Personal Recollections of Distinguished Generals

by William Franklin Gore Shanks

The true story of Kentucky neutrality is one of the most romantic episodes of the war. The visionary schemers who planned the Southern Confederacy were guilty of dozens of chimerical and fallacious schemes, whose shallowness is now so apparent that one wonders how the Southern people were ever deceived by them. The rebel leaders declared—and declared it so often that they actually believed it themselves—that the Northern people would not fight. They boasted, and boasted so frequently that they began after a time to believe, that one Southern man could really whip five Yankees. They deceived themselves for so many years with the doctrine of States Rights that leaders and people began to believe that a fraction of the body corporate could exist without the aid of the rest, and offered to this modern and enlightened age a national illustration of Æsop's fable of the stomach's folly. When the schemes of the rebel leaders were culminating, and they found that the people of the Border States were not disposed, like those of the Cotton States, to be hurried, regardless of consequences, into a war in which they had nothing to gain and every thing to lose, they instituted, with a shrewdness worthy the fame of a Philadelphia lawyer, the no less visionary schemes that there could be law without power, and that a portion of the body, and that portion the heart, could suspend its operations while the rest was being violently agitated. In Tennessee, where the first-named scheme was successful, the rebels deceived the Union men into advocating the doctrine of "no coercion." In Kentucky, where their complete success in carrying out the second design was frustrated only by the sagacity of Rousseau, the rebels deceived the Unionists into advocating the doctrine of "neutrality." Twice the people of Tennessee voted against co-operation with the rebel states; and when the rebels again dared to test the question at the polls, they embodied in the contest the principle that "the general government could not coerce a sovereign state," and into the support of this doctrine the anti-secessionists foolishly acquiesced. The first act of the President in calling for troops to enforce the laws was construed into coercion, and the state seceded. Three times the State of Kentucky voted by large majorities against secession, but the rebels did not despair, and, having failed to get the people to secede, or to declare against the right of coercion, they endeavored, with but partial success, to commit the authorities and the Unionists to what was called "a strict neutrality."

The rebels in Kentucky were under the leadership of a Cassius-like character named Simon Bolivar Buckner. He had been in the secrets and the interests of the dis-union leaders for years before the first overt act of secession was committed, and for three or four years previous to 1861 had been engaged in schemes for carrying the state out of the Union, and for furnishing troops to the rebel army that was to be. The principal of these schemes was the organization of the very irregular militia of the state into a strong body, known as the "State Guard." Buckner, by every means in his reach—and his associates in treason, who were also in power, gave him great assistance—fostered this scheme. He created a martial spirit among the young men of Kentucky, and by the aid of Tilghman, Hunt, Hanson, and others, who eventually became rebel generals, extended this spirit to every part of the state. He was a man eminently fitted for such a task, and by his duplicity and skill undermined the faith in and love for the Union existing among the young men who formed the State Guard. Years before the majority of them suspected that secession would ever be attempted, they had grown to look upon the institutions, doctrines, and even the flag of the Union with indifference, if not contempt. The flag of Kentucky became the flag of the guard, and Buckner even attempted to expel that of the government from the organization. The various uniforms of the different militia organizations of different districts were discarded, under Buckner's orders, for a uniform of gray, which eventually proved to be that of the rebel army. The various arms of the different companies were discarded for weapons of a uniform calibre. The organization, which had originally embraced only companies, was extended to divisions and regiments, and brigades were formed and drilled in encampments as such. In fact, nearly a year before South Carolina seceded, the State Guard of Kentucky, with Simon Bolivar Buckner as Inspector General commanding, was simply a body of recruits for the embryo rebel army. It is slightly foreign to the subject, but I may as well add here the fact I have never heard stated before, that, at the same time, and undoubtedly for the same purpose, the martial spirit of the youth of all the Southern States was being encouraged. Militia organization of the various states were being thoroughly remodeled and systematized, the best of arms obtained, uniforms of the same kind purchased, and, to all appearances, the rebel army, as it afterward existed, was being recruited in 1858-9 and '60.

This organization, under Buckner, existed when neutrality was instituted, and the new doctrines gave it and the traitors who led it additional strength, while it served to cloak their designs. Great numbers of the leading Unionists of the state joined with the rebel leaders in support of this doctrine, ridiculous and inconsistent as it now appears to have been. A large majority of the people who had voted against secession also became committed to the visionary doctrine, until it came to be the accepted policy of the state; so that, when Lovell Rousseau, in the Senate, in May, 1861, denounced neutrality as a mask of the secessionists on the one hand, and a disgraceful yielding of the Unionists on the other, he found few who agreed with him, and less who seconded him in his avowed purpose of abolishing neutrality, and placing the state, at all times, in her proper position as a true member of the Union, amid the disasters of war as well as in the prosperity of peace.

