USA > Kentucky > The story of Kentucky > Part 11
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battle, we are told, the old fire died out of the Con- federates; they fought on desperately, but without hope.
Harry and Edmund Peterson, like many other Kentucky brothers, had gone separate ways. At the first demand for troops to put down the rebel- lion, the impulsive Edmund had avowed his sym- pathy for the "poor, abused South." The air was full of battle. Company after company slipped away to one side or the other. Harry joined a company of Home Guards. His uniform was blue, and very becoming. " Are you going to fight the South ?" his brother asked.
" I would fight any one who attempted to destroy this Union - which our fathers fought and died to establish."
" A Union of tyrants and slaves ! " cried Edmund.
"Yes; there are tyrants and slaves in it," re- turned Harry, regretfully.
"Perhaps you will set yours free?" Edmund next remarked.
"I may; yes, I think I will," was the reply.
A few days afterward Edmund made his hasty adieus and rode away to the South: to fight for liberty - for the whites-but slavery for the blacks. And soon his brother's company was or- dered into the field, to keep the Confederates at bay. Then the father and mother, left alone in the
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great gray house set in the midst of verdant past- ures, to which they had retired in the hope of spend- ing their green old age in peace, saw that peace had flown forever from their lives. It was a hard lot. but no harder than that of many of their neighbor -. What wonder that the Union-loving fathers of Ken- tucky were so often loath to go into the field -to fight their sons and brothers and cousins, whose call had come from the South instead of the North ?
Harry Peterson never went into battle without feeling a vague dread lest he should see the face of his brother among the enemies whom it was hi- duty to fight. But as time went on and he neither saw nor heard of Edmund, he concluded that his brother was in another part of the country, and ceased to look for him. After the victory of Chicka- mauga, the Confederates had been driven from Chattanooga, and then from "Lookout Mountain " and finally - wearied out by a long day's contest on " Missionary Ridge," pressed closer and closer by fresh Federal troops - they were forced again to fly. Harry Peterson was with these fresh troops when the Confederate lines began to break and the volleys grew fainter and fainter.
Among the last to fly was an officer whom he had noticed before -always urging on his men. His gray uniform was covered with dust, his face begrimed with the smoke of battle. He was evi-
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dently wounded; one more shot would probably finish him. Peterson fired that shot and had the satisfaction of seeing his enemy fall. By the time he had reached his victim the last gray-coat had vanished. Some unfathomable instinct caused him to stoop and look at the face more closely. The fantastic light of the dying day fell full upon it. Suddenly he turned cold and began to tremble. He pushed back his enemy's hat and looked more closely at the face. "Edmund !"
The dying man looked up, but there was no springing light of affectionate recognition in his glance. A squad of soldiers passing by called out in loud, triumphant tones : " Victory ! Come on ! come on ! and get your share of the glory."
Glory! and his only brother dying at his feet! Victory ! and he had just murdered one whom he would have died to save from harm. "Edmund," he called persuasively. " Don't you know me, Edmund ? It's Harry."
" I know," he mur- mured, with an effort,
CRUEL WAR.
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" I know. That last shot - finished me. I am dying."
"O no, Edmund !" he tried to speak cheerfully.
" I hope not. Let me see where you are wounded.
" No use," panted the dying man. " Let me go in peace."
"O, Edmund ! this will break mother's heart."
" Tell her I was not afraid. I have done miv best. I fought faithfully for the right - as I saw it. If I have made a mistake, God knows it . . . and he is merciful. He was always quicker to forgive - quicker to excuse fault - than his disciple -. He knows our weakness -our fallibility."
" Edmund," Harry's voice was hoarse with griet and pain, "it was I who killed you! I never once thought of you ; I had looked for you so long. If we could only change places how happy I should be."
"Never mind, Harry. I know you wouldn't have harmed me for the world if you had known it. You only did your duty. A sad chance of thi- cruel war which might have been mine, just as we Promise me you will never let them know it !! home. It would make it so much harder for ther: - dear old father and mother!" His breath can shorter and shorter ; his words grew more and more indistinct. At length he looked up piteously i: his brother's face. "O. Harry!" -a gasp or two more and all was over.
