At Bardstown, Maysville, Tompkinsville, Cynthiana, and Paducah, the two sides met in deadly conflict. At the latter place the daring Confederate cavalryman, General Nathan Bedford Forrest, entered with his troops. Here also General A.P. Thompson, while gallantly leading his troops in a charge on Fort Anderson, fell pierced by a cannon ball.
At Murfreesboro, Missionary Ridge, Chickamauga, Vicksburg, Donelson, Shiloh, Baton Rouge, Stone River, indeed, on almost every battlefield, Kentucky courage was tested and never found wanting.
At the close of the crucial conflict more than thirty thousand of the flower of our Kentucky manhood had fallen, and thousands more were crippled.
More than forty thousand Kentuckians followed the fortunes of the Confederacy. Among them were: General Albert Sidney Johnston; Lieutenant Generals Simon B. Buckner and John B. Hood; Major Generals John C. Breckinridge, William Preston, and George B. Crittenden; Brigadier Generals John Hunt Morgan, Humphrey Marshall, Ben Hardin Helm, Basil W. Duke, Roger W. Hanson, Lloyd Tilghman, John S. Williams, George B. Hodge, Thomas H. Taylor, Henry B. Lyon, Adam R. Johnson, and Richard S. Gano.
More than one hundred thousand of the white men of our state and eleven thousand negroes enlisted in the Federal cause. Among the former were numbered: Major Generals Thomas L. Crittenden, Cassius M. Clay, Don Carlos Buell, William Nelson, Lovell H. Rousseau, and Thomas J. Wood; Brigadier and Brevet Major Generals Robert Anderson, Richard W. Johnson, Stephen G. Burbridge, W.T. Ward, Walter C. Whittaker, John T. Croxton, and Eli Long; Brigadier Generals James M. Shackelford, James S. Jackson, Green Clay Smith, Speed S. Fry, Jerry T. Boyle, Edward H. Hobson, T.T. Garrard, L.P. Watkins, and W.P. Sanders.
Of the Kentuckians engaged we can truly say no braver men were found on either side; no better citizens have helped to develop our state since the conflict closed. Now only a few veterans are left on either side. Most of them are
"Under the sod and the dew
Waiting the judgment day;"
so let all unite in
"Love and tears for the blue
Tears and love for the gray."