Kentucky,
In 1776 Kentucky was made a county of Virginia, and in 1777 the first court was held at Harrodsburg. Conventions held at Danville in 1784-85 recommended a peaceable and constitutional separation from Virginia. In 1786 an act was passed by the Virginia legislature complying with the desires of Kentucky. There was delay in consummating the change. Other conventions were held urging the matter. In 1790 Kentucky became a separate Territory, and on June 1, 1792, it was admitted into the Union as a State. Its population at that time was about 75,000. For several years much uneasiness was felt among the people of Kentucky on account of Indian depredations and the cloudiness of the political skies, for the great questions of the free navigation of the Mississippi River and the ultimate possession of Louisiana were unsettled. These were settled satisfactorily by the purchase of Louisiana in 1803. During the War of 1812 Kentucky took an active part, sending fully 7,000 men to the field; and after that war the State was undisturbed by any stirring events until the breaking out of the Civil War. Its progress was rapid. A second constitution took effect in 1800, and continued in force until the adoption of the present one in 1850. At the beginning of the Civil War Kentucky assumed a position of neutrality, but it was really one of hostility to the Union. The governor refused to comply with the President's requisition for troops; but Lieut. William Nelson, of the navy, a native of the State, and then on ordnance duty at Washington, began to recruit for the National army; and towards the close of July, 1861, he established Camp DickState seal of Kentucky. |
Governors.
Name. | Term. |
Isaac Shelby | 1792 to 1796 |
James Garrard | 1796 to 1804 |
Christopher Greenup | 1804 to 1808 |
Charles Scott | 1808 to 1812 |
Isaac Shelby | 1812 to 1816 |
George Madison | 1816 |
Gabriel Slaughter | 1816 to 1820 |
John Adair | 1820 to 1824 |
Joseph Desha | 1824 to 1828 |
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Governors—Continued.
Name. | Term. |
Thomas Metcalfe | 1828 to 1832 |
John Breathitt | 1832 to 1834 |
J. T. Morehead | 1834 to 1836 |
James Clark | 1836 to 1837 |
C. A. Wickliffe | 1837 to 1840 |
Robert P. Letcher | 1840 to 1844 |
William Owsley | 1844 to 1848 |
John J. Crittenden | 1848 to 1850 |
John L. Helm | 1850 to 1851 |
Lazarus W. Powell | 1851 to 1855 |
Charles S. Morehead | 1855 to 1859 |
Beriah Magoffin | 1859 to 1861 |
J. F. Robinson | 1861 to 1863 |
Thomas E. Bramulette | 1863 to 1867 |
John L. Helm | 1867 |
John W. Stevenson | 1868 to 1871 |
Preston H. Leslie | 1871 to 1875 |
James B. McCreary | 1875 to 1879 |
Luke P. Blackburn | 1879 to 1883 |
J. Proctor Knott | 1883 to 1887 |
Simon B. Buckner | 1887 to 1891 |
J. Y. Brown | 1891 to 1895 |
William O. Bradley | 1896 to 1900 |
William S. Taylor | 1900 |
William Goebel | 1900 |
J. C. W. Beckham | 1900 to — |
United States Senators.
