The Southern States of America
The History of Kentucky - Chapter II

KENTUCKY FROM 1792 TO 1865.

Steps to Statehood.

The peculiar circumstances characterizing the erection of Kentucky into one of the states of the Federal Union render it necessary to give a brief review of its settlement before entering upon its history as a separate commonwealth.

The original thirteen colonies were organized before anything definite was known of the territory now embraced within its limits or of that extending westward to the Pacific. It was the hunting ground of various hostile tribes of Indians, and it was not until Dr. Thomas Walker, in 1750, and Col. Christopher Gist, in 1751, made their explorations that there existed any definite knowledge of its topography or other features which later proved so alluring to the immigrant from the east. Even then, it was not until 1769 that it was first visited by Daniel Boone, and no permanent habitation was erected until 1774 when James Harrod and a few other Virginians made a settlement at what is now Harrodsburg in the central portion of the state. A year later the fort at Boonesborough, not far distant, was built and became the nucleus of other similar defensive stations, by means of which tenure of the territory was maintained against the combined efforts of the Indians and the British.

The settlement of Kentucky is invested with an interest not merely from its local bearing and its rapid growth from an uninhabited wilderness to a new member of the Republic, but from its influence in promoting the settlement of the west and in winning to the Federal control the vast territorial area now comprising the states of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and that part of Minnesota east of the Mississippi, through the genius of George Rogers Clark, one of its early pioneers. The achievement of this great leader who, with a mere handful of backwoodsmen, while not yet thirty years of age, wrested this territory from the British in 1779, cannot be overestimated in its influence upon the rapid settlement of the West and the cause of American independence. Nor was the civic growth of Kentucky less remarkable in its otherwise rapid development. The first movement looking to the establishment of local self-government was the meeting of the House of Delegates or Representatives of the Colony of Transylvania at Boonesborough on May 23. 1775. composed of delegates from the following settlements: Boonesborough, Harrodsburg, Boiling Springs and St. Asaphs, all comprised in a limited territorial area. The list of delegates included the names of many who afterwards bore a conspicuous part in the history of the state. The meeting was called by Richard Henderson, president of the Transylvania Company composed of North Carolinians, who had, on March 17 previous, purchased from the Cherokee Indians, by treaty held at Watauga, in East Tennessee, that part of Kentucky south of the Kentucky River. All the formalities of a parliament were observed, including an opening address from Colonel Henderson and a formal response from Thomas Slaughter, the presiding officer. Various acts were passed, such as establishing courts, regulating the militia, to prevent profane swearing and Sabbath breaking, and for preserving the game and improving the breed of horses. But the session was brief, as later proved the life of the government sought to be organized. Virginia claimed priority of title to the land by virtue of the treaty of Fort Stanwix, New York, Nov. 5, 1768, by which the Cherokees had sold to that colony all their lands in Kentucky and declared the Henderson purchase void. North Carolina also repudiated the claim, but both commonwealths, in view of the service rendered by the Henderson Company in promoting the settlement of the west, donated to it a tract of 200,000 acres of land. That of Virginia was located at the mouth of Green River, Kentucky, comprising in part the present county of Henderson, while North Carolina contributed an equal quantity of rich lands in Powell's Valley at the base of the Cumberland Mountains in East Tennessee.

The impetus given to the settlement of Kentucky by the incoming of the Henderson Company was in no measure checked by its dissolution, but with the foothold gained by the establishment of the nucleus of stations and forts, not far distant from Boonesborough, was maintained by the bravery of the pioneers who successfully resisted the efforts of the Indians and their British allies to prevent their occupation of the country. The story of the heroic struggle of the pioneers of Kentucky during the American Revolution and for more than a decade after its close is one of unparalleled courage and fortitude, involving, as it did, not only the defense of their immediate firesides but the conquest of the northwest from the British and the protection of the pioneers thereto from Indian and Canadian aggression.

Virginia, assuming jurisdiction over the territory embraced in Kentucky was not slow in organizing civil government therein. From the start it was held as part of Fincastle county, but on Dec. 6, 1776, the legislature of Virginia established the county of Kentucky, and in the following April burgesses were chosen to represent it, the first court being established at Harrodsburg in September of that year. On Nov. 1, 1780, the county of Kentucky was divided into three counties, Jefferson, Lincoln and Fayette, each with a colonel, lieutenant-colonel and surveyor; and thence every few years afterwards additional counties were organized, the civil government gradually supplanting the more primitive methods. Meantime the tide of immigration, chiefly from Virginia, was steadily increasing, embracing many men of prominence in their former homes and others who subsequently achieved distinction in their new one. The roll embraces too many of merit to admit of singling out a few for illustration. Upon these brave pioneers was imposed the task, not only of forming a civil government, but of protecting the lives of their families from the savage Indian tribes of the northwest, stimulated in their desire to recover posses, sion of their hunting grounds by the British who, utilizing them as part of their military force in the colonial war, added to their barbarities by a bounty for the scalps of the settlers. It was not until 1783 that the Indians were sufficiently subdued to exempt the territory of Kentucky from organized invasion, while, for more than a decade later, small predatory bodies made life unsafe in every part of the territory occupied. The close of the Revolutionary War brought but little relief to the pioneers. The British, in violation of the treaty of peace which secured independence of the colonies, refused to give up the forts of the northwest territory until 1795, and it was not until the victory of Wayne at Fallen Timbers, in 1794, followed by the treaty of peace with the Northwest Indians at Greenville, Ohio, Aug. 3, 1795, that Kentucky was relieved of both defensive and aggressive measures against the savages for the sanctity of their homes.

Notwithstanding these adverse conditions, an early sentiment was manifested by the pioneers in favor of the organization of the territory as an independent colony.

In 1784 the first convention looking to the establishment of a separate government was held at Danville with ten successive ones, at intervals, until its final admission as a state in 1792. Thus it will be seen that within nine years after the erection of the fort at Boonesborough the pioneers of Kentucky began an organized movement for the erection of the territory into a separate government and eight years later perfected its organization as a state, and it was admitted as the fifteenth member of the Federal Union with a census population of 73,677.

The Constitutional History of Kentucky.

The constitutional history of Kentucky from its admission into the Union as a state until the War of Secession, and to the present date, is easy of comprehension, having been simply an evolution of the conditions of its original organization as a state to those which now prevail. The first constitution which went into effect June 1, 1792, followed the lines of governmental principles and policies of the parent commonwealth. It required, however, but a very brief period of experience to demonstrate that, in many of its provisions, it fell short of putting into practical operation the advanced principles of constitutional liberty which had been won by the colonies by their successful struggle during the Revolution.

The act of the Virginia legislature which finally led to the erection of Kentucky as a separate state is what is known in Kentucky as the "Compact with Virginia," entitled "An act concerning the erection of the District of Kentucky into an independent state, approved Dec. 18, 1789." This provided that in the month of May, 1790, on the respective court days of the several counties, then numbering nine, viz.: Jefferson, Nelson, Mercer, Lincoln, Madison, Fayette, Woodford, Bourbon and Mason, there should be elected from each county five representatives to a convention to be held in Danville July 26, 1790, "to consider and determine whether it be expedient for and the will of the good -people of the said district that the same be erected into an independent state," upon terms later prescribed as to boundary, land grants and other details. The act further provided that if the convention should approve the erection of the district into an independent state, on the terms prescribed, it should fix a day after the 1st of November, 1791, on which the authority of Virginia should cease and the compact become mutually binding upon the parties, and unalterable by either without the consent of the other. This was coupled with a proviso that prior to the 1st of November, 1791, the General Government of the United States should assent to the erection of the said district into a separate state, releasing Virginia from all obligations arising from the said district, as being a part thereof, and agree that the proposed state should, immediately after the day fixed posterior to the 1st of November, 1791, or at some convenient future day, be admitted into the Federal Union.

This was the third act of Virginia consenting to the separation of Kentucky, the first having been in January, 1786, and the second in the following October, but it met with no favorable response from the Federative Congress. Finally that body having previously provided for the admission of Vermont as a state on March 4, 1792, passed an act on the 4th day of February, 1791, to admit Kentucky into the Union on the first day of June, 1792.

