Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume I.

[492] to obey the unconstitutional edicts of the military despotism which has introduced itself at Washington, nor submit to the infamous and degrading sway of its wicked minions in this State. No brave-hearted Missourian will obey the one or submit to the other. Rise, then, and drive out ignominiously the invaders, who have dared to desecrate the soil which your labors have made fruitful, and which is consecrated by your homes.

Thus, though Missouri had authoritatively and overwhelmingly refused to leave the Union, her Governor made war upon it, and, mustering all the forces of Slavery and treason, proceeded openly to cast in his and their lot with the fortunes of the Great Rebellion.

Kentucky, despite the secret affiliation of her leading politicians with the traitors, whom many of them ultimately joined, refused from the outset, through the authentic action of her people, to unite her fortunes with those of the Rebellion. Though she had, for some years, been a “ Democratic” State--casting her Presidential vote for Buchanan and Breckinridge, in 1856, by some seven thousand majority¹--the cloven foot of treason had no sooner been exhibited, by the disruption of the Democratic party at Charleston, than her people gave unmistakable notice that they would acquiesce in no such purpose. Her State Election occurred not long afterward,² when Leslie Combs, “Union” candidate for Clerk of her highest Court (the only office filled at this election by the general vote of the State), was chosen by the magnificent majority of 23,223 over his leading competitor, and 11,423 over the combined votes of all³ others. If Maj. Breckinridge had been made their candidate for President by the bolters with any idea of thereby seducing “the home of Henry Clay” from her loyalty, that hope was ill-grounded, as the Presidential election more conclusively demonstrated — Bell and Everett carrying the State by a large plurality.⁴ Yet her Democratic Governor, Magoffin,⁵ though he forcibly protested⁶ against the headlong impetuosity wherewith South Carolina persisted in dragging the South into Disunion — summoned her⁷ Legislature to meet in extra session, and, on its assembling,⁸ addressed to it a Message, urging the call of a State Convention, wherein he premises that

We, the people of the United States, are no longer one people, united and friendly. The ties of fraternal love and concord, which once bound us together, are sundered. Though the Union of the States may, by the abstract reasoning of a class, be construed still to exist, it is really and practically — to an extent, at least — fatally impaired. The confederacy is rapidly resolving itself into its original integral parts, and its loyal members are intent upon contracting wholly new relations. Reluctant as we may be to realize the dread calamity, the great fact of revolution stares us in the face, demands recognition, and will not be theorized away. Nor is the worst yet told. We are not yet encouraged to hope that this revolution will be bloodless. A collision of arms has even occurred between the Federal Government and the authorities of a late member of the Union, and the issue threatens to involve the whole country in fratricidal war. It is under these circumstances of peculiar gloom that you have been summoned. * * * In view of the partial disruption of the Union, the secession of eight or ten States, the establishment of a Southern Confederated Republic, and the administration