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“ [134] occupy the work upon the ground of its necessity for protecting Tennessee.”

But Jefferson Davis had too great hopes of Kentucky to create enmity by forcing her neutrality, and Pillow's scheme was necessarily postponed. As the autumn approached, however, Kentucky was clearly lost to the “Confederates.” Of the members of Congress chosen at the election held June 20th, nine out of ten were loyal. At the general election held on the first Monday of August, the Unionists gained three-fourths of the members of each branch of the Legislature. Meanwhile the danger of a great Mississippi expedition from the North grew formidable. The lower Mississippi flows generally between level shores, and offers few points where the stream may be effectually obstructed by fortifications. It was, therefore, desirable to secure all that were available, and the Richmond authorities now resolved to seize and hold Columbus, notwithstanding the fact that it lay in “neutral” Kentucky.

Since July 4th the defence of the Mississippi River had been specially entrusted to General Leonidas Polk, formerly a bishop in the Protestant Episcopal Church, but who, since the outbreak of the rebellion, preferred to utilize his early West Point education, by laying aside his clerical functions and accepting a major-general's commission in the Confederate service. On September 5th he began moving his forces northward, violating the neutrality of Kentucky by occupying the town of Hickman, on the Mississippi, within that State. The movement did not pass unobserved; the Union commander at Cairo had, with equal vigilance, been studying the possibilities of the river system in his neighborhood. On the following day, Brigadier-General Grant proceeded, with two gunboats and an infantry force, to take possession of the town of Paducah, at the confluence of the

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