Name. | No. of Congress. | Term. |
John Brown | 2d to 9th | 1792 to 1805 |
John Edwards | 2d to 4th | 1792 to 1795 |
Humphrey Marshall | 4th to 7th | 1795 to 1801 |
John Breckinridge | 7th to 9th | 1801 to 1805 |
John Adair | 9th | 1805 to 1806 |
Henry Clay | 9th | 1806 to 1807 |
John B. Thurston | 9th to 11th | 1806 to 1809 |
John Pope | 10th to 13th | 1807 to 1813 |
Henry Clay | 11th | 1810 to 1811 |
George M. Bibb | 12th to 13th | 1811 to 1814 |
George Walker | 13th | 1814 |
William T. Barry | 13th to 14th | 1815 to 1816 |
Jessie Bledsoe | 13th to 14th | 1813 to 1815 |
Isham Talbot | 14th to 19th | 1815 to 1825 |
Martin D. Hardin | 14th | 1816 to 1817 |
John J. Crittenden | 15th | 1817 to 1819 |
Richard M. Johnson | 16th to 21st | 1819 to 1829 |
William Logan | 16th | 1819 to 1820 |
John Rowan | 19th | 1825 |
George M. Bibb | 21st to 24th | 1829 to 1835 |
Henry Clay | 22d to 27th | 1831 to 1842 |
John J. Crittenden | 24th to 30th | 1835 to 1848 |
James T. Morehead | 27th | 1842 |
Thomas Metcalfe | 30th | 1848 to 1849 |
Joseph R. Underwood | 30th to 32d | 1847 to 1852 |
Henry Clay | 31st to 32d | 1849 to 1852 |
David Meriwether | 32d | 1852 |
Archibald Dixon | 32d to 33d | 1852 to 1855 |
John B. Thompson | 33d | 1853 |
John J. Crittenden | 34th to 37th | 1855 to 1861 |
Lazarus W. Powell | 36th to 39th | 1859 to 1865 |
John C. Breckinridge | 37th | 1861 |
Garrett Davis | 37th to 42d | 1861 to 1872 |
James Guthrie | 39th to 40th | 1865 to 1868 |
Thomas C. McCreery | 40th | 1868 to 1871 |
Willis B. Machen | 42d | 1872 to 1873 |
John W. Stevenson | 42d to 45th | 1871 to 1877 |
Thomas C. McCreery | 43d to 46th | 1873 to 1879 |
James B. Beck | 45th to 51st | 1877 to 1890 |
John S. Williams | 46th to 49th | 1879 to 1885 |
Joseph C. S. Blackburn | 49th to 55th | 1885 to 1897 |
John G. Carlisle | 51st to 52d | 1890 to 1893 |
William Lindsey | 53d to — | 1893 to — |
William J. Deboe | 55th to — | 1897 to — |
Early settlements.
In 1767 John Finley, an Indian trader, explored the country beyond the mountains westward of North Carolina. In 1769 he returned to North Carolina and gave glowing accounts of the fertile country he had left. He persuaded Daniel Boone and four others to go with him to explore it. Boone had become a great hunter and expert in woodcraft. They reached the headwaters of the Kentucky, and, from lofty hills, beheld a vision of a magnificent valley, covered with forests, stretching towards the Ohio, and abounding in game of the woods and waters of every kind. They fought Indians—some of the tribes who roamed over Kentucky as a common hunting-ground. Boone was made a prisoner, but escaped. He determined to settle in the beautiful country between the upper Kentucky and Tennessee rivers, and, after remaining a while the sole white man in that region, he returned for his wife and children in 1771. Two years later he started with his own and five other families for the paradise in the wilderness. Driven back upon settlements on the Clinch, he was detained a year and a half longer. He penetrated to the Kentucky, and, on June 14, 1775, completed a log fort on the site of the present Boonesboro. He soon brought his family there, and planted the first permanent settlement in Kentucky. Mrs. Boone and her daughters were the first white women who ever stood on the banks of the Kentucky River.The precarious tenure by which places that were settled in Kentucky by Boone and others were held, while the land was subjected to bloody incursions by Indians, was changed after George Rogers Clarke's operations in Ohio had made the tribes there no longer invaders of the soil south of that river. The number of “stations” began to multiply. A blockhouse was built (April, 1779) on the site of the city of Lexington. By a law of Virginia (May, 1779), all persons who had settled west of the mountains before June, 1778, were entitled to claim 400 acres of land, without any payment: and they had a right of pre-emption to an adjoining 1,000 acres for a very small sum of money, while the whole region between the Greene and Tennessee rivers was reserved for military bounties. Settlements quite rapidly increased under this liberal [237] Virginia land system, and fourteen years after its passage Kentucky had a population that entitled it to admission into the Union as a State.
In Civil War days.
