By Todd Hatton
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-968609.mp3
Murray, KY – This week in our Kentucky Civil War Dispatch, the Commonwealth's political leaders and editorialists weigh the course the state should take now that civil war has broken out. The Kentucky-born U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln, also considers how to keep his native state from bolting to the southern confederacy.
On this date in 1861, the Unionist-majority General Assembly was inching closer to making neutrality Kentucky's official policy.
The Unionists hoped, and the secessionists feared, that the longer Kentucky stayed in the Union, the less likely it would be to join the Confederacy.
President Abraham Lincoln also believed time was the Union Party's ally in his native state. The president showed remarkable patience toward Kentucky.
When Governor Beriah Magoffin flatly refused to send Kentucky troops to put down the rebellion, Lincoln took it in stride. He could have considered Magoffin's actions treasonous and sent troops to punish the state.
Yet Lincoln knew such a move might shove the Bluegrass into the arms of the Confederacy. So he avoided confrontation with Magoffin.
Nonetheless, Kentucky Unionists were anxious to discover Lincoln's intentions toward the state. It was obvious that Union forces attacking Confederates west of the Appalachian Mountains would almost certainly have to cross the Commonwealth.
Union and Confederate troops were massing, or would soon be massing, along the state's borders.
Thus, in late April, Garrett Davis of Paris, a Union Party leader, met with Lincoln in Washington. The president promised Davis that he contemplated no military operations that would require the march of troops across Kentucky.
A day after Lincoln saw Davis, he conferred with another Kentucky Unionist, Warner Underwood of Bowling Green. According to E. Merton Coulter's The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky, the president told his guest he hoped the Commonwealth would remain loyal to the Union. If not, "let her stand still and take no part against it; and that no hostile step should tread her soil."
When Davis and Underwood assured Union Party leaders that Lincoln seemed fine with neutrality, they became more determined to achieve it.
At the same time, the Southern Rights Party pushed even harder for secession. Walter Haldeman, editor of the Louisville Courier, the state's leading Confederate newspaper, declared, "The Unionists would have Kentucky stand still while seventy-five thousand Abolitionist mercenaries are waging war against our brethren of the South."
The legislature was unmoved by Haldeman's pleas, or those of any other secessionist editors. On May 16, the Unionist-majority House of Representatives endorsed neutrality. The five Jackson Purchase representatives, all Southern Rights men, voted "no."
On the same day, the House also passed a resolution approving Magoffin's refusal to send troops to fight the Confederates. The Unionist-majority Senate would soon adopt neutrality resolutions of its own.
Meanwhile, the start of civil war had propelled two more states into the Confederacy: Virginia and Arkansas. North Carolina and Tennessee were also moving steadily toward secession.
But neutrality within the Union was as far as Kentucky was willing to go, at least for the time being. Eventually, Kentucky would have to go farther. The native state of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis would have to choose between full support for the Union, including fighting against the Confederacy, or secession.
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.