USA > Kentucky > The history of Kentucky, from its earliest discovery and settlement, to the present date, V. 2 > Part 29
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The prodigious efforts of the past year at recruiting the Federal ranks by drafting and by bounties to volunteers had swelled the ranks of the Union armies to a total of over one million men, to which the Confeder- ates could now oppose less than two hundred thousand. Beneath the constricting folds of the vast bodies of Federal troops moving over the fields of the South, the exhausted rebels were gradually yielding. At last came the evacuation of and retreat from Richmond, then the surrender at Appomattox, and finally the crash of the Confederacy.
The flight of President Davis from impending capture, and for refuge, accompanied by his cabinet, to Charlotte, North Carolina, under escort of a division of cavalry, in which were found the remains of Williams' Ken- tucky brigade, commanded by Colonel W. C. P. Breckinridge, and of Morgan's old brigade, commanded by General Basil Duke, and a detach- ment from Colonel Giltner's brigade; the separation of the cavalcade, and effort to reach the armies of Generals Taylor and Forrest in Alabama ; the capture of President Davis and suite, and the final surrenders of all the armies east and west of the Mississippi river, make up a panorama of picturesque scenes and events to be justly viewed only on fuller pages of history than can be given here.
On November 8, 1864, Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson were again elected president and vice-president of the United States. In Ken- tucky, this ticket received 27,786 votes against 64,301 for George B. McClellan and George H. Pendleton, Democratic candidates in opposition. During this year the credit of the United States Government sank to an alarmingly low ebb, and the values of both the paper currency and the bonds put forth by the government to support the emergencies of the war widely and wildly fluctuated. The greenback currency ranged in value upon the New York market as two hundred to three hundred dollars, to one hundred dollars in gold. Its value gradually appreciated toward the close of the war, as success seemed more assured to the Union cause. But it was not for years after the close of the war, that coin and paper currency approxi- mated and reached the standard of equal values.
On January 11, 1865, James Guthrie, of Louisville, was elected by the Legislature United States senator for six years, from the 4th of March, 1865, and General John C. Breckinridge was appointed secretary of war in the Confederate cabinet, in place of James A. Sedden, resigned.
On the 6th day of January, Governor Bramlette sent in his message with accompanying documents of much interest and value to the history of that period. The report of Adjutant-General Finnell showed the total enroll- ment of persons liable to military duty in Kentucky to be 133,493, of whom from the beginning of the war to January 1, 1865, 76,335 volunteers were furnished to the United States army, and seven thousand more were already
663
BURBRIDGE REMOVED.
recruited under the recent call, making a total near eighty-three thousand men. Besides these, the number in the service of the Home Guards, not enumerated in the above. may safely be estimated at ten thousand. During the term of the war, there were perhaps forty thousand of the citizens of the State who entered the Confederate army. We have in these figures one- tenth of the population, nearly, in military service; a larger per cent. given to war than has ever been furnished by any modern State in the term of three years. It should be considered that these men were volunteers from the citizens of the State, in no part composed of the substitutes who formed so large a part of the forces from the Northern States; yet Kentucky had, years before the war, sent many thousands of her youth as colonists to other States of the West. Thousands of these were in the regiments of their adopted States, both North and South.
In January, 1865. President Lincoln annulled the iniquitous orders con- ·cerning the limitations of trade in Kentucky, and the Confederate Govern- ment at last, and much needed for its self-vindication, took steps finally to disavow the action of guerrillas in the State. For many months the regular troops of the Confederacy had repudiated all connection with these outlaws, and even in some cases had joined with the Home Guards in hunting them down.
1 " The banishment of Jacob and Wolford by General Burbridge was fol- lowed by an order to his subordinates to resist the State Government, which was at that time trying to raise a sufficient force of State troops to hunt down and crush out the guerrilla bands. Burbridge not only sought to nul- lify this action of the Commonwealth in raising new troops, but ordered the muster-out of all the State troops now in service.