The First Constitution.

In accordance with the provisions of this act the first constitution of Kentucky was formed by a convention which met for that purpose at Danville, April 13, 1792, being the tenth convention which had been held looking to its establishment as a separate commonwealth since 1784. By its provisions it was to become operative as provided by the foregoing act of Congress, June 1, 1792. There were, at that time, nine counties, as before enumerated, the present number being 120. The salient features of this organic law were : first, universal suffrage, "all free male citizens of the age of twenty-one years being entitled to vote who had resided in the state two years, and in the county in which they offered to vote one year next before the election" - the first instance in which the principle of unlimited suffrage, now of quite universal recognition in America, was put into practice. Members of the House of Representatives were elected by the direct vote of the people, but the governor and senators were chosen by electors equal to the number of representatives chosen by the people.

The first General Assembly met at Lexington on June 4, 1792, and on the 6th Isaac Shelby, who with his father, Gen. Evan Shelby, a native of Wales, had borne a prominent part in the Revolutionary and Indian wars, having been previously elected governor, delivered his first message orally, as was the custom in England and America at that day. The first act passed was one establishing an auditor's office and the second one creating the county of Washington from a portion of the county of Nelson. Thirty-seven acts in all were passed at this session, among them two for the establishment of Shelby and Logan counties, the former being taken from Jefferson and the latter from Lincoln. The final act of the session was passed June 29, 1792. The second, an adjourned session, was held at Lexington Nov. 15, 1792, the last act of which, passed Dec. 22, 1792, provided that the next session should be held at Frankfort, which had been fixed by a commission as the capital of the state on Nov. 1, 1793, at the house of Andrew Holmes. This was known later as the Love house, a large double frame dwelling which remained an object of historic interest until 1870, when it was torn down to give place to a modern residence. Since then Frankfort has continued to be the capital, although for more than half a century strenuous efforts were made, at intervals, to remove the seat of government to Lexington or Louisville. Latterly such efforts have been discontinued, and a new capitol, costing about $1,500,000, is nearing completion, insuring Frankfort's continuance as the seat of government indefinitely. The present State House, soon to be vacated, a classic stone edifice of the Parthenon order of architecture, the sixth in which the legislature has held its meetings, was completed in 1829, and in it has been held all the legislative meetings since, except in the autumn of 1862 when a session was adjourned to Louisville in consequence of the invasion of Kentucky by a Confederate army under General Bragg, which was, for a time, in possession of the capital.

The Second Constitution.

It required but a brief period after the inauguration of the new government and the practical exercise of its constitutional provisions to develop a very general objection to some of them. While that relating to unlimited suffrage, in the sphere provided, was in keeping with the spirit of individual cooperation which has enabled the pioneers to win their victory over the opposing savages and the physical obstacles encountered in the planting of civilization in a wilderness, the restriction of suffrage in the choice of the executive, the senate and the judiciary, by electors instead of by the direct vote of the people, developed an early opposition. In addition to these features was a provision which gave to the Supreme Court original and final jurisdiction in all land cases which in its practical operation led to very general objection. It was net long, therefore, before there was a strong sentiment in favor of another constitutional convention to correct these objectionable features. Several attempts were made towards attaining this end, but it was not until 1798 that the requisite two-thirds majority of both houses in the legislature was obtained providing for it, and on July 22, 1799, the second constitutional convention met at Frankfort. The new constitution was adopted August 17. Its provisions remedied the principal objections to the first. The governor and senators were made eligible by the direct vote of the people. The jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals was limited to cases of appeal from inferior courts, and while judges of both were still to be appointed by the governor, for reasonable cause, not sufficient for impeachment, they were made removable by him upon the address of two-thirds of each House of the General Assembly. The governor, upon whose reelection there was no restriction in the first constitution, was made ineligible for the succeeding seven years after the time of his election. The office of lieutenant-governor, for which there was no provision in the first convention, was created by the second, with the same qualifications as the governor. The new constitution became operative June 1, 1800. James Garrard, who had been elected governor in 1796, as successor to Governor Shelby by a bare majority over Benjamin Logan, was again elected in 1800, the only instance of a governor of Kentucky having succeeded himself by consecutive elections. Governor Shelby was again reelected governor in 1812, since which time no governor has served two full terms.

The Third and Fourth Constitutions.

The third constitution of Kentucky was adopted by a convention which met at Frankfort Oct. 1, 1849, a half century after the adoption of the second one, and it bears date June 11, 1850. The salient features in which it differed from the previous one consisted, first, in making all officers, state and county, including the judiciary, elective, and incorporating the system of common school education as a constitutional, instead of legislative, subject, and providing for the election of a superintendent of public instruction, provisions, the necessity of which had long been felt. In the matter of contracting debts the legislature was limited to $500,000, except "to repel invasion, suppress insurrection, or, if hostilities are threatened, to provide for the public defense," coupled with a provision that the General Assembly should have no power to pass any act or resolution for the appropriation of any money, or the creation of any debt exceeding the sum of $100 unless the same, on its final passage, should be voted for by a majority of all the members elected to each branch of the General Assembly, and requiring the yeas and nays to be entered upon the journal. These were very salutary provisions, prohibiting such large expenditures as had been made in railroad construction, slack water navigation and the like. The granting of divorces, changing of names of individuals and permission for the sale of estates of infants or persons under legal disability were also taken from the legislature and relegated to the courts of justice.

The fourth constitution was adopted in convention at Frankfort Sept. 28, 1891, after an interval of forty-one years since the adoption of the preceding one. Its salient feature is the recognition in the organic law of the changes effected by the war in regard to the negro and previously observed by the legislature. In all his legal rights he is placed on an equality with the white, with no restriction as to suffrage, testimony or participation in the benefits of the common school fund, except as to the latter, separate schools are provided for the two races. The most notable change occurs in the manner of voting. Under previous constitutions the viva voce system was the method prescribed for all elections. The new constitution inaugurated the Australian ballot. In some respects the change has been salutary as protecting, by its secret feature, the independence of the voter, but the system has shown defects in its cumbersome machinery and has not as fully eliminated the matter of suffrage from fraudulent manipulation as was hoped. Another feature of the new instrument is that while it restricts the legislature in regard to many subjects hitherto under its control, it has embodied in the organic law a large mass not limited to principles prescribing the bounds of legislation, but having more the semblance of a fixed code of legislation repealable or amendable only by another constitutional convention.

The Resolutions of '98.

The success of the second constitutional convention in meeting the political views of the people was shown by the fact that a full half century elapsed before there was a revision of the fundamental law of the state. There was a concurrence in the adoption of that instrument with the political revolution in national politics by which the Federal party, which had for three terms controlled the presidency and dominated the political policies of the period, suffered defeat in the election of Jefferson over John Adams in 1800, and the Democratic party began its long career under the leadership of the author of the Declaration of Independence. In that memorable contest Kentucky played a conspicuous part in the adoption, by the legislature in November, 1798, of what are known as the Kentucky Resolutions of '98. They were introduced and strongly advocated by John Breckinridge, a Virginian who had moved to Kentucky in 1793, and taken a high position at the bar-the grandfather of Vice-President John C. Breckinridge, United States Senator, 1801-05, attorney-general in Mr. Jefferson's Cabinet, 1805-06. During the months of June and July previous to the introduction of these resolutions there had been passed by Congress the famous Alien and Sedition acts, the first empowering the President to banish any foreigner who should speak abusively of him or the Congress, and the second prescribing, as a penalty, fine and imprisonment upon any citizen who should speak severely against either. It was under the latter law that Matthew Lyon, then a member of Congress from Vermont and later from Kentucky, was, in October, 1798, expelled from Congress, fined $1,000 and sentenced to jail for four months for having severely criticized President Adams in a newspaper published by him. This aroused the people to a sense of the unconstitutionality of these acts, and Mr. Jefferson took active measures in opposition to them. In the autumn of that year a conference was held at Monticello at which were present Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Breckinridge, W. C. Nicholas, of Virginia, and, perhaps, Mr. Madison. As a result, Mr. Jefferson was requested to draw resolutions condemnatory of these acts as unconstitutional, to be presented by Mr. Breckinridge to the Kentucky legislature. This was done, but Mr. Breckinridge, exercising a conceded right, made sundry alterations, particularly in eliminating the nullification feature from the original and justly entitling him to the credit of authorship. That they were ably presented is evidenced by the fact that they passed the House with but one dissenting vote and the Senate unanimously.

