The reports which had reached the South represented that the people of Kentucky were eager to welcome an army of deliverance, and would flock with arms to join it. There was a belief that it was a land flowing with milk and honey. While both of these expectations had been fully realized by the army of General Smith, and the intelligence of it received by Bragg's army just before crossing the Tennessee line, their own experience had chilled them. Unfortunately they had traversed half the breadth of the State from north to south and encountered none of the typical rich and abounding soil or sympathetic co-operation pictured in their imagination, and experienced little of the enthusiasm which they had expected. Individual welcome was expressed, but cautiously and free from demonstration, for the Southern element, even in the localities where found in the majority, well knew that upon the coming of the Federal troops they would be persecuted and punished. The sympathy was divided, but in Hart and several contiguous counties the Union sentiment predominated and there had been many Federal troops raised there. There was no unfurling of the Confederate flag and cheering as in the Blue Grass region. Even the ladies, usually fearless of consequences, had learned caution, and if they waved their handkerchiefs, it was generally in a hall shut out from the view of their neighbors and visible only to the troops passing in front. At Bardstown it was somewhat better, but the division of sentiment was sufficient to put a restraint upon the Southern element, while those of Union
