USA > Kentucky > The history of Kentucky, from its earliest discovery and settlement, to the present date, V. 2 > Part 21
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Stirring events on both sides.
Bragg's invasion.
Buell cut off.
Munfordville captured.
Extraordinary retreat of Bragg.
Buell marches into Louisville.
Disappointments.
Consequences. Buell on the offensive. Skirmishing. Main tactics and movements.
Desperate battle at Perryville.
Bragg falls back to Harrodsburg.
To Bryantsville.
To Tennessee. Detachment fights.
The Federals hold Kentucky again. Dark omens for the Confederate cause.
The cry of the petrel heralding the coming storm never fell with more ominous forebodings on the sailor's ears than did the conspiring incidents and notes of warning of the inevitable crisis and catastrophe of conflict between the two sections of the Union, on the issue of slavery. It is doubt- ful if the people of any other State bore the incubus of apprehension upon their spirits with more of regretful sadness than did those of Kentucky. Certainly none more clearly forecast and appreciated the appalling dangers of the irrepressible strife. With the people of the North, the desperate determination of the South to hazard the peace of the country and the per- petuity of slavery, upon the fact of a disruption of the Union, as the lesser in a choice of evils, could not be realized in an estimate of the situation. The fear of a destruction of the Federal fabric, therefore, did not so strongly appeal to their patriotism. With the people of the extreme South, the vir- tues of patriotic devotion to the Union had been engulfed in the universal consciousness that their rights and chief interests were jeopardized by the accession to power of an anti-slavery administration ; that safety could only be sought in dissolution and separate government, and that such solution could be attained without the probabilities of a war of conquest, and the
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THE FEELING IN KENTUCKY.
destruction of the peculiar institution. In the intense resentments of the two extremes, reason became obscured by passion, with both parties.
The great heart of Kentucky did not fully share in the arbitrary views of the one section or the other. Her convictions and traditions. her interests and hopes, her devotions and desires, were with the Union : her sympathies, her partialities, her kinship, were with the South. With this conflict of emo- tions, she was called upon to make a choice between alternate evils, from one of which she shrank as with a horror of fratricide; from the other, with the terrors of ungrateful disloyalty and anarchy. Earliest, above the mut- terings of the storm, were the voices of her sage and venerable statesmen signaling the dangers, and the putting forth every human device to avert the catastrophe, or to postpone the dreaded crisis. The last years of Henry Clay were overcast with the shadow of the dark trouble coming. His com- promises had served a purpose for the time; but the great upheaving waves of sectional and party fury were beating away these barriers, soon to inundate the whole country with their destructive wrath. His distinguished colleague and bosom friend, John J. Crittenden, followed in this lead of warning danger, and of averting compromise. By such statesmen and patriots the people of Kentucky had their views and feelings reflected. Their training · and experience in the most practical politics gave them an instinctive sense of the magnitude of the dangers besetting the Commonwealth and the whole country.
Kentucky, as the central border State, with a large slave element within easy distance of the Ohio-river line, was subjected to repeated annoyances and irritations from the loss of this species of property. Organized agencies were multiplied on the northern side, with their emissaries traversing and ramifying this portion of the State, for the purpose of abducting and run- ning across the river the slaves of this section. With the zeal of martyrs, some of these emissaries, by speech and tract, prosecuted their work as though moved by the spirit of religious fanaticism. The arrest, conviction, and imprisonment in the penitentiary, did not stay the work, or abate the zeal. The temper of the people- on the north side made it dangerous to pursue the fugitives, and more than doubtful to seek redress in the courts, under the provisions of the "Fugitive slave law." "The underground railroad," though an invisible institution to ordinary outsiders, gave too many practical evidences of daily use to leave any doubt on the mind of its existence. The title became a household word in every mouth.
With these agitations and upheavals, which were but the symptomatic vibrations of the earthquake to come, political chaos spread her sable wings over the land. The old Whig party, after reeling into the arms of Know Nothingism, soon forsook such a refuge, and tottered back upon its base, only for a brief respite. Rapid decay set in, and the disintegrating elements almost as rapidly merged into the Republican party organization, in the Northern States, only to be massed against the fragments of the Democratic
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
party, soon to be sundered, and against the forlorn hope of the old Whig party on its last battlefield.
