Volume I Part 36 (1/2)

”Leonidas Polk,

”Major-General commanding.”

However willing the government of Kentucky might have been to accede to the proposition of General Polk, and which from his knowledge of the views of his own Government he was fully justified in offering, the State of Kentucky had no power, moral or physical, to prevent the United States Government from using her soil as best might suit its purposes in the war it was waging for the subjugation of the seceded States. President Lincoln, in his message of the previous July, had distinctly and reproachfully spoken of the idea of neutrality as existing in some of the border States. He said: ”To prevent the Union forces pa.s.sing one way, or the disunion the other, over their soil, would be disunion completed.... At a stroke it would take all the trouble off the hands of secession, except only what proceeds from the external blockade.”

The acts of the Federal Government corresponded with the views announced by its President. Briefly, but conclusively, General Polk showed in his answer that the United States Government paid no respect to the neutral position which Kentucky wished to maintain; that it was armed, but not neutral, [pg 398] for the arms and the troops a.s.sembled on her soil were for the invasion of the South; and that he occupied Columbus to prevent the enemy from taking possession of it. When our troops first entered Columbus they found the inhabitants had been in alarm from demonstrations of the United States forces, but that they felt no dread of the Confederate troops. As far as the truth could be ascertained, a decided majority of the people of Kentucky, especially its southwestern portion, if left to a free choice, would have joined the Confederacy in preference to remaining in the Union. Could they have foreseen what in a short time was revealed, there can be little doubt that mule contracts, and other forms of bribery, would have proved unavailing to make her the pa.s.sive observer of usurpations destructive of the personal and political rights of which she had always been a most earnest advocate. With the slow and sinuous approach of the serpent, the General Government, little by little, gained power over Kentucky, and then, throwing off the mask, proceeded to outrages so regardless of law and the usages of English-speaking people, as could not have been antic.i.p.ated, and can only be remembered with shame by those who honor the const.i.tutional Government created by the States. While artfully urging the maintenance of the Union as a duty of patriotism, the Const.i.tution which gave the Union birth was trampled under foot, and the excesses of the Reign of Terror which followed the French Revolution were reenacted in our land, once the vaunted home of law and liberty. Men who had been most honored by the State, and who had reflected back most honor upon it, were seized without warrant, condemned without trial, because they had exercised the privilege of free speech, and for adhering to the principles which were the bed-rock on which our fathers builded our political temple. Members of the Legislature vacated their seats and left the State to avoid arrest, the penalty hanging over them for opinion's sake. The venerable Judge Monroe, who had presided over the United States District Court for more than a generation, driven from the land of his birth, the State he had served so long and so well, with feeble step, but upright conscience and indomitable will, sought a resting place among those who did not regard it a [pg 399] crime to adhere to the principles of 1776 and of 1787, and the declaratory affirmation of them in the resolutions of 1793-'99. About the same time others of great worth and distinction, impelled by the feeling that ”where liberty is there is my country,” left the land desecrated by despotic usurpation, to join the Confederacy in its struggle to maintain the personal and political liberties which the men of the Revolution had left as an inheritance to their posterity. s.p.a.ce would not suffice for a complete list of the refugees who became conspicuous in the military events of the Confederacy; let a few answer for the many: J. C. Breckinridge, the late Vice-President of the United States, and whose general and well-deserved popularity might have reasonably led him to expect in the Union the highest honors the States could bestow; William Preston, George W. Johnston, S. B. Buckner, John H. Morgan, and a host of others, alike meritorious and alike gratefully remembered. When the pa.s.sions of the hour shall have subsided, and the past shall be reviewed with discrimination and justice, the question must arise in every reflecting mind, Why did such men as these expatriate themselves, and surrender all the advantages which they had won by a life of honorable effort in the land of their nativity? To such inquiry the answer must be, the usurpations of the General Government foretold to them the wreck of const.i.tutional liberty. The motives which governed them may best be learned from the annexed extracts from the statement made in the address of Mr. Breckinridge to the people of Kentucky, whom he had represented in both Houses of the United States Congress, with such distinguished ability and zeal for the general welfare as to place him in the front rank of the statesmen of his day:

”Bowling Green, Kentucky, October 8,1861.

