Attitude of the Border States

While events in Western Virginia were assuming the character of open warfare between armed forces, others of great importance were occurring westward of the Alleghany Mountains; for, so early as the beginning of June, civil war had begun wherever the system of slavery prevailed. Political leaders in the "Border States"--slave-labor States bordering on free-labor States--took a position which finally brought great distress upon the inhabitants of those Commonwealths. A large class of these leaders professed to be friends of the Union, but conditionally. They would be its friends so long as the National Government did not interfere with slavery, nor "attempt to bring back the seceded States;" in other words, they were friends of the Republic so long as its Government did not raise a finger for the salvation of its life. When the President's call for troops to suppress the rebellion appeared, the Louisville Journal, the organ of the professed Unionists of Kentucky, hastened to say: "We are struck with mingled amazement and indignation. The policy announced in the proclamation deserves the unqualified condemnation of every American citizen. It is unworthy, not merely of a statesman, but of a man. It is a policy utterly hair-brained and ruinous. If Mr. Lincoln contemplated this policy in his inaugural address, he is a guilty dissembler; if he conceived it under the excitement aroused by the seizure of Fort Sumter, he is a guilty Hotspur. In either case, he is miserably unfit for the exalted position in which the enemies of the country have placed him. Let the people instantly take him and his administration into their own hands, if they would rescue the land from bloodshed, and the Union from sudden and irretrievable destruction." And at a large "Union meeting" at Louisville, over which James Guthrie and other leading men in the State held control, it was resolved that "Kentucky reserved to herself the right to choose her own position; and that, while her natural sympathies are with those who have a common interest in the protection of Slavery, she still acknowledges her loyalty and fealty to the Government of the United States, which she will cheerfully render until that Government becomes aggressive, tyrannical, and regardless of our rights in slave property." They declared that the States were peers of the National Government; and gave the world to understand that the latter should not be allowed to "use sanguinary or coercive" measures to "bring back the seceded States." The "Kentucky State Guard," which the governor had organized for the benefit of the Secessionists, were commended by this Union meeting as "the bulwark of the safety of the Commonwealth," and its members were enjoined to remember that they were "pledged equally" to fidelity to the United States and Kentucky.

The "Guard" was placed under the command of Captain Simon B. Buckner of the National army, who was then evidently in the secret service of the Confederacy, for he used his position effectively in seducing large numbers of the members of the "Guard" from their allegiance to the old flag, and sending them as recruits to the Confederate armies. It was not long before he led a large portion of them into the camp of the enemy, and he became a Confederate major-general. Then the Louisville Journal, that had so savagely condemned the President, more savagely assailed Buckner with curses, saying: "Away with your pledges and assurances--with your protestations, apologies and proclamations--at once and altogether! Away, parricide! Away, and do penance forever!--be shriven or slain--away! You have less palliation than Attila--less boldness, magnanimity and nobleness than Cariolanus. You are the Benedict Arnold of the day! you are the Catiline of Kentucky! Go, thou miscreant!" And when in February, 1862, Buckner and some of the "State Guard" were captured at Fort Donelson, and he was sent to Fort Warren, Boston, many of those who were deceived by the pretence that the "Guard" were the "bulwark of the Commonwealth," demanded his delivery to the authorities of Kentucky, to be tried for treason against the State. That was after the Legislature of that State had refused to favor the scheme of the disloyal governor, and Kentucky was feeling the effects of its peculiar "neutrality;" a sort of Unionism that caused Missouri and Kentucky to become battle-fields, and to suffer untold miseries. Their soil was trodden and ravaged by contending armies, which had no respect for what was known as "Kentucky neutrality," for, in the hands of the Secessionists it was only an adroit scheme to mislead and confuse the people, a large majority of whom were sincerely attached to the Union.