In 1860, the Republican party nominated Abraham Lincoln and Han- nibal Hamlin for president and vice-president of the United States ; and the Union party, John Bell and Edward Everett. 1 The Democratic party had been divided in twain, and irreconcilably. The people of the South. through all the rage of the tempest of political wrath let loose over the whole country, had firmly and immovably held to the traditional doctrine and precedent of " States' Rights ; " that the people of each new State, at the time of coming into the Union, had the right to form their own State government, and say whether slavery should be adopted in the constitution or not. By 1860, the party of encroachment had assumed gigantic and threatening proportions. When the territorial governments of Kansas and Nebraska were about to be thus formed, the conservative men of the North joined the men of the South, in Congress, and repealed the restrictive meas- ures of compromise which had been adopted before by this body. On the border line between these territories and the slave State of Missouri a state of internecine warfare had for some years existed, between those in favor of carrying their slave property into the territories and the propagandists of abolition. The episode was but a phase of the "irrepressible conflict," that hastened the event of dissolution. The repeal of the compromise measures made the excitement furious.
Stephen A. Douglas, a senator from Illinois, though a man of vigorous and able mind, yet more of the shifty politician than the sagacious and discreet statesman, conceived and advocated a method of relief, which was entitled the doctrine of "squatter sovereignty." This doctrine proposed to leave to the settlers in the territory the question of the introduction or holding of slaves therein. Though its plausibility carried away multitudes from the ranks of Democracy, it proved neither to conciliate the exasperated North nor to be acceptable to the South, yet an apple of discord in the Democratic Troy. The national convention met at Charleston, South Caro- lina, and, after fifty-seven ballots, failed to nominate; then adjourned to Baltimore. Here a large portion of the delegations withdrew from the meeting, after protesting against certain action. The remaining delegates nominated Stephen A. Douglas and Herschel V. Johnson for the presidential ticket, while the seceding members formed and nominated John C. Breckin- ridge and Joseph Lane.
The result was the election of the Republican candidates, Lincoln and Hamlin, by a sectional vote. Kentucky gave to Bell and Everett 66,016 votes; to Breckinridge and Lane, 52,836; to Douglas and Johnson, 25,644; and to Lincoln and Hamlin, 1,366. John C. Breckinridge, at the time vice- president, had been, on the 12th of December before, elected to the Senate of the United States, showing the Democratic party then to be in the as-
I Collins, Vol. 1., Annals.
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TRIUMPH OF THE UNION TICKET.
GENERAL JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE, son of Joseph Cabell Breckenridge, and grandson of Hon. john Dreckinridge, was born near Lex- ington, January 21, IS21 ; graduated at Cen- tre College, and completed his law studies at Transylvania ; practiced at Lexington, and at Burlington, Iowa; entered the Mex- ican war as major of the Third Kentucky Regiment; was elected to the Legislature in 1849; to Congress in 1851 and 1853, from the Lexington district, and soon took rank as the most elegant and popular orator of that body, rising rapidly to political emi- nence; in 1856, was elected vice-president of the United States on the ticket with James Buchanan; defeated for president in 1860; elected United States senator in 1861, and resigned the same year to join his fortunes with the Confederate cause. His brilliant
GENERAL JOHN C. BRECKINR CGE.
military career at Bowling Green, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, Murfreesboro, Jack- son, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and in West and South-west Virginia, are of his- ' toric record. He was Confederate States secretary of war at the close, escaping by way of Cuba and England to Canada, finally returning to Lexington and devoting himself to the construction of the Lexington & Big Sandy railroad, of which he was vice-presi- dent until his death, May 17, 1875. This country has, perhaps. never produced a man more richly endowed with imposing personal presence and manly form and features, with elegant and popular manners, and with magnetic and graceful oratory. The jug- gernaut of war never stained its wheels with nobler blood nor left a grander spirit in ruins.
cendency in the Legislature, with a Democratic governor. 1It will thus appear that the Democratic or States' Rights party had the destiny of the State in their hands at the outbreak of the civil war. A very large number of the leaders of the party were doubtless inclined to follow the South, if disunion should be the alternative adopted in the event of Mr. Lincoln's election. Their motives were mainly held in reticence for a time, though gradually they became apparent from many indices of expression. Would the great mass of the people follow this element of leadership when the mo- ment of decisive action came? A test was had in advance at the State election in August, 1860. Leslie Combs, Union, received 68. 165 votes ; Clinton McCarty, Breckinridge Democrat, 44.942; and R. R. Bolling, Union Democrat, 10,971, showing a majority leaning to the side of the Union of 39, 184.
