On Thursday evening, the 5th of September, the gunboats Tyler and Conestoga were ordered to convey the troops to Paducah. The Ninth Illinois, under the gallant Major Philips, and the Twelfth Illinois, Colonel John McArthur, with four pieces of Smith’s Chicago Artillery, under Lieutenant Charles Willard, embarked on the steamers G. W. Graham and W. H. B., and left Cairo at 11 o’clock, P. M., the gunboat Tyler, Captain Rogers, leading, and the Conestoga, Captain Phelps, in the rear. The fleet pushed out into the stream amid the cheers of thousands of spectators, and steamed grandly up the Ohio.
They reached Paducah about eight o’clock, A. M., on Friday, the 6th. The troops were speedily disembarked. Colonel McArthur’s regiment landed at the Marine Hospital, in the lower part of the city, and the Ninth at the foot of Main street. The Twelfth found quarters at the hospital, and the Ninth repaired to the depot of the Ohio and New Orleans railroad. The citizens were sullen and unfriendly, and closed their places of business.
On arriving at the depot the troops found that the rolling stock of the road had all been removed, but a large quantity of stores for the confederate army was discovered, and promptly seized. They were marked for Memphis, New Orleans, and other points south, and were worth about $20,000.
Captain Rogers immediately took possession of the telegraph office. The post-office was next visited, and a large amount of rebel correspondence secured. Five companies of infantry, and a battery of Smith’s Light Artillery, Lieutenant Willard, were sent under Major Philips down the railroad about seven miles without meeting any of the rebel troops. Pillow was reported to be advancing, and a large bridge and trestle work were burnt to prevent him from reaching Paducah and falling upon the place by surprise.
A rumor became current that a large force of rebels from Tennessee were on their way down the Tennessee river in steamboats. To ascertain the facts, and to intercept their progress, the gunboat Conestoga was dispatched up the river some thirteen miles to watch the rebel movements, and to capture suspicious vessels. Although no hostile forces were seen, a steamer was discovered on Friday, which, on seeing the Conestoga, turned about, was run ashore, and the officers and crew abandoned her. It was the Jefferson, a small stern-wheel boat, loaded with a cargo of tobacco. On Saturday the Conestoga captured a fine propeller, called the John Gault, and a boat called the Pocahontas, belonging to John Bell, of Tennessee. The prizes were all safely taken to Cairo.
The inhabitants of Paducah were now seized with panic, and large numbers left the town, apprehending an attack from Pillow, in which case they expected the gunboats would freely use shell. On Saturday part of Colonel Oglesby’s Eighth regiment, the Forty-first Illinois, and the American Zouave regiment, from Cape Girandeau, entered the town, increasing the forces to about 5,000 men.
On the 9th of September a dispatch from General Polk to Governor Magoffin was laid before the Legislature, the substance of which was that he had occupied Columbus and Hickman, on account of reliable information that the Federal forces were about to possess those points; that he considered the safety of Western Tennessee and of the rebel army in the vicinity of Hickman and Columbus demanded their occupation, and that, as a corroboration of that information, the Federal troops had been drawn up in line on the river opposite to Columbus prior to its occupation by them, causing many of the citizens of Columbus to flee from their homes for fear of the entrance of the Federal troops. General Polk proposed substantially that the Federal and rebel forces should be simultaneously withdrawn from Kentucky, and to enter into recognizances and stipulations to respect the neutrality of the State.
But it was well known that the cry of neutrality was only an invention of the enemy to work his plans in Kentucky, so that when the appointed time should come Kentucky would swarm with rebels from Tennessee and Virginia; and two days afterwards both branches of the Legislature, by a vote of 71 to 26, adopted a resolution directing the Governor to issue a proclamation ordering the rebel troops then encamped in the State to evacuate Kentucky. A counter-resolution, ordering both Federal and rebel troops to leave the soil, was negatived under the rules of order. Governor Magoffin accordingly issued a proclamation to the effect that “the government of the Confederate States, the State of Tennessee, and all others concerned, are hereby informed that Kentucky expects the Confederate or Tennessee troops to be withdrawn from her soil unconditionally.”
After this decisive action of the Legislature, which effectually destroyed the hopes entertained by the conspirators of obtaining a semblance of legal authority for their designs, their next expedient was to hold an informal meeting at Russelville, a small town in the southern portion of the State, on the 29th of October. Here they drew up a declaration of grievances, in which they charged the majority of the Legislature with having betrayed their solemn trust, by inviting into the State the “armies of Lincoln,” with having abdicated the government in favor of a military despotism, and thrown upon the people and the State the horrors and ravages of war. They recommended the immediate arming of a “Guard” in each county, of not less than one hundred men, to be paid as Confederate troops, subject to the orders of the “Commanding General.” Finally, they called for a Convention to be held at Russelville, on the 18th of November, to be “elected, or appointed in any manner possible,” by the people of the several counties, for the purpose of “severing forever our connection with the Federal Government.”
John C. Breckinridge, late Vice President of the United States, was appointed one of the commissioners to carry out the orders of the convention. This Convention met at the time designated, composed of about two hundred persons, professing to represent sixty-five counties, though self-appointed, and without any form of election. On the 20th of November they adopted a “Declaration of Independence, and an Ordinance of Secession,” and appointed a “Provisional Government, consisting of a Governor, and a Legislative Council of Ten,” and dispatched H. C. Burnett, W. E. Simms, and William Preston, as commissioners to the Confederate States. On the 9th of December, the “Congress’” of the Confederate States, in session at Richmond, passed an “Act for the admission of the State of Kentucky into the Confederate States of America,” as a member “on equal footing with the other States of the Confederacy.”
