Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

[341] seizing other points. Upon this proceeding I have no comments to make. But I am prepared to say that I will agree to withdraw the Confederate troops from Kentucky, provided that she will agree that the troops of the Federal Government be withdrawn simultaneously, with a guarantee (which I will give reciprocally for the Confederate Government) that the Federal troops shall not be allowed to enter or occupy any part of Kentucky in the future.

I have the honor to be, respectfully, your obedient servant,

(Signed) Leonidas Polk, Major-General commanding.

However willing the government of Kentucky might have been to accede to the proposition of General Polk and which from his knowledge of the views of his own government he was fully justified in offering, the state of Kentucky had no power, moral or physical, to prevent the United States government from using her soil as best might suit is purposes in the war it was waging for the subjugation of the seceded states. President Lincoln, in his message of the previous July, had distinctly and reproachfully spoken of the idea of neutrality as existing in some of the border states. He said: “To prevent the Union forces passing one way, or the disunion the other, over their soil, would be disunion completed. . . . At a stroke it would take all the trouble off the hands of secession, except only what proceeds from the external blockade.”

The acts of the federal government corresponded with the views announced by its President. Briefly, but conclusively, General Polk showed in his answer that the United States government paid no respect to the neutral position which Kentucky wished to maintain; that it was armed, but not neutral, for the arms and the troops assembled on her soil were for the invasion of the South; that he occupied Columbus to prevent the enemy from taking possession of it. When our troops first entered Columbus they found the inhabitants had been in alarm from demonstrations of the United States forces, but that they felt no dread of the Confederate troops. As far as the truth could be ascertained, a decided majority of the people of Kentucky, especially its southwestern portion, if left to a free choice, would have joined the Confederacy in preference to remaining in the Union. Could they have foreseen what in a short time was revealed, there can be little doubt that mule contracts, and other forms of bribery, would have proved unavailing to make her the passive observer of usurpations destructive of the personal and political rights of which she had always been a most earnest advocate. With the slow and sinuous approach of the serpent, the general government, little by little, gained power over Kentucky, and then,