"Soon after the assembly of the Legislature, a committee was appointed to visit Washington, and lay before the president the deplorable condition of the Commonwealth due to the conduct of Burbridge and his party. The remonstrances of these ambassadors, and the attention which Burbridge's acts had begun to attract in the whole country, led to his removal from command, thus relieving the State from the rule of a man who had been well-named the "military Jeffreys" of the war. He was replaced by Gen- eral Palmer, a man of much better temper, who, though he fell under the same evil influences which had guided Burbridge in his course, never went to the same extremes.
"The people now began to act with more energy in the suppression of the guerrilla warfare. The Confederate scouts, from time to time within the State, did not hesitate to treat them as public enemies. A large part of the motive that led even decent citizens to take up with these maranding bands, or to give them aid and comfort, came from a spirit of protest against the arbitrary acts of the Federal officers. As soon as there seemed a chance that these evils were about to be mitigated, the people felt like regaining for
I Shaler's Kentucky Commonwealth P. 358.
664
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
themselves a better public security, and took efficient steps for their protec- tion.
"In February, the Thirteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution was presented to the Legislature for action. This amendment provided for the unconditional abolition of slavery within the United States, but did not secure any compensation for the value of the slaves within the loyal States. The subject was referred to the judiciary committee of the State Senate. Two reports were made; one, the majority, favoring the rejection of the amendment; the other, its acceptance, with the request that Congress give compensation for the value of slaves held by owners who were loyal to the Government during the rebellion. The majority report was accepted. both in the Senate and House ; in the former, by a vote of twenty-one to thirteen ; in the latter, by fifty-six to twenty-eight. The Thirteenth amendment was soon after adopted by the requisite number of States, and in this way slavery quietly lost its legal position, though its life had been practically extinguished by the events of the war.
1 During the progress and at the termination of the war, many facts and statistics were preserved and compiled in the interest of science, going to show the relative condition of the people of Kentucky with that of other States and nations. Particularly does this refer to the statistics of the Sani-
I Shaler's Kentucky Commonwealth p. 372.
A Table of Measurements of American White Men, Compiled from Report of the Sanitary Commission, Made from Measurements of the United States Volunteers during the Civil War, by B. A. Gould.
NATIVITY.
Number of men
Mean height, in inches .
Mean weight, in pounds . .
MEAN CIRCUMFER- ENCE OF CHEST.
Fach full inspiration,
After each inspiration,
Mean circumference around
Proportion of tall men in each
New England . .
152,370
67.834
139.39
36.71
34.1I
22.02
295
N. York, N. Jersey, Pennsylv'a 273.026
67.529
140.83
37.06
34.38
22.10
237
Ohio, Indiana . .
220,796
68.169
145.37
37.53
34.95
22.11
4So
Michigan, Missouri, Illinois
71,196
67.822
141.75
37.29
34.04
22.19
466
Seaboard slave States
Kentucky, Tennessee
50.334
68.605
149.85
37.53
35.30
22.32
848
British maritime provinces
6,320
67.510
143.59
37.13
34.81
22.13
237
Canada
31,698
6 ;. cS6
141.35
37.14
34.35
22.11
177
Scotland
7,313
67.258
137.55
37.57
34.69
22.23
Ireland .
83, 128
60.951
130.18
37.54
35 27
. . .
Germany
S9,021
60.600
140.36
37.20
34.74
22.09
Scandinavia
6,782 67.337
184.14
39 39
35.37
22.37
221
.
140.99
30.64
34.23
21.93
600
Free States west of Miss'pi river
3.811
67.419
.
37.53
34.84
21.97
184
England
30.037
66.741
137.01
36.91
34.30
22.16 10;
one hundred thousand
inches .
inches .
forehead and occiput . . . .
. .
665
KENTUCKY'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE WAR.
tary Commission, as carefully collated and classed by the distinguished mathematician, Dr. B. A. Gould, now well known as the astronomer of the Argentine Republic. Besides its humane work of charity, during the war, this society left a valuable body of fact in its carefully-made measurements of two hundred and fifty thousand men. These measurements were so tabulated as to separate men from the different parts of the country. From this excellent digest, the extracts given in the accompanying table are taken. The measurements of troops from Kentucky were doubtless far more nu- merous than from Tennessee, as the Federal troops from Tennessee were few in number.