George W. Johnson, of Scott county, who was chosen as Provisional Governor, by the Convention, in his “Message,” declared his willingness to resign “whenever the regularly elected Governor [Magoffin] should escape from his virtual imprisonment at Frankfort.”
Governor Magoffin, in a letter, dated December 13, 1861, says of this Convention, “I condemn its action in unqualified terms. Situated as it was, and without authority from the people, it cannot be justified by similar revolutionary acts in other States, by minorities to overthrow the State Governments. My position is, and has been, and will continue to be, to abide by the will of the majority of the people of the State, to stand by the Constitution and laws of the State of Kentucky, as expounded by the Supreme Court of the State, and by the Constitution and laws of the United States, as expounded by the Supreme Court of the United States. To this position I shall cling in this trying hour as the last hope of society and of constitutional liberty.”
While Pillow and Polk were invading the south-western part of the State, General Zollicoffer was operating in the east. With some six thousand rebels he came to Cumberland Ford—which is situated near the point where the corner of Virginia runs into Kentucky—capturing a company of Home Guards. On the 17th of September the Legislature received a message from Governor Magoffin communicating a telegraphic dispatch from General Zollicoffer, announcing that the safety of Tennessee demanded the occupation of Cumberland and the three long mountains in Kentucky, and that he had occupied them, and should retain his position until the Federal forces were withdrawn and the Federal camp broken up.
That portion of Kentucky lying west of the Cumberland river was then declared under insurrectionary control, and Secretary Chase instructed the Surveyor at Cairo to prevent all commercial intercourse with that section, and to search all baggage and all persons going thither. Just about the same time the gunboat Conestoga captured the rebel steamers Stephenson and Gazelle, on the Cumberland, and one of them was found to contain one hundred tons of iron.
When the seditious plans of General Buckner became too plain for concealment, the Legislature found it necessary to depose him from the command of the State troops, and General Thomas L. Crittenden, a loyal citizen, was appointed to fill that position. Governor Magoffin, in obedience to the resolutions and the enactments of the Legislature, promptly issued a proclamation, authorizing that officer to execute the purposes contemplated by the resolutions of the Legislature in reference to the expulsion of the invaders, and General Crittenden ordered the military to muster forthwith into service. Hamilton Pope, Brigadier-General of the Home Guard (Union), called on the people of each ward in Louisville to meet and organize into companies for the protection of the city.
Great excitement existed at this time in Louisville. The Union Home Guards began to assemble, while other Union forces were arriving and being sent to different portions of the State. At nine o’clock on the morning of the 18th, when the Government troops reached Rolling Fork, five miles north of Muldragh’s Hill, they found that the bridge over the fork had been burned by rebels under General Buckner, who were then upon the hill.
The Legislature passed, over the veto of the Governor, a resolution to the effect that, as the rebels had invaded Kentucky and insolently dictated the terms upon which they would retire, General Robert Anderson, the hero of Fort Sumter, one of Kentucky’s sons, should be invited to take instant charge of that department, and that the Governor must call out a sufficient force to expel the invaders from her soil. General Anderson, who had been previously appointed by the Government to command in Kentucky, responded to the call, and on the 21st of September issued a proclamation calling upon the people of Kentucky to rally to the support of the Union.
General S. B. Buckner, who had previously acted under neutrality pretences, now gradually assumed an attitude of hostility, and in September was openly arrayed against the Government. On the 12th he issued an inflammatory proclamation to the people of Kentucky, in which he declared that he sought to make no war upon the Union, but only against the tyranny and despotism of the Federal Government, which was about to make the people of Kentucky slaves. By such means as these he aimed to arouse the freemen of that State to arms and to rebellion. The proclamation was dated at Russelville, while he was entrenching a position at Bowling Green, about thirty miles from the Tennessee line, on the Louisville and Nashville railroad.
Very soon the Government formed a new department, consisting of Ohio, Indiana, and that part of Kentucky within a commanding distance of Cincinnati, placing it under the charge of General Mitchell, in order to relieve General Rosecranz in Western Virginia and General Anderson of a part of their responsibility, and enable them to give greater attention to their own specific departments. The department under General Anderson seemed to require similar military discipline to that of Annapolis and Maryland, and, as a commencement, Martin W. Barr, the telegraphic news reporter of the Southern Associated Press, the medium for the transmission of correspondence from traitors at the North to rebels in the South, was arrested, together with ex-Governor Morehead and Reuben T. Murrett, one of the proprietors of the Courier, a rebel sheet.
The State had now become a portion of the ground which was to be so fiercely contested. Rebel journals and leaders made no concealment of their purpose to wrest Kentucky from the Union at every hazard. The Ohio river was to be the boundary of the Southern empire, and notwithstanding the emphatic voice of her people, all the energy of the combined forces of the rebel armies were to be brought to bear upon the work. The fact could be no longer disguised from the people, and the loyal men, finding that their patience and confidence in the disloyal portion, with their previous consent to a negative position of neutrality, were in vain, boldly declared that the time had come to arouse and resist the impending ruin. The attempt of the conspirators of the Cotton States to make Kentucky the battle-field, along with Virginia, was to be defeated at every cost, and the people, rising to a comprehension of their responsibility, hastened to the work of organization and defence.
Among the loyal men of the State to whom the highest honor is due for their bold and stirring advocacy of the Union, and for the most summary measures which patriotism and honor could dictate, were Hon. Joseph Holt, and Hon. Lovell S. Rousseau, of the State Senate, and the gifted divine, R. J. Breckinridge, D.D.