”In obedience, as I supposed, to your wishes, I proceeded to Was.h.i.+ngton, and at the special session of Congress, in July, spoke and voted against the whole war policy of the President and Congress; demanding, in addition, for Kentucky, the right to refuse, not men only, but money also, to the war, for I would have blushed to meet you with the confession that I had purchased for you exemption from the perils of the battle-field, and the shame of [pg 400] waging war against your Southern brethren, by hiring others to do the work you shrunk from performing. During that memorable session a very small body of Senators and Representatives, even beneath the shadow of a military despotism, resisted the usurpations of the Executive, and, with what degree of dignity and firmness, they willingly submit to the judgment of the world.

”Their efforts were unavailing, yet they may prove valuable hereafter, as another added to former examples of many protest against the progress of tyranny.

”On my return to Kentucky, at the close of the late special session of Congress, it was my purpose immediately to resign the office of Senator. The verbal and written remonstrances of many friends in different parts of the State induced me to postpone the execution of my purpose; but the time has arrived to carry it into effect, and accordingly I now hereby return the trust into your hands.... In the House of Representatives it was declared that the South should be reduced to 'abject submission,' or their inst.i.tutions be overthrown. In the Senate it was said that, if necessary, the South should be depopulated and repeopled from the North; and an eminent Senator expressed a desire that the President should be made dictator. This was superfluous, since they had already clothed him with dictatorial powers. In the midst of these proceedings, no plea for the Const.i.tution is listened to in the North; here and there a few heroic voices are feebly heard protesting against the progress of despotism, but, for the most part, beyond the military lines, mobs and anarchy rule the hour.

”The great ma.s.s of the Northern people seem anxious to sunder every safeguard of freedom; they eagerly offer to the Government what no European monarch would dare to demand. The President and his generals are unable to pick up the liberties of the people as rapidly as they are thrown at their feet.... In every form by which you could give direct expression to your will, you declared for neutrality. A large majority of the people at the May and August elections voted for the neutrality and peace of Kentucky. The press, the public speakers, the candidates-with exceptions in favor of the Government at Was.h.i.+ngton so rare as not to need mention-planted themselves on this position. You voted for it, and you meant it. You were promised it, and you expected it.... Look now at the condition of [pg 401] Kentucky, and see how your expectations have been realized-how these promises have been redeemed.... General Anderson, the military dictator of Kentucky, announces in one of his proclamations that he will arrest no one who does not act, write, or speak in opposition to Mr. Lincoln's Government. It would have completed the idea if he had added, or think in opposition to it. Look at the condition of our State under the rule of our new protectors. They have suppressed the freedom of speech and of the press. They seize people by military force upon mere suspicion, and impose on them oaths unknown to the laws. Other citizens they imprison without warrant, and carry them out of the State, so that the writ of habeas corpus can not reach them.

”Every day foreign armed bands are making seizures among the people. Hundreds of citizens, old and young, venerable magistrates, whose lives have been distinguished by the love of the people, have been compelled to fly from their homes and families to escape imprisonment and exile at the hands of Northern and German soldiers, under the orders of Mr. Lincoln and his military subordinates. While yet holding an important political trust, confided by Kentucky, I was compelled to leave my home and family, or suffer imprisonment and exile. If it is asked why I did not meet the arrest and seek a trial, my answer is, that I would have welcomed an arrest to be followed by a judge and jury; but you well know that I could not have secured these const.i.tutional rights. I would have been transported beyond the State, to languish in some Federal fortress during the pleasure of the oppressor. Witness the fate of Morehead and his Kentucky a.s.sociates in their distant and gloomy prison.

”The case of the gentleman just mentioned is an example of many others, and it meets every element in a definition of despotism. If it should occur in England it would be righted, or it would overturn the British Empire. He is a citizen and native of Kentucky. As a member of the Legislature, Speaker of the House, Representative in Congress from the Ashland district, and Governor of the State, you have known, trusted, and honored him during a public service of a quarter of a century. He is eminent for his ability, his amiable character, and his blameless life. Yet this man, without indictment, without warrant, without accusation, but by the order of President Lincoln, was seized at midnight, in his own house, and in the midst of his own family, and led through [pg 402] the streets of Louisville, as I am informed, with his hands crossed and pinioned before him-was carried out of the State and district, and now lies a prisoner in a fortress in New York Harbor, a thousand miles away....

”The Const.i.tution of the United States, which these invaders unconst.i.tutionally swear every citizen whom they unconst.i.tutionally seize to support, has been wholly abolished. It is as much forgotten as if it lay away back in the twilight of history. The facts I have enumerated show that the very rights most carefully reserved by it to the States and to individuals have been most conspicuously violated.... Your fellow-citizen,

(Signed) ”John C. Breckinridge.”

