Confederate Devastation. KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE TREASON. 875 Knights of the Golden Under Anderson's brief | federate purpose to arouse all the animosity rule but little transpired, of the popular heart against their cause-not of military movement. Ev- that they came as deliverers, and conservators ery effort, for the time-being, was concentrat- of liberty and order. ed in organization and preparation. The hour was one of great peril, for Confederate | troops were gathering rapidly at the most efficient points. Secession emissaries were everywhere, poisoning the loyal mind, distracting public and private councils, and, under the pernicious plea of State Rights, instilling ideas of National relations which sent thousands of Kentuckians to take up arms against she Union. It will be hard, after the bitter experiences of most of those men, to make them charitable toward the "Southern idea" or the Southern leaders. General Anderson's Retirement. A letter writer from Paducah, Sept. 22d, announcing the seizure of a "Castle" of the Knights of the Golden Circle, said: "When the Union troops entered Paducah one of the first fruits of their advent was to secure the "Castle" and its contents; and from the books and papers there found it is hoped that Government will be enabled to ferret out most of the arch traitors in this State. These documents have been sent to Washington. Among them are letters carefully filed from Governor Beriah Magoffin, General Anderson remain- Senator John C. Brenkenridge, General Gided but a brief time in com- eon J. Pillow, General Buckner, Mr. Repremand of the Department, sentative Burnett and others; all of whom owing to feeble health. He was relieved, are thus proved to have been members of this October 7th, by special request, and Briga- treasonable league, and many of them file dier-General W. T. Sherman assumed com- leaders in the movement. A copy of the promand of the "Department of the Cumber-ceedings of the last three meetings of the land," understood to embrace all of Kentucky"National Castle" was also found, which lets east of the Cumberland river, Announcing in several rays of light upon the strange conhis withdrawal, Anderson said: "Regretting duct of Governors Harris, Jackson and Madeeply the necessity which renders this step goffin, and the breaking up of the Charleston proper, I do it with less reluctance because Convention; a letter-or, rather, a private my successor, Brigadier-General Sherman, is circular-from two members of Mr. Buchathe man I had selected for that purpose. God nan's Cabinet, while yet in office, stating the grant that he may be the means of delivering number and quality of arms which would be this Department from the marauding bands in the Southern States at the expiration of who, under the guise of relieving and be- their terms of office, and other information friending Kentucky, are doing all the injury which will be of use when the rebellion is they can to those who will not join them in crushed. This discovery has been kept a their accursed warfare." This latter expres- profound secret until now, in order that the sion indicated with precision the character persons implicated, or such of them, at least, ter of the "relief" and "protection" vouch- as could be caged, might be taken care of by safed to the people of Kentucky by the Con- the Government, and we have the satisfaction federate commanders. A disinterested ob- of knowing that three of them have found a server would have supposed it was the Con-residence in Fort McHenry." ducah, I hereby warn all well disposed persons from having The greatest sinner of them all, John C. anything to do with him, and I hereby ask all good and loyal Breckenridge, escaped from Frankfort, Sept. men to arrest the said Williams and to deliver him to me, and I promise to hang the traitor on the first tree. "H. C. KING, "Commanding Ky. Volunteers, C. S. A. As Judge Williams was one of the most estimable citizens of the State, the promise to "hang the traitor on the first tree," fully indicates the nature of Confederate justice. It affords correct data for comment on General Johnston's proclamation. 20th-passing secretly and in disguise into the Confederate dominions. A few days later he was at Bowling Green and Columbus, advising with the rebel commanders in regard to a campaign against his own State. The disregard of consequences practiced in the Charleston Convention, to prevent the nomination of Mr. Douglas, culminated in his The Case of John C. Breckenridge. ever knew. flight by night from the commonwealth which had bestowed all the honers he Once beyond the reach of Federal or State process he prepared and published (October 25th) an Address to his late fellow-citizens and constituents, announcing his resignation of the office of U. S. Senator, and setting forth his views of the crisis at length. It was an able document—a special | plea, as specious as his disloyal sympathies would permit. Its composition was designed not more to justify his own course than to cover his night-flight with glory. Breckenridge's Last Address. the rupture might be healed, it and mighty events have occurred, which