2 Shaler well says of this state of political affairs: "It would not be proper to represent this feeling of the conservative party as an unqualified approval of the project of remaining in the Union without regard to condi- tions. The state of mind of the masses of the people at this time is hard to
1 Shaler's Commonwealths, p. 233.
2 Kentucky Commonwealths, pp. 234-37.
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
make clear to those who, by geographical position, were so fortunate as to have their minds borne into a perfectly-definite position in this difficult ques- tion of national politics. The citizen of Massachusetts, or the citizen of South Carolina, surrounded by institutions and brought up under associa- tions which entirely committed him to a course of action that was unques- tionably the will of the people, had only to float on a current that bore him along. Whatever the issue might be, unity of action within his sphere was easily attained. Not so with the citizen of Kentucky. The Commonwealth was pledged by a generation of conservatism, the sentiment of which had been repeatedly enunciated in county and State conventions and in many assemblies of the people. At the same time, if the Union should go to pieces utterly, what should she do to save her own staunch ship from the general peril? The ties of blood and of institutions bound Kentucky with the Southern States, which were soon to drift away from the Union. The pledge of political faith tied her to the fragment of the Union with which she had not much of social sympathy, and in which she could not expect much comfort. Surely, never was a people more unhappily placed. Out of this chaos of anxious doubt there came a curious state of mind, which soon took shape and action.
"The general opinion of Kentucky was that the war was an unnatural strife, which would necessarily result in the certain, though, as hoped, tem- porary disruption of the Union they loved so well. They did not believe that the States had a moral right to secede: on the other hand, they did not believe that the Federal Government had the constitutional or other right to coerce them back into the Union. Their profound desire and preference was that the withdrawing States should be allowed to go in peace. She would stay where her pledges kept her, and, after a sorrowful experience, she believed that her erring sisters would return to the fold. If the Federal Government determined what seemed to them the unconstitutional process of arms to compel the States to return into the Union, Kentucky would have no part in the process. She would stand aloof, while both North and South left the paths of duty under the Constitution. bidding them not to in- vade her soil with their hostile armies. In the wild talk of the time, this neutrality project of Kentucky was denounced as cowardly. There may be in the world people whom it would be proper to defend from this accusa- tion ; but not in this history. With Kentucky, this attitude was a sorrowful and noble, though, it must be confessed in the after-light of events, a some- what Quixotic, position. In the rage of the storm almost ready to break in its fury upon the country, it appeared at the time a very rational standing ground. If war came into Kentucky, it would be internecine and fratri- cidal. It was not the fear of war, for the losses and dangers it might bring; but our people did look with terror on the fight between friends and neigh- bors and brothers. They were justified in their own minds, and will be justified in the reasonable opinions of mankind, in adopting what appeared
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THE FIRST FIRE ON FORT SUMTER.
to them would avert such war, and possibly enable them to stand finally as peacemakers between the hostile sections."
On the assembling of Congress in December. 1860, John J. Crittenden introduced his famous compromise into the Senate of the United States: to restore the Missouri line of 36° 30'; prohibit slavery north of that line; permit it south, if the people of the State wished; prohibit Congress from abolishing slavery in the States ; permit free transmission of slaves through any State ; pay for fugitive slaves rescued after arrest ; and to ask the repeal of personal-liberty bills in the Northern States. These provisions to be sub- mitted to the people as amendments to the Constitution, and, if adopted, never again to be disturbed. Mr. Crittenden followed the reading of these with one of the most eloquent and touching speeches of his patriotic life; but in vain. They were voted down by a majority of thirteen.