Such was the ”neutrality” suffered by the Confederacy from governments both at home and abroad.

The chivalric people of Kentucky showed their sympathy with the just cause of the people of the Southern States, by leaving the home where they could not serve the cause of right against might, and n.o.bly shared the fortunes of their Southern brethren on many a blood-dyed field. In like manner did the British people see with disapprobation their Government, while proclaiming neutrality, make new rules, and give new constructions to old ones, so as to favor our enemy and embarra.s.s us. The Englishman's sense of fair-play, and the manly instinct which predisposes him to side with the weak, gave us hosts of friends, but all their good intentions were paralyzed or foiled by their wily Minister for Foreign Affairs, and his coadjutor on this side, the artful, unscrupulous United States Secretary of State.

I have thus presented the case of Kentucky, not because it was the only State where false promises lulled the people into delusive security, until, by gradual approaches, usurpation had bound them hand and foot, and where despotic power crushed all the muniments of civil liberty which the Union was formed to secure, but because of the attempt, which has been noticed, to arraign the Confederacy for invasion of the State in disregard of her sovereignty.

The occupation of Columbus by the Confederate forces was only just soon enough to antic.i.p.ate the predetermined purpose [pg 403] of the Federal Government, all of which was plainly set forth in the letter of General Polk to the Governor of Kentucky, and his subsequent letter to the Kentucky commissioners.

Missouri, like Kentucky, had wished to preserve peaceful relations in the contest which it was foreseen would soon occur between the Northern and the Southern States. When the Federal Government denied to her the privilege of choosing her own position, which betokened no hostility to the General Government, and she was driven to the necessity of deciding whether or not her citizens should be used for the subjugation of the Southern States, her people and their representative, the State government, repelled the arbitrary a.s.sumption of authority by military force to control her government and her people.

Among other acts of invasion, the Federal troops had occupied Belmont, a village in Missouri opposite to Columbus, and with artillery threatened that town, inspiring terror in its peaceful inhabitants. After the occupation of Columbus, under these circ.u.mstances of full justification, a small Confederate force, Colonel Tappan's Arkansas regiment, and Beltzhoover's battery, were thrown across the Mississippi to occupy and hold the village, in the State of Missouri, then an ally, and soon to become a member, of the Confederacy. On the 6th of November General Grant left his headquarters at Cairo with a land and naval force, and encamped on the Kentucky sh.o.r.e. This act and a demonstration made by detachments from his force at Paducah were probably intended to induce the belief that he contemplated an attack on Columbus, thus concealing his real purpose to surprise the small garrison at Belmont. General Polk on the morning of the 7th discovered the landing of the Federal forces on the Missouri sh.o.r.e, some seven miles above Columbus, and, divining the real purpose of the enemy, detached General Pillow with four regiments of his division, say two thousand men, to reenforce the garrison at Belmont. Very soon after his arrival, the enemy commenced an a.s.sault which was sternly resisted, and with varying fortune, for several hours. The enemy's front so far exceeded the length of our line as to enable him to attack on both flanks, and our troops were finally driven back to the bank of the river with the loss of their battery, [pg 404] which had been gallantly and efficiently served until nearly all its horses had been killed, and its ammunition had been expended. The enemy advanced to the bank of the river below the point to which our men had retreated, and opened an artillery-fire upon the town of Columbus, to which our guns from the commanding height responded with such effect as to drive him from the river bank. In the mean time General Polk had at intervals sent three regiments to reenforce General Pillow. Upon the arrival of the first of these, General Pillow led it to a favorable position, where it for some time steadily resisted and checked the advance of the enemy. General Pillow, with great energy and gallantry, rallied his repulsed troops and brought them again into action. General Polk now proceeded in person with two other regiments. Whether from this or some other cause, the enemy commenced a retreat. General Pillow, whose activity and daring on the occasion were worthy of all praise, led the first and second detachments, by which he had been reenforced, to attack the enemy in the rear, and General Polk, landing further up the river, moved to cut off the enemy's retreat; but some embarra.s.sment and consequent delay which occurred in landing his troops caused him to be too late for the purpose for which he crossed, and to become only a part of the pursuing force.

