Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 9.djvu/29

Rh, Hamilton Pope, Nathaniel Wolfe and Lewis E. Harvie. After the fall of Fort Sumter, Governor Magoffin, in response to the President's call for troops, again voiced the sentiment of Kentucky when he said, "Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States."

On the 17th of April, two days after the above declaration, Hon. John J. Crittenden, who had just retired from the United States Senate and was the recognized Union leader of Kentucky, made a speech in Lexington in which he approved Governor Magoffin's action, and first of all proclaimed the doctrine of neutrality, to take no part in the impending war except as a mediator between the sections, and to resist aggression of her territory by either section. Upon the next day the Union central committee named above issued an address to the people of Kentucky. After endorsing the response of Governor Magoffin to the call for troops and favoring an armed neutrality, it said, "Whatever the future duty of Kentucky may be, we of course cannot with certainty foresee; but if the enterprise announced in the proclamation of the President should at any time hereafter assume the aspect of a war for the overrunning and subjugation of the seceding States through the full assertion therein of the national jurisdiction by a standing military force, we do not hesitate to say that Kentucky should promptly unsheath her sword in behalf of what will then have become a common cause. Such an event, if it should occur — of which we confess there does not appear to us to be a rational probability — could have but one meaning, a meaning which a people jealous of their liberty would be keen to detect, and which a people worthy of liberty would be prompt and fearless to resist. When Kentucky detects this meaning in the action of the government, she ought, without counting the cost, to take up arms at once against the government. Until she does detect this meaning, she ought to hold herself independent of both