[332]
Chapter 8:
- The Kentucky resolutions of 1798-‘99 -- their influence on political affairs -- Kentucky declares for neutrality -- correspondence of Governor Magoffin with the President of the United States and the President of the Confederate States -- occupation of Columbus, Kentucky, by Major General Polk -- his correspondence with the Kentucky commissioners -- President Lincoln's view of neutrality -- acts of the United States Government -- refugees -- their motives of expatriation -- address of ex-vice-president Breckinridge to the people of the State -- the occupation of Columbus secured -- the purpose of the United States Government -- battle of Belmont -- Albert Sidney Johnston commands the Department -- State of affairs -- line of defense -- efforts to obtain arms and troops.
Kentucky, the eldest daughter of Virginia, had moved contemporaneously with her mother in the assertion of the cardinal principles announced in the resolutions of 1798-‘99. She then by the properly constituted authority did with due solemnity declare that the government of the United States was the result of a compact between the states to which each acceded as a state; that it possessed only delegated powers, of which it was not the exclusive or final judge; and that, as in all cases of compact among parties having no common judge, “each party has an equal right to judge for itself as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.” Thus spoke Kentucky in the first years of her existence as a sovereign. The great truth announced in her series of resolutions was the sign under which the Democracy conquered in 1800, and which constituted the corner stone of the political edifice of which Jefferson was the architect, and which stood unshaken for sixty years from the time its foundation was laid. During this period the growth, prosperity, and happiness of the country seemed unmistakably to confirm the wisdom of the voluntary union of free sovereign states under a written compact confining the action of the general government to the expressly enumerated powers which had been delegated therein. When infractions of the compact had been deliberately and persistently made, when the intent was clearly manifested to pervert the powers of the general government from the purposes for which they had been conferred, and to use them for the injury of a portion of the states, which were the integral parties to the compact, some of them [333] resolved to judge for themselves of the “mode and measure of redress,” and to exercise the right, enunciated in the Declaration of Independence to be the unalienable endowment of every people, to alter or abolish any form of government, and to institute a new one, “laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” By no rational mode of construction, in view of the history of the Declaration of Independence, or of the resolutions of Kentucky, can it be claimed that the word “people” had any other meaning than that of a distinct community, such as the people of each colony who by their delegates in the Congress declared themselves to be henceforth a state; that none other than the people of each state could, by the resolutions of 1798-‘99, have been referred to as the final judge of infractions of their compact, and of the remedy which should be applied.
Kentucky made no decision adverse to this right of a state, but she declared, in the impending conflict between the states seceding from and those adhering to the federal government, that she would hold the position of neutrality. If the question was to be settled by a war of words, that was feasible; if the conflict was to be one of arms, it was utterly impracticable. To maintain neutrality under such circumstances would have required a power greater than that of both the contestants, or a moral influence commanding such respect for her wishes as could hardly have been anticipated from that party which had, in violation of right, inflicted the wrongs which produced the withdrawal of some of the states, and had uttered multiplied threats of coercion if any state attempted to exercise the rights defined in the resolutions of 1798-‘99. If, however, any such hope may have been entertained, but few moons had filled and waned before the defiant occupation of her territory and the enrollment of her citizens as soldiers in the army of invasion must have dispelled the illusion.
The following correspondence took place in August between Governor Magoffin of Kentucky and President Lincoln—also between the governor and myself, as President of the Confederate States—relative to the neutrality of the state:
Movements by the Federal forces in southwestern Kentucky revealed such designs as made it absolutely necessary that General, Polk, commanding the Confederate forces in that section, should immediately [337] occupy the town of Columbus, Kentucky—a position of much strategic importance on the shore of the Mississippi River.
That position was doubly important because it commanded the opposite shore in Missouri and was the gateway on the border of Tennessee.
Two states of the Confederacy were therefore threatened by the anticipated movement of the enemy to get possession of Columbus.
Major General Polk, therefore, crossed the state line, took possession of Hickman on September 3d, and on the 4th secured Columbus. General Grant, who took command at Cairo on September 2d, being thus anticipated, seized Paducah, at the mouth of the Tennessee River, and occupied it in force on the 5th and 6th.
