some scouting parties were at times engaged in some small engagements with the advanced guards of the enemy, but nothing like an engagement worthy of note occurred. About the 20th of January, 1862, it became evident that Fort Henry, on the Tennessee River, and Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland, would be attacked by the enemy; General Johnston detached the commands of Floyd and Pillow, and part of Buckner's, to march to the defense of Fort Donelson. The only Kentuckians sent with these commands were the Second and Eighth Regiments ; the Third remained with the army at Bowling Green. On the 13th of February, 1861, the Federals, under General Grant, made an attack on the Confederates at Fort Donelson, and as the Eighth Kentucky, one of the regiments embraced in this
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HISTORY OF THE 3D, 7TH, 8TH AND 12TH KENTUCKY.
book, was in that engagement, it becomes necessary to give that bat- tle a brief review at this point. Fort Donelson, as has been stated, is situated on the Cumberland River at the old town of Dover ; it has been fortified with a view of defense from the attack of gun-boats, also a long line of rifle-pits, together with the fort for defense against land attacks. A few years ago the writer visited this place for the pur- pose of viewing the battle-ground. The embankment of the old fort is still in a fairly good state of preservation, and the line of rifle-pits can be easily traced. My observation was that the fort was not ad- vantageously located, owing to the fact that there is a range of hills close by higher than the fort, where an attacking party could place artillery in easy reach of the fort; and the line of rifle-pits is so very long that it was impossible to protect them with an army of the size of the one that occupied it; in fact, it would have required an army of at least forty thousand to have properly defended all parts of those useless, long extended works. But no sort of engineering in the way of forts and rifle-pits could have saved that army from disaster, com- manded, as it was, by officers who, from beginning to end, were guilty of a perfect medley of errors. The battle was fought by about twenty- seven or twenty-eight thousand Federals under General Grant, and about fourteen thousand Confederates under Floyd, Pillow and Buck- ner. The Eighth Kentucky took part in that most disastrous engage- ment. General Lyon, the lieutenant-colonel of the Eighth at that time, was in command of the regiment, and the following was his official report :
"HEADQUARTERS EIGHTH KENTUCKY REGIMENT, "Dover, Tenn., Feb. 17, 1862.
"Sir : In our engagement with the Federal troops on Thursday, the 13th instant, the Eighth Kentucky Regiment was behind our in- trenchment and withstood the fire of a battery of, at time, four and two guns, stationed immediately in its front, at about seven hundred yards distance from the regiment; lost ten wounded and two killed. The men were also exposed to the fire of the enemy's sharpshooters, but received no injury from it. On the 14th inst. the regiment was behind our intrenchments and was fired upon only by the enemy's sharp- shooters, by which only one man was slightly wounded :
"On the 15th instant the regiment engaged the enemy in the wood on the left flank and in front of our intrenchments; fought gallantly, assisting to whip and drive back the enemy, sustaining the loss of seventeen men killed and forty-six officers and men wounded, and one man missing, and returned to the intrenchments about 12 noon, from which time until night it was exposed to enemy's sharpshooters, but losing no men from their fire.
"No officers and men could have acted more gallantly than did those of the Eighth Kentucky Regiment at all times during the three days' fight. Among the most daring, on the 15th, on the field, I must mention Major R. W. Henry, who had his horse shot under him, and was conspicuous for his bravery in all parts of the field where there
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ORGANIZATION OF THE 3D AND 8TH KENTUCKY.
was danger. Among the captains, lieutenants and men I cannot dis- criminate ; the action of all were gallant and highly commendable at all times.
"I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
"H. B. LYON, Lieutenant-Colonel Commanding."
After General Grant had captured Fort Henry, he moved over in the vicinity of Fort Donelson and on the 13th of February made an attack on the Confederate works around that place, but was easily re- pulsed by the Confederates, as at no time did the Federals succeed in making any impression on any part of the Confederate line. When night put a stop to the conflict, the Confederate lines were just as they were in the morning. There was a desultory fire kept up by the Fed- erals. The Confederates expected another attack on the morning of the 14th, but nothing was done until 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon, at which time a fleet of Federal gun-boats advanced on the Confed- erates works and opened fire, which was replied to from the Con- federate land battery. Three of the gun-boats were seriously injured, and the whole fleet driven down the river in such a crippled condition they were never able to return to re-attack; while the fleet and land batteries were engaged there was no demonstration by land. That night there was a consultation of the principal Confederate officers, and in that council it was agreed that an attack should be made on the Federals at an early hour the following morning, and it was to be commenced by General Pillow's command, who was on the Confed- erate's extreme left ; the Eighth Kentucky was on that part of the line and participated in all the hard fighting of the day. The attack was successful, and the right wing of the Federals was hurled back and almost crushed. General McClerand, who commanded that wing of the Federal army,. in his report at this stage of the battle, says: "The struggle had been waging for three hours with doubtful success; they were at length forced to yield to superior numbers and fall back upon a new position my whole command falling back some four hundred yards, where they reformed."
This was the situation of things when the Confederates were ordered back to their trenches, from where they made their attack in the morning. The Federal fleet had made a complete failure in their attack on the river batteries. Wherever the land forces were engaged the Confederates were successful, and yet that night there was another council of general officers, in which they agreed that they could not hold out any longer ; that the army could not be marched away and saved for future service. General Floyd, who turned over the com- mand to General Pillow, made his escape with the most of his original brigade. General Pillow, in turn, turned over the command to Gen- eral Buckner and made his escape. General Forrest, who was in the hottest of all the fighting, and whose good judgment and dashing cour- age made him the most conspicuous officer in that command, got his regiment, together with others who wished to follow him, and marched out up the river without having to fire a gun or coming in contact
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