One would naturally suppose that the question about which there would be the greatest certainty would be the number of troops engaged in a battle, yet there is nothing in regard to which we have such conflicting accounts. It is fairly concluded, from the concurrent reports, that the enemy attacked us on both flanks, and that in the beginning of the action we were outnumbered; but the obstinacy with which the conflict was maintained and the successive advances and retreats which occurred in the action indicate that the disparity could not have been very great, and therefore that, after the arrival of our reenforcements, our troops must have become numerically superior. The dead and wounded left by the enemy upon the field, the arms, ammunition, and military stores abandoned in his flight, so incontestably prove his defeat, that his claim to have achieved a victory is too preposterous for discussion. Though the forces engaged [pg 405] were comparatively small to those in subsequent battles of the war, six hours of incessant combat, with repeated bayonet-charges, must place this in the rank of the most stubborn engagements, and the victors must accord to the vanquished the meed of having fought like Americans. One of the results of the battle, which is at least significant, is the fact that General Grant, who had superciliously refused to recognize General Polk as one with whom he could exchange prisoners, did, after the battle, send a flag of truce to get such privileges as are recognized between armies acknowledging each other to be ”foemen worthy of their steel.”

General Polk reported as follows: ”We pursued them to their boats, seven miles, and then drove their boats before us. The road was strewed with their dead and wounded, guns, ammunition, and equipments. The number of prisoners taken by the enemy, as shown by their list furnished, was one hundred and six, all of whom have been returned by exchange. After making a liberal allowance to the enemy, a hundred of their prisoners still remain in my hands, one stand of colors, and a fraction over one thousand stand of arms, with knapsacks, ammunition, and other military stores. Our loss in killed, wounded, and missing, was six hundred and forty one; that of the enemy was probably not less than twelve hundred.”

Meanwhile, Albert Sidney Johnston, a soldier of great distinction in the United States Army, where he had attained the rank of brigadier-general by brevet, and was in command of the Department of California, resigned his commission, and came overland from San Francisco to Richmond, to tender his services to the Confederate States. Though he had been bred a soldier, and most of his life had been spent in the army, he had not neglected such study of political affairs as properly belongs to the citizen of a republic, and appreciated the issue made between States claiming the right to resume the powers they had delegated to a general agent and the claims set up by that agent to coerce States, his creators, and for whom he held a trust.

He was a native of Kentucky, but his first military appointment was from Louisiana, and he was a volunteer in the war for [pg 406] independence by Texas, and for a time resided in that State. Much of his military service had been in the West, and he felt most identified with it. On the 10th of September, 1861, he was a.s.signed to command our Department of the West, which included the States of Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, the Indian country, and the western part of Mississippi.

General Johnston, on his arrival at Nashville, found that he lacked not only men, but the munitions of war and the means of obtaining them. Men were ready to be enlisted, but the arms and equipments had nearly all been required to fit out the first levies. Immediately on his survey of the situation, he determined to occupy Bowling Green in Kentucky, and ordered Brigadier-General S. B. Buckner, with five thousand men, to take possession of the position. This invasion of Kentucky was an act of self-defense rendered necessary by the action of the government of Kentucky, and by the evidences of intended movements of the forces of the United States. It was not possible to withdraw the troops from Columbus in the west, nor from c.u.mberland Ford in the east, to which General Felix K. Zollicoffer had advanced with four thousand men. A compliance with the demands of Kentucky would have opened the frontiers of Tennessee and the Mississippi River to the enemy; besides, it was essential to the defense of Tennessee.

East of Columbus, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Hopkinsville were garrisoned with small bodies of troops; and the territory between Columbus and Bowling Green was occupied by moving detachments which caused the supposition that a large military force was present and contemplated an advance. A fortified camp was established at c.u.mberland Gap as the right of General Johnston's line, and an important point for the protection of East Tennessee against invasion. Thus General Johnston located his line of defense, from Columbus on the west to the c.u.mberland Mountains on the east, with his center at Bowling Green, which was occupied and intrenched. It was a good base for military operations, was a proper depot for supplies, and, if fortified, could be held against largely superior numbers.

On October 28th General Johnston took command at Bowling [pg 407] Green. He states his force to have been twelve thousand men, and that the enemy's force at that time was estimated to be double his own, or twenty-four thousand. He says: ”The enemy's force increased more rapidly than our own, so that by the last of November it numbered fifty thousand, and continued to increase until it ran up to between seventy-five and one hundred thousand. My force was kept down by disease, so that it numbered about twenty-two thousand.”