Convention projet, and denied that they had ever contemplated any thing revolutionary or treasonable. The whole matter was suffered to pass into oblivion. The conspirators were treated by the government and people of the United States as William the Third treated those around his throne who, within his knowledge, had conspired against him, and had actually served the public enemy of England. It was known in each case that the conspirators were controlled by their selfish interests, and that the best mode of managing them, was to cause them to see that it was to their interest to be faithful to their government. It needs no comment to indicate with what grace the vehement denunciation of the secession of the Southern States from a Union which had been prostituted alike to the selfishness of politicians and the passion of fanatics, comes from a people who had been not only domestic rebels, but allies to the foreign enemy in the war of 1812.

In tracing the political connections of Kentucky in the present war, it will be sufficient for our purposes to start at the election of its governor in 1859. Down to that period the body of the partisans now upholding the Lincoln government had been an emancipation party in the State. This party had lately suffered much in popularity. In the election of 1859, they determined to consult popularity, and took open pro-slavery ground. The State Rights candidate (Magoffin) was elected.

By their adroit movement, however, the Anti-State Rights party had made some advance in the confidence of the people, which availed them in the more important contests that followed. In the Presidential election of 1860 they supported Mr. Bell, and thus succeeded in their object of gaining the ascendency in the councils of the State. Emancipationists were urged to support Mr. Bell, upon the ground that from his antecedents and present position they had more to expect from him than from his principal competitor in the race in Kentucky, while the people at large were persuaded to support Mr. Bell as the candidate of the friends of "the Union, the Constitution, and the Laws."

The Anti-State Rights party (at least they may be known for the present by this convenient denomination), succeeded in carrying the State by a large plurality. They commenced at an carly day to combat the movements of sccession in the

South. Popular assemblies and conventions were called to pledge themselves to the support of the Union in every contingency. The party, as represented in these assemblies, united all the friends of Mr. Bell, and the great body of those of Mr Douglas and of Mr. Guthrie. By this combination an organization was effected which was able to control and direct public opinion in the subsequent progress of events.

It is certainly defective logic, or, at best, an inadequate explanation, which attributes the subserviency of a large portion of the people of Kentucky to the views of the Lincoln government to the perfidy of a party or the adroitness of its management. However powerful may be the machinery of party, it certainly has not the power of belying public sentiment for any considerable length of time. The persistent adhesion of a large portion of the Kentucky people to the Northern cause must be attributed to permanent causes; and among these were, first, an essential unsoundness on the slavery question, under the influences of the peculiar philosophy of Henry Clay, who, like every great man, left an impress upon his State which it remained for future even more than contemporary generations to attest; and, second, the mercenary considerations of a trade with both North and South, to which the State of Kentucky was thought to be especially convenient. These suggestions may at least assist to the understanding of that development of policy in Kentucky which we are about

to relate.

On the meeting of the Legislature of Kentucky, after the clection of Lincoln, the party in the interest of the North succeeded in obtaining the passage by that body of a singular set of resolutions, which, by a curious compost of ideas, were called "pro-slavery and Union" resolutions. They denounced secession, without respect to any cause which might justify the measure, deprecated any war between the North and the South, and avowed the determination of Kentucky to occupy in such an event a position of perfect neutrality.

At its regular session in 1859-'60, the Legislature had organized an active body of volunteer militia, denominated the State Guard, and General Buckner had been appointed its highest officer. This army, as it might be called, was found to consist of the finest officers and best young men in the State

It was necessarily, by the provisions of the Constitution, under the command of the governor; but as Governor Magoffin was supposed to be a Southern Rights man, and the fact appearing that nearly all of the State Guard were favorable to the same cause, and that they could not be made the soldiers of the despotic government of the North, he was in effect deprived of their command, and measures were taken for forcing out of their hands the public arms with which they had been furnished, and for the organization of a new corps, to be commanded by the officers and partisans of Abraham Lincoln. In the mean time, as if to make their professed determination of neutrality effective, the Legislature proceeded to arm with muskets their "Home Guards," as their new army was called. With this programme before the people, the Legislature took a recess, probably to await the progress of events, when the mask of neutrality might be thrown off, and their real purposes night safely be announced to the people.

