Personal Recollections of Distinguished Generals

by William Franklin Gore Shanks

The secessionists of Louisville did not, however, entirely desist from their efforts to aid the rebels, but on the 17th of August they called a meeting of sympathy with the South. At night, in pursuance of the call, they early mustered their strength at the court-house. Their leaders were on the stand, which was handsomely decorated with white or "peace" flags, awaiting the filling of the hall by their friends, and somewhat anxious at the appearance of numerous well-known Unionists, or "abolitionists," as they were then called by the rebel sympathizers. Every thing was in readiness to open the peace meeting, and James Trabue, the principal secession leader, had risen to call the assembly to order, when James S. Speed, late United States Attorney General, quietly walked upon the stand and approached the desk prepared for the chairman. He called the attention of the house by rapping on the desk with his cane, knocked aside with an air of contempt the "peace" flags on either side of him, and was about to speak, when he was interrupted by the clamor of the rebel leaders, who insisted that the house was theirs, and that the meeting was to be addressed by them. Amid the excitement, and above the clamor which ensued, was heard the stentorian voice of Rousseau, proposing Judge Speed as president of the meeting. He immediately put the question to a vote. A deafening "Ay!" drowned the "Noes" of the rebels, and, perfectly calm and cool, Mr. Speed reached forward, removed the white flags from the stand, and unfurled two small star-spangled banners in their stead. In an instant, as if by preconcerted arrangement, from different parts of the hall, large and small United States flags were unfurled, and ten minutes afterward the secessionists had left the hall, amid the groans of the loyal citizens. Judges Speed and Harlan, and Messrs. Wolfe, Rousseau, and others, followed in strong Union anti-neutral speeches, and the meeting adopted several very strong resolutions. Next to Rousseau's establishment of the Union recruiting camp opposite Louisville, this affair was the first determined step taken by the Unionists of Kentucky to keep the state in the Union.

Meantime Rousseau had quietly, but rapidly, filled up his two regiments as authorized, and they were sworn into the service. Fremont was then in want of troops in Missouri, and sent his aid, Richard Corwin, of Ohio, to inspect Rousseau's force, and, if found available for field service, to make application at Washington for it. An intimation came to Rousseau that he would be sent to Missouri (he was growing anxious to go to any department in which active work would afford him opportunities to win promotion and reputation), and he determined to invade Kentucky soil at least once before going, and so announced his intention of parading his corps through the streets of Louisville. A delegation of rebel and neutral citizens waited on him, and begged him to forbear his intention, representing that the indignant citizens would rise up in their anger and attack his soldiers.

"By Heaven!" exclaimed Rousseau, "the d—d scoundrels shall have enough of it, then, before I am done with them."

The march of the brigade through the city was undisturbed, and it returned to camp without having received any more deadly volley than a few curses from the neutrals and secessionists. One of the effects of the parade, and the announcement of the intention to send Rousseau to Missouri, was the presentation of an appeal to the President, signed by the principal of the Union men, protesting against the removal of Rousseau from the vicinity of the city. A copy of this protest was shown by a friend to Colonel Rousseau. When he read it he grew furiously enraged, cursing the protesting individuals as a set of marplots who had opposed him at every turn, and he immediately took steps to break up camp and be on the march to Missouri before the countermanding order could come. He was stopped in the midst of his preparations, however, and ordered by President Lincoln to remain in camp at "Camp Joe Holt," the name given to his encampment, in honor of the Secretary of War, Colonel Joseph Holt, now Judge Advocate General of the Army. It was a fortunate order, that, for the fair "City of the Falls."

Buckner had not been idle all this time, and recruiting for "Camp Boone," the rebel Kentucky encampment, had proceeded really under his directions, but ostensibly in opposition to his wishes; and a few thousand Kentuckians, and a large force of Tennesseeans and other Southern troops, had gathered upon the southern border of the state for the purpose of seizing Louisville and other places, and establishing a defensive line along the Ohio River. Had that project not been frustrated by the position and force of Rousseau, the fate of the Confederacy would not have been sealed as soon as it was. The line of the Ohio, occupied in force by the rebels, would have been very difficult to break. If the Ohio River had been blockaded by rebel guns, the Union forces along it would have been fed and moved with great difficulty. Subsequently to the frustration of this project by Rousseau, Kentucky furnished ninety thousand men to the Union army, few or none of which would have been raised with the state under rebel occupation, and numbers of whom would have been conscripted into the rebel army. These would have been some of the results of the occupation of the Ohio, and serious disasters they would have proved to the Union cause. In the prosecution of this scheme, Buckner labored with a zeal that one could confidently expect from a man of his Cassius-like proportions. In the prosecution of the plan he went to Washington, represented himself as a Union man, and obtained from Generals Scott and McDowell much valuable information. When about to return to Kentucky he called upon General McDowell, and, in parting with him, placed both hands upon McDowell's shoulders, looked him steadily in the eye, and said,

"Mack, I am going back to Kentucky to raise troops for my country."

McDowell wished him "God speed" in the undertaking, and they parted. Buckner returned to Louisville, halted but a day, and hastened southward to the rebel "Camp Boone" to doff his garb of neutrality for the Confederate gray. A change can not be said to have been necessary, for, as the rebels practiced neutrality in Kentucky, it was bona fide rebellion, and wore the same outward garb. Three nights after the countermanding of the order to Rousseau to march to Missouri, Buckner invaded Kentucky and occupied Bowling Green. On the next day, September 17, 1861, he advanced with a large force upon Louisville, and Rousseau, the rejected, with the "Home Guards," which he had preserved from the defection which seized the State Guard, were the only defenders of the city to be found. On the night of September 17, 1861, Rousseau crossed the Ohio River, and marched through the uproarious streets of the excited and endangered city to meet the invader. With this little band he penetrated forty miles into the interior of the state, hourly expecting to meet the enemy, and intending to fight him whenever and wherever he did meet him. He made the passage of Rolling Fork River, and occupied the heights of Muldraugh's Hills, where Buckner was reported to be, but found the rebel had retired to Green River.

