have turned to the extremists among the northern senators and asked them, too: "Can you ask more than this? Are you bent on revolution; bent on disunion?" From them had they answered from the depths of their hearts, that answer would have been that they welcomed dissolution and disunion, could they by these destroy slavery. By no means does the burden of the war rest upon the south. For years there was a party in the north bent upon the destruction of slavery by whatever means, and it hailed the day when it had goaded the south into armed opposition to its methods and its studied incentives to the conflict which followed the election and inauguration of Mr. Lincoln.

The Senate "Committee of Thirteen" raised on motion of Senator Lazarus W. Powell, of Kentucky, to consider measures of compromise and pacification, comprised among its members both the Kentucky senators, an unusual but a deserved honor. To this committee, Mr. Crittenden presented his resolutions as above outlined. Most of the Democratic senators thought that they saw in them an opportunity for the successful adjustment of the pressing sectional differences, but the Republican members considered them as yielding too much to the south and they were rejected. The day for concessions, for compromises, indeed for statesmanship had passed; the day for the mailed hand of the soldier was dawning, and not all the senates that have sat from the beginning of constitutional government, could avert the strife about to burst upon our country.

It is idle now to speculate upon the answer of the country to the Crittenden Compromise, had it been submitted to the people. Rhodes in his "History of the United States" declares: "No doubt can now exist and but little could have existed in January, 1861, that if the Crittenden Compromise plan had been submitted to the people, it would have carried in the northern states by a great major

ity; that it would have obtained the vote of almost every man in the border states, and that it would have received the preponderating voice of all the cotton states but South Carolina."

Perhaps these conclusions of Mr. Rhodes are correct and that the Republican senators who opposed the Crittenden Compromise, knew the conditions to be as he describes them, and therefore opposed the compromise in the Committee of Thirteen.

The Cincinnati Enquirer of July 3, 1861, declares that "the whole south, save South Carolina, would have adopted Crittenden's Compromise. It is written down in stern and inexorable history that the Republican party would not accept these propositions." President Buchanan's friends are said to have attempted to persuade Mr. Lincoln to approve Mr. Crittenden's compromise proposals. Mr. Lincoln is said to have replied: "I am for no compromise which asserts or permits the extension of the institution (of slavery) in soil owned by the nation."

The resolutions of Mr. Crittenden, when presented to the senate, were rejected by a majority of thirteen. On the 8th of January, 1861, the anniversary of the battle of New Orleans, ever since 1815 known in Kentucky as "Jackson's Day," a convention of Constitutional Union men, made up of representatives of both the leading parties in Kentucky, met in Louisville and endorsed the Crittenden Compromise, deploring the existence of a Union which could only be held together by armed power. Nine days later the state legislature was convened in extraordinary session by a call from Governor Magoffin. On assembling, a resolution was adopted inviting a national convention to consider measures of peace and conciliation. The legislature also declared "the unconditional disapprobation of Kentucky of the employment of force in any form against the seceding states."

At a later date, when resolutions had given

way before the stern demands of arms, men who had together voted for the adoption of these resolutions, met each other on the field. of battle wearing the uniforms of the opposing forces.

On January 25th, the general assembly adopted a resolution calling upon congress to call a national convention to consider amendments to the federal constitution in acordance with the fifth article of that instrument. On the 29th of the same month, they appointed six commissioners to a Peace Conference to be held in Washington February 4th. This convention assembled, remained in session twenty-three days and adjourned without having reached any results looking towards peace.

Kentucky had done her part in every effort to that end. Crittenden and Powell in the United States senate; the leading men of all parties in convention at Louisville; the general assembly at Frankfort; the Peace Commissioners at the Kentucky Peace convention of twenty-one states, at Washington, all these had vainly sought for peace; had offered from their wisdom and from their hearts, every concession possible to be made to avert the horrors of civil war, and all without avail. There was not a man of those Kentuckians who had given their best efforts in the interests of peace who did not recognize what war would mean to Kentucky; they knew that families would be sundered; that father would oppose son upon the field; that brother would meet brother in hostile array and that for these reasons, the usual horrors of war would be a thousand-fold intensified for Kentucky. Hence they sought peace by offering compromise; they sought peace by offering everything save honor, and when the die was cast, when war had come, Kentucky's sons made their choice and going with the colors of their hearts, won new honors and renown upon a thousand battlefields which they hallowed by their blood; and today, Kentucky, proud of her soldier

sons, regardless of the uniforms they wore, holds them in grateful remembrance and like the heroic mother of old, points proudly to them, saying: "These are my jewels."