Much misrepresentation and misconception of these resolutions have existed in the general charge and belief that they favored the doctrine of nullification or implied a purpose of resistance to Federal authority. A just view will ascribe to them but a purpose to enter a solemn protest against the exercise of the power sought to be conferred upon the Federal executive, and the use of moral rather than revolutionary means to effect a remedy. That this was done is sufficiently attested by history. The Federal party had administered the government for twelve years under a loose construction of the constitution during the last presidential term, and the introduction of these resolutions proved to be the basis of the organization of the Democratic party, the election of Jefferson and all succeeding presidents, except three, for sixty years.

The School System.

For some years prior to the formation of the third constitution it had become evident that a revision of the existing one was necessary to meet the growing wants of the increased population, and the more progressive ideas in regard to the administration of public interests. There was, in that instrument, no provision for a public school system and many restrictions upon the power of the people in various respects in which other states had demonstrated the wisdom of better methods. While the state had early enjoyed the foundation of universities, colleges and seminaries for higher education by the various religious sects, or through individual promotion, there was no adequate provision for the education of the young beyond the primary or other schools with a fee for tuition. The legislature had at various times, from an early period, donated lands for the benefit of seminaries and other educational institutions, and in 1838 had enacted a law for the establishment of a general system of common schools in Kentucky, and Congress had two years previously apportioned about $15,000,000 of surplus money in the treasury to several states in the form of a loan, of which Kentucky's share was $1,433,757, the greater part of which became and remains a part of the bonded assets of our public system. But notwithstanding a commendable zeal shown by those in charge of the public school system in its crude condition, there was but little progress made towards its efficient organization until it became a part of the organic law by the action of the convention which framed the third constitution. In addition to a provision that a superintendent of public instruction should be elected by the people at the same time with the governor and for the same term of years, the organization of the school system, by constitutional provision, instead of by mere legislative act subject to repeal or change at each meeting of the General Assembly, gave an impetus to the cause of education which prospered notwithstanding the injurious effects of the War of Secession and the great drawback to its efficiency in the mountain region of the state from its sparse population and inadequate roads. For a long time the percentage of taxation for school purposes was but two cents on the hundred dollars, but it has from time to time been raised until it is now, by constitutional provision, at the rate of twenty-two cents with the power of additional taxation in cities or other school districts which, by popular vote, may so decide. There has been a steady advance in the improvement of the system since the war, the negro children sharing equally with the whites in the privileges for education, the only distinction made being that which provides separate schools for the two races. There are state normal schools for each race, that for the negroes is located at Frankfort and has been in successful operation for nearly a score of years. The two schools for whites have but recently been organized, the eastern at Richmond and the western at Bowling Green, supplanting one formerly attached to the State University at Lexington. At the 1908 session of the legislature the following appropriations were made for these institutions in addition to the existing provisions: $200,000 for the State University; $150,000 each for eastern and western Normal Schools, and $40,000 for the Colored Normal School. For the general operation of the common school system provision is made for primary, graded, high schools, normal schools and universities. In the larger towns and cities, gratifying evidence of its success is to be seen in the excellence of the buildings, the esprit de corps of the pupils and the steady advance in all the departments of the system. In the rural districts which, from the different conditions, cannot give such visual demonstrations, there is a proportionate advance in the line of educational improvement. The legislature of 1908 enacted a law placing the schools outside of cities in charge of a board of education in each county which in other states has proved very effective in promoting the interests of education.

In addition to the provision made for the education of children under the common school system, Kentucky maintains state schools for the feebleminded, for the blind and for the deaf and dumb, which have been long in successful operation.

Early Military History of Kentucky.

The military history of Kentucky dates from its ;earliest settlement. In its primitive days every man who bore a rifle or a hunting knife was a soldier belonging to the army of pioneers, who felled the trees or plowed the ground, with his weapon ready at hand to repel the red-skinned adverse claimant. He was an unpaid soldier and was, therefore, not enrolled, but it was such as he who rallied to the call of Clark and Logan whenever the peace of the stations was threatened or the punishment of the Indian or his British ally was demanded in the territory north of the Ohio. The full roll of these men can never be found. They were too often the victims of the scalping knife, the arrow or the rifle, the gauntlet or the stake-the unknown heroes who in every contest of civilization against barbarism, or right against wrong, fill unmarked graves and have only an anonymous fame.

Virginia, embarrassed with her own troubles in resisting Indian or foreign aggression, was slow to recognize the value of these defenders of her western possessions, who in winning homes for themselves were at the same time zealously guarding against the encroachment of rival claimants as well as the Indians. It was not until George Rogers Clark, as first delegate from a convention of the Harrodsburg convention of June 20, 1776, made his appeal to the Virginia Convention at Williamsburg for aid, with the epigrammatic plea that "a country which was not worth defending was not worth claiming," that he received an order for five hundred pounds of powder upon the arsenal at Pittsburg and secured an act of Dec. 6, 1776, establishing Kentucky as a county of Virginia. In due time, after many hardships, the powder arrived safely at Harrodsburg and was used by the first militia of Kentucky under George Rogers Clark, then but twenty-four, commissioned as major. From this initiative dates the first military organization in Kentucky, resulting not only in the successful defense of the primitive forts, but in the conquest of the British possessions between the Ohio and the lakes which was in 1784 transferred, as a free donation, to the Federal government. Afterwards, when to the defense of the settlements south of the Ohio was added the arduous duty of repelling the invasion of that territory by the Indians and their British instigators, there were regiments under the command of Clark, then general, of men like colonels Ben Logan, John Todd and John Bowman, whose muster rolls are preserved. They may be said to have held against the British the western line of defense in the Revolutionary War, which not only secured the safety of the pioneers of Kentucky, but contributed, most effectively, to the success of Washington in the east, since, had Clark suffered defeat, there would have been a repetition of the calamity which followed the defeat of Braddock in 1775, when the colonial settlers were driven eastward beyond the Blue Ridge. Had similar disaster occurred during the Revolution, averted only by the skill and valor of George Rogers Clark and the Kentucky pioneers, Washington would have been confronted by a dangerous foe in his rear as well as his front, and the problem of the struggle for independence would most probably have had a different solution.

But a better fortune rewarded the valor of the army of western patriots whose labors were prolonged far beyond the Peace of Paris. Theirs was not only the task to defend Kentucky from the persistent aggressions of the Indians, encouraged by their British allies, but to protect the settlers from the east on the territory won by Clark at Kaskaskia and Vincennes. Unlike the pioneers of Kentucky, they were not of the material to cope with the savage, having had no such experience- The first settlements north of the Ohio were at Marietta and Cincinnati in 1788. The movement was a commercial one, involving a purchase from the Federal government of two very large tracts of land of about one million acres each, upon the Muskinghum and between the Little Miami and the Scioto rivers. The projector of the first was Rufus Putnam, of Massachusetts, and of the other John Cleve Symmes, of New Jersey. The settlers on the Marietta tract were from Massachusetts, and those on the other body of lands were chiefly from New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They had had no experience in frontier life or Indian warfare, and the chief dependence for the safety of the homes of the newcomers, as well as the security of Kentucky, from Indian depredations, was upon the more experienced pioneers of the latter. To meet this situation new military commanders were sent from the regular army in the east, as generals Harmar and St. Clair, who had made reputations in the Revolutionary War. But they, as well as the regulars whom they brought with them, were unskilled in Indian warfare, and several disastrous defeats followed. In September, 1790, General Harmar marched from Cincinnati to attack the Miami towns in the western part of the territory with two large detachments composed of both regulars and militia, which were successively surprised and routed with great slaughter. He was superseded in the following March by General St. Clair, recently appointed governor of the northwestern territory. During the summer successful expeditions were made by Gen. Charles Scott, of Kentucky, with troops of that territory, against he Indians on the Wabash, and by General Wilkinson, also with Kentucky troops. But in November General St. Clair, with a mixed army of regulars and militia, attacked the Indian towns on the Maumee River near the scene of Harmar's disaster, meeting even greater defeat than the latter, being surprised and overpowered with the loss of nearly 1,000 men in killed and wounded. A better condition ensued when General St. Clair was superseded by Gen. Anthony Wayne, who had lately been appointed by Washington General-in-chief of the United States Army. He organized a body of troops which he drilled and trained in Indian warfare, and built Fort Recovery near Greenville, Ohio, and Fort Adams at the junction of the Maumee and Auglaize rivers. He then held the Indians in check and offered them peace if they would lay down their arms, but they declined. Having in the preceding month been joined by Gen. Charles Scott, afterwards governor of Kentucky, with 1,000 Kentucky volunteers, he attacked them Aug. 20, 1794, at Fallen Timbers, about eleven miles southeast of Toledo, Ohio, and defeated them so signally that it proved the last of the long series of conflicts between the whites and the Indians until the War of 1812, the final treaty of peace having been signed at Greenville Aug. 3, 1795.

