xt72rb6vx67t https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt72rb6vx67t/data/mets.xml Stevenson, B. F. (Benjamin F.) 1886  books b96-17-36622634 English H.C. Sherick & Co., : Cincinnati [Ohio] : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Kentucky History Civil War, 1861-1865. Kentucky neutrality in 1861  : a paper read before the Ohio Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States ... June 2d, 1886 / by Benj. F. Stevenson. text Kentucky neutrality in 1861  : a paper read before the Ohio Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States ... June 2d, 1886 / by Benj. F. Stevenson. 1886 2002 true xt72rb6vx67t section xt72rb6vx67t 



"Kentuoky Nelliralitil in 1861."

 

"Kenitucky Netrality iII 1861."


        H--A PAPERt 5

              READ BEFORE '1HE

      OHIO COMMANDERY

                - OL F1  '1'1K -

,MiliLapiy OrzAer, of ble LcoypJ LTegjop,

                 -01 I'IIE

         U NLI TE'D STATEFS,

                  IWY



NJ-. F.



mYN JON,



Late KSulr- C0se (Jfajo-) 22d Aclitucky Vli/colucr Inyinal/ry.


             JUNE 2D, 4886.




             CINCINNATI.
             H. C. SHERICK & CO.
                 1886.

 This page in the original text is blank.

 





KENTUCKY NEUTRALITY IN i86i.



   What is now known on the map as the State of Ken-
tucky was, during our Revolutionary struggle, an appanage
of the then colony of Virginia; and in the year 1777 it was
organized by the House of Burgess as a county under the
name of Kentucky, and it was allowed two representatives
in the House of Burgess.  In 178i three counties were
organized out of the one-Fayette, Jefferson, and Lincoln--
with two representatives assigned to each county, the ter-
ritory still retaining its designation as Kentucky, but losing
its organization as a county. At the close of the Revolu-
tionary War, Virginia was encumbered with a heavy debt,
contracted mainly in the common defense of the Nation.
   The vast body of land north of the Ohio River -an
empire in extent-claimed by Virginia to be within her
chartered limits, she with singular magnanimity surren-
dered to the National Government-in trust-as a fund out
of which the general indebtedness, contracted during the
war, should be paid.  Out of this grant five States have
grown up, viz.: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and
Wisconsin. The lands of Kentucky were reserved by Vir-
ginia to aid in the liquidation of the debt to her own
citizens.
   In pursuance of this policy the Land Oflice of the State
was opened at Richmond, where patents were granted to
all who were able and willing to pay a nominal price per
acre, and then undergo the fatigue and additional expense of
a survey of the tract. A certificate of survey wias required
at the land office at Richmond to perfect the title. The State

 
-4 -



made no surveys, nor was it responsible for the accuracy
of any made.  It established no meridian line and no point
of departure for surveys. If the wit of man had been taxed
to devise a scheme to delude and defraud the unwary, none
more fertile could have been adopted.
   Fabulous stories of the fertility and beauty of the new
territory open for settlement spread over all the land, and
a steady stream of emigrants poured in, much the larger
portion of it from Virginia, each head of a family carrying
with him a land patent, with authority to locate and survey
any vacant or unoccupied land he might fancy.
   The inevitable result of this loose method of business
was reaped in after years in numerous land suits, when it
was found that all the more valuable portions of the State
was shingled with conflicting patents and interlapping lines
of survey three or four times over.
   The courts first held that the oldest patent carried the
land, but afterward, under the Occupying Claimant Laws
of the State, the same courts decided that a junior patent
with twenty years of occupancy held to the extent of its
survey and claim.
   From 1781 to I792 the influx of population into Ken-
tucky was very great, and through all those years there
was warm contention between the mother State and the
dependent territory as to the right of the latter to apply to
Congress for admittance into the Union as a co-equal
State.
   Kentucky was, in 1792, admitted as a State-first-born
of the new Nation--from the vast territory west of the
Allegheny range, and by the irony of fate it was made first
among sister States to sound the tocsin of revolt against the
Nation.  With no rights withheld or denied, with no
wrongs impending, the Legislature, in 1798, passed a
series of resolutions which were primarily intended as a
flank movement on the Presidential office; they were
adopted as a party shibboleth, and afterward elevated into
the dignity of a commentary on the Constitution, as of