The idea that there could be a war in this country with Kentucky out of it, had something of the grotesque about it. As if to emphasize this fact, Major Robert Anderson, born in Jefferson county about ten miles from Louisville, was ordered to the command of the United States forces at Fort Moultrie in Charleston harbor in November, 1860. Subsequent events brought this officer into command at Fort Sumter when the first gun of the war was fired; thus Kentucky, which had sought immunity from war through her plea for neutrality, was actually one of the important participants in the very first action of the war she vainly hoped to escape. "It is Fate" says the mystic of the Far East, when trouble encircles him, and the people of Kentucky, loving the union of their fathers and the south of their kindred, might well be pardoned if in this extremity, they had folded their arms and, with the stoicism of the savages whom they had evicted from their original homes, had declared: "Let Fate do its worst; we will follow the dictates of our hearts and consciences."

History was made rapidly in those days. December 27, 1860, Major Anderson spiked the guns at Fort Moultrie, burned the inner works of the fort, and transferred the garrison to Fort Sumter on an island at the mouth of Charleston harbor. In response to an inquiry from the secretary of war as to why this movement was made, Major Anderson replied: "I abandoned Fort Moultrie because I was certain that if attacked, my men must have been sacrificed and the command of the harbor lost. If attacked, the garrison would never have surrendered without a fight." McElroy, falling into the unsupported charges against John B. Floyd, secretary of war in the cabinet of Mr. Buchanan, says that Floyd at

this time "was using his high office in the interest of the cause of disunion." It is easy to make such charges as this, but more difficult to establish them. McElroy makes no effort to prove the correctness of this claim and one is left to believe or disbelieve it, as his sympathies may be with the people of the south or with the Union. In the absence of anything beyond mere assertions written years after the incidents involved, one may be excused from subscribing to the correctness of the charges of which there is no substantial proof.

While commissioners from South Carolina were in Washington seeking in vain for a conference with Mr. Buchanan, the possible fate of the Crittenden Compromise measures was causing suppressed excitement in Kentucky. The people of the state, regardless of past political affiliations, thought, very justly, that at such a crisis as now confronted the Union, these measures should come out of committee and be openly debated in the senate. They believed, as they had a right to believe, that they were entitled to know who favored and who opposed this effort to save the Union intact and thus evade the horrors of an internecine war. Perhaps a majority of the people, while believing abstractly in the right of secession, were too ardently devoted to the Union of their fathers to vote for a separation from that Union. Mr. Justice Harlan, of the supreme court of the United States, one of Kentucky's most distinguished sons, who had commanded a regiment of troops in the Federal army, said at a later period: "I confidently assert that there was no moment during the war when a decided majority of the people of Kentucky were not unalterably opposed to a dissolution of the Union under all circumstances and whatever might be the result to the institution of slavery."

Notwithstanding this statement from one of her sons, who has for so many years honored his native state upon the highest judi

cial tribunal in the world, it is nevertheless a fact that when the people of Kentucky sought at the polls to register their will, they were confronted with bayonets and paid the penalty of a free expression of their will, in arrest and imprisonment.

The historian of today is impressed with conflicting emotions typical of the conditions. of the period of which he writes. The views of Mr. Justice Harlan, entitled to the highest respect, have just been stated. Gen. George B. Hodge, of the Confederate army, a Kentuckian, says of this period and of the people of the state: "Their loyalty was nearly akin to the religious faith which is born in childhood, which never falters during the excitements of the longest life and which at last, enables the cradle to triumph over the grave. The mass of them did not reason about it. The Union was apotheosized. The suggestion of its dissolution was esteemed akin to blasphemy, to advocate or speculate about it was to be infamous."

But before an appeal to arms, Kentucky, schooled by Henry Clay, who sought by compromise to bring the dissonant sections of the Union to agreement, and whose successor, Mr. Crittenden, endeavored by the same efforts to prevent a dissolution of the Union-Kentucky would have every effort to that end put to the test. In the Crittenden resolutions, the people of the state believed they saw a peaceable and an honorable solution of the great questions confronting them. It was not the men who had voted for Bell and Everett or for Douglas and Johnson who alone hoped for this consummation. The men who had supported Breckinridge and Lane were as profoundly interested as those who had opposed that ticket. These men knew that if the supreme test of war came they would find themselves in the ranks of one of the armies as soldiers confronting their own kindred in the opposing army. No other state had so serious, so poignant a question to decide. The

great heart of Kentucky was torn by conflicting emotions, and one who was a minor part of the movements of that day finds it difficult to transcribe here the emotions of the people who found themselves divided along personal as well as political lines.

While awaiting action by the senate upon the Crittenden resolutions, a convention of men of all parties, met January 8th, in Louisville, and adopted the following resolutions:

"We recommend the adoption of the propositions of our distinguished Senator, John J. Crittenden, as a fair and honorable adjustment of the difficulties which divide and distract the people of our beloved country. We recommend to the legislature of the state to put the amendments of Senator Crittenden in form and submit them to the other states."

