“
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States of the
South and the
General Government.
Nay, more,” they said; “the almost inevitable result would be the transfer of the war within her own borders, the defeat of all hopes of reconciliation, and the deluging of the
State with the blood of her own people.”
1
The Governor of Kentucky was less courageous and more cautious than his neighbor of Tennessee, but not less a practical enemy of the Union.
To confirm him in disloyalty, and to commit the great State of Kentucky to the cause of the conspirators, Walker, their so-called “Secretary of War,” wrote to Governor Magoffin, from Montgomery, on the 22d of April, complimenting him for his “patriotic response to the requisition of the President of the United States for troops to coerce the Confederate States,” 2 and saying that it justified the belief that his people were prepared to unite with the conspirators “in repelling the common enemy of the South.
Virginia needs our aid,” he continued.
“I therefore request you to furnish one regiment of infantry without delay, to rendezvous at Harper's Ferry, Virginia.
It must consist of ten companies, of not less than sixty-four men each. . . . They will be mustered into the service of the Confederate States at Harper's Ferry.”
The object of this call to Harper's Ferry will be apparent presently.
Virginia, at this time, was in a state of great agitation.
Its Convention had passed through a stormy session, extending from the middle of February to the middle of April.
It was held in the city of Richmond, and was organized
by the appointment of
John Janney, of
Loudon, as its
President, and
John L. Eubank, Clerk.
In his address on taking the chair, the
President favored conditional Union, saying, in a tone common to many of the public men of
Virginia, that his State would insist on its own construction of its rights as a condition of its remaining in the
Union.
It was evident, from the beginning, that a better National sentiment than the
President of the
Convention evinced was largely dominant in that body, and the conspirators within it were for a long time foiled in their attempts to array
Virginia on the side of the “Southern Confederacy.”
Even so late as the 4th of April, the
Convention refused, by a vote of eighty-nine against forty-five, to pass an ordinance of secession;
3 and they resolved to send Commissioners to
Washington City to ask the
President to communicate to that body the policy which he intended to pursue in regard to the “
Confederate States.”
4 Yet the conspirators worked on, conscious of increasing strength, for one weak Unionist after another was converted by their sophistry or their threats.
Pryor and
Ruffin, as we have seen, went to
Charleston to urge an attack upon Fort