 


more vital worth and force than the original text. This
root of bitterness-" source of unnumbered woes "--Ken-
tucky inherited from her mother State, Virginia.
   The influence of Virginia in controlling the political
action of Kentucky is shown in this, that in twenty-two
quadrennial elections for Governor of the State, from I 792
to i863 inclusive, eleven of them, half the whole number,
were Virginians by birth and education; and of the seven
Governors born in Kentucky, six of them were of Virginia
parentage; of the remaining four, two were born in Mary-
land, and one each in Pennsylvania and South Carolina.
When Virginia took snuff, Kentucky sneezed.

             DIVIDED PUBLIC SENTIMENT.

   The restraining influence of three men of Kentucky-Mr.
Clay, Mr. Crittenden, and Rev. Dr. R. J. Breckenridge-
did more to hold the State true to her National obligations
than all others combined. In the long, persistent, and un-
yielding fight of Mr. Clay against all forms of disloyalty
and disunion, he had the earnest and hearty co-operation
of Mr. Crittenden. A single expression in one of the last
speeches made by Mr. Clay in the Senate of the United
Slates, "1 I owe a supreme allegiance to the Government of
the United States, a subordinate allegiance to my State,"
sounded like the bugle-blast of boots and saddles to call his
adherents into line. And just at the most critical period, in
the spring and early summer of i86i, Dr. R. J. Brecken-
ridge addressed to the people of Kentucky a series of
essays of unanswered, of unanswerable cogency, urging
them to stand by the Nation, and to fill all just requisitions
for men and means to suppress the rebellion.
   Mr. Clay was in his grave, but one of his sons and two
of his grandsons were in the rebel armies. Mr. Crittenden,
devoted as he was to the perpetuity of the Nation, had a
son in each of the hostile armies. Of Dr. R. J. Brecken-
ridge's sons, two were in the Union, and two in the rebel

 
-6-



armies. Judge J. R. Underwood, who had been a repre-
sentative in Congress, for eight years on the Appellate
Bench, and then for six years Senator in Congress, was
loyal to the Nation. Two of his sons were in arms aiding
the rebellion.
   Daniel Breck, formerly member of the Legislature and
of Congress, and Judge of the Circuit and Appellate Courts,
stood by the Nation. His sons all were arrayed in arms in
behalf of rebellion. The Shelbys, the Garrards, the Scotts,
the Marshalls, the Hardins, the Helms, the Deshays, the
Johnsons, the Wickliffs, all of them leading, wealthy, and
influential families, were divided in sentiment and feeling,
and subsequently had representatives in both National and
Rebel armies.  The Letchers, the Owsleys, the Harlans,
the Goodlows, were all of them loyal.
   What was true of leading families was equally true of
all classes and grades of society throughout the State.

CONVENTION TO FORM A NEW CONSTITUTION IN 1849.

   In 1849 a convention was called to remodel the Consti-
tution. Additional guarantees were demanded for the con-
servation of slavery.
   The party favoring a system of gradual emancipation
formulated their platform as advocates of an open clause pro-
vision permitting the Legislature at an indefinite time in the
future to pass an ordinance of emancipation. They took
nothing by their motion, as they were compelled on the
stump to avow themselves as favorable to such an ordi-
nance. They met the fate usually accorded to men who
have not the courage of their convictions-a disastrous
defeat.
   In a body of one hundred men, but one man-Silas
Woodson, of Knox County-appeared as an advocate of an
open clause, and after events proved him to have been
unworthy of such an honor. He emigrated to Missouri,
and in the troublous Kansas and Nebraska times he was a

