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[614] was thenceforth actively promoted. On the 25th, a bill calling out 40,000 volunteers for the defense of the State and Union passed the House by a vote of 67 to 13; the Senate concurring by a vote of 21 to 5. On that day, the Senate, by 16 to 10, passed a bill providing that any and every Kentuckian who shall have voluntarily joined the Rebel force invading the State, shall be incapable of inheriting any property in Kentucky, unless he shall return to his allegiance within sixty days; and, on the next day, the House Judiciary Committee, having reported that, in its judgment, Congress had not transcended its powers in imposing taxes for the preservation of the Union, was discharged from further consideration of the subject by a vote of 67 to 13; and the Senate concurred without a division.

On the 16th, Zollicoffer advanced to Barboursville, Ky., capturing the camp of a regiment of Kentucky Unionists, who fled at his approach.

The changed attitude and determined purpose of Kentucky encouraged the Federal Government to take some decided steps in defense of its own existence. Ex-Gov. Morehead,1 a most inveterate traitor, was arrested at his residence near Louisville, and taken thence to Fort Lafayette, in New York harbor, wherein he was long confined, and whence he should not have been released. Warned by this blow, ex-Vice-President John C. Breckinridge, Hon. Wm. Preston, late Minister to Spain, Thomas B. Monroe, sr., U. S. District Judge, Thomas B. Monroe, jr., Secretary of State, Col. Humphrey Marshall, late “American” member of Congress, Col. George W. Johnson, Capt. John Morgan, and several other prominent traitors, escaped about this time to the Rebel camps in Southern Kentucky, and passed thence into Tennessee or Virginia, where they openly gave in their adhesion to the Southern Confederacy. Judge Monroe formally renounced his office and his allegiance, and was adopted a citizen of the Confederacy in open court at Nashville, October 3d. Breckinridge and Humphrey Marshall were promptly made Confederate Brigadier-Generals.

Zollicoffer, on entering Kentucky, issued an order promising that no citizen of that State should be molested in person or property unless found in arms for the Union, or somehow giving aid and comfort to the National cause. Of course, this did not save active Unionists from seizure, abuse, and confinement, nor the pigs, fowls, cattle, etc., whether of Unionists or Confederates, from wholesale confiscation by his loosely organized and undisciplined banditti, who swept over the poor and thinly settled mountainous region wherein the Cumberland and Kentucky rivers have their sources, devouring and destroying all before them.

Mr. Breckinridge, on finding himself safely within the Confederate lines, issued an elaborate and bitter Address, announcing his resignation

1 Charles S. Morehead, formerly a Whig representative in Congress from the Lexington district, afterward “American” Governor of the State from 1855 to 1859, was originally a Unionist of the Henry Clay school; but, having become largely interested in slaves and cotton-growing in Mississippi, was now and evermore a devotee of the Slave Power-hence a Disunionist. He bore an active and baleful part in the Peace Conference of February, 1861; and was thenceforth, though professing moderation, fully in the counsels of the Secessionists.

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