[
615]
of his seat in the Senate, and the dissolution of the
Union; demonstrating, after his fashion, the unconstitutionality of struggling to uphold the
Constitution; the atrocity of the despotism which had ventured to arrest a few of the many traitors actively at work to subvert the
National Government; and charging the Legislature of his State with “woeful subserviency to every demand of Federal despotism and woeful neglect of every right of the
Kentucky citizen,” etc., etc. Here is a specimen of his rhetoric:
I would speak of these things with the simple solemnity which their magnitude demands; yet it is difficult to restrain the expression of a just indignation while we smart under such enormities.
Mr. Lincoln has thousands of soldiers on our soil, nearly all from the North, and most of them foreigners, whom he employs as his instruments to do these things.
But few Kentuckians have enlisted under his standard; for we are not yet accustomed to his peculiar form of liberty.
I will not pursue the disgraceful subject.
Has Kentucky passed out of the control of her own people?
Shall hirelings of the pen, recently imported from the North, sitting in grand security at the Capital, force public opinion to approve these usurpations and point out victims?
Shall Mr. Lincoln, through his German mercenaries, imprison or exile the children of the men who laid the foundations of the Commonwealth, and compel our noble people to exhaust themselves in furnishing the money to destroy their own freedom?
Never, while Kentucky remains the Kentucky of old!--never, while thousands of her gallant sons have the will and the nerve to make the State sing to the music of their rifles!
It is clear that
Mr. Breckinridge, in his exodus from
Kentucky, had perpetrated a serious blunder.
As a declaimer in the Senate, in chorus with
Vallandigham,
Voorhees, and May, he was worth far more to the
Confederacy than as a Brigadier in its military service; and even the election of Garret
Davis in his stead did not fully compensate the
Rebellion for the loss of its boldest and most unscrupulous champion in the Federal Congress.
Gen. W. T. Sherman, early in October, succeeded
Gen. Anderson in command of the district of Kentucky.
The Rebels, with an art which they had already brought to perfection, imposed on him, with success, as on
Gen. McClellan and other of our commanders, a most exaggerated notion of the amount of their forces; so that, when
Kentucky might easily have been cleared of armed foes by a concerted and resolute advance,
Sherman was telegraphing furiously to the War Department for large reenforcements; and, when visited at
Louisville, on the 18th, by
Secretary Cameron and
Adjt.-Gen. Thomas, he gravely informed them that lie should need 200,000 men to recover and hold
Kentucky; when, in fact, there were not 40,000 Rebels in arms within the limits of that State.
Pollard, writing of the early part of November, says:
Despite the victory of Belmont, our situation in Kentucky was one of extreme weakness, and entirely at the mercy of the enemy, if he had not been imposed upon by false representations of the number of our forces at Bowling Green.
* * * About the middle of September, Gen. Buckner advanced, with a small force of about 4,000 men, which was increased, by the 15th of October, to 12,000; and, though other accessions of force were received, it continued at about the same strength until the end of November, measles and other diseases keeping down the effective force.
The enemy's force then was reported to the War Department at 50,000; and an advance was impossible.
The
Unionists of
south-eastern Kentucky were mustering and organizing under
Col. Garrard at a point known as Camp Wild-Cat, when
Zollicoffer advanced (Oct. 20th) with seven regiments