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When the men came with stretchers to carry off the dead and wounded, they found Peterson bend- ing speechless, motionless, as if paralyzed, over the body of a dead Confederate officer. When it was known that it was his brother they said: " Poor fellow! " and then began to laugh and joke about death and the grave, and tell humorous anecdotes, and speak facetiously of " handing in their checks." War is a terrible hardener. Carnage and blood- ·shed, brutality and rapine, had become common and humorous themes. Nothing was too horrible to be made the subject of jest and merriment. The three years of war had done their work of de- moralization. Pity, sympathy and tenderness were well-nigh extinguished from hardened hearts. To say " they fought like devils " was the highest, most acceptable compliment you could bestow. The best soldier was the one who killed the most men. The happiest general was the one whose slain were counted by the thousands. Shouts of joy went up as the paie faces opposite them went down.
But it was a " glorious war." The man who tried to keep out of it was called a coward, and it was said. " If he had one spark of honor he would be fighting for his country." Women, reading of the " glorious victories," and seeing the gallant troops on parade in their gala dress, were smitten with ad- miration for the work of slaughter, and sacrificed
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their jewels, and denied themselves books and all means of culture, that they might help on the " sacred cause." And almost daily thousands of souls went into eternity with murder in their heart. . for the nation was smitten with an awful madness.
A season of moral darkness had come upon our country, in which the very lights of heaven seemed to flicker and grow pale. A time of mourning, and of hideous rejoicing over death. A period o: commercial stagnation, when the factories were silent because their workers had gone off to fight one another; when residences, store-houses, stable- and barns were emptied by marauders, and earth'- treasury ministered more to the destruction of life than to its preservation ; when there was more money made on musketry than on grain.
In the great upheaval the lowest class came to the top. Burglaries by armed men were of com. mon occurrence. Travelers were robbed and often. times shot down on the highway. Peaceable citizens were mobbed and "burned out" for thei: " Union " sentiments, or arrested and thrown in! prison for "sympathizing with the South." In the hitherto prosperous State of Kentucky the question. What shall we eat and wherewithal be clothed : became one of serious import.
CHAPTER X.
CLOSE OF THE WAR.
A LTHOUGH no great battles were fought in Kentucky in 1864 it was for that State the most trying year of the war; probably the severest in loss of life The Old Capitole E FROM PHOTOGRAPH BYMATTERN and certainly the most destructive to prop- erty. Besides the loss of slaves by conscription, and the confiscation of property by military order, there was a continual drainage by raiding guerrillas. These pests, who were at the last disowned and hunted down by both parties, swept over the State like a fire, or a plague of locusts. At no time during the year was the State entirely free from them. They seemed to regard the fattening herds and ripening grain of Kentucky as legitimate spoil. They plundered both parties alike and had no real connection with either army.
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One of the most exasperating injustices of the war was holding "Southern sympathizers " respon- sible for outrages committed by the guerrillas who claimed to be Southern soldiers. As there were no regular Confederate troops in Kentucky at this time, there was no opportunity for disprov- ing this assertion; and the first week in January Governor Bramlette issued a proclamation holding the "Southern sympathizers " responsible for all guerrilla raids, requesting military commandants to " arrest at least five prominent rebel sympathiz. ers for every loyal citizen taken by the guerrilla -. and to hold them as hostages for the safe and speedy return of the loyal citizen." Where there were disloyal relatives of guerrillas, they should be the chief sufferers. "Let them learn that if they refuse to exert themselves actively for the assist- ance and protection of the loyal, they must expect to reap the just fruits of their complicity with the enemies of our State and people." A former Fed- eral officer himself. Governor Bramlette must have had implicit confidence in the military authorities. or he would never have entrusted them with un- limited authority over the personal liberty of cit ;. zens - leaving the selection of the victims to their discretion.
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At least, we may venture to suggest that, in reversing the Scriptural order, and visiting the
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iniquities of the sons upon the fathers, the Gover- nor transcended his authority. As the guerrilla bands were made up mainly of refugees from other States, few of the Kentucky fathers had to suffer in consequence of this order.