After the occupation, under date of September 4th, I received the following dispatch from Major General Polk: “The enemy having descended the Mississippi River some three or four days since, and seated himself with cannon and intrenched lines opposite the town of Columbus, Kentucky, making such demonstrations as left no doubt upon the minds of any of their intention to seize and forcibly possess said town, I thought proper, under the plenary power delegated to me, to direct a sufficient portion of my command both by the river way and land to concentrate at Columbus, as well to offer to its citizens that protection they unite to a man in accepting, as also to prevent, in time, the occupation by the enemy of a point so necessary to the security of western Tennessee. The demonstration on my part has had the desired effect. The enemy has withdrawn his forces even before I had fortified my position. It is my intention to continue to occupy and hold this place.” On the same day I sent the following reply to Major General Polk: “Your telegram received; the necessity must justify the action.”
The legislature of Kentucky passed resolutions and appointed a committee to inquire into the action of General Polk, from which the annexed correspondence resulted:
Letter of Hon. J. M. Johnson, Chairman of the Committee of the Kentucky Senate, to General Polk.
Letter from General Polk to the Kentucky Commissioners.
Letter from General Polk to Governor Magoffin.
However willing the government of Kentucky might have been to accede to the proposition of General Polk and which from his knowledge of the views of his own government he was fully justified in offering, the state of Kentucky had no power, moral or physical, to prevent the United States government from using her soil as best might suit is purposes in the war it was waging for the subjugation of the seceded states. President Lincoln, in his message of the previous July, had distinctly and reproachfully spoken of the idea of neutrality as existing in some of the border states. He said: “To prevent the Union forces passing one way, or the disunion the other, over their soil, would be disunion completed. . . . At a stroke it would take all the trouble off the hands of secession, except only what proceeds from the external blockade.”
The acts of the federal government corresponded with the views announced by its President. Briefly, but conclusively, General Polk showed in his answer that the United States government paid no respect to the neutral position which Kentucky wished to maintain; that it was armed, but not neutral, for the arms and the troops assembled on her soil were for the invasion of the South; that he occupied Columbus to prevent the enemy from taking possession of it. When our troops first entered Columbus they found the inhabitants had been in alarm from demonstrations of the United States forces, but that they felt no dread of the Confederate troops. As far as the truth could be ascertained, a decided majority of the people of Kentucky, especially its southwestern portion, if left to a free choice, would have joined the Confederacy in preference to remaining in the Union. Could they have foreseen what in a short time was revealed, there can be little doubt that mule contracts, and other forms of bribery, would have proved unavailing to make her the passive observer of usurpations destructive of the personal and political rights of which she had always been a most earnest advocate. With the slow and sinuous approach of the serpent, the general government, little by little, gained power over Kentucky, and then, [342] throwing off the mask, proceeded to outrages so regardless of law and the usages of English-speaking people, as could not have been anticipated, and can only be remembered with shame by those who honor the constitutional government created by the states. While artfully urging the maintenance of the Union as a duty of patriotism, the Constitution which gave the Union birth was trampled under foot, and the excesses of the Reign of Terror which followed the French Revolution were reenacted in our land, once the vaunted home of law and liberty. Men who had been most honored by the state, and who had reflected most honor upon it, were seized without warrant, condemned without trial, because they had exercised the privilege of free speech, and for adhering to the principles which were the bed-rock on which our fathers builded our political temple. Members of the legislature vacated their seats and left the state to avoid arrest, the penalty hanging over them for opinion's sake. The venerable Judge Monroe, who had presided over the United States District Court for more than a generation, driven from the land of his birth, the state he had served so long and so well, with feeble step, but upright conscience and indomitable will, sought a resting place among those who did not regard it a crime to adhere to the principles of 1776 and 1787, and the declaratory affirmation of them in the resolutions of 1798-‘99. About the same time others of great worth and distinction, impelled by the feeling that “where liberty is there is my country,” left the land desecrated by despotic usurpation, to join the Confederacy in its struggle to maintain the personal and political liberties which the men of the Revolution had left as an inheritance to their posterity. Space would not suffice for a complete list of the refugees who became conspicuous in the military events of the Confederacy; let a few answer for the many: J. C. Breckinridge, the late Vice-President of the United States, and whose general and wellde-served popularity might have reasonably led him to expect in the Union the highest honors the states could bestow; William Preston, George W. Johnston, S. B. Buckner, John H. Morgan, and a host of others, alike meritorious and alike gratefully remembered. When the passions of the hour shall have subsided, and the past shall be reviewed with discrimination and justice, the question must arise in every reflecting mind. Why did such men as these expatriate themselves, and surrender all the advantages which they had won by a life of honorable effort in the land of their nativity? To such inquiry the answer must be, the usurpations of the general government foretold to them the wreck of constitutional liberty. The motives which governed them may best be learned [343] from the annexed extracts from the statement made in the address of Breckinridge to the people of Kentucky, whom he had represented in both houses of the United States Congress, with such distinguished ability and zeal for the general welfare as to place him in the front rank of the statesmen of his day:
Such was the “neutrality” suffered by the Confederacy from governments both at home and abroad.
