and the maintenance of troops,[13] and, therefore, adhered to it
when it was threatened with destruction.

Another cause, moreover, was equally as potential. In Kentucky as in some
other Southern States, there had grown up a considerable number of
prosperous country towns, where resided lawyers, merchants, bankers,
teachers, and mechanics, who had little property interest in slavery, who
felt their own "intellectual superiority to the country squires and their
fox-hunting, horse-racing, quarrelsome sons, and who consequently asserted
social independence of them and social equality with them."[14] They were
hostile to the aristocratic masters, whom they generally denounced as
"oligarchs," "slavocrats," "Lords of the Lash," and "Terror Engenders."[15]
This mercantile and professional class, inspired by such men as Hinton
Rowan Helper, contemplated the removal of the Negroes and the bringing of
white laborers into the South.[16]

In view of this cleavage, it was difficult in the beginning of the struggle
to characterize the situation. There were unconditional Secessionists and
unconditional Union men. Judging from the condition then obtaining, no one
could tell exactly which way the State would go. "Sympathy, blood, and the
community of social feeling growing out of slavery," says one, "inclined
her to the South; her political faith which Clay more than any other man
had inspired her with and which Crittenden now loyally represented held her
fast to the Union."[17] Many of the people, though believing in States'
rights, did not think that the grievances of the South were such as to
justify secession. At the same time they opposed "coercion," and since a
reconstructed Union was impossible they would have solved the difficulty by
peaceful separation. Writing to Gen. McClellan June 8, 1861, Garrett Davis
said: "The sympathy for the South and the inclination to secession among
our people is much stronger in the southwestern corner of the state than
it is in any other part, and as you proceed toward the upper section of
the Ohio and our Virginia line, it gradually becomes weaker until it is
almost wholly lost.... I doubt not that two thirds of our people are
unconditionally for the Union. The timid are for it and they shrink from
convulsion and civil war, while all the bold, the reckless, and the
bankrupt are for secession."[18] This categorical distinction, however, is
hardly right. There were Kentuckians of representative fami