Kentucky,
In 1776
Kentucky was made a county of Virginia, and in 1777 the first court was held at
Harrodsburg.
Conventions held at
Danville in 1784-85 recommended a peaceable and constitutional separation from
Virginia.
In 1786 an act was passed by the Virginia legislature complying with the desires of
Kentucky.
There was delay in consummating the change.
Other conventions were held urging the matter.
In 1790
Kentucky became a separate Territory, and on June 1, 1792, it was admitted into the
Union as a State.
Its population at that time was about 75,000.
For several years much uneasiness was felt among the people of
Kentucky on account of Indian depredations and the cloudiness of the political skies, for the great questions of the free navigation of the
Mississippi River and the ultimate possession of
Louisiana were unsettled.
These were settled satisfactorily by the purchase of
Louisiana in 1803.
During the
War of 1812
Kentucky took an active part, sending fully 7,000 men to the field; and after that war the
State was undisturbed by any stirring events until the breaking out of the
Civil War. Its progress was rapid.
A second constitution took effect in 1800, and continued in force until the adoption of the present one in 1850.
At the beginning of the
Civil War Kentucky assumed a position of neutrality, but it was really one of hostility to the
Union.
The governor refused to comply with the
President's requisition for troops; but
Lieut. William Nelson, of the navy, a native of the
State, and then on ordnance duty at
Washington, began to recruit for the
National army; and towards the close of July, 1861, he established Camp Dick
Robinson, in
Garrard county, for the organization of Kentucky volunteers.
These flocked to this camp and to other recruiting stations.
A great majority of the people were loyal to the
Union, but the governor was not, and the unfortunate position of neutrality which the latter, with the
Confederates, caused
Kentucky to assume brought upon her the miseries of civil war. Steps were taken for the secession of the
State, and for the organization of a Confederate State government, but failed.
The State was scarred by battles, invasions, and raids, and martial law was proclaimed by
President Lincoln, July 5, 1864.
The civil authority was restored Oct. 18, 1865.
The legislature refused to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment.
Population in 1890, 1,858,635; in 1900, 2,147,174.
See
United States, Kentucky, vol.
IX.
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Early settlements.
In 1767
John Finley, an Indian trader, explored the country beyond the mountains westward of
North Carolina.
In 1769 he returned to
North Carolina and gave glowing accounts of the fertile country he had left.
He persuaded
Daniel Boone and four others to go with him to explore it.
Boone had become a great hunter and expert in woodcraft.
They reached the headwaters of the
Kentucky, and, from lofty hills, beheld a vision of a magnificent valley, covered with forests, stretching towards the
Ohio, and abounding in game of the woods and waters of every kind.
They fought
Indians—some of the tribes who roamed over
Kentucky as a common hunting-ground.
Boone was made a prisoner, but escaped.
He determined to settle in the beautiful country between the
upper Kentucky and
Tennessee rivers, and, after remaining a while the sole white man in that region, he returned for his wife and children in 1771. Two years later he started with his own and five other families for the paradise in the wilderness.
Driven back upon settlements on the
Clinch, he was detained a year and a half longer.
He penetrated to the
Kentucky, and, on June 14, 1775, completed a log fort on the site of the present
Boonesboro.
He soon brought his family there, and planted the first permanent settlement in
Kentucky.
Mrs. Boone and her daughters were the first white women who ever stood on the banks of the
Kentucky River.
The precarious tenure by which places that were settled in
Kentucky by
Boone and others were held, while the land was subjected to bloody incursions by
Indians, was changed after
George Rogers Clarke's operations in
Ohio had made the tribes there no longer invaders of the soil south of that river.
The number of “stations” began to multiply.
A blockhouse was built (April, 1779) on the site of the city of
Lexington.
By a law of
Virginia (May, 1779), all persons who had settled west of the mountains before June, 1778, were entitled to claim 400 acres of land, without any payment: and they had a right of pre-emption to an adjoining 1,000 acres for a very small sum of money, while the whole region between the Greene and
Tennessee rivers was reserved for military bounties.
Settlements quite rapidly increased under this liberal
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Virginia land system, and fourteen years after its passage
Kentucky had a population that entitled it to admission into the
Union as a State.
In Civil War days.
The people were strongly attached to the
Union, but its
governor (
Beriah Magoffin) and leading politicians of his party in the
State sympathized with the
Confederates.
The action of
Kentucky was awaited with great anxiety throughout the
Union.
The governor at first opposed secession, for the people were decidedly hostile to revolutionary movements in the
Gulf region; yet they as decidedly opposed what was called the “coercion of a sovereign State.”
At a State convention of Union and
Douglas men, held on Jan. 8, 1861, it was resolved that the rights of
Kentucky should be maintained
in the Union. They were in favor of a convention of the free-labor and slave-labor border States to decide upon just compromises, and declared their willingness to support the national government, unless the incoming
President should attempt to “coerce a State or States.”
The legislature, which assembled about the same time, was asked by the governor to declare, by resolution, the “unconditional disapprobation” of the people of the
State of the employment of force against “seceding States.”