It should be noticed that the Confederacy received the youth and strength mainly from the richest part of the Kentucky soil. It is nearly certain that the averages given in the tables would have been distinctly greater if they had included the forty thousand men who drifted out into the rebel army. * Even without these corrections, the form of the men as determined by the measurement of fifty thousand troops is surprising. Their average height is nearly an inch greater than that of the New England troops; they exceed them equally in girth of chest, and the circumference of head. In size. they come up to the level of the picked regiments of the Northern armies of Europe. Yet these results are obtained from what was a levy en masse, for such was the call to arms that took more than one in ten of the popula- tion, both as infantry and cavalry. These troops did very effective service in both armies.
1 The rebel 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 regiments. were probably the superior element of these Kentucky contributions to the war. They were the first runnings from the press, and naturally had the peculiar quality of their vintage more clearly marked than the later product, when the mass became more turgid with conscripts, sub- stitutes, and bounty volunteers. Had the measurements and classified results applied only to the representative native element, the standard of average of manhood would have been shown to be perceptibly higher. Though the ancestry of these soldiers had been a fighting people, yet for forty years their children had known and followed only the peaceful pursuits of agri- culture, and the industries of trade peculiar to the Commonwealth, with the limited exception of the Mexican war interlude, which made an inconsid- erable draft of the few thousand 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 illustra-
t Shaler's Kentucky Commonwealth p. 375
666
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
tion, on the one side, the force of Morgan; we find in this remarkable body of men. great capacity at once for dash and endurance. Its leader, sud- denly improvised from the ranks of private 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 hurl- ing 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 can endure. Yet this force owed its peculiar excellence to the qualities of the men and the subordinate commanders, as to the distinguished leader. Such a list of superior subordinate commanders as Basil Duke, Hines, D. Howard Smith, Grigsby, Cluke, Alston, Steele, Gano, Castleman, Chenault, Brent, and others, was perhaps found in no other such brigade of Kentucky cavalry. Yet at the head of their regiments and brigades, such leaders as Wolford, Green Clay Smith, Hobson, and others, showed quali- ties of a high order, and their commands proved to be the most effective Federal cavalry of the war. The fighting of the Federal regiments of Ken- tucky 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 in the great Union armies, and so little of distinct- ive Kentucky history has been collated or published of these, that we find it difficult to illustrate with the recount of their exceptional services.
1 The most marked example of the character and success of the Ken- tucky troops in the Confederate infantry service has been given us in the well-preserved history and statistics of the First Kentucky Confederate brig- ade. We have already noted the daring and gallantry of these troops in the battles of Donelson, of Shiloh, of Baton Rouge, of Murfreesboro, of Chicka- mauga, and of other conflicts, to Dalton, Georgia, in May, 1864. On the au- thority of General Fayette Hewitt, this brigade marched out of Dalton eleven hundred and forty strong, on the 7th of May. The hospital reports show that up to September Ist, not quite four months, eighteen hundred and sixty wounds were taken by the 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 engaged were killed or wounded. During the time of this campaign, there were not more than ten desertions. The campaign ended with two hundred and forty men able to do duty ; less than fifty were without wounds. It will be remembered that this campaign was at a time when the hope of the Con- federate armies was well nigh gone, and they were fighting amid the darkness of despair.
I Shaler's Kentucky Commonwealth p. 476.
667
LOSSES DURING THE WAR.
I The data afforded us does not give us an accurate idea of the destruc- tion of life traceable to the war. The returns of the adjutant-general do not include the loss from death or wounds, the hundreds of small fights between the Home Guards, and other irregular troops, and the raiding parties of the enemy. It is estimated that in the two regular armies the State lost ap- proximately thirty-five thousand men by wounds in battle, and by diseases in hospitals and elsewhere contracted in military service. To these may be added several thousands whose lives were sacrificed within 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, afflicted with internal disease bred by camp and march, or aged by the swift expenditure of force that such war demands. Omitting many small rencounters and irregular engagements in which there was much loss of life, but which have no place in our histories, Captain L. R. Hawthorne, in a manuscript summary of the , history of the war, enumerates one hundred and thirty-eight combats within the borders of Kentucky.