The War of 1812.

As in the Revolutionary War and the decade or more subsequent thereto in which Kentucky bore the brunt of the conflict west of the Alleghanies, so in the second conflict with Great Britain her people, from their geographical position as a frontier western state between the northern lakes and the Gulf, were called upon for an equally active participation in the conflict. The relations between the United States and France during the revolutionary struggle naturally led to a sympathetic feeling with that power in the Napoleonic War, and Great Britain was not slow to resent such manifestation, especially when assured of exceptional sympathy in her behalf on the part of several of the New England states. Denying the right of her citizens to expatriate themselves, she claimed the right to search our vessels for British seamen, taking them in spite of their naturalization and not always discriminating as to native Americans. She also passed orders in Council requiring all neutral vessels, in sailing from one foreign port to another, to enter first a British port. In view of such tendencies Mr. Jefferson, in 1807, recommended the protection of our harbors by the building of small gunboats for their defense. On the 22d of June following occurred the outrage by which the British man-of-war Leopard attacked the American Chesapeake and, after its surrender, bore off a number of its crew. Upon demand by Mr. Jefferson for satisfaction and security from further outrage, England made amends for the attack on the Chesapeake but claimed the right of search and refused to rescind the orders of Council. Congress approved Mr. Jefferson's action and passed an act prohibiting the departure of any American vessels from the ports of the United States, known as the Embargo Act. Irritation on these accounts continued with vain attempt of the United States to effect a termination of the wrongs. Finally, on June 7, 1812, President Madison sent a message to Congress reviewing the action of Great Britain in persisting in her claim of the right of search and her evident determination, by the orders in Council, to destroy American commerce, and presenting the question as to whether the United States should longer continue in passive submission or resent them as deserved.

On June 18 Congress declared war against England, and on the 19th President Madison issued his proclamation making formal announcement of the same and appealing to the patriotism of the people for their support of the government. The war lasted two years and a half, the treaty of Ghent terminating it, having been signed Dec. 14, 1814. Kentucky had already experienced a foretaste of the struggle which followed this declaration in the loss of several of its prominent citizens in the battle of Tippecanoe, fought on Nov. 7, 1811, between William Henry Harrison, then governor of Indiana and afterward President, in command of troops of that state and Kentucky, and "The Prophet," a brother of Tecumseh, the Indian chief who, in the War of 1812, played a conspicuous part and was killed at the battle of the Thames. The inception of the hostility between the Indians and the whites was a treaty by which the latter, representing the territory of Indiana, had purchased certain lands from Indians represented by Tecumseh and "The Prophet." After having received the first payment they conceived the idea of forming a great confederacy of Indians for wresting from the whites the Northern territory, evidence not being wanted to show that in this Purpose they had encouragement from the British on the Northern borders. Their settlement was in central Illinois on the Wabash River, and having made evident their hostile purpose. Governor Harrison began energetically to organize a force to attack them. This culminated in the battle of Tinnecanoe, the name of the Indian settlement, under the immediate command of General Harrison, in which the army organized by him consisted chiefly of regulars, two companies of Kentuckians from the vicinity of Louisville and a member of volunteers assigned to various duties. Among the latter who fell victims in the action were Col. Joseph Hamilton Daviess and Col. Abraham Owen, both members of General Harrison's staff. The former, who had married the sister of Chief Justice Marshall, was United States district-attorney, who prosecuted Aaron Burr in Frankfort in 1806 for alleged treason, and the latter, who had distinguished himself in the Indian wars of the preceding decade, was at the time of death a member of the Kentucky senate. The victory of Harrison was complete and terminated the issue with the Indians. In the presidential election of 1840, when Harrison and Tyler constituted the ticket, it figured prominently in the canvass, the favorite party cry and motto being "Tippecanoe and Tyler too."

The declaration of war by the proclamation of President Madison was received in Kentucky with enthusiastic response. Congress having authorized the President to call out 100,000 of the militia, the quota of Kentucky was fixed at 5,500. This call was promptly met. Seven thousand volunteers offered their services and the Kentucky troops were organized with ten regiments, and in August four regiments, with Gen. John Payne in command, rendezvoused at Georgetown where they were eloquently addressed by Henry Clay. On the 19th they marched for Cincinnati on their way to join the army of Gen. Wm. Hull, a veteran of the Revolution, who had been appointed governor of Michigan by Jefferson. But on reaching Cincinnati they heard of Hull's surrender at 'Detroit on the 16th with 900 men. He was later tried by court-martial for treason, cowardice and neglect of duty and sentenced to be shot, but was pardoned by the President in view of his service in the Revolution. Thus was again demonstrated, as in the ease of St. Clair, the incapacity of the veterans of the east to cope with the enemy in the west. General Harrison succeeding to the command, the campaign which followed was not dissimilar to those recounted prior to the peace of Greenville in 1795, the Indians rallying to the support of the British, and the scenes of Indian warfare of that period being reenacted on the Wabash and the Miami. But General Harridan with Zachary Taylor, of Kentucky, then a captain, but soon promoted major and afterward President, pursued a vigorous and successful campaign reinforced by additional levies from Kentucky. But again was the west, and especially Kentucky, made to suffer by the incompetence of the eastern officers who, however, successful in the Revolutionary War, proved incompetent to cope with the savage of the west. Gen. James Winchester had, meantime, been placed in command. He inaugurated a movement for the recapture of Detroit early in January 1813, which culminated in the defeat of his army at the river Raisin Jan. 22, 1813, and the capture of himself and the greater part of his army. But this did not terminate the disaster. The prisoners, exposed to the vigorous cold of the season, disarmed, and relying upon the good faith of their captors, were turned over to the savage brutality of the Indians and massacred by the score. Among them were Col. John Allen, Capt. Nathaniel Hart and many other prominent Kentuckians of that day, whose bodies were not later identified and whose bones were left to bleach upon the field. In the following autumn, when the Kentucky troops were on their way southward after their great victory at the Thames, they recovered sixty-nine bodies and gave them honorable interment. Subsequently, in 1818, they were reinterred in the cemetery in Monroe, Michigan, the site of the battle. In 1834 they were brought to Kentucky and interred in the state lot in the Frankfort cemetery. The battle of the Thames, which occurred on Oct. 5, 1813, when Governor Shelby reinforced General Harrison with 4,000 Kentuckians, closed the campaign in the northwest. Following the naval victory of Commodore Perry off Put-in-Bay, Lake Erie, Sept. 10, 1813, in which the defeat of the British was as signal as that of the militia on the Thames, the British were left without the means of further resistance, and hence the American troops, having no more occasion for service, returned to their homes, save only as to the garrisons at certain forts, and a successful expedition under command of Maj. Peter Dudley against the Pottowatamies in November, 1814.