A little farther on we find Governor Bramlette, as well as other prominent Unionists, resisting the conscription of negroes. When Federal officers began to recruit negro troops in the State, the Governor flatly declared that "no such recruiting would be tolerated here. Summary justice will be inflicted on any who attempt such unlawful pur- pose. Kentucky," he says proudly, " will furnish white men to fill the call upon her for more troops." Nor would she permit other States, who were " un- willing to meet the measure of duty by contributing their quota from their own population, to shelter from duty behind the free negro population of Kentucky." Only a few months previous, Secre- tary Seward had opposed a similar measure because it would " look like a call upon Ethiopia for help."
Perhaps the Federal Colonel Frank Woolford de- fined the general feeling in the State at this time when he declared at Lexington in a speech, for which he was afterward arrested, that the people of Kentucky did not want to "keep step to the music of the Union alongside of negro soldiers; it was an insult for which their free and manly spirits
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were not prepared." It is well known that thi- prejudice was not confined to Southern State -. In 1863 it was dangerous for a negro soldier to show himself on the streets of New York. In six months a different feeling prevailed, in Kentucky as well as elsewhere.
When Congress passed an act providing for the enrollment in the army of all able-bodied male slaves between twenty and forty-five, Governor Bramlette declared that "the citizen whose prop- erty was taken under a constitutional act will be entitled, by an imperative mandate of the Consti- tution, to a just compensation for his private prop- erty so taken for public use."
So intense was the feeling in Kentucky against this measure. that President Lincoln addressed them a letter through Col. A. G. Hodges of Frank- fort, in which he stated for their benefit his reason for enrolling their slaves. He said: " I am natu- rally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. Yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred on me the unre- stricted right to act officially on this feeling." He had taken the oath to preserve the Constitution. He understood that this oath even forbade him to indulge his own feeling on the question of slavery. yet imposed on him the duty of preserving the Government and Nation; and measures otherwise
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unconstitutional might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitu- tion and Nation. Early in the war when General Frémont proposed military emancipation he had forbidden it; a little later, when Secretary Cam- eron suggested arming the blacks, he again ob-
AFTER THE BATTLE.
jected; and still later he refused General Hunter. In 1862 he had made repeated earnest appeals to the border States to favor compensated emancipa- tion, to avert the necessity for military emancipa- tion. "They declined the proposition ; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of
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either surrendering the Union or of laying a strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter." By this the action had not lost, but gained one hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen and laborers.
The Kentuckians, though not placated, mad the best of the situation; and Governor Bramlette's next proclamation advised the people to submit quietly to the enrollment, and " trust the American people to do us the justice which the present Cou -. gress may not do." The President promised the Governor that no enlistment of negro soldier- should take place, " unless Kentucky failed to fur- nish her quota of white men." Kentucky's quota was filled but, in three months, we are told, over twelve thousand negroes were taken out of Ken- tucky and enlisted elsewhere. In July there was a demand on the State for five thousand additiona: troops for which a draft was ordered, but postponed " in view of the scarcity of labor and the fact that the citizens have so patriotically responded to the late call." Only a few counties failed to make up their quota without draft.
The Adjutant-General's report shows that Ker- tucky had sent at this time about sixty thousand men into the Federal service. "Kentucky." Pro- fessor Shaler tells us, "furnished her full quota of troops for the Union army almost without boun
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CLOSE OF THE WAR. 239
ties, and practically without a draft." Although her vote in 1860 was only one hundred and fifty- one thousand the State furnished one hundred and seventy-six thousand Federal soldiers, besides the eleven thousand colored troops. At least fifty thousand were in the Confederacy. It is asserted that " the tabulated measurement of United States volunteers during the Civil War show that Ken- tucky and Tennessee soldiers exceeded all others in height, weight, circumference of head and chest and ratio of weight and stature."
The chief military events of the year were Forrest's attack on Paducah, defended by Colonel Hicks with six hundred men, which resulted in the defeat of the Confederates, after two days of battle and a loss of about one hundred men on either side; and Morgan's destructive raid through the central portion of the State.
