Pictorial history of the war for the Union, volume 1 (of 2)

by Ann S. Stephens

While Pillow and Polk were invading the south-western part of the State, General Zollicoffer was operating in the east. With some six thousand rebels he came to Cumberland Ford—which is situated near the point where the corner of Virginia runs into Kentucky—capturing a company of Home Guards. On the 17th of September the Legislature received a message from Governor Magoffin communicating a telegraphic dispatch from General Zollicoffer, announcing that the safety of Tennessee demanded the occupation of Cumberland and the three long mountains in Kentucky, and that he had occupied them, and should retain his position until the Federal forces were withdrawn and the Federal camp broken up.

That portion of Kentucky lying west of the Cumberland river was then declared under insurrectionary control, and Secretary Chase instructed the Surveyor at Cairo to prevent all commercial intercourse with that section, and to search all baggage and all persons going thither. Just about the same time the gunboat Conestoga captured the rebel steamers Stephenson and Gazelle, on the Cumberland, and one of them was found to contain one hundred tons of iron.

DECISIVE MEASURES OF THE LOYAL STATE GOVERNMENT.

When the seditious plans of General Buckner became too plain for concealment, the Legislature found it necessary to depose him from the command of the State troops, and General Thomas L. Crittenden, a loyal citizen, was appointed to fill that position. Governor Magoffin, in obedience to the resolutions and the enactments of the Legislature, promptly issued a proclamation, authorizing that officer to execute the purposes contemplated by the resolutions of the Legislature in reference to the expulsion of the invaders, and General Crittenden ordered the military to muster forthwith into service. Hamilton Pope, Brigadier-General of the Home Guard (Union), called on the people of each ward in Louisville to meet and organize into companies for the protection of the city.

Great excitement existed at this time in Louisville. The Union Home Guards began to assemble, while other Union forces were arriving and being sent to different portions of the State. At nine o’clock on the morning of the 18th, when the Government troops reached Rolling Fork, five miles north of Muldragh’s Hill, they found that the bridge over the fork had been burned by rebels under General Buckner, who were then upon the hill.

The Legislature passed, over the veto of the Governor, a resolution to the effect that, as the rebels had invaded Kentucky and insolently dictated the terms upon which they would retire, General Robert Anderson, the hero of Fort Sumter, one of Kentucky’s sons, should be invited to take instant charge of that department, and that the Governor must call out a sufficient force to expel the invaders from her soil. General Anderson, who had been previously appointed by the Government to command in Kentucky, responded to the call, and on the 21st of September issued a proclamation calling upon the people of Kentucky to rally to the support of the Union.

General S. B. Buckner, who had previously acted under neutrality pretences, now gradually assumed an attitude of hostility, and in September was openly arrayed against the Government. On the 12th he issued an inflammatory proclamation to the people of Kentucky, in which he declared that he sought to make no war upon the Union, but only against the tyranny and despotism of the Federal Government, which was about to make the people of Kentucky slaves. By such means as these he aimed to arouse the freemen of that State to arms and to rebellion. The proclamation was dated at Russelville, while he was entrenching a position at Bowling Green, about thirty miles from the Tennessee line, on the Louisville and Nashville railroad.

Very soon the Government formed a new department, consisting of Ohio, Indiana, and that part of Kentucky within a commanding distance of Cincinnati, placing it under the charge of General Mitchell, in order to relieve General Rosecranz in Western Virginia and General Anderson of a part of their responsibility, and enable them to give greater attention to their own specific departments. The department under General Anderson seemed to require similar military discipline to that of Annapolis and Maryland, and, as a commencement, Martin W. Barr, the telegraphic news reporter of the Southern Associated Press, the medium for the transmission of correspondence from traitors at the North to rebels in the South, was arrested, together with ex-Governor Morehead and Reuben T. Murrett, one of the proprietors of the Courier, a rebel sheet.

The State had now become a portion of the ground which was to be so fiercely contested. Rebel journals and leaders made no concealment of their purpose to wrest Kentucky from the Union at every hazard. The Ohio river was to be the boundary of the Southern empire, and notwithstanding the emphatic voice of her people, all the energy of the combined forces of the rebel armies were to be brought to bear upon the work. The fact could be no longer disguised from the people, and the loyal men, finding that their patience and confidence in the disloyal portion, with their previous consent to a negative position of neutrality, were in vain, boldly declared that the time had come to arouse and resist the impending ruin. The attempt of the conspirators of the Cotton States to make Kentucky the battle-field, along with Virginia, was to be defeated at every cost, and the people, rising to a comprehension of their responsibility, hastened to the work of organization and defence.