ions.

But while both North and South, at some time, doubted her good faith and
complained of her action, all such sentiments have been entirely
forgotten by the latter, and have become intensified into bitter and
undisguised animosity upon the part of a large share of the population
of the former.

The reason is patent. It is the same which, during the war, influenced
the Confederates to hope confidently for large assistance from Kentucky,
if once enabled to obtain a foothold upon her territory, and caused the
Federals, on the other hand, to regard even the loudest and most zealous
professors of loyalty as Secessionists in disguise, or, at best,
Unionists only to save their property. It is the instinctive feeling
that the people of Kentucky, on account of kindred blood, common
interests, and identity of ideas in all that relates to political rights
and the objects of political institutions, may be supposed likely to
sympathize and to act with the people of the South. But a variety of
causes and influences combined to prevent Kentucky from taking a decided
stand with either of the combatants, and produced the vacillation and
inconsistency which so notably characterized her councils and paralyzed
her efforts in either direction, and, alas, it may be added, so
seriously affected her fair fame.

Her geographical situation, presenting a frontier accessible for several
hundreds of miles to an assailant coming either from the North or South,
caused her people great apprehension, especially as it was accounted an
absolute certainty that her territory (if she took part with the South)
would be made the battle-ground and subjected to the last horrors and
desolation of war. The political education of the Kentuckians, also,
disposed them to enter upon such a contest with extreme reluctance and
hesitation.

Originally a portion of Virginia, settled chiefly by emigration from
that State, her population partook of the characteristics and were
imbued with the feelings which so strongly prevailed in the mother
commonwealth.

From Virginia, the first generation of Kentucky statesmen derived those
opinions which became the political creed of the Southern people, and
were promulgated in the celebrated resolutions of '98, which gave shape
and consistency to the doctrine of States' Rights, and popular
expression to that construction of the relations of the several States
to the General Government (under the Federal Constitution), so e