TREASONABLE PROCEEDINGS. other "being as yet no part of the Southern Confederacy," resolved to call a Convention to be "chosen, elected or appointed in any manner now possible by the people of the several counties of the State," and meet at the same place the following month. The body thus loosely summoned was recommended to sever forever the connection of Kentucky with the United States, and adopt a provisional government, or take such measures as might be expedient for their purposes. This meeting was presided over by the Hon. H. C. Burnett of Trigg county, who had been recently elected, the only disunionist out of ten members, to the National House of Representatives. A committee was appointed to carry out the Resolutions, of which John C. Breckenridge and Humphrey Marshall were members. According to appointment, this so-called Convention met at Russellville on the 18th of November. It was composed of some two hundred persons, professing to represent sixty-five counties, but the terms on which they had been invited did not warrant much scrutiny as to their credentials. They proceeded, however, to their work, with the formality and solemnity of the best accredited delegates in the world, drew up a formidable Declaration of Independence, pronounced a Decree of Separation, and adopted a Plan of Provisional Government, one of the sections of which directed the appointment of Commissioners to treat with the Confederate States for the earliest practicable admission of Kentucky into that body. George W. Johnson of Scott county, was appointed Provisional Governor under this instrument. On the 9th of December the Rebel Congress at Richmond, recognizing the " Convention," admitted Kentucky to the Confederate States of America. Governor Magoffin, it may be added, by no means approved of the proceedings at Russellville. When Provisional Governor Johnson intimated in Message" that he would resign his 91 position whenever" the regularly elected Governor should escape from his virtual imprisonment at Frankfort, that he might be placed at the head of this movement for the emancipation of Kentucky," Governor Magoffin wrote to the Louisville Journal that he had not given his sanction to any such use of his name. On the contrary, he expressed his strong disapprobation of the Convention. "Selfconstituted as it was," he wrote, "and without authority from the people, it cannot be justified by similar revolutionary acts in other States, by minorities to overthrow the State Governments. I condemned their action, and I condemn the action of this one." * All that treason could accomplish by Resolutions and Proclamations, was thus attempted. Not an expedient of that sort seems to have been left untried. Yet the State stood firm for the Union, in spite of the declarations of her disappointed politicians, a hundred times repeated, that she was tyrannically treated and betrayed. The people had given their allegiance to law and order under a beneficent government, in preference to the cruel tender mercies of the Confederate usurpaiton. If any thing was to be gained by the rebels it was evident it was to be accomplished not by words but by violence. The first military encounter of conscquence in the State, was in the Southeastern region, where the rebel General Zollicoffer, at the head of a band of marauders, was conducting a series of predatory attacks upon the Unionists. This officer, destined to leave a lasting memory of his brief military career, was not bred to the profession of arms, but had risen to his rank in the Confederate army by his services in various political campaigns. He was a native of Western Tennessee, had received but a limited education in his boyhood, had improved it by service in a printing-office, and at * Letter of Governor Magoffin to the Editors of the Louisville Journal, Frankfort, Ky., December 13, 1861. the age of seventeen had undertaken the management of a country newspaper. He had been much engaged in editorial life, editing the Nashville Banner and other journals, and had held various political offices of trust and profit in Tennessee. In 1853 he was elected to Congress by the American party from the Nashville District. He was a man of energy and ambition, and, though without military experience, was relied upon as an efficient officer by the rebels of the Southwest. were stationed here. The first attack, about eight in the morning, was made in a hollow extending from the London road to the Winding Blades road. After the repulse, the rebels formed again and attempted to come along the London road. By this time the 33d Indiana regiment had come upon the ground, and a portion of them were led to the top of the conical hill. A battery of artillery, too, arrived at this critical juncture. The rebels advanced shouting as before, supported by their artillery, at every discharge of which they screamed like fiends. A shell from the first of our guns silenced both their shouts and their cannonade, and sent them flying again. with astonishment and consternation. Retreating out of sight they deliberated a third attack, this time selecting the conical hill as the point of approach. With much labor they opened a road through the woods along the side of a high ridge on the other side of the London road, and planted a piece of their artillery. On our side, the 14th Ohio regiment, under Colonel Steadman, came into the field by a forced march, and took position. One piece of cannon was taken on the shoulders of the men to the top of the hill and every preparation made to give the rebels a handsome reception. As they approached on the rear of the hill, they came in the guise of friends, bearing their hats on the points of their guns and calling out as they approached, We are Union men!' Then,' said our men, "Colonel Garrard was encamped at lay down your arms and come along.' the junction of the three roads,-the Approached now within twenty yards of Mount Vernon road leading to Camp our lines, they cried, 'Now, d―n you Dick Robinson, along which the rein- we've got you!' 'Give 'em the lead!' forcements came; the London road by was the fierce reply. The conflict was which the rebels approached, and the obstinate and the carnage terrible. VolWinding Blades road leading to Rich-ley after volley was delivered into the mond. Between the last two roads, and commanding Colonel Garrard's position, is a high conical hill. The whole face of the country is covered with a heavy growth of timber, except where it has been felled by the soldiers since they Advancing from Tennessee he had inflicted various injuries upon an unoffending population, plundering Barboursville and London, when on the 21st of October he made his appearance before the Union encampments on Rock Castle Creek, which bore the characteristic appellation of Camp Wild Cat. Colonel Garrard had held command of the place with a single Kentucky regiment, but it was now strengthened by the 17th Ohio Infantry, and Colonel Woolford's Kentucky cavalry. Brigadier-General Alvin Schoepff, a recently appointed Hungarian officer, had also just arrived and was in command. We have no information of the exact number of Zollicoffer's force confronted by General Schoepff, but it is represented as large-the newspaper accounts say six thousand-and well supplied with cavalry and artillery. A correspondent of the Boston Courier, writing from the camp the next day, gives this account of the fight : tottering ranks of rebellion, until, throwing aside their muskets still loaded, they fled the third time. The first fire of their cannon, planted with such infinite pains, drew forth a reply from our piece on the hill, which disabled and silenced PURSUIT OF THE REBELS. 