 
                         -7-
chief among "1 border ruffians," and at the close of the war
was elected Governor of the State.
   The convention met, deliberated long, discussed every
phase of governmental policy and power broached by man,
and finally established slavery on a firm and immutable
basis by Sections 2 and 3 in the Bill of Rights.
   The sections were drawn and presented to the conven-
tion by the Hon. Garratt Davis, and they were just as
potent guarantees in the maintenance of slavery as wvas the
clerical bull in suppressing the comet.
   Here they are:
   " SEC. 2. That absolute arbitrary power over the lives,
liberty, and property of freemen exists nowhere in a re-
public, not even in the largest majority.
   " SEC. 3. The right of property is before and higher than
any constitutional sanction, and the right of an owner of t
slave and its increase is the same, and as inviolable as the
right of the owner of any property whatever."
   These sections are but a dalliance with words, and were
intended to beguile and mislead the unwary. They are
based on the robber plea,
             "They may take who have the power,
               And they may keep who can."
   If the right of property is before and higher than any
constitutional sanction, how happens it that the most sacred
of all property rights-the right of man to himself-may be
violated by constitutional sanction The whole theory is
a palpably absurd dogma, in violation of natural and gov-
ernmental rights.
   As a fitting commentary of the text, I extract from a
bill presented by Mr. Davis-the same Mr. Davis-to the
Senate of the United States, December 26, i86i.  [See
Cong-ressional Globe.]
   "A bill declaring all persons to be alien enemies who
have taken any part in the government of the so-called
Southern Confederate States, or any operations or business

 

-8 -



connected with it, and all persons who have joined -the
army or navy, or any military organization or naval expe-
dition of said Confederation, or gotten up by its authority,
or in its name against the United States, and all persons
giving aid and comfort to said Confederation in the war
which it is now waging against the United States, and all
such persons to have forfeited to the United States their
whole property and estate of every description, including
debts, choses in action, and every legal and equitable right,
whether in possession or expectancy,"-a perfect drag net.
   Two propositions more antagonistic in character-
emanating from the same pen-cannot be found in all the
domains of legal lore.  By the first Mr. Davis hoped to
arrest all discussion of the slavery question in Kentucky,
and by the latter to frighten rebels from further aggressive
warfare on the nation.
   Professor Shaler, in his recent history of Kentucky,
represents the discussion of the slavery question of that day
as temperate in character. Was it so when Cassius Clay's
press was taken down by a mob at Lexington and shipped
to Cincinnati Was it so when Bailey's press and type
were sunk to the bottom of the river at Newport  Was it
so when an eminent legal gentleman of this city was made
the victim of a shameful outrage on the streets of Covington
for defending a fugitive slave woman in the courts here, as
was his right
   The grandest, the most imposing exhibition of aerial
warfare is that of the storm cloud and the electric element.
I can recall no displays of nature that more aptly illustrates
the action of the slavery sentiment and feeling in Kentucky
at that period. It zig-zagged its way through all the frame-
work of society, scorching, burning, tearing, and rending
communities into opposing and hostile factions, each armed
with gleaming sword and burning brand, ready for mortal
fray.

 
-9 -



                  KENTUCKY IN I859.

   At the general election of i859, Beriah Magoffin was
chosen Governor, and the same wave of popular sentiment
that carried him into the executive chair took with him a
majority ot the Legislature of his political sentiment.
   On the outbreak of rebellion in i86i, the executive
branch of the Government of Kentucky was found to be in
full sympathy and accord with it, as is proven by the re-
sponse of the Governor to President Lincoln's call for
troops to aid in its suppression:
                         FRANKFORT, Ky., April i6, i86i.
HON. SIMON CAMERON, Secretary at War:
    Your dispatch is received. In answer, I say emphatically that
Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of sub-
duing our sister Southern States.
                                    B. MAGOFFIN,
                                  Governor of Kentucky.
   That was the official response to a legal and proper call
from his official superior, who was but exercising an irre-
missible duty.
   The response was curt and blunt enough to indicate the
feelings and purpose of His Excellency, but it was not so
curt as the spontaneous verbal response-as reported by
the papers of the day on reading the telegram-" Tell old
Abe to go to hell, and I'll go to my dinner."

              KENTUCKY STATE MILITIA.