banish "The constitutional compact which created and upheld the old Union is at an end. A large number of the original and additional parties have withdrawn from it. So large a number that its stipulations can no longer be executed, and under such circumstanees no court has ever decided a contract to be bind We have, in the course of this work, given He then proceeded to demonstrate even the much space to the views of leading minds, in unconstitutionality of upholding the Constituorder that the dispassionate inquirer might tion-a view of the case which his professed have the whole argument before him. To friends of the North did not care to adopt, the opinions of Mr. Breckenridge ample jus- since it might create doubts as to their ever tice has deen done [see page 42, et sequitur], having entertained any faith in the Federal and we do not feel it incumbent on us to re- compact. If it was to be broken simply by produce at length his last outburst of mingled the power of non-representation, the Union entreaty, argument, invective and threat. It was but a shadow at best, and the democratic was his valediction to friends and malediction rally cry, "The Union! It shall be preserved!” to foes; but, it was, also, the funeral oration was proven, therefore, a designed imposture. of one who had passed away-the victim of Mr. Breckenridge's argument was: a thwarted ambition. In announcing the dissolution of the Union he seemed unconsciously to throw his own memory into the past tense. We quote enough of the Address to indicate its spirit and something of its argument. His position as a partizan leader gave to his words the weight of authority to a large class in the Northern States up to the hour of his final defection, and his last appeal, we have reason to know, received from many of that class a willing though si lent endorsement. That endorsement he well knew awaited his words; and the subtle Chief of State-Rights' Democracy in his valedictory, but breathed into being the heresies of party which sprang into a vigorous life in a year's time. Mr. Breckenridge wrote: Breckenridge's ing between the remaining parties, or attempted to enforce its execution. The Constitution requires positively that each State shall have at least one representative in Congress, but now twelve States have none; that each State shall have two Senators, but now twelve States have none; that all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States, but now in more than one third of them none are or can be collected. Commerce cannot be regulated between the respective States. Uniform rules of naturalization and bankruptcy cannot be adopted. Post offices and post roads, in nearly half the States have been given up, and a preference is given to the ports of one State over those of another. Even the election of a President has become impossible. The Constitution is mandatory on all the States to appoint electors, and requires a majority of the latter to elect; but more than one-third of the States refuse to Appoint, and hence no election can be made by the people. If the election goes to the House of Representatives, the Constitution requires that at least two-thirds of Breckenridge's Last Address. BRECKENRIDGE'S LAST ADDRESS. in that body. The Constitution can no longer be amended, for it requires three-fourths of the States to concur, and more than one-third of the States have withdrawn from the Confederacy. All the safeguards provided for by the States in the instrument, still further to secure public and personal liberty, have been destroyed. The three departments of the Federal Government, which were carefully separated and their boundaries defined, have been merged into one, and the President, sustained by a great army, wields unlimited power." 377 Breckenridge's Last Address. the States shall be represented | duties, taken beyond the limits This If this position was true all others were un that the President should be made a dictator. "The exemption of persons from arrest without judicial warrant, the right of a citizen to have his body brought before a judge to determine the legality of his imprisonment, the security provided against searches and seizure without warrant or law, the sanctity of the home, the trial by jury, the freedom of speech and of the press-these and every other precious right which our fathers supposed they had locked up in their Constitution, have been torn from it and buried beneath the heel of military power. The States made the Constitution, placed rigid boundaries around that Government, and expressly reserved to themselves all powers not delegated. They did not delegate to the Federal Government the power to destroy them-yet the creature has set itself above the creator. The atrocious doctrine is announced by the President and acted upon, that the States derive their power from the Federal Government, and may be suppressed on any pretence of military necessity. The gallant little State of Maryland has been utterly abolished. Missouri is engaged in a heroic struggle to preserve her existence and to throw off the horrors of martial law proclaimed by a subordinate military commander. Everywhere the civil has given way to the