In the closing scenes of the great war drama, of Confederate soldiers there were surrendered, by General Robert E. Lee, 27, 805: General Joseph E. Johnston, 31, 243; General Richard Taylor, 42, 293; General E. Kirby . Smith, 17,686 ; scattering and prisoners of war, 101, 402-a total of 220.429. By the official reports, the aggregate Federal military force was then, in the field and enlisted, 1,000,516 men. besides the prisoners in the hands of the Confederates, and released at the surrender, the mightiest army of modern times.
1 Shaler's Kentucky Commonwealth P. 377.
668
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
CHAPTER XXIX.
(1775-1886.)
First Period, 1775-1821 :
Education of the Kentucky pioneers.
Discussions of the " Danville Club." First schools.
Mrs. Coomes, Filson, May, and Doni- phan.
Manuscript text-books used.
Kentucky primers and spellers.
Mckinney's school.
First seminary, Transylvania, located near Danville.
Its early struggles and work.
First teacher and trustees.
Difficulties of endowment.
Transylvania moved to Lexington.
First buildings there.
Teachers Finley, Fry, and Priestly.
First denominational schools.
Legislature grants six thousand acres for a seminary in each county.
Proceeds of these mostly squandered. Schools in Louisville.
Second constitution does nothing for education.
Might then have endowed a State sys- tem from North-west lands won by Clark, as Ohio, Indiana, and other States did.
Neglect of female education.
First suggestion in Governor Greenup's message, 1807.
General Green Clay's advocacy.
Election of Toulmin and Holley over Transylvania followed by discord.
Governor Slaughter's messages on pop- ular education, 1816 and 1817.
Mistakes of Virginia and Pennsylvania. Transylvania made a State institution in 1818.
Holley made president.
County seminaries dying of the disease of trusteeism.
Centre College incorporated. 1819.
Fines and forfeitures to county semina- ries until 1820.
Second Period, 1821 to 1829-
First attempt to support common schools by "literary fund" of legislation.
Sixty thousand dollars first year.
Next year, Legislature diverts it.
State aid to Transylvania and Centre College.
Legislative sparring.
Alumni of Transylvania.
Report of legislative committee, 1821.
Governor Metcalfe repeats demand for Kentucky rights, in 1828.
Followed by Governors Morehead and Letcher.
If her Congressmen had demanded, Ken- tucky's share of public lands, ten million dollars.
Splendid report of William T. Barry and other committeemen.
Governor Desha's recommendations.
Ben Hardin's speech opposing.
Agitation for reform by Peers, Guthrie,
Young, Morehead, etc.
Transylvania burned.
Louisville free school system.
Disorder and neglect of State school interests about 1830.
Peers' report.
Awakens interest, and leads to the first law of 1838.
Experimental district taxation inade- quate.
Monitorial plan.
Educational conventions.
In 1836, Congress distributes to Ken- tucky $1,433, 177.
Eight hundred and fifty thousand dol- lars set apart for the school fund.
Law for a common-school system drafted by William F. Bullock, 1838.
4
.
669
EDUCATION IN KENTUCKY.
Not for free schools.
In IS40, school fund seized on to pay other debts.
Effort to abolish the office of superin- tendent.
Labors of Superintendents Bullock and Smith.
School fund bankrupted.
Discontent at local taxation.
George R. McKee moves to repeal the system.
State school bonds publicly burned by the authorities at Frankfort.
Revised law of 1845.
Governors Clarke, Letcher, and Owsley and the Legislatures do nothing, while sister States build up systems out of gov- ernment lands.
.
Sixteen hundred students away at col- leges, and five thousand pupils now at home academies.
Dr. R. J. Breckinridge, superintendent, 1847-52.
Third Period, 1849-1865 :
New bonds issued.
Two cents tax voted.
Schools improved under Dr. Breckin- ridge's management.
He restores the school fund.
Contest between friends and enemies in constitutional convention.
The sinking fund must pay the school fund dues.
Changes in Revised Statutes of 1852, and Constitution of 1849.
