VI.
A Conversation with a Loyal Kentuckian, who had Faith in the final Triumph of Democracy.
Confedrit × Roads
(wich is in the Stait uv Kentucky),
January 6, 1866.
I see a lite. Democricy is not that dead karkis its enemies hoped for and its friends feared. My noomerious friends here insisted that ez I wuz growin into the seer and yaller leaf, I shood abandon Dimocrisy, and flote with the current. I cant. Ez troo ez the needle to the pole, so am I to Dimocrisy. Young wimmin flock to marryins, middle-aged ones to bornins, and old ones to buryins, which shows concloosively to the most limited intelleck wat the mind uv each class runs upon. So it is with me. To me Dimocrisy is wife, mother, and child.
I hev diskivered many things sense I hev bin in Kentucky—things wich elevated my deprest heart ez yeast does dough, wich filled my shrunken soul ez wind does a bladder.
The people uv Kentucky wuz all loyal. Doorin the horrible fratrisidle war wich hez rent the proud temple uv liberty into twain, they preserved a strict nootrality. I hed a conversation with wun old patriarch, who asshoored me that he hed never taken sides.
Upon his honor, he asshoored me that, after battles, he rifled the corpses uv both armies, impartially. “Cood any boddy be more nootraller than that?” he asked. “My sons,” sed he, “wuz in the confedrit army. This fact wood hev turned the affections uv a week-minded man in that direction; but when I thot uv the boys, I alluz thot also uv that gellorious star-spangled banner, under wich I hed whipped my niggers and sold their children; under whose shadder I hed men servants, and made servants, and home-made servants born unto me. That banner hed bin my shield. Ef my niggers run off, who so prompt in their pursoot ez the Democratic marshals, wich alluz returned em to me ef it wuz possible? The instooshun wuz guaranteed to me by solemn compermises, wich we cood hev ez often ez we desired. Compermises wuz our best holt. Whenever we wanted anything, all we hed to do wuz to ask for it. The Ablishinists wood object, the Dimocrisy wood draw up a compermise, wich inklooded, ez a rool, twice or 3 times wat we asked, and pass it to save the Union. Sich a Union wuz worth havin, and I opposed all efforts to dissolute it. Hed the South succeeded, I shood hev gone with em; for Kentucky alone—the only nigger State in the North—wood hev bin helpless. Scaldin tears hev I shed when contemplatin the horrors uv war; but I cood do nothin to avert it. Kentucky wuz loyal, but nootral.”
I find down here that the loyal citizens uv Kentucky who hev returned from the confedrit service are not at all discouraged; on the contrary, they are hopeful. Sed one to me (I bleeve he wuz a Kernel under Gen. Forest; indeed, I think he told me he participated in the glorious victory at Fort Piller),—
“Why art thou cast down? Things is workin eggsackly to our hand.”