by Bruce Catton
There must be (said the President) no shooting of men taken in arms, because the Confederates could play the same game, with reprisals and counter-reprisals keeping firing squads busy from the Potomac all the way to Kansas; therefore the general must order no executions without first getting specific approval from Washington. In addition, and more importantly, there was the matter of the emancipation of slaves. This, wrote the President, “will alarm our Southern Union friends, and turn them against us—perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect for Kentucky.” Frémont therefore was requested to modify that part of his proclamation, putting it in line with a recent act of Congress which provided only that slaves actually used in service of the Confederate armed forces could be taken from their owners, the subsequent status of such slaves being left most indefinite.1
General Frémont would not retreat. He wrote that he had been in a hot spot, “between the Rebel armies, the Provisional Government, and home traitors,” and his proclamation was “as much a movement in the war as a battle”; if he modified it of his own accord it would imply that he felt that he had made a mistake, and he did not feel that way. Consequently, he would modify it only if the President publicly ordered him to do so. He was satisfied that “strong and vigorous measures have now become necessary to the success of our arms,” and he hoped that his views would receive the President’s approval.2 Meanwhile, General Frémont sent Jessie off to Washington to argue the case with the President in person.
By this time the general was in far over his depth. What he was saying, in effect, was that the military problem in his own bailiwick justified him in committing the entire nation—both the states of the Federal Union, and the Confederate states which had declared their independence—to an entirely different kind of war; a remorseless revolutionary struggle which in the end could do nothing less than redefine the very nature of the American experiment, committing the American people for the rest of time to a much broader concept of the quality and meaning of freedom and democracy than anything they had yet embraced. The war might indeed come to that. Secession was at bottom a violent protest against change, and extended violence would almost certainly destroy the delicate unspoken understanding by which the rival governments fought a limited war. But this was a problem for Washington, not for a general in the field. Frémont was making a decision that lay beyond his competence, and in his message to the President there was a proconsular arrogance that American soldiers are not supposed to display.
President Lincoln acted promptly. He publicly ordered Frémont to modify the clause about emancipation, he sent Postmaster General Montgomery Blair to St. Louis to talk to the general and give the President a fill-in on the situation, and when Jessie Frémont reached the White House he gave her an exceedingly cold reception. Jessie’s trip in fact did Frémont much harm. Mr. Lincoln said afterward that “she more than once intimated that if General Frémont should decide to try conclusions with me, he could set up for himself,”3 and although she denied vehemently that she ever said anything of the kind she undoubtedly helped to confirm the President’s dawning suspicion that Frémont, in a decidedly tough situation, was trying to protect his fences by winning the support of the abolitionists. At one point, Jessie explained that only an edict of emancipation would keep England and France from recognizing the Confederacy; and the President, who had devoted agonizing hours to the question of preventing European intervention in this war, cut her short with the curt remark: “You are quite a female politician.” The next day the elder Blair (who had been Jessie’s friend for many years) scolded her, crying out: “Who would have expected you to do such a thing as this, to come here and find fault with the President?” All in all, she had a most unhappy visit.4
Overruling Frémont, Mr. Lincoln was thinking of a principle and of a point of tactics, and the explanation which he did not bother to give Jessie Frémont he gave to his old friend and political supporter, Senator Orville Browning of Illinois. Writing to Browning not long afterward, Mr. Lincoln said that the principle was simple but basic. As a general Frémont could seize all sorts of property—a Missouri farm, or even a Missouri slave—for purely military purposes, but the effect of such seizures was only temporary. “When the need is past it is not for him to fix their permanent future condition. That must be settled according to the laws made by law-makers, and not by military proclamations.” What Frémont did was nothing less than an act of dictatorship. The United States no longer had a constitutional government if a general, or a President, “may make permanent rules of property by proclamation.” Reflecting that the acts of a general were in the end the acts of the President himself, Mr. Lincoln went on to write a sentence that would echo powerfully a year later: “What I object to is that I as President shall expressly or impliedly seize and exercise the permanent legislative functions of the government.”