   In the olden times Kentucky had a system of military
enrollment and drill which was a burlesque on tactics,
subordination, and duty. It had no useful results; its chief
defect was to fill the land with hosts of be-feathered and
epauletted officers, who were worthless, inefficient, and in-
competent to set a squadron in the field. For fifteen years
before the rebellion it had gone into the stage of " innoc-
uous desuetude."

 
- IO-



   The Legislature of '59-'60 amended the military laws of
the State, consolidated all the independent uniform com-
panies of the State into one organization, under the name
of the Kentucky State Guard, and the arms and equip-
ments for this body-between twelve and fifteen thousand
strong-were drawn from the National armories with the
deliberate intention to use them against the Nation.
   Simon Boliver Buckner was made Inspector-General of
the State, and Commander-in-Chief of all State troops, and
this body formed the nucleus of all the rebel force that went
into rebellion from Kentucky, John H. Morgan's command
being the first detachment to abandon the State.
   Let the following letter say what manner of man Simon
Boliver Buckner proved himself to be:
                     BOWLING GREEN, Ky., Sept. I9, i86i.
MR. GEORGE W. TRIPLETT:
    My Dear Sir-Yours is received.  Lock No. I must be de-
stroyed. I rely on our friends at Owensboro to do it; not an hour
must be lost. The destruction is a great deal to me in crippling
our adversary.  Assemble our friends without delay in sufficient
force to accomplish the object. If possible, it should be done in
such a way as to leave a strong current through the lock, which will
empty the dam. Provide everything in advance. Do not fail; it
is worth an effort.               S. B. BUCKNER.
                               [Without his Official Signature.]
   This letter, together with his unconditional surrender of
Fort Donelson, will preserve his name from oblivion.

               THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY.

   Resolutions passed by the General Assembly of Ken-
tucky January 2 1, I 86i;
   "Ist. That the General Assembly has heard with pro-
found regret of the resolutions of the States of New York,
Ohio, Maine, and Massachusetts, tendering to the Presi-
dent men and money to be used in coercing sovereign
States of the South into obedience to the Federal Govern-
ment.

 
- II -



   " 2d. And declaring, and so notifying them, that when
those States should send armed forces to the South for such
purpose, the people of Kentucky, uniting with their brethren
of the South, will as one man resist invasion of the soil of
the South at all hazards, and to the last extremity"

   Thus it will be seen that the Executive and Legislative
Departments of the State Government wvere fully committed
to hostility to the Government of the Nation, and it will
also be seen that the military power of the State, together
with all the arms of the State, were in the hands of a man
prompt to resort to any and every means of aggressive war-
fare on the nation. The day of the publication of the
Buckner-Triplett letter I was in Frankfort and a witness to
the consternation occasioned by its premature publication,
as it fully unmasked the rebel policy. They were willing
to abide by neutrality so long as it subserved their designs,
but the instant it failed to do so they disregarded it.

              A PERSONAL REMINISCENCE.
   My elder brother was at that time managing editor of
the Franlfor t _reomnu, the most pronounced, outspoken
rebel sheet in the State. I called at his office and was
directed to his room.
   " How are you, Ben What has brought you to the
capital just now"
   -To tender my services as a surgeon in the army,"'
was my reply.
   " You had better go home and attend to the interests of
your family. The South can not be conquered. I wish,"
said he, " to talk with you seriously. Here we will be sub-
jected to constant interruption. Will you walk out wvith
me"
   We walked the streets of Frankfort and defined our
separate positions.  He was my senior in years. I had
ever regarded him as my senior in all things. It comes to
most men once at least in a lifetime to assert their person-

