By Todd Hatton / Berry Craig
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-960980.mp3
Murray, KY – As the United States teetered on the brink of civil war, border states like Kentucky faced stark and serious choices. Would they remain loyal to the Union, or would they follow their sister slave states into the southern Confederacy? On this week's Kentucky Civil War Dispatch, we look at Kentuckians' sentiments, Union and Confederate, on the eve of war.
On this date in 1861, the Kentucky General Assembly was close to adjournment, but not to secession.
The Unionist majority had defeated every attempt by the Southern Rights minority to put the Bluegrass State into the Confederacy.
As the session wound down, lawmakers and the public heard a pair of former governors, Charles Wickliffe and Charles Morehead, report on the failed peace conference at Washington.
Sen. John Jordan Crittenden, author of the Crittenden Compromise, was welcomed home to Frankfort by a great crowd of citizens, both houses of the legislature, and by a reception speech by Judge Mason Brown.
The Unionist Crittenden also addressed lawmakers and the public in the house chamber. He urged Kentucky to remain under the Stars and Stripes.
Kentucky's other senator, John C. Breckinridge, was to address the legislators on April 2. He was leaning toward the Confederacy.
Before it adjourned, the General Assembly continued to signal what would be the position of most Kentuckians throughout the coming Civil War: pro-Union and pro-slavery.
On April 3, the General Assembly would call for a convention of the border slave states to meet in Frankfort in late May. The Unionist majority hoped the gathering would somehow reunite North and South and avoid civil war.
On April 4, the legislature ratified a proposed constitutional amendment declaring that "No amendment shall be made to the constitution which will authorize or give congress power to abolish or interfere, within any state, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to service by the laws of said state."
It was also clear in the spring of 1861 that most Kentuckians desperately wanted peace. Even so, the state's secessionist minority was spoiling for a fight with Kentucky's northern neighbors.
The pro-Confederate Cadiz Organ demanded, "Will Kentuckians stand as idlers and behold an army of Abolition minions, with hearts festering with treason as black as hell itself, attempt to force the South into ignominious SUBMISSION TO NORTHERN RULE AND NORTHERN TYRANNY?"
The Paris Flag warned, "if disunion is to be a fixed fact, and war must come, we shall advise our people to array themselves with the South, and fight for the South."
The editor of the Bardstown Gazette wasn't sure if a state had the constitutional right to secede. He did believe the people had "a right to revolutionize."
If "revolutionize" meant secede, few Kentuckians were revolutionaries. True, almost all Kentuckians -- what few there were in the future Bluegrass State in 1775-1783 -- supported the American Revolution.
Also, in 1798, the state legislature approved the Kentucky Resolutions, revolutionary proposals which held that a state had the right to nullify a federal action it considered unconstitutional.
Yet Kentucky, guided by Henry Clay, its greatest and most beloved statesman, became profoundly Unionist after the 19th century turned. Clay put the preservation of the Union above all other considerations. And so did most Kentuckians.
But what would Kentucky do if war - a war not of Kentucky's making and not of Kentucky's choosing - broke out between North and South? On this date in 1861, most Kentuckians were fervently hoping or praying they would never have to answer such a question.