ATTEMPT TO FORM A REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT IN THE STATE.
After this decisive action of the Legislature, which effectually destroyed the hopes entertained by the conspirators of obtaining a semblance of legal authority for their designs, their next expedient was to hold an informal meeting at Russelville, a small town in the southern portion of the State, on the 29th of October. Here they drew up a declaration of grievances, in which they charged the majority of the Legislature with having betrayed their solemn trust, by inviting into the State the “armies of Lincoln,” with having abdicated the government in favor of a military despotism, and thrown upon the people and the State the horrors and ravages of war. They recommended the immediate arming of a “Guard” in each county, of not less than one hundred men, to be paid as Confederate troops, subject to the orders of the “Commanding General.” Finally, they called for a Convention to be held at Russelville, on the 18th of November, to be “elected, or appointed in any manner possible,” by the people of the several counties, for the purpose of “severing forever our connection with the Federal Government.”
John C. Breckinridge, late Vice President of the United States, was appointed one of the commissioners to carry out the orders of the convention. This Convention met at the time designated, composed of about two hundred persons, professing to represent sixty-five counties, though self-appointed, and without any form of election. On the 20th of November they adopted a “Declaration of Independence, and an Ordinance of Secession,” and appointed a “Provisional Government, consisting of a Governor, and a Legislative Council of Ten,” and dispatched H. C. Burnett, W. E. Simms, and William Preston, as commissioners to the Confederate States. On the 9th of December, the “Congress’” of the Confederate States, in session at Richmond, passed an “Act for the admission of the State of Kentucky into the Confederate States of America,” as a member “on equal footing with the other States of the Confederacy.”
George W. Johnson, of Scott county, who was chosen as Provisional Governor, by the Convention, in his “Message,” declared his willingness to resign “whenever the regularly elected Governor [Magoffin] should escape from his virtual imprisonment at Frankfort.”
Governor Magoffin, in a letter, dated December 13, 1861, says of this Convention, “I condemn its action in unqualified terms. Situated as it was, and without authority from the people, it cannot be justified by similar revolutionary acts in other States, by minorities to overthrow the State Governments. My position is, and has been, and will continue to be, to abide by the will of the majority of the people of the State, to stand by the Constitution and laws of the State of Kentucky, as expounded by the Supreme Court of the State, and by the Constitution and laws of the United States, as expounded by the Supreme Court of the United States. To this position I shall cling in this trying hour as the last hope of society and of constitutional liberty.”