 
-12-



ality, and that period reached me then and there. His first
remark to me was that he was sorry to find me ready to
join in an abolition war to overthrow slavery. My response
to him was, "Tom, stop just there. You have known me
for years as a slave-owning, anti-slavery man, and now I
have to say that, so far as I am personally concerned, slavery
may be damned.    Try another tack."  Then the effort
was to convince me that ten millions of people standing on
their own soil, united and determined, could not be con-
quered.
   "You assume," said I, "more than I will grant. All
their union is that enforced by despotic power; break that,
and the frame-work of the rebellion will tumble to pieces;
but, setting that aside, the Government has been most
wantonly assailed, and must, if it hopes to live and have
the respect of the world, vindicate its dignity and rights."
" How vindicate rights," said he, "with a soldiery that will
not fight" Looking over the country and the battles
fought, and naming Bull Run, Ball's Bluff, and Big Bethel
-others he did not mention-he said he had reached the
conclusion that the Nation had no leaders fit for command,
and that Yankee soldiers had no iron in their blood.  To
which I responded: "s If you mean to impute cowardice to
an entire section of the Nation, I am sorry to say to you
that partisan rancour has usurped the seat of justice and
of judgment in your mind, and we had better adjourn our
discussion."  I reminded him that our grandfather had
been a soldier in the Revolutionary struggle, that our father
had shouldered his musket in the War of i8i2, and said to
him that I would be bastard to their blood when I failed
to follow in their footsteps.
   At this stage of our controversy we had reached the
front of a leading hardware house in the city. He stepped
into the store and returned in half a minute with a beauti-
ful pearl-handled pocket-knife, and said: " Now, Ben, we
can't agree on these questions, let us agree to disagree; but
I hope you will accept this little gift as a pledge of personal

 
                        - 3-
amity between us," and he laid the implement in the palm
of my hand.
   Looking at the gift, an incident of the long past was re-
called to my memory. When he was twelve and I was
ten, a negro girl living in the family came into the family
room one winter morning, and with smiling face said:
"1 Massa Tom, I'se got a volentine, and I wants you to read
the writins on it fur me." It was but two lines:

                If you loves me as I loves you,
                No knife can cut our loves in two."

   The lines instantly popped into my mind, and I re-
peated them. The memory of the long past incident and
its pat application at the moment served to assuage any ris-
ing acerbity of feeling, and we had our laugh over it. We
met as brothers ever should on the level, and we parted as
brothers ever should on the square-he to pursue his
course, and I mine.
   He was a man of extensive and varied reading; he
wielded a facile and trenchant pen; on the platform and
on the hustings he was an able debater. His knowledge
of the political history of the nation and of its leading men
was not surpassed by any one in all the land. He was the
trusted friend of Clay, of Crittenden, and of Corwin; but
when the supreme hour of the nation's peril and agony
came, he abandoned the teachings of those great leaders
of men. "' Madness ruled the hour."
   He lived long enough to know that at Island No. IO, at
Memphis, and at New Orleans, the Fresh-water Navy of
the Confederacy had been annihilated; long enough to
know that at Vicksburg and at Port Hudson the bi-section
of the Confederacy had been made complete and pernia-
nent, and that henceforth the Father of Waters would flow
to the gulf unvexed by the rage of man. He lived to know
that at Gettysburg the serried hosts of rebellion had been
hurled back to their Virginia stronghold,
            -"With hideous ruin and combustion."-

 
                        - 14-
   He lived to know that at Chickamauga and at Chatta-
nooga a long, long stride had been taken in the tri-section
of the Confederacy. He lived to know that the nation had
found leaders fit for command, and that those leaders had
found soldiers with iron in their blood, and that those
commanders and soldiers had driven cold iron deep into
the vitals of the Confederacy. And then he died. All his
hopes were blasted. " The silver cord was loosed; the
golden bowl was broken at the fountain."  He had many
noble, generous, and magnanimous traits of character, and
my tongue shall cleave to the roof of my mouth before I
shall attempt to disparage them.

                  SLAVERY-PER SE.
   Slavery in its economic and financial aspects exercised
quite as controlling an influence on society, as in its political
relations it did on partisan policy.
   The census report of i86o gives the total population of
Kentucky at I,155,684 persons, and the slave population
at 225,483 persons; nearly one-fifth of the total population
were slaves; and the same report fixes the value of slave
property in the State at a little under one-fourth of the total
value of all property in the State. Assuming the average
value of each slave to have been 400 in i86o, it gives
90,093,200 as their money value at that time. That
Mr. Lincoln, two years later, when slave property had
greatly depreciated, should have offered three hundred
dollars for each slave emancipated is, I think, conclusive
evidence that my estimate is not too high. Mr. Lincoln's
offer, under authority of an act of Congress, was sixty-seven
millions six hundred and forty-four thousand and nine
hundred dollars. Either sum was large enough to contend
for by men already spoiling for a fight.
   At the outbreak of the rebellion I was a slave owner,
made such by the accidents of birth and marriage, and
under the laws of descent; but no man ever heard from me
any justification of slavery. I ever held it to be an un-