Some adequate conception of the service rendered by Kentuckians in this campaign may be found by the after history of many of those who shared its dangers. In addition to Shelby, who had but recently been elected governor for the second time, there were Richard 112. Johnson, then a member of Congress and afterward senator and vice-president, Adair, Desha and Crittenden, governors, Walker and Barry, senators, and the latter, with McAfee and Charles A. Wickliffe, lieutenant-governors. [For full account of the battle of the Thames and those who took part in it see The Battle of The Thames, by Bennett H. Young, Filson Publication, No. 18, Louisville, 1903.]

Battle of New Orleans.

The next call upon Kentucky for troops was when the British, under General Pakenham, moved against New Orleans. In November three regiments rendezvoused at Louisville in 1814, viz.: The first under command of Lieutenant-Governor Samuel Mitchussen, the second, Lieutenant-Colonel Gabriel Slaughter, and the third Lieutenant-Colonel Presley Gray. They had been summoned hastily and, poorly armed and equipped for such a trip, embarked in flat boats November 21. They were crowded together on the boats without any shelter, and the hardships and exposure endured at an inclement season produced much sickness. After many delays and a short voyage they arrived at New Orleans on January 3. A portion of the Kentucky command, under Col. John Davis, was placed on the west bank of the Mississippi River when a flanking movement was threatened, and the remainder in the centre of the main line of defense on the east side under command of Gen. John Adair, afterwards governor, near the Tennesseeans under General Carroll. It was this portion of the latter line which received the main attack of the British who were approaching in close range, and repulsed them by the rapid and accurate fire of the western riflemen. The result is too well known to require detail, the flower of the British army being defeated with great slaughter, including the commanding general, while the American loss was but thirteen killed and thirty-nine wounded. The saddest part of the tragedy was later disclosed when the intelligence reached America that the treaty of Ghent, terminating hostilities, had been signed on December 14 preceeding. Some reflection was made upon the conduct of the Kentucky troops posted on the western bank of the river, resulting in a controversy between General Adair and General Jackson, but a court of inquiry relieved the troops of any censure and all bitterness of feeling was, in time, removed. General Adair, who had been a senator in Congress, was governor of Kentucky, 1820-24.

The Mexican War.

The Mexican War was the logical result of the successful revolution of Texas, accomplished by the defeat of Santa Anna at the battle of San Jacinto April 21, 1836. Her independence, subsequently proclaimed, was acknowledged by the United States Oct. 22, 1837, but not recognized by Mexico. On the 1st of March, 1845, Congress, by joint resolution, declared in favor of the annexation of Texas, and the same having been communicated to that Republic by President Polk, it was ratified by the people of Texas in convention. In view of threatening conditions on the western frontier of Texas in January, 1846, General Taylor was ordered to take position on the left bank of the Rio Grande, and was soon confronted by General Ampudia with a Mexican army on the opposite side of the river. These movements culminated in the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma on May 8 and 9, 1846. The war which ensued was prosecuted with vigor first on the southwestern border of Mexico under Gen. Zachary Taylor, afterward President, when among the battles fought were Monterey and Buena Vista, and later by the campaign of Gen. Winfield Scott from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico, culminating in the capture of the latter Sept. 14, 1847. Peace was confirmed by the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo, Feb. 2, 1848, by which Mexico ceded to the United States New Mexico and California.

Under a call for 2,600 troops from Kentucky, ready response was made by the Louisville Legion, a volunteer organization, and on the 21st of May, 1846, four days after the governor's call, the command left on steamboats for the seat of war via New Orleans. It was known as the First Regiment, commanded by Col. Stephen Ormsby, and was followed later by the Second Regiment with Wm. R. McKee as colonel and Henry Clay. Jr., lieutenant-colonel, and the Third Regiment cavalry, with Humphrey Marshall, colonel, and E. H. Field, lieutenant-colonel. Of these troops the loss was many at the battle of Buena Vista, Feb. 22, 1846, including the death of Colonel Clay and Lieutenant-Colonel McKee. In August, 1847, under another call, two more regiments were accepted, while twelve other companies which offered were rejected as the quota was full. The regimental officers of one regiment were Munlins V. Thompson, colonel, Thomas L. Crittenden, lieutenant-colonel, and John C. Breckinridge, major, and of the others, John S. Williams, colonel, William Preston, lieutenant-colonel, and W. T. Ward, major. These commands marched to the City of Mexico too late to participate in the battles preceding its capture. Their service was, however, useful, as the city remained in possession of the American army until after the formal declaration of peace.

In looking back upon the Mexican War two things attract our attention, one the low percentage of loss in battle compared with that in the War of Secession, there having been few engagements which would have ranked above skirmishes in comparison with the battles the Federals and Confederates fought, showing at once the improvement in the death-dealing implements of war in the interval and the more evenly matched contestants. The other observation worthy of note is the fact that the Mexican War proved a great school of education for both the later contending armies. This was notable not only in the regular army but also among the volunteers. From Kentucky the Northern army had Generals Thomas L. Crittenden, Lovell H. Rousseau, Cassius M. Clay, William T. Ward, Colonels W. E. Woodruff, C. D. Pennebaker and others, while the South received Generals John C. Breckinridge, William Preston, John S. Williams, John H. Morgan, Humphrey Marshall, Roger W. Hanson and many others of less rank. The war was also a stepping stone to political preferment, having furnished two Presidents. In Kentucky those who had aspirations gratified them in the state legislature, one or both Houses of Congress and in foreign courts. As a campaign of education it was, however, less remarkable than for the territorial acquisition which resulted from it. Its duration was but two years, and yet there was added to our territory an area as large as the original thirteen states at a cost of less than that of one year's present administration of the government. It gave us control of the Pacific coast with all the wealth of California, and rounded out our boundary so as to leave nothing further to be desired for peace with our continental neighbors.

The War of Secession.