mili tary power. The fortresses of the country are filled with victims seized without warrant of law, and ig in the North; here and there a few heroic voices are feebly heard protesting against the progress of despotism, but for the most part, beyond the milita This 'Daniel come for judgment' forgot to state, in this immediate connection, that he himself, had he not fled by night, would have been seized and thrust into prison, because, like most all others so arrested and incarcerated, he was guilty of treason—was a dangerous enemy of the country, whom the Federal Executive, in the discharge of its sworn duty to protect the Constitution, had no power to allow of liberty. But, it is unnecessary to devote more space to the Senator's statements on these points. Like the argument of every ultra State Rights man, it pronounced all attempts to "enforce the Laws" and to uphold the Constitution to be an infamous abuse of power, &c. No counter argument ever did or ever will satisfy that class of thinkers, as will be discovered should a Convention of States be called to revise the Federal fundamental law. The north and south poles are not wider apart than men of the schools of Abraham Lincoln and John C. Calhoun. Mr. Breckenridge, after this general discussion of the question, then addressed himself to Kentuckians, charging that tyranny, duplicity and treachery had marked the entire "The legislators of States and other public officers of Federal proceedings in are seized while in the discharge of their official State. He charged that Federal money had norant of the cause of their imprisonment. course the Breckenridge's Last Address. Breckenridge's Last Address. been lavishly used to bribe | the Ashland district, and Govcitizens-that armed posernor of the State, you have session of the State had known, trusted and honored been taken under false pretences-that the him, during a public service of a quarter of a cen tury. He is eminent for his ability, his amiable Legislature had been awed and bribed into a character and his blameless life. Yet this man, betrayal of the State's independence, &c., &c. withou indictment, without warrant, without accuHe presented this picture for contemplation:sation, but by the order of President Lincoln, was "Fellow citizens, you have to do now, not with this fragment of a Legislature, with its treason bills and tax bills, with its woeful subserviency to every demand of the Federal despotism, and its woeful neglect of every right of the Kentucky citizen; but you have to deal with a power which respects neither Constitution nor laws, and which, if successful, will reduce you to the condition of prostrate and bleeding Maryland. General Anderson, the military dictator of Kentucky, announces in one of his pro clamations that he will arrest no one who does not act, write or speak in opposition to Mr. Lincoln's Government. It would have completed the idea if he had added, or think in opposition to it. Look at the condition of our State under the rule of our new protectors. They have suppressed the freedom of speech and of the press. They seize people by military force upon mere suspicion, and impose on them oaths unknown to the laws. Other citizens they imprison without warrant, and carry them out of the State, so that the writ of habeas corpus cannot reach them. "Every day foreign armed bands are making seizures among the people. Hundreds of citizens, old and young, venerable magistrates, whose lives have been distinguished by the love of the people, have been compelled to fly from their homes and families to escape imprisonment and exile at the hands of Northern and German soldiers, under the orders of Mr. Lincoln and his military subordinates. While yet holding an important political trust, confided by Kentucky, I was compelled to leave my home and family, or suffer imprisonment and exile. If it is asked why I did not meet the arrest and seek a trial, my answer is, that I would have welcomed an arrest to be followed by a judge and jury; but you well know that I could not have secured these constitutional rights. I would have been transported beyond the State, to languish in some Federal fortress during the pleasure of my oppressors. Witness the fate of Morehead and his Kentucky associates in their distant and gloomy prison. "The case of the gentleman just mentioned is an example of many others, and it meets every element in a definition of despotism. If it should occur in England, it would be righted, or it would overturn the British empire. He is a citizen and native of Kentucky. As a member of the Legislature, Speaker of the House, Representative in Congress from seized at midnight, in his own house, and in the midst of his family, was led through the streets of Louisville, as I am informed, with his hands crossed and pinioned before him-was carried out of the State and district, and now lies a prisoner in a fortress in New York harbor, a thousand miles away. Do you think that any free Legislature, ever assembled in Kentucky since the days of Charles Scott and Isaac Shelby, until now, would have permitted such a spectacle to dishonor the State? No! fellow citizens, the Legislature could not have been