The chivalric people of Kentucky showed their sympathy with the just cause of the people of the Southern states, by leaving the home where they could not serve the cause of right against might, and nobly [345] shared the fortunes of their Southern brethren on many a blood-dyed field. In like manner did the British people see with disapprobation their government, while proclaiming neutrality, make new rules, and give new constructions to old ones, so as to favor our enemy and embarrass us. The Englishman's sense of fair play, and the manly instinct which predisposes him to side with the weak, gave us hosts of friends, but all their good intentions were paralyzed or toiled by their wily Minister for Foreign Affairs, and his coadjutor on this side, the artful, unscrupulous United States Secretary of State.
I have thus presented the case of Kentucky, not because it was the only state where false promises lulled the people into delusive security until, by gradual approaches, usurpation had bound them hand and foot, and where despotic power crushed all the muniments of civil liberty which the Union was formed to secure, but because of the attempt, which has been noticed, to arraign the Confederacy for invasion of the state in disregard of her sovereignty.
The occupation of Columbus by the Confederate forces was only just soon enough to anticipate the predetermined purpose of the federal government, all of which was plainly set forth in the letter of General Polk to the governor of Kentucky, and his subsequent letter to the Kentucky commissioners.
Missouri, like Kentucky, had wished to preserve peaceful relations in the contest which it was foreseen would soon occur between the Northern and the Southern states. When the federal government denied to her the privilege of choosing her own position, which betokened no hostility to the general government, and she was driven to the necessity of deciding whether or not her citizens should be used for the subjugation of the Southern states, her people and their representative, the state government, repelled the arbitrary assumption of authority by military force to control her government and her people.
Among other acts of invasion, the Federal troops had occupied Belmont, a village in Missouri opposite to Columbus, and with artillery threatened that town, inspiring terror in its peaceful inhabitants. After the occupation of Columbus, under these circumstances of full justification, a small Confederate force, Colonel Tappan's Arkansas regiment, and Beltzhoover's battery, were thrown across the Mississippi to occupy and hold the village, in the state of Missouri, then an ally, and soon to become a member, of the Confederacy. On November 6th General Grant left his headquarters at Cairo with a land and naval force, and encamped on the Kentucky shore. This act and a demonstration made [346] by detachments from his force at Paducah were probably intended to induce the belief that he contemplated an attack on Columbus, thus concealing his real purpose to surprise the small garrison at Belmont. General Polk on the morning of the 7th discovered the landing of the Federal forces on the Missouri shore, some seven miles above Columbus, and, divining the real purpose of the enemy, detached General Pillow with four regiments of his division, say two thousand men, to reenforce the garrison at Belmont. Very soon after his arrival the enemy commenced an assault which was sternly resisted, and with varying fortune, for several hours. The enemy's front so far exceeded the length of our line as to enable him to attack on both flanks, and our troops were finally driven back to the bank of the river with the loss of their battery, which had been gallantly and efficiently served until nearly all its horses had been killed, and its ammunition had been expended. The enemy advanced to the bank of the river below the point to which our men had retreated, and opened an artillery fire upon the town of Columbus, to which our guns from the commanding height responded with such effect as to drive him from the river bank. In the meantime General Polk had at intervals sent three regiments to reenforce General Pillow. Upon the arrival of the first of these, General Pillow led it to a favorable position, where it for some time steadily resisted and checked the advance of the enemy. General Pillow, with great energy and gallantry, rallied his repulsed troops and brought them again into action. General Polk now proceeded in person with two other regiments. Whether from this or some other cause, the enemy commenced a retreat. General Pillow, whose activity and daring on the occasion were worthy of all praise, led the first and second detachments, by which he had been reenforced, to attack the enemy in the rear, and General Polk, landing further up the river, moved to cut off the enemy's retreat; some embarrassment and consequent delay which occurred in landing his troops caused him to be too late for the purpose for which he crossed, and to become only a part of the pursuing force.