Dr. Matthews, superintendent.
Normal College established, 1856.
The civil war period.
Superintendent Stevenson's views.
Agricultural and Mechanical College grant.
Fourth Period, 1865-1886:
Plans and work of Superintendent Z. F. Smith, 1867-71. .
Fifteen cents tax voted.
Increase to twenty cents.
School fund trebled, and system im- proved.
Opposition to reform.
H. A. M. Henderson's work as superin- tendent, 1871-9.
Improved law.
Superintendent J. D. Pickett, 1879-86.
Volunteer aid by Hons. Albert S. Berry, William M. Beckner, William Chenault, and others.
Work of Judge Laban T. Moore, and others, framing the school law of 1884.
Education in Kentucky, 1775 to 1821 .- 1 It is sometimes said that the early settlers of Kentucky were an uneducated people. If this remark is limited to the body of the very earliest immigrants, it is, perhaps, true that they were rude and unlettered, but even among these there were many men of a different kind, such as George Rogers Clark, Benjamin Logan, John Floyd, the Todds, and others.
The immigration which came at the close of the Revolutionary war, in 1783, was of a different class. The historian, Humphrey Marshall, declares that among the population coming to Kentucky at this period, up to 1790, " was to be found as much culture and intelligence as fell to the lot of any equal number of people, promiscuously taken, in either Europe or America." The men who controlled and molded the destinies of Kentucky from 1783 to 1800, if not very learned, were, many of them, well educated and fully capable of meeting all the questions of interest and policy which arose at the establishment of Kentucky as an independent State.
The discussions of the Danville " Political Club," in 1786-87. as brought to light by Mr. Thomas Speed, in his article published in the Louisville
I Paper by William Chenault, LL. D., read before the Filson Club of Louisville, December 7, 1885.
670
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
Commercial, 29th of September, 1878, show that the politicians and states- men at the head of affairs in the district of Kentucky, in 1787, would compare favorably with those in charge of the State at any later period of our existence. Even the excellences and defects of the Constitution of the United States itself were not more ably discussed in any of the ratifying State conventions of 1788 than by the leading men of the " Political Club" at Danville. The amendments there proposed to the Constitution are among the best which time and experience have since suggested. Other questions of State policy and political economy were handled with like ability by the members of that club. These are some of the evidences of the culture of the early politicians of the State, and more might be adduced.
The peculiar circumstances of our early history, under the influence of which the people grew up, were such as to impress upon them great vigor, energy, and enterprise, both of body and mind. Dr. Mann Butler asserts that, while some of the earliest pioneer leaders may not have pos- sessed the artificial education which comes from the perusal of books, they did have that real education which is sure to come from the study of men, and a development of their faculties, so as to be able to take the best ad- vantage of the conditions surrounding them. Many of them were endowed with the virtues of courage, kindness, magnanimity, fortitude, and all those elements of character which control the minds of the masses. Such men were better suited to the times in which they lived than they would have been if educated in the ordinary sense. The task of making Kentucky an inhabit- able State, by conquering the Indians, felling the forests, clearing away the canebrake, and turning the buffalo paths into roads, called more imperatively for high physical powers and bodily endurance than for the book education obtained in the schools. The people lived with their rifles in their hands, and even the school-boys were required to carry their guns with them to school, as it was not known what emergency might arise in which the hands of the pupils might not be essential for their own protection. Amid such interruptions, they pursued their studies.
It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that even the earliest pioneer leaders of Kentucky felt no interest in the establishment of schools, or did nothing to promote the cause of education. Under the adverse circum- stances surrounding them, they did almost as much to educate their children as could well have been done. Scarcely had the families of Hugh McGary, Thomas Denton, Richard Hogan, and William Coomes, been permanently settled at Harrodsburg, when an effort was made to establish a school in the fort. The very year that Captain DuQuesne and Chief Blackfish made their formidable assault upon Boonesboro, a young man arrived at that fort to impart the rudiments of learning to the children of the station. The block house at Lexington was hardly finished by Colonel Robert Patterson. in 1780, when a teacher was employed to take charge of a school within the fort.
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