On Jan. 22 the legislature accordingly resolved that the Kentuckians, united with their brethren of the
South, would resist any invasion of the soil of that section at all hazards and to the last extremity.
This action was taken because the legislatures of several free-labor States had offered troops for the use of the national government in enforcing the laws in “seceding States.”
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They decided against calling a convention, and appointed delegates to the Peace Congress.
On April 18 a great Union meeting was held in
Louisville, over which
James Guthrie and other leading politicians of the
State held controlling influence.
At that meeting it was resolved that
Kentucky reserved to herself “the right to choose her own position; and that, while her natural sympathies are with those who have a common interest in the protection of slavery, she still acknowledges her loyalty and fealty to the government of the
United States, which she will cheerfully render
until that government becomes aggressive, tyrannical, and regardless of our rights in slave property.”
They declared that the States were the peers of the national government, and gave the world to understand that the latter should not be allowed to use “sanguinary or coercive measures to bring back the seceded States.”
They alluded to the Kentucky State Guard as the “bulwark of the safety of the commonwealth, . . . pledged equally to fidelity to the
United States and to
Kentucky.”
Early in the summer the governor declared that arrangements had been made that neither National or Confederate troops should set foot on the soil of that State.
The neutrality of
Kentucky was respected many months.
Pillow had urged the seizure of the bluff at
Columbus, in western Kentucky, as an aid to him in his attempt to capture
Cairo and
Bird's Point, but the solemn assurance of the Confederate government that
Kentucky neutrality should be respected restrained him: but on Sept. 4, General (
Bishop)
Polk, with a considerable force, seized the strong position at
Columbus, under the pretext that National forces were preparing to occupy that place.
The Confederate
Secretary of War publicly telegraphed to
Polk to withdraw his troops;
President Davis privately telegraphed to him to hold on, saying, “The end justifies the means.”
So
Columbus was held and fortified by the
Confederates.
General Grant, then in command of the district at
Cairo, took military possession of
Paducah, in northern Kentucky, with National troops, and the neutrality of
Kentucky was no longer respected.
The seizure of
Columbus opened the way for the infliction upon the people of that
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State of the horrors of war. All
Kentucky, for 100 miles south of the
Ohio River, was made a military department, with
Gen. Robert Anderson, the hero of
Fort Sumter, for its commander.
Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, was in command of the
Confederate Western Department, which included
southern and
western Kentucky, then held by the
Confederates, and the
State of Tennessee, with his headquarters at
Nashville.
Under the shadow of his power the Confederates of
Kentucky met in convention at
Russellville, Oct. 29, 1861.
They drew up a manifesto in which the grievances of
Kentucky were recited, and the action of the loyal legislature was denounced.
They passed an ordinance of secession, declared the
State independent, organized a provisional government, chose
George W. Johnston provisional governor, appointed delegates to the Confederate Congress at
Richmond, and called
Bowling Green the
State capital.
Fifty-one counties were
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Site of the last Indian settlement in Kentucky. |
represented in that convention by about 200 men, without the sanction of the people.
Late in 1861, the
Confederates occupied a line of military posts across
southern Kentucky, from
Cumberland Gap to
Columbus, on the
Mississippi River, a distance of nearly 400 miles.
Don Carlos Buell,
major-general, had been appointed commander of the Department of the Ohio, with his headquarters at
Louisville.
There he gathered a large force, with which he was enabled to strengthen various advanced posts and throw forward along the line of the Nashville and Louisville Railway a large force destined to break the
Confederate line.
He had under his command 114,000 men, arranged in four columns, commanded respectively by
Brig.-Gens. A. McDowell McCook,
O. M. Mitchel,
G. H. Thomas, and
T. L. Crittenden, acting as major-generals, and aided by twenty brigade commanders.
These troops were from States northward of the
Ohio, and loyalists of
Kentucky and
Tennessee.
They occupied an irregular line across
Kentucky, parallel with that of the
Confederates.
General McCook led 50,000 men down the railroad, and pushed the
Confederate line to
Bowling Green, after a sharp skirmish at Mumfordsville, on the south side of the
Green River.
In
eastern Kentucky Col. James A. Garfield struck (Jan. 7, 1862) the
Confederates, under
Humphrey Marshall, near
Prestonburg, on the
Big Sandy River, and dispersed them.
This ended
Marshall's military career, and
Garfield's services there won for him the commission of a brigadier-general.
On the 19th,
General Thomas defeated
Gen. George B. Crittenden near
Mill Spring, when
General Zollicoffer was slain and his troops driven into
northwestern Tennessee.
This latter blow effectually severed the
Confederate lines in
Kentucky, and opened
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the way by which the
Confederates were soon driven out of the
State and also out of
Tennessee.
The Confederate line was paralyzed eastward of
Bowling Green, and their chief fortifications and the bulk of their troops were between
Nashville and
Bowling Green and the
Mississippi.
On that line was strong
Fort Donelson, on the
Cumberland River.
Believing
Beauregard to be a more dashing officer than
Johnston, the
Confederates appointed him commander of the Western Department, late in January, 1862, and he was succeeded in the command at
Manassas by
Gen. G. W. Smith, formerly of New York City.