 
-'5-



mitigated wrong. In I849 I acted with the emancipation
party, and in i865 1 issued an address to the voters of
Boone County, Ky., from which I read:

    TO THE VOTERS OF BOONE COUNTY, ZENTUCKY.
    At the earnest solicitation of a number of original Union
men of the county, I hereby announce myself a candidate to re-
present Boone County in the lower branch of the Legislature of
Kentucky. I have accepted the position with the distinct under-
standing that I shall not be expected to engage in an active per-
sonal canvass of the county; domestic considerations imperatively
forbid my doing so. Respect for the people demands from me a
full and explicit declaration of the principles which have heretofore,
and will in the future, govern my political action. I will endeavor
to make it so plain that there shall be no grounds for present
misrepresentation or future misunderstanding.
     I am now, as I have been from the beginning of our political
troubles, unconditionally in favor of maintaining the unity, the
integrity, and the perpetuity of the Government of the United
States, over all the national domain. Because-
     1st. My political education taught me that " I owe a supreme
allegiance to the General Government, a subordinate one to my
State ;" and as a corollary therefrom, that secession is treason.
     2d. I have never received any wrong from the National
Government, but, on the contrary, and always, protection to
person and property.
    3d. I have never been able to conceive of any wrongs in the
Government comparable to those which, in my judgment, are in-
evitable from disunion.
    On the slavery question I seek no concealments, and will re-
sort to no subterfuges to secure votes. As an abstract question of
justice and right, it is indefensible.  In its politico-economical
aspects, the highest official authority of the State-Governor Bram-
lette-has pronounced it not only worthless, but burdensome; and in
this judgment most men now concur. In its social and domestic
relations, its concubinage, its debaucheries, its enforced ignorance,
its cruelties, its disregard of the natural ties of parent and offspring
-all its inseparable incidents-it is abhorrent to the instinct and
judgment of the just-thinking portion of mankind. Since first en-

 



dowed with the power of thought and reflection, I have ever held
the integrity of the Government as of infinitely more worth than
slavery.
    In I849, being then a slave owner, I voted in favor of a
system of gradual emancipation in Kentucky. The propriety of
that vote has been vindicated on every battle-field of the rebel-
lion. HaB that policy then prevailed, it would have given a
guaranty to the world that slavery was in process of extinction;
it would have taken from the disloyalists of the State the potent
argument of a community of interests with those seeking a dis-
memberment of the nation; it would have deprived them of the
question of a natural boundary afforded by the great river which
sweeps along our Northern limits; and it would probably have
prevented a war which has swept into the vortex of ruin the
material resources of eleven States of the Union, and which has
draped the entire land in mourning.
    For the emasculated loyalty of i86i, which under the leader-
ship of Breckenridge and Magoffin, of Powell and Buckner, and
which proposed to stand mute and neuter in the presence of an
armed rebellion which was stabbing at the vitals of the nation,
I entertained neither respect nor sympathy. Neutrality with
them was treason masked. Every measure of the legal author-
ities, State or National, designed to crush the rebellion has had
my earnest, thorough, and radical support; and I am radical
still in my desire to extirpate from the land the seminal principle
of future rebellions, and also to compel all men who claim the
protection of a citizen under the national flag to acknowledge
their allegiance to the National Government.
    If chosen your representative, I will vote in favor of the
amendment to the National Constitution forever forbidding slavery
in the national limits.
    A political defeat on the issues presented, with conscious
loyalty, is with me more desirable than would be a triumphant
election entertaining feelings of hostility to the unity and perpetuity
of my government.       Respectfully,
                                       B. F. STEVENSON.
     BURLINGTON, Ky., July 2 2d, I 865.



