THE DEFEAT OF THE SECESSIONISTS IN KENTUCKY IN 1861

The treatment of the Border States in the crisis of 1861 has received from
historians the same attention as Saxony, the objective point between
Prussia and Austria in the Seven Years' War. Directing special attention
to Kentucky requires some explanation. The possession of this commonwealth
was for several reasons more important than that of some other border
States. The transportation facilities afforded by the Cumberland and
Tennessee rivers furnished the key to carrying out the plan to divide the
South. The possession of the State by the Confederates was of strategic
importance for the invasion of the North too for the reason that the
Ordinance of 1787 had been so interpreted as to fix the boundary of
Kentucky on the north side of the Ohio River. It was, moreover, the native
State of Abraham Lincoln and it was important to have that commonwealth
support this untrained backwoodsman whom most statesmen considered
incapable of administering the affairs of the nation.

In the beginning, the situation was not the least encouraging to the
Unionists. The Breckenridge Democrats had carried the State in 1859 on a
platform favoring Southern rights. Their chief spokesman had become such a
defender of their faith that in 1860 he was chosen to lead the radically
proslavery party which had come to the point of so doubting the orthodoxy
of their Northern adherents as to deem it advisable to separate from
them. Unalterably in favor of the rights of the slave States, the leaders
of this persuasion had expressed themselves in terms that could not be
misunderstood.[1] One of their spokesmen Humphrey Marshall contended
that slavery is not a creature of municipal law. He believed that the
institution followed the flag. He wanted Union but only with that
equality which involved the recognition of the right of property in slaves
everywhere.[2] Speaking in the House of Representatives on January 30,
1861, John W. Stephenson, another of this faction, said on the same topic:
"Equality underlaid the whole Federal structure, and protection to persons
and property within the Federal jurisdiction, was the price of allegiance
of the States to such General Government, as delegated and prescribed in
the constitution. Wherever the American banner floated upon the seas or
land, all beneath it was entitled to the protection of the flag."[3]

On this question, their leader John C. Breckenr