One would naturally suppose that the question about which there would be the greatest certainty would be the number of troops engaged in a battle, yet there is nothing in regard to which we have such conflicting accounts. It is fairly concluded, from the concurrent reports, that the enemy attacked us on both flanks, and that in the beginning of the action we were outnumbered; the obstinacy with which the conflict was maintained and the successive advances and retreats which occurred in the action indicate, however, that the disparity could not have been very [347] great, and therefore that after the arrival of our reenforcements our troops must have become numerically superior. The dead and wounded left by the enemy upon the field, the arms, ammunition, and military stores abandoned in his flight, so incontestably prove his defeat, that his claim to have achieved a victory is too preposterous for discussion. Though the forces engaged were comparatively small to those in subsequent battles of the war, six hours of incessant combat, with repeated bayonet charges, must place this in the rank of the most stubborn engagements, and the victors must accord to the vanquished the meed of having fought like Americans. One of the results of the battle, which is at least significant, is the fact that General Grant, who had superciliously refused to recognize General Polk as one with whom he could exchange prisoners, did after the battle, send a flag of truce to get such privileges as are recognized between armies acknowledging each other to be “foemen worthy of their steel.”
General Polk reported as follows: “We pursued them to their boats, seven miles, and then drove their boats before us. The road was strewed with their dead and wounded, guns, ammunition, and equipments. The number of prisoners taken by the enemy, as shown by their list furnished, was one hundred and six, all of whom have been returned by exchange. After making a liberal allowance to the enemy, a hundred of their prisoners still remain in my hands, one stand of colors, and a fraction over one thousand stand of arms, with knapsacks, ammunition, and other military stores. Our loss in killed, wounded, and missing, was six hundred and forty-one; that of the enemy was probably not less than twelve hundred.”
Meanwhile Albert Sidney Johnston, a soldier of great distinction in the United States army, where he had attained the rank of brigadier general by brevet, and was in command of the Department of California, resigned his commission, and came overland from San Francisco to Richmond, to tender his services to the Confederate States. Though he had been bred a soldier, and most of his life had been spent in the army, he had not neglected such study of political affairs as properly belongs to the citizen of a republic, and appreciated the issue made between states claiming the right to resume the powers they had delegated to a general agent and the claims set up by that agent to coerce states, his creators, and for whom he held a trust.
He was a native of Kentucky, but his first military appointment was from Louisiana, and he was a volunteer in the war for independence by Texas, and for a time resided in that state. Much of his military service [348] had been in the West, and he felt most identified with it. On September 10, 1861, he was assigned to command our Department of the West, which included the states of Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, the Indian country, and the western part of Mississippi.
General Johnston, on his arrival at Nashville, found that he lacked not only men, but the munitions of war and the means of obtaining them. Men were ready to be enlisted, but the arms and equipments had nearly all been required to fit out the first levies. Immediately on his survey of the situation, he determined to occupy Bowling Green in Kentucky, and ordered Brigadier General S. B. Buckner, with five thousand men, to take possession of the position. This invasion of Kentucky was an act of self-defense rendered necessary by the action of the government of Kentucky, and by the evidences of intended movements of the forces of the United States. It was not possible to withdraw the troops from Columbus in the west, nor from Cumberland Ford in the east, to which General Felix K. Zollicoffer had advanced with four thousand men. A compliance with the demands of Kentucky would have opened the frontiers of Tennessee and the Mississippi River to the enemy; besides, it was essential to the defense of Tennessee.
East of Columbus, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Hopkinsville were garrisoned with small bodies of troops; and the territory between Columbus and Bowling Green was occupied by moving detachments which caused the supposition that a large military force was present and contemplated an advance. A fortified camp was established at Cumberland Gap, as the right of General Johnston's line and an important point for the protection of East Tennessee against invasion. Thus General Johnston located his line of defense, from Columbus on the west to the Cumberland Mountains on the east, with his center at Bowling Green, which was occupied and entrenched. It was a good base for military operations, was a proper depot for supplies, and, if fortified, could be held against largely superior numbers.
On October 28th General Johnston took command at Bowling Green. He states his force to have been twelve thousand men, and that the enemy's force at that time was estimated to be double his own, or twenty-four thousand. He says: “The enemy's force increased more rapidly than our own, so that by the last of November it numbered fifty thousand, and continued to increase until it ran up to between seventy-five and one hundred thousand. My force was kept down by disease, so that it numbered about twenty-two thousand.”