The people were strongly attached to the Union, but itsDaniel Boone's first sight of Kentucky. |
On April 18 a great Union meeting was held in Louisville, over which James Guthrie and other leading politicians of the State held controlling influence. At that meeting it was resolved that Kentucky reserved to herself “the right to choose her own position; and that, while her natural sympathies are with those who have a common interest in the protection of slavery, she still acknowledges her loyalty and fealty to the government of the United States, which she will cheerfully render until that government becomes aggressive, tyrannical, and regardless of our rights in slave property.” They declared that the States were the peers of the national government, and gave the world to understand that the latter should not be allowed to use “sanguinary or coercive measures to bring back the seceded States.” They alluded to the Kentucky State Guard as the “bulwark of the safety of the commonwealth, . . . pledged equally to fidelity to the United States and to Kentucky.”
Early in the summer the governor declared that arrangements had been made that neither National or Confederate troops should set foot on the soil of that State. The neutrality of Kentucky was respected many months. Pillow had urged the seizure of the bluff at Columbus, in western Kentucky, as an aid to him in his attempt to capture Cairo and Bird's Point, but the solemn assurance of the Confederate government that Kentucky neutrality should be respected restrained him: but on Sept. 4, General (Bishop) Polk, with a considerable force, seized the strong position at Columbus, under the pretext that National forces were preparing to occupy that place. The Confederate Secretary of War publicly telegraphed to Polk to withdraw his troops; President Davis privately telegraphed to him to hold on, saying, “The end justifies the means.” So Columbus was held and fortified by the Confederates. General Grant, then in command of the district at Cairo, took military possession of Paducah, in northern Kentucky, with National troops, and the neutrality of Kentucky was no longer respected. The seizure of Columbus opened the way for the infliction upon the people of that
First (permanent) State-House, Frankfort, Ky. |
Kentucky River, from high Bridge. |
Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, was in command of the Confederate Western Department, which included southern and western Kentucky, then held by the Confederates, and the State of Tennessee, with his headquarters at Nashville. Under the shadow of his power the Confederates of Kentucky met in convention at Russellville, Oct. 29, 1861. They drew up a manifesto in which the grievances of Kentucky were recited, and the action of the loyal legislature was denounced. They passed an ordinance of secession, declared the State independent, organized a provisional government, chose George W. Johnston provisional governor, appointed delegates to the Confederate Congress at Richmond, and called Bowling Green the State capital. Fifty-one counties were [240]
Site of the last Indian settlement in Kentucky. |
Late in 1861, the Confederates occupied a line of military posts across southern Kentucky, from Cumberland Gap to Columbus, on the Mississippi River, a distance of nearly 400 miles. Don Carlos Buell, major-general, had been appointed commander of the Department of the Ohio, with his headquarters at Louisville. There he gathered a large force, with which he was enabled to strengthen various advanced posts and throw forward along the line of the Nashville and Louisville Railway a large force destined to break the Confederate line. He had under his command 114,000 men, arranged in four columns, commanded respectively by Brig.-Gens. A. McDowell McCook, O. M. Mitchel, G. H. Thomas, and T. L. Crittenden, acting as major-generals, and aided by twenty brigade commanders. These troops were from States northward of the Ohio, and loyalists of Kentucky and Tennessee. They occupied an irregular line across Kentucky, parallel with that of the Confederates. General McCook led 50,000 men down the railroad, and pushed the Confederate line to Bowling Green, after a sharp skirmish at Mumfordsville, on the south side of the Green River. In eastern Kentucky Col. James A. Garfield struck (Jan. 7, 1862) the Confederates, under Humphrey Marshall, near Prestonburg, on the Big Sandy River, and dispersed them. This ended Marshall's military career, and Garfield's services there won for him the commission of a brigadier-general. On the 19th, General Thomas defeated Gen. George B. Crittenden near Mill Spring, when General Zollicoffer was slain and his troops driven into northwestern Tennessee. This latter blow effectually severed the Confederate lines in Kentucky, and opened [241] the way by which the Confederates were soon driven out of the State and also out of Tennessee. The Confederate line was paralyzed eastward of Bowling Green, and their chief fortifications and the bulk of their troops were between Nashville and Bowling Green and the Mississippi. On that line was strong Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland River. Believing Beauregard to be a more dashing officer than Johnston, the Confederates appointed him commander of the Western Department, late in January, 1862, and he was succeeded in the command at Manassas by Gen. G. W. Smith, formerly of New York City.