Gov. Magoffin's refusal to furnish troops to answer the requisition of the Federal government (to which reference has already been made in another part of this work), appeared at the time to meet with the approval of the entire people of Kentucky. The enemies of the South acquiesced in the decision of the governor only until the period arrived when the farce of neutrality might be conveniently broken, and the next step ventured, which would be union with the North. With the pretence of neutrality, and the seductive promises of a trade with both belligerents, which would enrich Kentucky and fill her cities with gold, a considerable portion of the people were held blinded or willingly entertained, while the purposes of the Lincoln government with respect to their State were being steadily fulfilled.

In the election of members of the Congress called by Lincoln to meet in special session on the 4th of July, 1861, men of Northern principles were elected from every district in Kentucky save one; and in the same condition of the public mind, the members of the Legislature were elected in August the result being the return of a large majority of members os tensibly for the purpose of maintaining the ground of neu trality, but with what real designs was soon discovered. The clection of the Lincoln rulers having been thus accomplished

the measures all the time contemplated and intended were easily put in course of execution. In a short time every State Rights newspaper was suspended; every public man standing in defence of the South was threatened with arrest and prosecution; and the raising of a volunteer corps for the defence of the South was totally suppressed.

Immediately after the declaration of war by the Lincoln government, a number of young men in Kentucky, actuated by impulses of patriotism, and attesting the spirit of the ancient chivalry of their State, had commenced raising volunteer companies in the State for the Confederate service. They passed South in detachments of every number. This emigration was at first tolerated by the Unionists, if not actually desired by them, for the purpose of diminishing the opposition in the State to their sinister designs. By the removal of its members, and by the acts of the Legislature already mentioned, the admirable army of the "State Guard of Kentucky" was totally disorganized, and the command of it virtually taken from Governor Magoffin and General Buckner, and placed in the hands of the political partisans of the Lincoln government. General Buckner could not long occupy such a position, and therefore, as soon as practicable, he resigned his office, renounced the Lincoln government, and placed himself under the Confederate flag. The value of his accession to the Southern cause was justly appreciated, and he was speedily appointed a brigadier-general in the provisional army of the Confederacy.

The encouragement to emigration was not long continued by the party in power in Kentucky. It was determined by the Lincoln government to make examples of the small party remaining in Kentucky who sympathized with the South, and to arrest at once every public and influential man in the State known to be hostile to the North, or to the despotic purposes of the government at Washington. Ex-Governor Morehead was at a dead hour of the night arrested in his own house, a few miles from Louisville, in the presence of his afflicted family, by the Lincoln police, and hurried through the city and over the river, and out of his State and district, in violation of all law; and the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus was practically denied him in a mode which, at any period in the last

two hundred years, would have aroused all England into commotion. The high-handed act, it might have been supposed would have aroused Kentucky also to a flame of indignation at any other period since it became the habitation of white men. The people, however, seemed to be insensible, and the outrage was allowed to pass with no public demonstration of its disapproval. Encouraged by its experience of the popular subserviency in Kentucky to its behests, it was in convenient time determined by the Lincoln government to arrest or drive off from the State every prominent opponent of its despotic authority. It was determined at Louisville that John C. Breckenridge, late Vice-President of the United States, Col. G. W. Johnson, a prominent citizen, T. B. Monroe, Jr., Secretary of State, William Preston, late Minister to Spain, Thomas B. Monroe, Sr., for about thirty years District Judge of the United States, Col. Humphrey Marshall, ex-member of Congress, and a distinguished officer in the Mexican war, Capt. John Morgan (since "the Marion" of Kentucky), and a number of other distinguished citizens in different parts of the State, should be arrested at the same hour, and consigned to prison, or driven from their homes by the threats of such a fate. It is supposed that some of the Lincoln men, and perhaps some officers of the government, preferred the latter alternative, especially in respect to some of the individuals named. However this may be, it happened that all of them escaped, some in one direction, and some in another.

The venerable Judge Monroe, on his arrival at Bowling Green, whence he was on his next day's journey to pass out of his State and his district, executed in duplicate, and left to be transmitted by different modes of conveyance, his resignation of the office of Judge of the United States for Kentucky; and in conformity to the general expectation at the time, he placed npon historic record the declaration of his expatriation of himself from the dominion of the despotic government of Lincoln, and adopted himself a citizen of the Southern Confederacy. The proceedings occurred in the Confederate Court of Nashville on the 3d of October. The scene of the renunciation of allegiance to the government that would have enslaved him, by this venerable jurist, who had been driven from a long-cher ished home, and was now on his way to the State of Virginia,