Ever since this memorable era, Kentucky has persisted in showing herself on every important occasion as belonging to the neuter gender of states, and her unenviable position on several questions of national interest within the last five or six years has all been owing to the influence of the same class of politicians as those who opposed action in 1861. A few independent, energetic men, with opinions of their own, and a spirit of progress consonant with that of the Union, like Rousseau, Cyrus H. Burnham, and one or two others, have hardly proven the leaven to the corrupt whole. Many of those who were neutral when the success of secession was doubtful, when the constitutional amendment was pending, would now like to present a different record; and one or two of this class have written me, since the publication of this sketch in "Harper's Magazine," to prove that they were not neutrals in 1861. I have not considered their claims worth notice. There are any number of men in Kentucky who would now like to have it appear that they stood with Rousseau in 1861, but it would be falsifying history to say so. I have written here the true story of Kentucky neutrality, and do not propose to alter it. The sponsor of that neutrality—the editor of the Louisville Journal—has corroborated this story as I tell it. On the evening of the 17th of June, 1862, exactly one year after having rejected Rousseau, and driven him to encamp his troops in another state, the Union men of Louisville welcomed him from the battle-field of Shiloh at a grand banquet, at which George D. Prentice, the editor of the Journal, thus narrated the trials and efforts of Rousseau, and condemned, as mistaken, himself and his neutral comrades who had opposed Rousseau:

"We have come together," he said, "to honor a man, a patriot, a hero, whom we can scarcely honor too much. A great debt is due to General Rousseau from our city, from our state, from our nation. At the hands of Louisville he deserves a civic wreath and a marble statue. He has stood between her and desolation. We all know what bitter hostilities on the one side, and what deep apprehensions and misgivings on the other, he had to contend against when he undertook the bold enterprise of raising a brigade to resist the rebellion. The best patriots among us doubted, and hesitated, and faltered, and attempted to divert him from his purpose, and he was even constrained by their appeals to go beyond the river, and erect upon the soil of another state the glorious standard around which he invoked Kentuckians to rally. Denounced, maligned, and cursed by all the rebels, he received, at best, but a cold, reluctant, and timid support from the masses of our loyal men. When he came, one day, from his encampment with two full and splendid regiments to pass a single hour in our city, the city of his home and his love, he marched his gleaming columns through our streets amid an almost deathless stillness, his enemies awed to silence by the appalling spectacle before them, and his friends scarcely deeming it prudent to give expression to the enthusiasm secretly swelling in their bosoms. It must have been with a keen sense of disappointment, if not of injustice and ingratitude, that he returned to the Indiana shore. But ere long there came to us all a night of mystery and terror. Suddenly the electric telegraph between our city and Nashville ceased to give forth its signs, and the railroad train, anxiously awaited for hours, came not. In every loyal soul there was a deep presentiment of impending calamity. It pervaded and burdened the atmosphere. Brave men gazed into each other's faces and whispered their fears. Then it was that all loyal eyes and hearts turned instantly to General Rousseau and his brigade. A signal apprised him of apprehended danger, and in an incredibly brief space of time, in less than two hours, he crossed the Ohio, and passed with his brigade so noiselessly through our streets, that even our citizens, living within thirty yards of his route, heard him not, and before midnight he was far on his way to meet the expected invaders. He took his position between Louisville and that rebel army which would have seized and despoiled her. He was her shield and her sword. He was her salvation. For this, among other things, we tender him our gratitude to-night; for this, we tender him our gratitude forever."

This episode of neutrality must always remain the most remarkable event of Rousseau's career. Very few lives find two such opportunities, and half the credit due Rousseau has been lost to him by the fact that it occurred amid a revolution which saw many more startling events. Only the Union people of the interior of Kentucky seemed to appreciate the magnitude of his service, and on every occasion expressed, in their strange way, their admiration of and gratitude to the man. The Army of the Ohio, under Sherman and Buell, was known to them only as "Rousseau's Army." They never talked and hardly ever heard of Sherman, or Buell, or Thomas; and Rousseau could never make them clearly understand that he was not the supreme power and highest authority. His popularity among the Union people of the state had a rather pleasing illustration in October, 1862, when he was on the march to Perryville. At Maxville the mountaineers from the district gathered around his quarters in great numbers, and almost every family of the many which visited the general had with it an infant named after him, either "Lovell" or "Rousseau." When the first infant was presented, instead of blessing it in the usual patriarchal style, the general picked out one from among a number of silver half dollars he had and gave it to the child's mother. Several of the other infant Rousseaus received other half dollars, until the general began to suspect that the infants would be produced as long as the money lasted, and so he announced a suspension of specie payment. The children, however, continued to make their appearance, until it became apparent that the name was never likely to die out among the mountaineers. Rousseau used to tell with great glee how two blind and deaf brothers presented themselves at his quarters, and said that they "had walked five miles to see Rousseau and hear him talk." The demonstrations of the poor mountaineers of Chaplin Hills, as the region was called, greatly affected the general, and, as a singular mode of expressing his gratification, he always insisted on calling the battle of Perryville, which he fought next day in the vicinity of Maxville, "the battle of Chaplin Hills."