KENTUCKY. 



541 



large numbers of the people who were contented, com- 

 fortable, and independent, are suffering for the neces- 

 saries of life ; their fences have been destroyed, their 

 stock and provisions taken, so that many cannot make 

 a crop this year; add to this, that many persons have 

 been frightened or dragged from their homes and 

 suffering families. The laws are silent, or cannot be 

 executed. Universal gloom and distress pervade 

 these regions. Families are divided and broken up, 

 and each has its wrongs or its woes to relate. Starva- 

 tion stares many in the face. In other and more highly 

 favored districts no property of any description can be 

 sold at one third of its former value. The people are 

 much in debt. They would gladly pay if their prop- 

 erty would bring anything Tike a reasonable price ; 

 but owing to the great reduction in the circulation of 

 the banks, from thirteen to five millions of dollars 

 within a year or two ; owing to the enormous war debt 

 which must be met by an increase of taxation, the 

 destruction of property and of confidence, the with- 

 drawal of funds by capitalists, and the consequent fall 

 in prices, the indebtedness of our people, and the open- 

 ing of the courts, bankruptcy, and ruin stare them in 

 the face unless they get relief! 



There was not a cordial cooperation between 

 the governor and the majority of the Legis- 

 lature. Several bills, passed by the Legislature, 

 were vetoed by him, such as an act to disfran- 

 chise all citizens who entered the Confederate 

 service; another requiring all clergymen to 

 take an oath to sustain the Constitution of the 

 United States before performing the marriage 

 ceremony, &c. These things, however, were 

 soon lost sight of by the movements of the 

 Federal troops, which .engrossed attention. 

 Kentucky was not only completely under their 

 control, but the Confederate forces were driven 

 beyond her limits. Even at this time the State 

 had contributed more than its quota to the 

 Federal army, and there was no military or- 

 ganization of the State but entirely acquiesced 

 in this contribution. 



In August an extra session of the Legislature 

 was held on a call by Gov. Magoffin. The ne- 

 cessity of the session was thus explained by 

 him: 



Most cheerfully have I convened you in extraordi- 

 nary session, upon the earnest appeal of the Speaker of 

 the House of Representatives, and other distinguished 

 members of both branches of the Legislature, who 

 thought themselves justified, by the alarming condition 

 of the State, in taking the responsibility of making the 

 request in behalf of the absent members of the Gen- 

 eral Assembly. Divided and distracted as we are, with 

 almost every neighborhood threatened with civil 

 strife, with dangerous combinations of bad men form- 

 ing in different sections of the State, to frighten, rob, 

 and, if need be, to murder the good citizens of the 

 Commonwealth ; with lawless bands of desperate men, 

 who have nothing to lose, headed by daring and reck- 

 less leaders, already roaming over the country, plun- 

 dering indiscriminately at will the men of property, 

 influence, and position, followed by the daring, dash- 

 ing, and successful adventure and invasion of the State 

 by Col. John Morgan, at the head of a large cavalry 

 force, which forcibly seized and carried away a large 

 amount of valuable property belonging to the Govern- 

 ment and private citizens ; with all this, condemned 

 by law-abiding men, staring us in the face; with nu- 

 merous appeals made to me by the people, as governor 

 of the State, to protect them in the peaceful enjoyment 

 of their property, their liberties, and their rights under 

 the Constitution, and totally without the means or the 

 power to keep the peace, to protect them, or to enforce 

 the laws ; with my persistent and unavailing efforts to 



organize the militia of the State under the late law, 

 growing out of the divided sentiment of our people, 

 their distrust of each other, and a conflict of authority 

 with the military board, they claiming they had the 

 paramount authority over the arsenal, arms, munitions 

 of war, Ac., under the old law, and I claiming it under 

 the new one, which, according to my construction, re- 

 instated me in the authority Ihad under the Constitu- 

 tion, and of which I had been deprived bv a previous 

 Legislature; with no power to organize the militia my- 

 self ; with none in the military board ; threatened with 

 invasions and anarchy, I not unwillingly yielded to . 

 the request to call you together, so that you can deter- 

 mine by an amendment of the law, or the passage of 

 a new one, the extent of the authority you intended to 

 grant, and provide for the defence and protection of 

 the people of the Commonwealth. 



The governor also condemned the invasion 

 of the State by guerillas under Col. Morgan, 

 expressed regret at the arrest of citizens with- 

 out any legal process, and recommended the 

 adoption of the resolutions proposed by Senator 

 Crittenden at the last session of the thirty- 

 sixth Congress, as a standing proposition for 

 peace, and the settlement of the war. 



Immediately afterward the governor re- 

 signed his office, and James F. Robinson, secre- 

 tary of state, was elected by the Legislature to 

 fill the unexpired term. The most important 

 subject which came under the consideration of 

 this body during this session was the resolution 

 of President Lincoln proposing a system of 

 gradual emancipation to be adopted by the 

 border slaveholding States. The report of the 

 committee on the subject states that if a resto^ 

 ration of the Union, as it was, required the 

 sacrifice of the value of their slaves, the people 

 of Kentucky, in their opinion, would make it. 

 It further says : 



But devoted as we are to the Union, rre do not feel 

 that our loyalty demands at cur hands the adoption of 

 the measure proposed. We do rot agree with the 

 President that the gradual emancipation of the slaves 

 in the border States would bring about a speedy ter- 

 mination of the war. Unhappily for our countrv, the 

 dominant party in the Congress of the United States 

 are bent on the destruction of the Constitution and the 

 Union. Xo curse which the direst enemy of our coun- 

 try could have imposed would, in our opinion, have 

 borne more bitter fruits than the action of that party 

 has produced. "\Ve have viewed with alarm the rapid 

 strides which the dominant party in Congress has 

 made toward the prostration of every guarantee which 

 the Constitution provides for the dearest rights of the 

 people. They have endeavored, through the instru- 

 mentality of the executive and Congress, to strip the 

 people of the disaffected States of their property; they 

 nave passed confiscation bills, in utter violation of the 

 plain provisions of the Constitution ; they have sought 

 to take away from those people their State govern- 

 ments, and reduce them to a state of territorial vassal- 

 age; they have declared their purposes to free the 

 slaves of the rebel States, and elevate them to an equal- 

 ity with the white man ; they have declared that the 

 war should be prosecuted un'til slavery shall be swept 

 from the entire land ; they proclaim that they are 

 against restoration of the Union unless slavery is 

 abolished. 



The people of Kentuckv justly feel horror and alarm 

 at the enunciation of such doctrines. They will op- 

 pose them by all peaceable means, and if the time 

 should come when the counsels of reason shall no 

 longer be heeded, when the barriers erected by the 

 Constitution shall no longer afford protection, then 

 will Kentucky rise up as one man and sacrifice the 