A convention of the constitutional Union men of Kentucky. both of the Whig and Democratic parties, met in Louisville on the 8th of January fol- lowing, indorsed these resolutions, and deplored the existence of a Union to be upheld by force of arms. On the 17th, the Legislature met, pursuant to the call of Governor Magoffin. in extra session, and passed resolutions inviting a national conference convention of delegates to meet for the pur- · pose of considering measures of conciliation. This body also declared, by resolution, "the unconditional disapprobation of Kentucky of the employ- ment of force in any form against the seceding States." Upon the 25th, another resolution appealed to Congress to call a convention for proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States, pursuant to the fifth article thereof. On the 29th, yet another appointed six commissioners to the peace conference, to be held at Washington, on February the 4th, in accordance with the invitation of the Virginia Legislature. This latter con- vention did assemble, with a representation of one hundred and thirty-three commissioners, from twenty one States. and remain in session twenty-three days deliberating terms of compromise. All in vain! These expiring efforts to stay the swelling tides of coming wrath were more the wails and trepida- tions of despair than the sanguine expressions of hope.
On the 12th of April, 1861, General Beauregard ordered the batteries in front of the city of Charleston to open fire on Fort Sumter. On the 13th, after thirty hours of destructive bombardment, the fort surrendered. The intelligence, flashed over the wires to every part of the country, intensified the spirit and passions of the belligerent sections beyond all control. The conflagration of war swept like a terrible cyclone over all parts of the sun- dered nation.
Major Robert Anderson, one of the most trusted and honored officers of the United States army, was in command of the fort at the time. He did all that human skill and power could do in defense, yet conscious that the destruction of the fortress was inevitable. His fidelity refused a surren- der until every means and art of resistance were overcome. His gallantry
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
and grace commanded the praise of friend and foe alike. This distinguished gentle- man was born at Louisville, June 14, 1805, and was a graduate of West Point. where for a time he was instructor of artillery. He served with credit and gallantry in the Black Hawk war, and in the Seminole campaigns, where he was breveted captain in the regu- lar army. He was aid to General Scott, and and in 1841. was made colonel of artillery. He shared in the fortunes of General Scott's army in the invasion of Mexico, and was wounded at Molino del Rey. In 1853. he GENERAL ROBERT ANDERSON. was placed in charge of the military asy- lum at Harrodsburg ; and in 1857, was major of the First United States artillery. In 1861, he commanded the important post of Charleston harbor, and met the shock of battle that inaugurated the terrible war of sections, as related above. General Anderson was afterward placed in command of the Kentucky department. and served with great honor and acceptance for a time, until failing health, in 1863. compelled his permanent retirement from the service. While on a tour of Europe seeking a restoration of health, he died at Nice, October 26, 1871, yet honored and beloved by his country- men and friends.
1 On the 15th of April, President Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand troops. The following telegraphic correspondence took place :
"WASHINGTON, D. C., April 15, 1861. - To His Excellency Beriah Ma- goffin, Governor of Kentucky: Call is made on you by to-night's mail for four regiments of militia, for immediate service.
" SIMON CAMERON, Secretary of War."
"FRANKFORT, KY., April 15, 1861 .- Hon. Simon Cameron, Secretary of War: Your dispatch is received. In answer, I say, emphatically, Ken- tucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States.
"B. MAGOFFIN, Governor of Kentucky."
In a speech at Lexington, Senator Crittenden appealed to Kentucky to take no part in the fratricidal strife. The "Union State Central Com- mittee," John H. Harney, George D. Prentice. Charles Ripley, Philip Tomppert, Nathaniel Wolfe, William F. Bullock. James Speed, Hamilton Pope, William P. Boone, and Lewis E. Harvie, issued an address of the same purport to the people. Petitions from thirty-one central counties, numerously signed, came in to the Legislature, "from the mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of Kentucky," praying to "guard them from the direful calamity of civil war, by allowing Kentucky to maintain inviolate her armed neu- trality." Late in April, President Lincoln assured Hons. John J. Crittenden
I Collins, Vol. 1., Annals of Kentucky
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REFUSAL TO FURNISH TROOPS.
and Warner L. Underwood that he hoped Kentucky would act with the Government; but if she would not, and remain neutral. no hostile step should tread her soil. In his inaugural message, on the 4th of March, Mr. Lincoln said : "I declare that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the State where it exists. I be- lieve I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination." But no oil of words poured on the waters could now still the tempest-tossed waves. Nor could Mr. Lincoln, with all the power of the United States Government at command, have long stayed the encroaching and inundating tide of anti- slavery sentiment within constitutional limits, even if he desired to do so. This the South well knew.
