CHAPTER XVI 



THE WAR 



1862-1867 



REMINDED by some old letters that he came across, Mr. Shaler 

 stated in a paper published in the Atlantic Monthly, January, 

 1882, the reasons that led him, though Southern or States'- 

 Rights in his sympathies, to join the North. It was the fear 

 that Southern success would make for both peoples strong, 

 centralized, continually warring governments in which States' 

 Rights would be completely swamped. He was so determinately 

 a believer in the doctrine of States' Rights that he was always 

 opposed to the Republican Party and the spirit of centralization 

 which it embodied. 



In the summer of 1862, Mr. Shaler received a commission 

 from the government to raise what was known as the Fifth 

 Kentucky Battery. Although the extremists on both sides had 

 long since gathered around the flags of their respective alle- 

 giances the Confederate movement in Kentucky, under the 

 command of Generals Bragg, Heth, and Kirby Smith at the high 

 tide of the Civil War, brought the conservative element into 

 full activity. There had already been an exodus of some forty 

 thousand of the natural leaders and fighting population to the 

 Southern army. Kentucky had also contributed its full share 

 to the Federal forces, almost without bounties and practically 

 without a draft ; and yet there were fighting men left who sprang 

 up everywhere eager to bar the veteran host. When Heth's army 

 assumed a commanding position within five miles of Cincinnati, 1 

 there was hardly a single regiment on the ground that could 



i See an account of this period in Kentucky, by N. S. Shaler, in the American Common- 

 wealths Series. 



