By Todd Hatton
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-983657.mp3
Murray, KY – Todd Hatton and historian Berry Craig take us back to the Bluegrass of 1861 in this week's installment of the Kentucky Civil War Dispatch.
This week on the Kentucky Civil War Dispatch, we look back 150 years ago to a Commonwealth finding it more and more difficult to stay neutral in the expanding conflict. Today, we'll hear about a meeting in Murray whose attendees had no such difficulties; they knew exactly which way they wanted to go.
On this date in 1861, Calloway County secessionists convened a so-called peace meeting in Murray.
Like most other pro-Confederate Kentuckians, the Calloway countians feared the Bluegrass State was on the verge of abandoning neutrality in favor of outright support for the Union war effort.
Up to this point, the Southern Rights party had condemned neutrality. The secessionists had demanded Kentucky take what they called its rightful place in the Confederacy.
Calloway County, and the rest of the Jackson Purchase, had voted overwhelmingly secessionist in the recent state elections. But the Union Party won big in every other region, all but eliminating any chance for a Confederate Kentucky.
So, in desperation, the Southern Rights men embraced neutrality. They still preferred secession, but they concluded that a neutral Commonwealth was better than a Union one.
Consequently, the Southern Rights party sponsored peace or neutrality meetings in several counties around the state.
Despite their stated desire for peace and neutrality, these meetings were plainly Confederate in sentiment. Typically, attendees passed resolutions blaming the conflict squarely on Lincoln and his anti-slavery Republican party. They protested taxes and other measures to carry on what they said was a wicked and illegal war against the South.
In addition, many of the meetings resolved to send delegates to a state Southern Rights Peace Convention set for Frankfort on September 10th.
The Murray meeting demanded an end to the war, denounced taxes Congress levied to support the conflict and proposed to send Calloway's two state legislators to the peace convention: state Sen. John L. Irvan and state Rep. Daniel Matthewson, both Southern Rights men.
Irvan won office in 1858. Matthewson had been elected in August, without Unionist opposition.
The Murray meeting also passed resolutions praising Kentucky senators John C. Breckinridge of Lexington and Lazarus Powell of Henderson as well as Cadiz's First District U.S. Representative Henry Burnett.
Breckinridge and Burnett, both pro-slavery Democrats, were self-declared pro-Confederates. Powell was also a pro-slavery Democrat. But, he wasn't a secessionist, though he opposed both Lincoln and the war.
The Murray gathering also adopted a resolution thanking Representatives Clement Vallandingham of Ohio, Jesse D. Bright of Indiana and other such "Northern patriots" for their congressional opposition to Lincoln. Most Northerners, however, reviled Southern-sympathizing Northern Democrats like Vallandingham and Bright, labeling them traitorous "copperheads."
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.