The chief anxiety of the commander of the department was to [349]
General A. S. Johnston |
These details are given to serve as an illustration of the deficiencies existing in every department of the military service in the first years of the war. In this respect much relief came from the well-directed efforts of Governor Harris and the legislature of Tennessee. A cap factory, ordnance shops, and workshops were established. The powder mills at Nashville turned out about four hundred pounds a day. Twelve or fourteen batteries were fitted out at Memphis. Laws were passed to impress and pay for the private arms scattered throughout the state, and the utmost efforts were made to collect and adapt them to military uses. The returns make it evident that, during most of the autumn of 1861, fully one half of General Johnston's troops were imperfectly armed, and whole brigades remained without weapons for months. [351]
No less energetic were the measures taken to concentrate and recruit his forces. General Hardee's command was moved from northeastern Arkansas and sent to Bowling Green, which added four thousand men to the troops there. The regiment of Texan rangers was brought from Louisiana, and supplied with horses and sent to the front. Five hundred Kentuckians joined General Buckner on his advance, and five regiments were gradually formed and filled up. A cavalry company under John H. Morgan was also added. At this time (September, 1861), General Johnston, under the authority granted to him by the government, made a requisition for thirty thousand men from Tennessee, ten thousand from Mississippi, and ten thousand from Arkansas. The Arkansas troops were directed to be sent to General McCulloch for the defense of their own frontier. The governor of Mississippi sent four regiments, when this source of supply was closed.
Up to the middle of November only three regiments were mustered in under this call from Tennessee, but by the close of December the number of men who joined was from twelve to fifteen thousand. Two regiments, fifteen hundred strong, had joined General Polk.
In Arkansas five companies and a battalion had been organized, and were ready to join General McCulloch.
A speedy advance of the enemy was now indicated, and an increase of force was so necessary that further delay was impossible. General Johnston, therefore, determined upon a levy en masse in his department. He made a requisition on the governors of Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, to call out every able-bodied member of the militia into whose hands arms could be placed, or to provide a volunteer force large enough to use all the arms that could be procured. In his letters to these governors, he plainly presents his view of the posture of affairs on December 24th, points out impending dangers, and shows that to his applications the response had not been such as the emergency demanded. He says:
It was apprehended by me that the enemy would attempt to assail the South, not only by boats and troops moving down the river, to be assembled during the fall and winter, but by columns marching inland, threatening Tennessee, by endeavoring to turn the defenses of Columbus. Further observation confirms me in this opinion; but I think the means employed for the defense of the river will probably render it comparatively secure. The enemy will energetically push toward Nashville the heavy masses. of troops now assembled between Louisville and Bowling Green. The general position of Bowling Green is good and commanding; but the peculiar topography of the place and the length of the line of the Barren River as a line of defense, though strong, require a large force to defend it. There is no position equally defensive as Bowling Green, nor line of defense as [352] good as the Barren River, between the Barren and the Cumberland at Nashville; so that it can not be abandoned without exposing Tennessee, and giving vastly the vantage-ground to the enemy. It is manifest that the Northern generals appreciate this; and, by withdrawing their forces from western Virginia and east Kentucky, they have managed to add them to the new levies from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and to concentrate a force in front of me variously estimated at from sixty to one hundred thousand men, and which I believe will number seventy-five thousand. To maintain my position, I have only about seventeen thousand men in this neighborhood. It is impossible for me to obtain additions to my strength from Columbus; the generals in command in that quarter consider that it would imperil that point to diminish their force, and open Tennessee to the enemy. General Zollicoffer can not join me, as he guards the Cumberland, and prevents the invasion and possible revolt of East Tennessee.
On June 5th General Johnston was reenforced by the brigades of Floyd and Maney from western Virginia. He also sent a messenger to Richmond to ask that a few regiments might be detached from the several armies in the field, and sent to him to be replaced by new levies. He said: “I do not ask that my force shall be made equal to that of the enemy; but, if possible, it should be raised to fifty thousand men.” Meantime such an appearance of menace had been maintained as led the enemy to believe that our force was large, and that he might be attacked at any time. Frequent and rapid expeditions through the sparsely settled country gave rise to rumors which kept alive this apprehension.