By Todd Hatton
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-966237.mp3
Murray, KY – This week in our Kentucky Civil War Dispatch, we narrow our focus to the Jackson Purchase. In this installment, shots fired in South Carolina has brought civil war, and even though the northern and southern armies are still only mobilizing, Purchase residents are rushing to prepare for the conflict they all know is coming.
On this date in 1861, the Louisville Courier reported that the clerk of a steamboat on the Mississippi River had spied a Confederate flag flying above Columbus, where Kentucky State Guard troops had planted two large cannons on the tall bluffs above the town.
Three days before, the Memphis Appeal said local citizens, including west Tennesseans, were helping the state troops scan the river for Yankees.
A grateful Memphis Appeal declared, "We are pleased with the alacrity with which the gallant people of the neighboring Commonwealth are responding to the urgent necessity of the occasion."
On April 22, some Columbus citizens had sent a letter to Confederate President Jefferson Davis inviting Southern forces to take the town and also nearby Cairo, Ill., where the Ohio and Mississippi rivers merge. According to the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, the western Kentuckians acknowledged "no union other than the Confederate States" and recognized no president other than Davis.
On April 23, Union troops seized Cairo, unnerving Columbus' rebellious populace. On April 28, Mayor B.W. Sharp wrote Confederate Secretary of War Leroy Pope Walker, stressing the strategic importance of the river between his city and Cairo. He even included a detailed map of the area.
Meanwhile, Southern-sympathizing Paducah, less than 50 miles up the Ohio from Cairo, also fretted over the possibility of seeing Northern soldiers. Strategically, Paducah was as important as Columbus. The Tennessee River joins the Ohio at Paducah.
The April 29 Courier quoted a steamboat officer whose vessel was in Paducah when news of the occupation arrived. " The people were intensely excited about the proceedings at Cairo," he said. "Eight companies have been formed; they have sent Major Tilghman to St. Louis to procure arms."
"Major" Tilghman was actually Colonel Lloyd Tilghman, commander of the Southwest Battalion, Fourth Regiment, Kentucky State Guard. Tilghman's well-trained and well-equipped 500-man force included an artillery battery and an infantry company in McCracken County and infantry companies in Graves, Hickman and Marshall counties.
Tilghman was pro-Confederate. So were all - or almost all - of his men.
He was probably gratified to learn that some communities from throughout the Purchase offered volunteers to help him fend off any attack from Cairo.
Fowler's Landing, near Paducah, pledged a company, as did Feliciana in southern Graves County. State Line, a Fulton County community, agreed to furnish a company to, quote, "help defend the city or to drive the plunderers from Cairo."
Colonel James Brien, a War of 1812 veteran, offered his services and 300 men from Marshall County. He seemed to be spoiling for a fight with the Union troops.
Brien bragged that he could, quote, "take one thousand men armed with dogwood cudgels, and swim the Ohio with them at hightide and clean Cairo of the scum that now infests it."
However, both Brien and the blueclad objects of his disaffection stayed put.
Meanwhile, the scramble for arms continued. Citizens of Columbus, Paducah and Ballard County trekked to Memphis and even Birmingham, Alabama seeking weapons.
Paducah attorney Albert P. Thompson also wrote Walker, begging him for firepower. He promised that "should Lincoln attempt to invade the South from Illinois we, with arms in our hands, should resist to the death." Thompson would meet his end in Paducah, not as a defender, but as an attacker. He would be killed leading western Kentucky Confederates in Forrest's attack on the city less than three years after writing those words.
WKMS produces Kentucky Civil War Dispatches from West Kentucky Community and Technical College history professor Berry Craig. The Murray State alumnus is the author of Hidden History of Kentucky in the Civil War, Hidden History of Kentucky Soldiers and True Tales of Old-Time Kentucky Politics: Bombast, Bourbon, and Burgoo.