The public were not prepared to follow him, and he was forced to accept neutrality as a compromise between union and secession, between right and wrong, but doing so under public protest in the Senate of the state, and declaring on every occasion which offered that it was a debasing position, which he intended to abandon as soon as he could induce the state to follow him. He found little support in this honorable war upon neutrality until the secessionists, under Buckner, went a step farther, and proposed, after hostilities had fairly begun, to make the neutrality of Kentucky an "armed neutrality," urging that the state troops be armed to resist encroachments from either rebel or Union troops. In this proposition Rousseau saw an opportunity for forcing a direct issue with the rebels, and he was quick to take advantage of it. He saw in it actual aid to the rebellion. Against this scheme, which proposed the appropriation of three millions of dollars to arm the "Kentucky State Guard," he at once began a crusade as earnest as it was untiring. He denounced the State Guard and its leaders as secessionists and traitors, stormed at them in Senate-halls and on the stump, and not only defeated the bill, but succeeded very happily in dividing the State Guard into two rival organizations, known as the "Home Guards" (Unionists) and "State Guardsmen" (rebels). He called it at the time "separating the sheep from the goats." It was a most fortunate achievement; for it not only saved thousands of young men belonging to the State Guard from being unwittingly drawn into the rebel army, but precipitated the designs of the rebels, and hastened the defection which was inevitable. This was accomplished under personal difficulties, opposition, and dangers, which only made the labor more delightful to a person of Rousseau's temperament. He delights in opposition; is in his element only when in the minority, and strongly opposed; and his belligerent disposition led him to gladly accept not only the numerous stump and street discussions and disputes, but even street quarrels and fights with the secessionists. The rebel sympathizers seldom dared attack him openly, his bold front, at all times maintained, making them prefer to exercise their strategy and trickery against him rather than come to open warfare. Upon him, as the head and front of the offending party, they poured all their abuse and vituperation, but dared to do little more.

This split in the State Guard soon proved a serious affair, and the "defection," as the traitors called the retirement of the Union men, became quite general. Every incident increased the feeling; every day saw the differences of opinions and the breach grow wider. On one occasion Buckner was reviewing the regiment of the Guard which was stationed at Lexington, Ky. The feeling between the partisans composing the regiment had become quite demonstrative, and on this occasion Captain Saunders D. Bruce, a Union officer of the regiment (subsequently colonel of the Twentieth Kentucky Infantry, now a resident of New York, and editor of the "Field, Turf, and Farm" newspaper), made his appearance in the line with two small United States flags as guidons for his company. Buckner, noticing them, approached Captain Bruce, ordered him to the front, in full view of the regiment, explained to him that Kentucky was neutral in the "unfortunate struggle" then going on, and directed him to replace the guidons by flags of the state. Bruce, without replying, turned to his company, and, as if about to obey, gave the orders, "Attention, company;" "Shoulder arms;" "Right face;" "Forward march," and away went the "Lexington Chasseurs" out of the line, and for that matter out of the State Guard. No attempt was made to stop the company, or to call Bruce to account for his "insubordination."

No sooner had the work of dividing the State Guard been thus accomplished, than Rousseau hastened to Washington to obtain permission from the President to raise troops in the state for the United States service. While on the way to Washington, he had an interview with General McClellan, then commanding the Western Department, at Cincinnati, and found him opposed to his scheme. McClellan sent to Washington his aid, Colonel Key (subsequently dismissed the service for disloyal utterances), to represent Rousseau's scheme as rash and ill-advised. At the same time, others were sent to Washington by the "mild-mannered" Unionists to urge the President not to grant Rousseau permission to raise troops, arguing that it would at once precipitate the invasion of the state by the rebels. Rousseau consequently found great difficulty in obtaining the required authority, but went at the question boldly.

He was introduced to the President and the cabinet by Secretary Chase, who was his energetic friend in the matter, and who subsequently aided him materially in getting around the President's objections to the project. Before he had finished shaking hands with the stalwart Kentuckian and soldier, the President good-humoredly said, "Rousseau, I want you to tell me where you got that joke about Senator Johnson, of your state."

The "joke" alluded to was one of the neatest of Mr. Lincoln's numerous dry humors, and was as follows: A state senator from Paducah, Ky., John M. Johnson by name, who had made himself notorious as a secessionist, wrote to Mr. Lincoln in May, 1861, a very solemn and emphatic protest, in the name of the sovereign State of Kentucky, against the occupation and fortification of Cairo, on the Illinois side of the Ohio River. Mr. Lincoln replied in a letter written in his own peculiar vein, apologizing for the movement, promising it should not be done again, and declaring that if he had half suspected that Cairo, Illinois, was in Dr. Johnson's Kentucky senatorial district, he would have thought twice before sending troops there. Rousseau had heard the story, and had repeated it in a speech in the Senate, and an explanation of how it had gained publicity was what the President requested. Rousseau explained.

"The joke was too good to keep, sir, and so Johnson told it himself."