Morgan entered Kentucky June I, via Pound Gap. With two thousand four hundred men he galloped over the State, capturing in succession, Mount Sterling, Paris, Cynthiana and Williams- town. He tore up railroads, destroyed Govern- ment property and seized money and horses. Three regiments of mounted infantry, under Colonel John Mason Brown, Col. C. S. Hanson, and Col. David A. Mims attacked the raiders at Mount Sterling and after a desperate fight in which Morgan
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lost nearly four hundred men, killed, wounded 1. 4025% and prisoners, and the Federals about eighty, the Confederates fled to Lexington. Here they seized ten thousand dollars from the Branch Bank ot Kentucky, robbed citizens right and left, and re- tired to Fort Clay. Two days afterward the; attacked Cynthiana, burned two hundred thousand dollars worth of property, and, intercepting a train. captured General Hobson and five hundred Fed- eral troops. At daylight the following mornin_ the same force which had defeated them at Moun: Sterling overtook them near Cynthiana and after an hour's desperate fighting, put them to flight. Three hundred of the raiders were killed and wounded, four hundred were taken prisoners and Hobson and his men released. The Federal los. was one hundred and fifty.
Finding the Federal force too strong for him Morgan returned to Tennessee. He was surprised and surrounded at a private house near Greenville. September 4, and shot while attempting to escape. His methods of warfare have been seriously que- tioned by military leaders, but personally he was loved and respected as a kind and upright gentle. man. That the Federal troops pursued the sank methods, though not to such an extent, is well known. An order issued by General Burbridge September 14 says that he " is pained to learn that
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in various portions of his command, squads of Federal soldiers, and companies of men styling themselves . State Guards,' ' Home Guards,' ' Inde- pendent Companies,' etc., are roving over the coun- try, committing outrages on peaceable citizens, seizing without authority their horses and other property."
Martial law was proclaimed in the State July 5, on account of " the prevalence of Confederate and guerrilla raids ;" and from that time until 1865, more and more stringent orders were issued; until the exasperated people finding their civil govern- ment overthrown, and the tyranny of military law unendurable, in desperation appealed to the Presi- dent. A heavy tax was imposed on the State, sufficient to arm, mount and pay five thousand troops for the Federal Army, notwithstanding that the Legislature had appropriated five million dol- lars for that purpose. Produce could be sold only to specified agents and at their prices. Horses were taken, "to be paid for when the owners should prove their loyalty." Women whose husbands or sons or brothers were in the Confederate Army were arrested and sent either to prison or to Canada. Soldiers presided at the polls and directed the elections to suit their own preferences; and men were shot down for small offences, and without even the pretence of a trial.
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The violent measures of General Burbridge, and other military men, excited revolt even. among the strongest friends of the Union. So out-spoken was their disapproval that many prominent Union- ists were arrested, and some of them banished to the Confederacy. Among these were Paul Ship- man, one of the leading editors of the Louisville Journal, Lieutenant-Governor Jacob, General John B. Huston, and Colonel Frank Woolford.
Some of the tyrannical orders were revoked by the President; and, at the request of the Governor for a military commission composed of "good. brave, just and fearless men " to inquire into the iniquities perpetrated by Federal officials in the western district of Kentucky, General Speed Smith Fry and Colonel John Mason Brown were appointed to investigate and pronounce judgment on the offenders. In consequence, General Eleazer Paine and other officers were removed. And in February, 1865, General John M. Palmer was appointed to command in Kentucky instead of General Burbridge.
General Palmer revoked the tyrannical trade regulations ; he restored the liberty of the press. (The people of Kentucky, Mr. Collins tells us. " with only one twenty-seventh of the population of the United States were paying one sixth of the direct revenuc." ) Banished loyalists were allowed
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THE GREAT KANIUCKIAN. (Henry Chay at theriv-five.)