93 it. The battle was now over and the beyond Prestonburg to Pikeville, where victory won." The retreat of the rebels to Barboursville is described as most disastrous to them. All along the road farmers and others, indignant at the outrages which they had practiced, came forth with their guns to harass their flight. "You start 'em," is said to have been the exclamation of these resolute yeomen to Colonel Garrard, "we'll keep 'em going ;" and every where they poured their fire upon them as the New England farmers once smote the British in their retreat from Lexington. The loss of Zollicoffer's troops, loosely estimated at a thousand to fifteen hundred, was certainly severe; that of the defenders was slight, less than ten, it is said, killed, and but fifty in any way wounded. "I have called this," says the writer whose account of the battle we have cited, an important action. Such it is for the number of the troops and obstinacy of the fight, but far more for its moral effects. It is the first battle upon the soil of Kentucky, the first resistance to an invasion that for enormity and atrocious barbarity has seldom been equalled. While Zollicoffer has created but little solicitude among military men, his name will live among the dwellers of these mountains for generations as a synonym of terror and distress, desclate houses, ravaged fields, and fugitive old men, women and children. If history preserves his name, it will be in the execrable category with Claverhouse, and Tarleton, and Haynau, the oppressors and enemies of the human race.' About a fortnight after a second lesson was administered to the rebels in Eastern Kentucky, in the onward march of General Nelson, with a body of Ohio and Kentucky Volunteers, through and 90 Colonel Williams, an insurgent officer, was at the head of a considerable force. General Nelson's advance met the enemy at a narrow defile of Joy Mountain, near Pikeville, where they were lying in wait at the turn of the road, in the mountain side above and on the opposite bank of the creek which skirted the sharp declivity of the narrow pathway. Four were killed and thirteen wounded of Colonel Marshall's Kentucky Battalion, on their sudden approach to the enemy. A charge was then ordered; the Ohio Volunteers as they came up deployed along the mountain, and two pieces of artillery were got in position on the road and opened fire. The skirmishing lasted an hour and twenty minutes, when the insurgents were thoroughly routed. Thirty of the enemy were found dead on the field. The Union loss was six killed and twenty-four wounded. From his Headquarters, Camp Hopeless Chase,' Piketon, General Nelson, on the 10th of November, issued this order to his soldiers :-"I thank you for what you have done. In a campaign of twenty days you have driven the rebels from Eastern Kentucky, and given repose to that portion of the State. You have made continual forced marches over wretched roads deep in mud. Badly clad, you have bivouacked on the wet ground in the November rain without a murmur. With scarcely half rations you have pressed forward with unfailing perseverance. The only place that the enemy made a stand, though ambushed and very strong, you drove him from you in the most brilliant style. For your constancy and courage I thank you, and with the qualities which you have shown that you possess, I expect great things from you in the future." CHAPTER XLV. THE CAPTURE OF PORT ROYAL, NOVEMBER, 1861. THE obvious need by the Government of the possession of a series of harbors on the Southern Coast, to serve as the stations and places of refuge of the blockading fleet during the approaching inclement season, as well as to provide a basis of operations for future military movements against the Southern States, and afford protection to loyal citizens, required the prosecution of those naval undertakings which had been commenced with such success in the victory at Hatteras Inlet. The attention of the Navy Department had been early directed to this necessity, and in June a special board of army and Navy officers was ordered for the thorough investigation of the whole subject. The board was composed of Captains Samuel F. Dupont and Charles H. Davis of the Navy, Major John G. Barnard of the Engineer Corps of the Army, and Professor Alexander Bache of the Coast Survey. The Commission prepared several elaborate reports, exhibiting the position and advantage of almost every available point on the Coast, and it was in accordance with their recommendations that the expeditions to the Southern Coast in the summer and autumn of 1861 were undertaken. The rapidly increasing resources of the Department, in connection with the larger requirements of the war, demanded the equipment of a Naval Expedition on a larger scale, and one productive of more important results than that which had so readily gained possession of the forts at Hatteras. Accordingly, for the month or two following that event, there were rumors of the preparation of a fleet to be accompanied by a military force and to be directed against some important point of the Southern Coast, the popular conjectures of the precise locality to be assailed ranging widely from North Corolina to Texas, with a special inclination, in view of their value, to the harbors of Georgia and South Carolina. In the month of October the enterprise which had been energetically forwarded by the Secretary of the Navy and his efficient assistant, Mr. Fox, began to take definite shape to the eye of the public, in the gathering of a large squadron in Hampton Roads, and the collection of a considerable body of troops at a convenient point for embarkation at Annapolis. It was, of course, an object, as far as possible, to keep these movements secret from the enemy, and the press was consequently put under restraint in reporting the progress of the Expedition. At length, however, the completeness and unavoidable publicity of the preparations rendered secrecy no longer practicable, and the public, a few days before the departure of the fleet, were made acquainted with its military proportions and resources, though its particular destination was sedulously kept secret even in official circles. At the head of the Naval Expedition was placed Commodore Samuel F. Dupont, the chairman of the board of Inquiry, just mentioned, who consequently was in full possession of the knowledge acquired by the Government in reference to the opportunities of the enterprise, and largely shared with the Administration the responsibility of its success. Indeed, so thoroughly had he studied the matter, and so confident was the reliance on his judgment, that the selection within certain limits, of the place where the |