The presidential election of 1860 found Kentucky divided in political. sentiment, as between the lines of the old Whig and Democratic parties, a split in the latter between the Breckinridge and Douglas factions giving the electoral vote of the state to Bell and Everett by a plurality of over twelve thousand votes. But the overwhelming Southern sentiment was evidenced by the fact that, out of nearly 150,000 votes, Mr. Lincoln received less than fifteen hundred. As the discussion which followed the election became more and more intense, pending the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, and the steps taken by several of the Southern states for the establishment of a separate government, Kentucky was not thrown from her poise by the acts of the extremists on either side. Her sympathies were with the South and she was opposed to the use of force, but men of all parties were strong in their devotion to a Constitutional Union, from the great benefits derived therefrom, as well as from the geographical position of Kentucky as a border state. Inn a called session of the legislature in January, 1861, to consider the existing state of affairs, a proposition to call a convention to determine the ultimate course to be pursued as between the North and the South was promptly voted down.. On January 25 George W. Ewing, of Logan county, offered two resolutions, the first declaring that the General Assembly had heard with profound regret of the resolutions of the states of New York, Ohio, Maine and Massachusetts, tendering to the President men and money to be used in coercing the sovereign states of the South into obedience to the Federal government ; second, declaring that when those states shall 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 such invasion to the last extremity." The first resolution passed -unanimously and the second by a vote of eighty-seven to six. The Bell and Everett party was equally pronounced with the Democratic party in its opposition to force. Governor Magoffin, in response to the call for troops by the Secretary of War April 15, after the firing upon Fort Sumter, replied: "I say emphatically that Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister states." If there was any considerable body of men in Kentucky who differed from this declaration, it was not made known. The Democratic party, of course, concurred with it. The Bell and Everett and Douglas parties had fused, and their committee, calling itself the Democratic Union Committee, composed of such men as George D. Prentice, editor of file Louisville Journal, the Whig organ, John H. Harney, editor of the Louisville Democrat, the Douglas organ, and James Speed, afterward attorney-general, on the 17th of April, unanimously adopted the following among other resolutions: "We approve the response of the Executive of the Commonwealth," adding that "if the enterprise announced in the proclamation of the President shall at any time hereafter assume the aspect of a war for the overrunning and subjugation of the seceding states, through the full assertion therein of the national jurisdiction by a standing military force, we do not hesitate to say that Kentucky should unsheath the sword in what will then have become a common cause." Kentucky was then a unit on this proposition, and had the so called Union element kept good faith the many woes which her people endured during the four years' war might have been greatly diminished, if not wholly averted. But in time the position taken by the anti-Democratic party, proved delusive, and the Southern element having trusted too implicitly in their good faith found themselves, in a few months, abandoned by their late allies and the state under the domination of the Federal army. On April 17, the same day the Union committee adopted the resolution cited, Mr. Crittenden, who had just finished a term in the Senate, made a speech in Lexington in which he proclaimed the doctrine of an armed neutrality, with the assertion that if Kentucky would refrain from taking part in the controversy war might be averted. General Breckinridge, his successor, personally expressed his concurrence and committed himself and his party to the policy. It was evident, even to the most bitter Southern sympathizer, that if this condition should be maintained it would give protection to nearly 700 miles of Southern border. It was not long, however, before evidence of bad faith became manifest. Lieutenant William Nelson, of the navy, a Kentuckian, came to the state on a secret mission and after conference with the leaders of the Union party was, as shown later by the official records, as early as July 1, authorized by the President to recruit five regiments of infantry and one of cavalry and notified by him that 10,000 arms and accoutrements would be sent for the men thus enlisted and the Home Guards (see Rebellion Record, Vol. IV., pp. 251-52). In due time he established Camp Dick Robinson in Garrard county as a recruiting station, and it was in full operation before the expiration of the summer. Gen. George H. Thomas was assigned to the command of that post Sept. 10, 1861. Pending these secret movements for recruiting and organizing Federal troops in Kentucky, the facts of which were only made public after the war, in the volume cited, assurances were being given by the leading Union men that the neutrality of Kentucky would be respected. President Lincoln having, late in April, assured Mr. Crittenden that while he hoped Kentucky would act with the government, if she would not and could remain neutral, no hostile step should tread her soil. Meantime, as evidence of respect for the neutrality of the state, those who wished to take sides with the South in the pending war went beyond the Southern border of Kentucky for organization, while men like Rousseau, intent on supporting the Federal authority in its alleged purpose of protecting the public property at Washington, entered upon the recruiting service, but fixed their camps outside the state across the Ohio. Lulled into confidence by the assurance of good faith on the part of the government at Washington and its adherents in Kentucky, the Southern leaders awoke too late to a realization of the fact that they had been circumvented and that upon proper pretext they would be made to feel the full weight of the Federal power. With the approach of autumn a play for advantage began between the authorities at Washington and those at Richmond upon the technicality as to who should claim the first violation of neutrality, in which the Southern men of Kentucky had no part. General Grant, who occupied Cairo, threatened Columbus, Ky., by a movement on the Missouri side of the Mississippi, and the Federal general, Smith, made demonstrations threatening Paducah. General Polk at Memphis, not apparently foreseeing the consequences, moved north and occupied Columbus September 3, followed on the 5th by the occupation of Paducah, Ky., by General Grant. The legislature elected in August was then in session with the Union element largely in the majority, and on September 10 adopted resolutions to notify the Confederate troops to withdraw from the state, declining at the same time to take similar action as to the Federal force at Paducah. Gen. Robert Anderson, who was in command of Fort Sumter at the time of its capture, had, on August 15, been assigned to the command of the department of the Cumberland and established his headquarters at Louisville shortly after this date. Thus fortified and assured of protection, the Federal element in Kentucky threw off all disguise and, at its instigation, the state became at once the theatre of malignant persecution of Southern sympathizers and of the most radical measures for its subjugation to the Federal rule.

On the night of September 18 ex-Gov. Charles S. Morehead and Col. R. T. Durrett, with no direct charge against them except that of sympathy with the South, were arrested at their homes in Louisville and sent to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, as the initial move for similar persecution of others of the same class. Simultaneous with this act General Rousseau's command, which had been in camp in Indiana opposite Louisville, crossed the river into Kentucky and marched through the streets with loaded guns, without demonstration of welcome from the citizens, and were thence moved southward towards Bowling Green, which, on the same day, was occupied by Gen. S. B. Buckner commanding a force consisting of 2,500 Tennesseeans and 1,500 Kentucky troops organized at Camp Boone, just across the interstate line. On the next night Colonel Bramlette moved from Camp Dick Robinson to Lexington for the arrest of John C. Breckinridge, William Preston and other prominent Democrats who, relying upon the good faith which had been assured them of exemption from persecution, had remained at home in pursuit of their several avocations. Forewarned of their danger they left the city, and together with others of similar prominence made their way through the mountains of eastern Kentucky to Virginia where, in time, they took service in the Confederate army.

The foregoing narrative of the circumstances attending the action of Kentucky at the inception of the war, extended beyond otherwise reasonable limits in a brief history such as this, is necessary to the vindication of the patriotic Kentuckians who gave their lives and fortunes to the cause of the South in the four years' struggle for its liberties. Their after deeds are recorded in the official annals of the war, but there is not elsewhere to be found as full and succinct an account of their action in the interval treated, of the details of which the author can truthfully say, Omnia quorum vidi, et pars fui. The official records of the war on both sides attest the valor and faithful service of the Kentuckians who, giving up home and family for the defense of a principle, left their bones to bleach on the battlefields or returned after the struggle to begin life anew, wrecked in their estates, and with only the sublime consolation that they had done their duty as God gave them to see it. But there is not elsewhere readily accessible an accurate account of the perfidy and usurpation of power which preceded and ultimately secured the Federal occupation and control of Kentucky.

The first serious battle on Kentucky soil was at Mill Spring in Pulaski county, ten miles north of the Cumberland River, Jan. 19, 1862, when Gen. George B. Crittenden with his command of 5,000 infantry and one battery of artillery advanced to attack the Federal army under Gen. George H. Thomas, of nearly equal numbers, two of the regiments being Col. Speed Smith Fry's Fourth Kentucky Infantry and Col. Frank Walford's regiment of Kentucky cavalry. The opening of the battle was favorable to the Confederates, but General Zollicoffer, second in command of the Confederate force, having been killed by a pistol shot by Colonel Fry, of the Federal army, and a heavy reinforcement to the Federal force marching to the field under the command of Col. John M. Harlan, General Crittenden was compelled to fall back and recrossed the Cumberland with his army, after having experienced comparatively small loss of life, but being compelled to abandon ten pieces of artillery, all of his horses and wagons and a large quantity of ammunition and stores. This reverse shed quite a gloom among the Southern element in the state. In the meantime Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, a Kentuckian, who was in command of the Military Department of the Pacific at the inception of the war, and had resigned in April, had ridden on horseback 1,500 miles to Texas. Having been appointed to the command of the Confederate Department No. 2, including Kentucky, he had established his headquarters at Bowling Green with about 4,000 men under Gen. S. B. Buckner, composed of Tennessee troops, the Second Kentucky Regiment and parts of the Third and Fourth recruited at Camp Trousdale near Nashville. General Sherman had been superseded by General Buell, and the Green River formed the line between the advance of the respective armies. It was merely a tentative line to cover the operations of the two armies during organization for activity in other fields. The active campaign began on Feb. 6, 1863, with a Federal attack upon Fort Henry on the Tennessee River, resulting in the capture of the post with Gen. Lloyd Tilghman, of Kentucky, and eighty men, after a gallant defense; his main force of 3,000 men having fallen back on Fort Donelson, eastwardly, on the Cumberland. To the defense of this post General Johnston sent General Pillow with 4,000 men on the 9th, and on the 12th reinforced him with the commands of Generals Floyd and Buckner, 8,000 men. At the same time recognizing the danger to which he would be exposed at Bowling Green by the depletion of his force and the necessity of covering Nashville, he fell back upon the latter place at which he arrived on the 15th, the withdrawal being made without loss of any material and in perfect order. The fall of Fort Donelson on the 16th by its surrender to General Grant after a strenuous defense by Gen. S. B. Buckner, after Generals Floyd and Pillow, his seniors, had imposed that duty upon him by escaping to Nashville, was a far-reaching disaster which opened up to the recapture of the enemy not only all of Kentucky but all of Tennessee west of the Cumberland mountains. Among the troops surrendered were the Second and Eighth Kentucky, which, with General Buckner, were retained as prisoners in the North until exchanged in the following August.