- i6-

 -17 -



                STATE SOVEREIGNTY.

   On the i8th of December, i86i, two hundred men, re-
fugees from their homes, assembled at Russellville, Logan
County, Ky., and after one day of deliberation adopted a
constitution, which they proclaimed as the Constitution of
the State; and under it they elected George W. Johnson,
of Scott County, Provisional Governor of the State. The
body also elected ten citizens of Kentucky as an Executive
Committee as follows:
i. Willis B. Machen,         6. Elijah Burnside,
2. John W. Crockett,         7. Horatio Bruce,
3. Philip B. Thompson,       8. Eli M. Bruce,
4. James P. Bates,           9. James W. Moore,
5. James S. Chrisman,       1o. George B. Hodge.
   Geo. B. Hodge resigned, and S. S. Scott was appointed
in his stead.
   In this body was vested all the legislative and executive
authority of the State.
   The convention appointed Henry C. Burnett, William
Preston, and William E. Sims as commissioners to ne-
gotiate an alliance with the Confederate States.
   As a result of that negotiation, Kentucky was admitted
into the Confederacy December Io, i86i, by the following
ordinance:
   "An act for the admission of the State of Kentucky into
the Confederate States of America as a member thereof.
   " SEC. i. The Congress of the Confederate States of
America do enact that the State of Kentucky be and is
hereby admitted as a member of the Confederate States of
America on an equal footing with the other States of the
Confederacy.
   "Approved December lo, i86i."
   The following gentlemen were elected as Representa-
tives or Members of the Provisional Congress from Ken-
tucky:

 
-i8-



i. Henry C. Burnette,      6. Thomas Johnson,
2. John Thomas,              7. Samuel H. Ford,
3. Theo. L. Burnette,      8. Thomas B. Monroe,
4. George W. Ewing,          9. John M. Elliott,
5. Daniel P. White,        io. George B. Hodge.
   The council of ten divided the State of Kentucky into
twelve Congressional Districts, and provided for their
election by the State at large of persons to represent these
districts in the first permanent Congress of the Confederate
States.
   Voting places were provided for, and on the designated
day an election was held in the counties within the lines
of the Confederate army, resulting in the choice of the
following:
i. Willis B. Machen,       7. Horatio W. Bruce,
2. John W. Crockett,       8. George B. Hodge,
3. Henry E. Read,            9. Eli M. Bruce,
4. George W. Ewing,       IO. James W. More,
5. James S. Chrisman,     i i. J. R. Breckenridge, Jr.
6. Theo. L. Burnette,     12. John M. Elliott.
   These gentlemen took their seats in the first permanent
Congress of the Confederate Government, and all of them
voted to enforce the conscription throughout Kentucky.
   The council of ten elected Henry C. Burnette and
William E. Simms to serve for six years in the Confederate
Senate; and in due time proclamation was made that Ken-
tucky of her own free will and choice had joined the Con-
federacv, and was therefore a State in full membership.
This action was all of it a wanton and flagrant outrage on
all their professed principles of State sovereignty. Ken-
tucky had at the time a Governor dejaure who was Gover-
nor defacto and in office; she had a legally elected Legis-
lature then in session, and they alone had the right to take
action in the premises.
   The duplicity, the folly, and the fraud of the entire move-
ment was so transparent as only to have merited the con-

 
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tempt of the world, but for the grave complications which
speedily ensued.
   Beriah Magoffin, writing of the body that assumed to
act for the State at large, says: " I condemn its action in
unqualified terms.  Self-constituted as it was, and without
authority from the people, it can not be justified by similar
revolutionary acts in other States by minorities to over-
throw State Governments. I condemned their action, and
I condemn the action of this one."
   General Burnside, when in command of the Department
of the Ohio, caused the arrest of Thomas C. Magraw in
Harrison County, Ky. He was arrested as a spy, tried as
a spy, convicted as a spy, and subsequently executed as a
spy. The rebel authorities made strenuous, persistent
efforts to save the man, claiming Kentucky to be a portion
of th