By Todd Hatton
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-980384.mp3
Murray, KY – On this week's installment of the Kentucky Civil War Dispatch, Commonwealth neutrality in the early days of the war did not mean freedom from violence. Today we'll hear about Union victims of secessionist terrorism in the Purchase.
On this date in 1861 persecution of Union sympathizers in the Jackson Purchase was turning deadly.
Milburn in Ballard County - now Carlisle County - was a prime target of secessionist vigilantes. The tiny community was a Unionist enclave in the state's only Rebel region.
Several residents of Milburn were immigrants from northern and central Kentucky counties where Union sentiment was strong.
In the summer of 1861, armed secessionists regularly terrorized the town. One group hanged a man because he was pro-Union. Other mounted gunmen ordered two Unionist families, formerly of Shelby County, to leave or suffer the same fate. They fled, followed by others, according to the Louisville Journal.
Some of the exiles sought refuge in southern Illinois. Others chose to return to their homes elsewhere in Kentucky.
One exile described his plight in a letter to the Journal:
"I have been driven from my home in Milburn by the secessionists, simply because I am a Union man .The secessionists from Blandville [then the Ballard County seat] came over to Milburn three times in the course of as many weeks to curse and abuse the Union men of the latter place, and on the third visit they got up a row, in which several men were shot and killed."
He added, "In the fracas, the Union side got the best of it .After this, bands of armed men were constantly scouring the countryside, taking some of our friends to prison, threatening others, and filling the community with alarm .Families are leaving that section daily, being unable to bear the annoyance, and powerless to defend themselves against the cowardly brutality of the secessionists .At the time I left our stock, crops, furniture, and all, having no time to dispose of or secure them."
Meanwhile, in Paducah, Confederate sympathizers were terrorizing the city's Union sympathizing minority. "The Union men here are having a hard time still - no quarters given them by the secessionists," a Unionist wrote the Journal. " Men have been forced to leave their families at the mercy of the world our worthy mayor has been called on for protection [but] he refuses to give any - rather aides and abets the secession party."
Another Paducah Union supporter lamented to the Journal that "the Union men here are now completely overpowered: they are watched with the eyes of hawks and when the seceshers' hear anything they think they will do to tell, they inform the Committee of Thirteen of the K.G.C." The K.G.C. was the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret pro-Confederate organization. In Calloway County, some local secessionists kidnapped a Union man and took him to the Confederate camp at Union City. When the Confederates refused to make the man a prisoner, the secessionists left with their captive, but murdered him on the way home, the Journal said.
In Mayfield, a mob threatened to kill a Union sympathizer for ordering a small quantity of gunpowder and lead. At Columbus, a group of townsfolk beat three German immigrants they suspected of being pro-Union. The mob dragged the trio off a steamboat heading north from New Orleans. One died of his injuries, according to the Journal.
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.