This protest, made in the name of over ninety thousand Kentuckians, as stated by McElroy (who fails to say whence came the authority for his statement that it was made "in the name of over ninety thousand Kentuckians") was unheeded, the United States senate a week later, disposing of the Crittenden resolutions, by adopting as a substitute therefor a resolution declaring, "that the provisions of the constitution are ample for the preservation of the Union; that it needs. to be obeyed rather than amended." The senators of the Northern states seemed to desire a war and as conditions appeared to put upon the southern states the onus of bringing about that war, they complacently sat in their places; declined to accept any compromise, no matter what its terms, and calmly awaited an overt act upon the part of the south which they could claim as a justification of their own action or lack of action.

When the Kentucky legislature met in extraordinary session, on January 17th, Governor Magoffin said in his message to that body: "The special purpose for which the legislature has been called into extra session is that you may consider the propriety of providing for

the election of delegates to a sovereignty convention to be assembled at an early day, to which shall be referred for full and final determination the future of Federal and interstate relations of Kentucky. This commonwealth will not be an indifferent observer of the force policy-the seceding states have not, in their hasty and inconsiderate action, our approval, but their cause is our right and they have our sympathies. The people of Kentucky will never stand with arms folded while those states are struggling for their constitutional rights and resisting oppression, or being subjugated to an anti-slavery government. The idea of coercion when applied to great political communities, is revolting to a free people, contrary to the spirit of our institutions, and, if successful, would endanger the liberties of the people."

The message further urged the legislature to strengthen the State Guard forces, already a decided military arm of the state and to take a stand against "the employment of force against the seceding states."

McElroy, the historian, and a very able one, himself a Kentuckian, seems to have been unable to consider any other than the Federal side of the conditions existing at this period. Of Governor Magoffin's message he says: "Its tone indicates the very natural belief on the part of the governor, that a legislature which had chosen John C. Breckinridge to the United States senate would not hesitate to advocate the principles for which his party stood, although the people of their state, în their vote for president, had positively rejected them." Mr. McElroy writes in the light of today; in the light of after events and results. The words that are written here are in the light of the days, the events of which are given by one who was a part in an humble way, of those events and who saw, with his own eyes, the results which followed.

Kentucky showed her indisposition to be considered inimicable to the Union during

this session of the legislature when by a formal vote, it was ordered that the national flag be displayed over the capital during the session. This was really an unnecessary order as it was then as it had long been, the custom to display the colors upon the building when the legislature was in session. But the public was nervous, tense, sensitive, and every movement was closely scrutinized, every motive criticised. The national flag flew from the capital during the war, save for the brief period in 1862 when the Confederate army under General Bragg, occupied a considerable portion of the state. On January 21st, George W. Ewing, of Logan county, proposed two resolutions which are declared by McElroy as of "a dangerously menacing character." The first of these resolutions which received unanimous support could not, therefore, have been menacingly dangerous, else it would not have received the votes of those who were known as Union members of the general assembly. This first resolution expressed strong disapproval of the recent action of the states of New York, Ohio, Maine and Massachusetts in sending men and money to the president of the United States, "to be used in coercing certain sovereign states of the south into obedience to the Federal government."

Remember, now, that this resolution was unanimously adopted, not a vote of a Union representative or senator being recorded against it. The men who had voted for Breckinridge for president or for United States senator cannot be charged with responsibility for the adoption of this resolution, since the Douglas men, and the Bell men in the general assembly had joined with them in its support. Of course, there were not then in that body any of the men who had voted for Mr. Lincoln. The time had not yet come for them to sit in "the seats of the mighty" in Kentucky, but it was to come and that too at an earlier day than was imagined by the politicians of that period.

The second of the resolutions moved by Mr. Ewing, which was adopted in the house by a vote of eighty-seven yeas to six nays, requested Governor Magoffin "to inform the executives of each of said states that it is the opinion of the general assembly, that whenever the authorities of these states shall send armed forces to the south for the purpose indicated, the people of Kentucky, uniting with their brethren of the south, will as one man, resist such invasion of the south at all hazards and to the last extremity."

The tone of these resolutions, which were drawn in joint form, does not breathe of that neutrality which was soon to be proposed. To the contrary, their predominant element is pugnacious, breathing of war and bloodshed. Being drawn in joint form, it was necessary that these resolutions, after adoption by the house, should be sent to the senate for its approval. The Unionist senators in that body, fearing the result of a direct vote upon the latter resolution, endeavored to prevent action upon it by pressing to the front other and less dangerous questions. To that end, they took up the resolutions of the Virginia legislature calling for a Peace Conference to be held in Washington, February 4th. Virginia, in inviting Kentucky to join in this conference, had stated its willingness to accept the terms of the Crittenden Compromise. By the unanimous vote of the senate and an almost unanimous vote of the house, the resolutions were adopted; six Kentucky delegates to the conference were appointed; $500 appropriated for the expenses of each of them; they attended the conference; as previously stated herein, no good results followed and the commissioners came home to face conditions even worse than those existing when they went to the conference. But the Unionists had prevented action by the senate on the Ewing joint resolution and had gained that much, though it had but small effect upon individual citizens of the state, who followed their own in