free! "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 accuetomed 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 Capitol, force public apinion to opprove 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 thonsands of her gallant sons have the will and the nerve to make the State sing to the music of their rifles!" Yet, in spite of the Senator's rhetoric, there was no rebellion against the acts of the loyal Legislature. The arrest of ex-Governor Morehead and of others plotting treason against the Union, was loudly called for by leading Kentuckians, as a matter of public safety. The suppression of the Louisville Courier was also an act to suppress conspiraCy and disloyalty—a mere step of self-defense, The Anderson characterised as a military dictator was the hero of Fort Sumter-a Breckenridge's Last Address. THE BATTLE OF WILD CAT. 379 South Eastern Kentucky. Christian gentleman in the | or gathering at Camp Wild truest sense of the word. Cat, between Great and The statement that most of Little Rockcastle rivers, the Federal army of invasion was composed was designed to operate against Zollicoffer, of foreigners whom Lincoln employed to do then in possession of Cumberland Gap, with his behests was outrageously untrue, since an advance to Barboursville. The rebels, for Ohio, Indiana and Illinois furnished from three weeks of October, carried terror through their own citizens, the great mass of troops the adjacent country. Union men fled or called to Kentucky's aid. And so the record were given over to the cruel mercies of ConThe entire appeal was grounded upon federate jailors in East Tennessee; families a perverse sentiment of loyalty; it would were stripped of their means of sustenance or have had but little foundation for its conclu-driven out from their homes into exile. Assions had the Senator been truly impartial sassins lurked everywhere to shoot down and neutral. runs. The Military Position. Oc any "suspicious person." Battle of Wild Cat. The position of the belNot desiring the presence ligerents, October 15th, in- of Colonel Garrard's force dicated an early collision. Sherman's ad- at Camp Wild Cat, Zollicoffer resolved to vance to Nolin Creek, twenty miles from strike him before reenforcements could arGreen River, commanded by Generals Ros- rive. To this end he advanced against the seau and McCook, it was thought would meet position with six regiments of infantry, one Buckner's and Hardee's combined forces at of cavalry and a battery of six light pieces. any moment. A flank movement upon Lou- Reconnoitering and demonstrating during isville by Polk and Pillow was feared. Sunday, October 20th, he made his attack on tober 17th Sherman urgently telegraphed the the morning of the 21st. General Schoepff War Department for reenforcements. The having arrived on the ground, assumed com- · next day, Secretary of War Cameron and Ad- mand. Ordering forward the Thirty-third jutant-General Thomas visited Sherman's Indiana, four companies under command of headquarters, on their return to Washington Colonel John Coburn, advanced and took from a tour of inspection in Fremont's de- possession of an eminence called Round Hill. partment. Seeing the imminence of the dan-one-half mile from the camp. This advance, ger, eight thousand troops were ordered on two Tennessee regiments of the enemy assailby special trains from Pittsburg, Indianapo-ed on the hill, pressing up under cover of the lis and Chicago. General Ward, in command woods, and when quite near the summit, at Camp Johnson, at Greensburg, dispatched messengers, October 18th, for reenforcements, learning that a rebel column three thousand strong was advancing in that direction. He feil back twelve miles to Campbellville, to await reenforcements. No enemy, however, confronted him. All the enemy's efforts seemed to be directed to the Federal advance toward Bowling Green-whose loss would be a severe blow to the Confederate occupa-personating Federal troops. One Tennessee regition and winter campaign in Western Kentucky. The rapid augmentation of Union forces under Sherman, and at Cairo and Paducah, soon placed the rebels strictly on the defensive. By November 1st Louisville was considered safe, and arrangements were then making for prosecuting the advance against Columbus and Bowling Green. opening a rapid fire of musketry.* Colonel Woodford soon joined Colonel Coburn, with about two hundred and fifty Kentucky cavalry. These troops bore the brunt of the fight with such persistence as to break the enemy's attempted charge; and, after an hour's fire, The enemy here tried the ruse so fatally suc cessful at the battle of Edwards' Ferry, Virginia, of ment advanced out of the woods, with their caps on bayonets, shouting: "we are Union men!" Lieutenant Knight, in command of a breast work which the Indianians had thrown up, sprang to the embankment and ordered his men not to fire, supposing the looked-for reenforcements had arrived. In a moment the Tennesseans sent in a volley and pushed on to carry the work. They fairly wilted, however, before the sheet of flame which leaped In Eastern Kentucky, the column gathered from the crest of the work like an avenging herald. |