Of the military operations which followed, it is not within the scope of the history to enter into detail. During the remainder of the war the Kentuckians who had left their homes, most of them, hastily and with little preparation, to vindicate a principle dear to them, and who survived its terrors of battle, disease and imprisonment as captors, quite as deadly as the first, were separated from their families for more than three years, except in such brief opportunity as was afforded by the cavalry raids and the invasion of Kentucky by the army of General Bragg in the autumn of 1862. A large proportion did not live to enjoy this pleasure. A true muster roll of Kentucky's contribution to the war can never be made, even though every military organization which they composed were officially recorded, since under the conditions hedging them about there were numbers who were in the service of other states. The most reliable estimate is that there were in the Confederate army 30,000, and in the Federal 75,000, the latter including negroes. Many thousand more Kentuckians served in the ranks from other Southern states.

The following is a list showing the various commands as organized, with the names of their first commanders and dates of commission:

INFANTRY

First Regiment, Thomas H. Taylor, colonel, Oct. 14, 1861; Second Regiment, James M. Hawes, colonel, July 17, 1861; Third Regiment, Lloyd Tilghman, colonel, July 5, 1861; Fourth Regiment, Robert P. Trabue, colonel, Sept. 23, 1861; Fifth Regiment, John S. Williams, colonel, Nov. 19, 1861; Sixth Regiment, Joseph H. Lewis, colonel, Nov. 1, 1861; Seventh Regiment, Charles Wickliffe, colonel, Nov. 1, 1861; Eighth Regiment, Henry C. Burnett, colonel, Oct. 3, 1861; Ninth Regiment, Thos. H. Hunt, colonel, Oct. 3, 1861; Graves Battery, Rice E. Graves, captain, Nov. 8, 1861; Lyon's and Cobb's Battery, H. B. Lyons, captain, Sept. 1, 1861; Corbett's Battery, Henry D. Green, captain.

CAVALRY

First Regiment, Ben Hardin Helm; Second Regiment, John H. Morgan, colonel, Oct. 2, 1861; Third Regiment (afterwards consolidated with First), J. Russell Butler, colonel; Fourth Regiment, Henry L. Giltner, colonel, Oct. 6, 1862; Fifth Regiment, D. Howard Smith, colonel, Oct. 6, 1862; Sixth Regiment, J. Warren Grisgby, colonel, Sept, 25, 1862; Seventh Regiment, R. M. Gano, colonel, Sept. 25, 1861; Eighth Regiment, Roy S. Cluke, colonel, Sept. 10, 1862; Ninth Regiment, W. C. P. Breckinridge, colonel, Dec. 17, 1862; Tenth Regiment, Adam R. Johnson, colonel, Aug. 13, 1862; May's Battalion Kentucky and Virginia Mounted Rifles, A. J. May, colonel; Eleventh Regiment, D. W. Chenault, colonel, Sept. 10, 1862; Twelfth Regiment, W. W. Faulkner, colonel, Sept. 15, 1863; Thirteenth Kentucky Regiment, Ben E. Caudill, colonel, Nov., 1862; First Battalion, W. E. Simms, 1861; Second Battalion, Clarence J. Prentice, 1862; First Battalion Mounted Rifles, Benjamin F. Bradley, major, 1861; First Special Battalion, `V. W. Ward, colonel, Nov. 10, 1864; Third Battalion Mounted Rifles, Ezekiel F. Clay, lieutenant-colonel, Nov. 7, 1862; Third Special Battalion Cavalry, Joseph T. Tucker, colonel, Nov. 10, 1864; Independent Battalion Cavalry, Bart W'. Jenkins, captain; Jessee's Battalion, George N. Jessee; Independent Company (afterwards known as Woodward's Regiment), Thomas G. Woodward, captain, Aug. 25, 1862; Independent Company, James M. Bolin, captain, Nov. 21, 1862; King's Battalion, H. Clay King, major; Independent Company, J. J. Murphey, captain; Moorhead's Partisan Rangers, J. C. Moorhead, colonel; Buckner's Guards, Culvin S. Sanders; Company of Partisan Rangers, William J. Fields, captain, Aug. 1, 1862; Company of Partisan Rangers, Philip M. Victor.

There were other organizations composed in whole or part of Kentuckians of which there is no official record, as Byrne's Battery, which, although first organized in Mississippi, was composed of and officered by Kentuckians almost exclusively. In the service Kentucky contributed to the Confederate army a large number of able and distinguished officers, some of whom are accredited to other states, but most of whom went directly from Kentucky. The following is a list of them:

General Albert Sidney Johnston (Texas); Lieutenant-General Simon Bolivar Buckner; Lieutenant-General John B. Hood (Texas); Lieutenant-General Richard Taylor (Louisiana); Maior-Generals: John C. Breckinridge, George B. Crittenden, William Preston. Gustavus W. Smith. Brigadier-Generals: John H. Morgan, Daniel W. Adams (Mississippi), Roger W. Hanson, Basil W. Duke, Abram Buford. George B. Cosby. John S. Williams, James M. Hawes, Ben Hardin Helm. George B. Hodge, Claiborne F. Jackson (Missouri), Joseph H. Lewis, Samuel B. Maxey (Texas), Randall L. Gibson, (Louisiana), Thomas H. Taylor.

Provisional Government of Kentucky.

On Nov. 18, 1861, a Sovereignty Convention was held in Russellville, Kentucky, at which two hundred members were present for the purpose of forming a state government favorable to a union with the Southern Confederacy. It remained in session three days and adopted a constitution which provided for a provisional government vesting all executive and legislative powers in a council of ten, the council to fill vacancies. The existing constitution and laws were declared to be in force except when inconsistent with the acts of that convention and of the legislative council. George W. Johnson, of Scott county, was elected governor; Robert McKee, of Louisville, secretary of state, and Orlando F. Payne, assistant secretary; Theodore L. Burnett, of Spencer county, treasurer, who resigned December 17, and J. B. Burnham, of Warren county, was appointed in his place; Richard Hawes, of Bourbon county, auditor, who resigned, and Joshua Pillsbury was appointed in his place.

An ordinance of secession was adopted, and Henry C. Burnett, William E. Simms and William Preston were sent as commissioners to Richmond, and on Dec. 10, 1862, the Confederate Congress admitted Kentucky as a member of the Confederate states.

Upon the death of Gov. George W. Johnson, who fell on the second day at Shiloh while fighting in the ranks, the legislative council, which retained its organization during the war, elected Hon. Richard Hawes his successor. While the state was occupied by the Confederate army under General Bragg, Governor Hawes was duly inaugurated and delivered an inaugural address in the capitol at Frankfort Oct. 4. 1862. But the evacuation of the place occurring within a few hours precluded the exercise of any of his official functions.

The Return of Peace.

After the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox and Gen. Joseph E. Johnston at Greensboro, N. C., the Kentuckians who received paroles were, for a time, barred from returning to their homes by an opinion rendered by James Speed, United States attorney-general, himself a Kentuckian. This was to the effect that Kentuckians, Missourians and Marylanders having left their homes to make war on the Union were not entitled to the privilege of the parole. This delayed their return to Kentucky, but after an interval of several weeks the decision was rescinded and gradually the weary exiles returned to their homes, the welcome which they received going far to repay them for the trials through which they had gone and to nerve them for a renewed struggle in the peaceful pursuit of a livelihood. They found the conditions much changed from those attending the Federal occupation of the state, the oppression inflicted upon the people by the satraps like Burbridge, Palmer and Payne had changed the whole current of political feeling. Many who had been prominent at the inception of the war in handing over the state to Federal control, had been sent to Northern prisons or through the lines South, as was Lieut.-Gov. Richard T. Jacob, an early Federal volunteer, near the close of the war. Garrett Davis, who had succeeded Breckinridge in the Senate as a reward for his services in shackling the state, was as severe against the administration at Washington as his predecessor had been four years previously, and was as roundly denounced as an arch-rebel. So that instead of coming home to be disciplined, the Southern soldier was received with open arms, and by none more cordially than by the Union soldier. At the meeting of the first legislature all disabilities were removed, and at the second a number of ex-Confederates were members; and within two years the Confederate element was in control of the state, magnanimously opposing any discrimination against those who wore the blue, and maintaining ever since the most cordial relations with them. Thus again reunited, the people of Kentucky soon built up the waste places and the state has prospered in every line of physical and intellectual development. The thorough reunion of the people of the state was well illustrated during the war with Spain, when former Confederate officers and soldiers vied with the Federal element in the promptness with which they rallied to the standard of the country, and maintained its honor on the field of battle.

