[
475]
she has furnished far more troops to
Lincoln than to the cause of Southern independence.
They know that we would stake all on either test, and that we would have done so at any time since
Mr. Lincoln's inauguration.
We would have gone further; we will go further now. We should not, being masters of the position, have denied to those who preferred association with the
North liberty of egress from the
State with their families and effects and the sale of their lands within a limited time to be established by law.
Such was, in fact, the rule adopted by the President of the Southern Confederacy, and it stands in striking contrast to that cruel tyranny of the Kentucky Legislature and of the Northern dictator, which, after depriving your constituents, who prefer the Southern association of every right they enjoyed at home, arrests them on the highway and hurries them off to a foreign military prison if they attempt to depart from the scene of these outrages.
I have known of this unparalleled meanness and cowardly barbarity practiced upon the men of the Southern-rights party of Kentucky for some months, and have waited and watched to see it bring forth its legitimate results — assassination and incendiarism.
I do not hesitate to declare that where such outrages upon everything like liberty are perpetrated the victims are justifiable in resorting to every species of resistance which may afford a means of defense.
I would resort to them, and I hope my friends will also.
I shall advise them to do so. I shall say to them either to come from among the Lincolnites in the State, when they desire to do so, or to defend their birthright by every accessible and possible means if they are obstructed.
The war will never cease until we have our rights or are buried with all we hold dear beneath the ruins we create in vindicating them.
I am, your obedient servant,