On April 22d, Hon. L. P. Walker, secretary of war of the Confederate States, requested Governor Magoffin to " furnish one regiment of troops, without delay, to rendezvous at Harper's Ferry, Virginia." A like refusal was the response.
Governor Magoffin having asked of Governors Morton, of Indiana, and Dennison, of Ohio, to " co-operate with him in a peace proposition to the Government at Washington, by the mediation of the border States," was refused by both.
1 At an informal conference of leading men of the Bell and Douglas par- ties, John J. Crittenden, Archibald Dixon, and S S. Nicholas, were selected to negotiate with Governor Magoffin, John C. Breckinridge, and Richard Hawes, of the Breckinridge party, to devise an adjustment that would bring about united action in the polling of the State. The first proposition, to call a State sovereignty convention to act in the emergency, was resisted by the Bell and Douglas men. The second proposition, to preserve armed neutrality, was unanimously agreed upon. The remaining subject of con- sideration, the raising, arming, organizing, and equipping the military forces of the State, was one of some contention; but it was finally agreed to recom- mend that this should be done, and that the work should be placed in the hands of a committee, composed of General Simon B. Buckner, George W. Johnson, Gustavus W. Smith, Archibald Dixon, and Samuel Gill, and report to the Legislature. This body refused to adopt the recommendation. But on May the 24th, the same body adopted the plan outlined, and appointed on the committee of management, Governor Magoffin, Samuel Gill, George T. Wood, Peter Dudley, and Dr. John B. Peyton, who were authorized to borrow one million dollars. Arms and ammunition were to be purchased for arming the Home Guards, as organized for home and local defense, only. These were not to be used " against the United States, nor the Confederate States, unless in protecting from unlawful invasion." The governor, with the consent of the Senate, appointed General Buckner inspector-general; Scott Brown, adjutant-general; and M. D. West, quartermaster-general. The provisions for arming were now complete.
I Collins, Vol. 1., Annals of Kentucky.
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
At the special election for congressmen, in June, 1861, Henry C. Burnett was the only States' Rights candidate elected. Of Union men, James S. Jackson, Henry Grider, Aaron Harding, Charles A. Wickliffe, George W. Dunlap, Robert Mallory, John J. Crittenden, William H. Wadsworth, and John W. Menzies, were elected by an aggregate majority of 54,760. The result shows that the mass of the people were for the Union overwhelmingly. In August, one hundred and three Union and thirty-five States' Rights members were elected to the Legislature. These expressions of the popular vote, and of the decided sentiments of the Legislature in favor of the Union, greatly deterred the leaders in sympathy with the South, and correspond- ingly encouraged the friends of the Union. It is well-nigh certain that, if a sovereignty convention could have been called at any time before this forma- tion of the Union sentiment and policy into active and aggressive life, the State would have been carried off into the act of secession, as Virginia and Tennessee were, by the sense of sympathy and kinship toward the South. But the opportune hour was permitted to pass by unavailed of, and it was now too late. The destiny of Kentucky in the gigantic struggle was deter- mined, and for aught we know, the destiny of the Union, which may have hung in the balance.
The militia who volunteered their services were armed and equipped, but divided into two classes-the State Guards, who at once went into camp. and the Home Guards, who were held in reserve. It was openly alleged
PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN, sixteenth president of the United States, was born Feb- ruary 12, 1809, in Hardin county, Kentucky. His parents, Thomas Lincoln and Nancy, formerly Hanks, moved to Indiana in 1816, and in 1830, to Illinois. He was inured to all the hardships and vicissitudes common to early Western settlers, working, economizing. studying, and improving, under the strictest habits of self-discipline ; served as captam in the Black Hawk war; eight years in the Legislature ; qualified for the law, and in 1837, located in Springfield for the practice ; elected to Congress in 1847, and led the Whig electoral ticket for General Scott. in 1852; after the Missouri compromise he became an open advocate of the anti-slavery republican party, and was elected president by it, in PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 1860; which election eleven of the Southern States considered an adequate cause for seceding from the Federal Union, and the estal .. lishment of a Confederate Union, with Jefferson Davis for its president. The result of the two causes was the greatest civil war known in history. The presidents of the two great opposing powers were both natives of Kentucky, the State that labored longest and most earnestly to avert the war.
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