Mountain Feuds.

One of the features of Kentucky life which has excited much comment and given to the state an unenviable reputation has been the feuds which, although confined to the mountain counties, have been credited to the state at large and interpreted as indicating an irreconcilable hostility between the extreme classes, or, as otherwise expressed, between the mountaineers and the aristocracy. This has not only been greatly exaggerated as to the extent of the area in which such disturbances have occurred, but also as to the nature of the lawlessness with which the state has been accredited. The population of Kentucky is more homogeneous than that of any other state in the Union. It is the largest aggregation of English-speaking people on the continent and with less continental element than is to be found in any other body of like numbers. The total population of Kentucky by the census of 1890 was 1,858,635, divided as follows: Native-born, 1,799,279; foreign-born, 59,305; colored, 381,137. By that of 1900 it was 2,380,887, of whom 50,249 were of foreign birth and 284,708 negroes the remainder being 57 Chinese and 102 Indians. And this ratio of whites and native-born citizens has been maintained from its earliest statehood.

The state embraces an area of about 42,500 square miles with every variety of topography and geology above the archaean. The length from east to west is about 350 miles, and its greatest breadth is 175 miles. Its shape is somewhat that of a triangle, with its apex on the Mississippi River at an altitude of 275 feet above sea level, ascending eastward, gradually at first, but more rapidly after reaching the central portion until it attains an elevation at the Cumberland range of 2,500 feet, with exceptional points in the extreme middle east of 4,000 feet. Its geology includes all the formations from the lower silurian to the quarternary, the variation in altitude giving a corresponding variety in climate and production so that, while in the lowlands of its western portion the production of cotton is practical and the cypress of the South grows in its swamps, in the mountains of the east only the hardy cereals are cultivated, and the forest growth includes the pine and hemlock of the more northern climes. It will be readily seen, therefore, what a wide range there exists within a boundary of such diverse physical features for a corresponding difference in the mental, moral and physical qualities of the residents of the mountains and the less elevated portions of the state. It is not because they are of a different race. They are practically of the same, the foreign population being found chiefly in the cities and the negroes confined to the central and western agricultural portions of the state, there being very few of either element in the mountains, some of the counties having neither. Thus, the population of that region is almost exclusively composed of native-born whites, chiefly descendants of the original settlers from Virginia and North Carolina, and homogeneous with the great body of the native-born whites of other portions of the state. The mountain section of Kentucky comprises about one-fourth of the state, its boundaries being approximately those of the eastern coal field. The greater part of it is still thickly timbered and threaded with many small streams, the head waters of the Big Sandy, the Kentucky and the Cumberland and Licking rivers, unnavigable except for rafting logs after a heavy rainfall, unless with slack-water improvement. In the narrow valleys and coves the soil is rich, and with good cultivation productive wherever it is level enough for agriculture, but the great drawback either to agricultural or other development was, in early times, and has been until a very recent period, from the inability to ship products requiring land transportation on account of the lack of railroad or other facilities. To understand the situation it must be borne in mind that prior to the War of Secession there was not a mile of railroad within this whole region, and while it was the first portion to receive the footprint of the pioneer it has been the last to feel the awakening touch of modern development.

A thrifty class of immigrants from Virginia and North Carolina, with a strong infusion of Scotch blood, found their homes in these mountains during the two decades following the Revolutionary War. By the natural law of migration which leads those who seek homes in a new country to select one having features similar to that from which they migrate, the ancestors of these movers had settled in the highlands of the colonies even as they had lived in those of their -nativity. The same law, when in their second migration they reached Cumberland Gap, led them to select the mountainous portions of Kentucky as their new home. Someone, in seeking a cause for the difference between the people of the mountains and the richer and more level area has suggested that they were of the convict or indentured servant class transported from England and sold for a term of years. But this is untrue. There was such an element in Virginia and some other colonies, but in the tide of immigration to Kentucky there was no such line of segregation. A few of such may have come to that region, degenerates from the start, but the great body of mountain settlers were as good as the average Kentucky immigrants, with many of wealth and education who brought their slaves. Nor was the immigration to the more favored portions of the state exclusively of the first families of Virginia, as some of their descendants would have us believe, but included many of this convict and indentured class from which grew, on the one hand, a thrifty crop of criminals, overseers and negro traders, and on the other that type which makes itself conspicuous, upon the requisition of wealth, by aping the manners of the well-bred and manufacturing pedigrees to which they have no just title.

The mountain people have been much slandered, and their feudal troubles being of the Scotch type involved but little loss of life and less of property, and in recent years, save, as to the Hargis feud in Breathitt county, lately terminated by the death of the leader, there has been comparatively little disorder. Notwithstanding these conditions, crime and vice of the kind which fosters in certain strata of a higher civilization did not prevail. Robbery and murder for gain were, as they are now, almost unknown. The picture drawn by Macaulay, writing but little over a half century ago, of the conditions in the north of England, is darker by far than the worst conditions which have prevailed in any part of Kentucky: "The seats of country gentry and the larger farmhouses were fortified. Oxen were penned at night beneath the overhanging battlements of `The Peel.' The inmates slept with arms at their sides. Huge stones and boiling water were in readiness to crush and scald the plunderers who might venture to assail the little garrison. No traveler ventures into that country without making his will. The judges of the circuit with the whole body of barristers, attorneys, clerks and serving men rode from New Castle to Carlisle, armed and escorted by a strong guard, under command of the sheriff. It was necessary to carry provisions, for the country was a wilderness which afforded no supplies. Within the memory of some whom this generation has seen, the sportsmen who wandered in the pursuit of game to the sources of the Tyne found the heaths among the Keeldar Castle peopled by a race scarcely less savage than the Indians of California, and heard, with surprise, the half-naked women chanting a wild measure while the men, with brandished dirks, danced a wild dance."

But as the region, of the conditions of which he draws such a dark picture, has since become, through its developed mines, one of the richest and most enlightened in England, so the penetration of the mountains of Kentucky by railroads within the last two decades has relatively changed the conditions in that much misunderstood portion of the state. The development of its coal mines has made Kentucky eighth in the production of that mineral, the output of that fuel in the eastern coal-field being nearly equal to that of the western, previously the chief source of supply. Schools, colleges and universities are now spreading their light in regions which so long felt the need of them. Iron furnaces and other similar evidences of physical, as well as social and mental, progress are now to be found in this portion of the state.

During the year 1908 the state was disgraced by the lawlessness of the night riders in the rich and cultured tobacco-growing regions not unlike, in purpose, the famous Barn Burner's organization of New York, which, in the memory of those living, exerted a strong political influence not limited to the state.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. - Collins, R. H.: History of Kentucky (2 vols., 1874); Duke, B. W.: History of Morgan's Cavalry; Durrett, R. T.: Kentucky Resolutions of 1798-99 Southern Bivouac, 1899; Johnston, J. Stoddard: Kentucky (Vol. IX. of Confederate Military History, Atlanta, 1899); Memorial History of Louisville (2 vols., 1896); Smith, Z. F.: History of Kentucky (1 vol., 1901).

J. STODDARD JOHNSTON,
Formerly Associate Editor Louisville Courier-Journal; author of Confederate History of Kentucky.

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