By Todd Hatton / Berry Craig
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Murray, KY – Today on the Kentucky Civil War Dispatch, we meet the members of Kentucky's Confederate Congressional delegation. These fourteen men faced the unenviable prospect of representing a very southern, but very pro-Union Commonwealth.
On this date in 1861, three commissioners from Kentucky's rump Rebel government were in the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. Their mission: get President Jefferson Davis' support for Kentucky's admission to the Confederacy as the 13th "state."
It wouldn't be a hard sell. Davis favored adding his native Commonwealth to the Confederacy, though a majority of Kentuckians clearly wanted to remain in the Union.
Kentucky's "secession" was based on the dubious Russellville Sovereignty Convention of November. Meeting behind Rebel lines in the Logan County seat, a group of die-hard pro-southern Kentuckians approved an ordinance of secession and created a Rebel "government."
Never mind that in August, Bluegrass voters had elected even more Unionists to the Unionist-majority General Assembly. Forget that in September, lawmakers abandoned neutrality within the Union for outright support for the Union war effort.
The commissioners sent to Richmond had been among the Russellville convention leaders. First District U.S. Rep. Henry Burnett of Cadiz was the presiding officer. Accompanying Burnett were Louisville's William Preston and William Simms of Paris.
Preston had been a Whig state representative, member of Congress and ambassador to Spain. Simms was a Mexican-American War veteran and had been a Democratic congressman.
Meanwhile, on November 25th, Davis sent a message to Georgian Howell Cobb, president of the Confederate Congress, claiming " we have sufficient evidence to assure us that by a large majority [Kentuckians'] will has been manifested to unite their destinies with the Southern States whenever, despairing of the preservation of the Union, they should be required to choose between association with the North or the South."
Davis said reports from two of the three commissioners (he didn't name which ones) contained "a powerful exposition of the misrepresentation of the people by the government of Kentucky." Hence, he concluded "...that the revolution in which they are engaged offered the only remedy within their reach against usurpation and oppression, to which it would be a reflection upon that gallant people to suppose that they would tamely submit."
At the moment Davis was welcoming the Kentucky Confederate commissioners to Richmond, most Kentuckians were welcoming Northern soldiers as liberators. The Yankees were greeted especially warmly in Preston's hometown. Before the war was over, many more Kentucky men would don Union blue than would suit up in Confederate gray.
In any event, on December 10th, the Rebel Congress "admitted" Kentucky into the Confederate States of America. The Bluegrass delegation to the First Confederate Congress consisted of two senators and 12 congressmen, according to the Biographical Register of the Confederate Congress. Burnett and Simms were named senators.
The representatives were Robert Breckinridge Jr. of Lexington; Eli Bruce of Fleming County; Louisville's Horatio Bruce; Theodore Burnett from Taylorsville; James Chrisman of Wayne County; John Crockett of Henderson; Prestonsburg's John Elliott; George Ewing from Russellville; George Hodge of Newport; James Moore of Montgomery County; Elizabethtown's Henry Read; and Willis Machen of Lyon County.
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, True Tales of Old-Time Kentucky Politics: Bombast, Bourbon, and Burgoo, and Hidden History of Western Kentucky. For WKMS News, I'm Todd Hatton.