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to return : Confederate soldiers who were willing o swear allegiance to the United States were promised pardon: a tighter rein was drawn upon the military forces, and the fetters of the civilians were relaxed. The guerrillas were hunted down with such determined energy that the most des- perate companies were broken up, and their lead- ers executed - among these the notorious Sue Munday (Jerome Clark), a young man of twenty, whose girlish beauty had led to his being mistaken for a woman. The Confederate troops under Major Walker Taylor united with the Federals in hunt- ing down the guerrillas.
In February the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was rejected by the Legislature. The Governor's message suggested that "as England, in the Act of IS33 abolishing slavery, appropriated twenty million pounds to compensate the owners, our Government would surely not be less just ; espe- cially if the assessed value of 1864 ($34, 179,246) be locepted by the State - the valuation of 1860 being three times that sum. Resolutions were offered urging an earnest effort to obtain compen- sation for the slave-property, but were rejected by the majority. The Kentuckians certainly under- stood that slavery was at an end, although they refused to express any approval of the manner of it- extinction.
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The Southern horizon had steadily darken. and narrowed, until now very little of its territory: remained unoccupied by Federal troops. TL ... Confederate armies, depleted by continual batt .. numbered only one hundred and seventy-five the .. sand men, to the one million Federal troops.
General Lee was a man of invincible courage, but he knew when he was conquered. On the ninth of April, 1865, he surrendered the remnu! . of his army, less than twenty-eight thousand mta at Appomattox Court House, Va. And on the thirteenth the Southerners stacked their guns a :. : covered the heap with their tattered flags, which some of them bent to kiss in sad farewell.
On the thirteenth also General Joseph E. Joh :: ston surrendered the remainder of his army; ar .. Federal and Confederate came home together They came to fight guerrillas and the milita !. tyrants who were not willing to admit that a Star containing so many rebels-even though it h.t. held to the Union through immeasurable diffic .. ties - was to be trusted with its own government
On the evening of Johnston's surrender President Lincoln requested the band gathered in front the White House to play " Dixie," saying that : had always thought it one of the best songs ! ever heard, and that he considered that it i: . been fairly captured from the rebels. It was h .
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last speech ; the following evening he was assassi- nated. There was sincere mourning throughout Kentucky, where he had many warm personal friends. Public offices were draped in mourning, and, at the hour of his funeral, long processions marched through the streets.
Harry Peterson returned to his home with a heavy heart. The family circle was broken by death and by estrangement. The house had been stripped by Union soldiers; the finest horses had been "pressed into service" for the Union; the herds had gone to feed Union soldiers; the word " Union " was a sore word to all. His father had been arrested and kept in prison for "sympa- thizing" with the South. All that the household knew of the Federal soldier was to his disadvan- tage. They loved the defeated South all the more for its misfortunes; and disliked the victorious North all the more for its triumph.
They received Harry rather coldly. His party was responsible for all their losses. They con- sidered that he had disgraced himself in deserting the traditions of the family. Never before had there been in the Cabell family, in all its various ramifications, an " Abolitionist": for that in the family opinion was what their Federal soldier had proved to be. The Keiths too, had all gone with the South.
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To suffer for one's country changes one's for . ings entirely. To hear the old flag abused, t. listen to contemptuous, angry words against ti ... 1 Union, was sometimes hard to endure. But Hart remembered his father's sufferings, past and pr .- ent; he respected his broken health and fortune -. and held his tongue. Trade regulations had ruin . the pork business; the establishment had been so for almost nothing; only the farm was left. [1. had neither the experience, strength nor taste ft agricultural pursuits, necessary to success in farn . ing. The rich fields were choked with weeds; ti: vacant pastures overrun with briers.
Harry went to work quietly and determinedly : make the most of the farm. When he had hire .. what " hands " he could and set them to work. I. reopened his law office in the city. His father took little interest in the narrow calculations. th petty economies of this day of small things. Ti .: old gentleman found little except discomfort in the new order that had come in. Harry's mother tor found it hard to adjust her old tastes and habs. to their altered fortunes. The lavish hospitalit. easy and pleasant in the slavery days, now becan a grievous burden. Yet there was no thought .' discontinuing it. What pleasure was there : home and comfort if they could not be shar with friends and neighbors ?
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