So much for principle. There was also work-a-day practicality, for Frémont had packed both moral error and tactical blunder into one ill-advised pronunciamento. Tactically, the case rested largely on Kentucky; on Kentucky’s geographical position and on its divided state of mind, representative of the divided minds of so many millions who lived elsewhere. Kentucky was still at peace, delicately poised between the warring sections, and Kentucky’s sentiments were fearfully, tragically mixed, strong devotion to the Union going hand in hand with cheerful acceptance of slavery and outright horror of anything that smacked of racial equality. Fighting an abolitionists’ war, the Federal government might well lose Kentucky entirely, and the President wrote soberly: “I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game … we would as well consent to separation at once, including the surrender of this capital.”5
So far the war was incomplete. It had two ends and no middle, which is to say that although it was being fought at full strength in Virginia and in Missouri it was not being fought at all in the 400-mile length of Kentucky. Here was where North and South touched one another most intimately, and perhaps came closest to a mutual understanding; here was the vital center of the whole border country, which in reality was no border at all but a broad corridor straight through the heart of America. Once the war broke into Kentucky it could begin to develop its full potential, which was likely to be much greater than had been bargained for by either of the two Kentuckians, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, who headed the opposing governments.
Kentucky had tried hard to stay out of the war, thus reflecting not only the split in popular feeling but also the fact that Governor Beriah Magoffin leaned toward secession while a majority of the state legislature opposed it. Immediately after Fort Sumter Governor Magoffin notified Lincoln that the state would furnish no troops “for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern states,” and a group called the State Union Committee agreed that Kentucky could not send such troops “without outraging her solemn convictions of duty, and without trampling upon that natural sympathy with the seceding states which neither their contempt for her interests nor their disloyalty to the Union has sufficed to extinguish.” On May 20 the governor made formal announcement of the state’s neutrality, warning “all other states, separate or united, especially the United and Confederate states,” not to enter Kentucky or to occupy Kentucky soil without express invitation from the state’s legislative and executive authorities.6
In the long run this policy was bound to fail, and throughout the summer both sides prepared methodically for the day of failure. They began simply by seeking Kentucky recruits, carefully establishing camps outside of the state for their reception—Union camp near Cincinnati, just north of the Ohio River; Confederate camp near Clarksville, Tennessee, just below the Kentucky-Tennessee line. Inside the state there was the Kentucky State Guard, some 4000 militiamen strongly pro-Confederate in sympathies, commanded by Brigadier General Simon Bolivar Buckner—a solid West Pointer who had many friends in the Old Army, including both George B. McClellan and Ulysses S. Grant, and who was correctly believed to be ready to enter the Confed
erate service whenever neutrality should come to an end. As a counterweight, Unionists formed a militia of their own, naming it the Home Guard, and centering it at Camp Dick Robinson, not far from the state capital, Frankfort. The Home Guard was led by a burly ex-lieutenant in the Navy, William Nelson, a three-hundred-pound giant whom Mr. Lincoln made a brigadier general of volunteers and entrusted with a substantial quantity of arms and ammunition.7 Nelson had influence in Kentucky. He also had much drive, and a flaming temper which one day would be the death of him; and now he worked hard to prepare the loyalists for the coming fight.
Governor Magoffin wrote letters of protest—to Mr. Lincoln, complaining about Nelson’s force at Camp Dick Robinson, and to Mr. Davis, protesting the presence of Confederate troops in Tennessee, close to the Kentucky line. Lincoln replied blandly that the men at Nelson’s camp were all Kentuckians, menacing nothing and attacking nothing; he did not think most Kentuckians wanted them removed, and he would not remove them. Davis replied with equal blandness, saying that his troops in Tennessee were there solely to protect that state from invasion.8 Things went on as they had been, with Washington and Richmond raising troops, bringing in arms and lining up leading Kentuckians, no overt acts being performed but nothing being done in complete secrecy. During the summer Kentucky held a state election, sending a solid Unionist slate to the Federal Congress and increasing the Unionist majority in both houses of the state legislature.
The stakes were high. In Confederate hands, Kentucky would effectively blockade the Ohio River and deprive the Federals of any feasible base for a large-scale offensive in the Mississippi Valley, fundamental in the Union’s grand strategy; if Mr. Lincoln felt that to lose Kentucky was to lose everything there was good reason for it. Conversely, if the state were held by the Union the Confederacy had no good way to save Tennessee, hold the Mississippi, and stave off a drive into the deepest South. Neither side could afford to lose, and neither side dared risk losing by moving prematurely; Kentuckians were notably touchy, and as far as anyone could see in the summer of 1861 they might go either way. Much would depend on which side first angered the Kentucky majority.
It was into this situation that General Frémont had thrust his proclamation about freeing the slaves of people who supported the Confederacy. The effect could have been a major Union disaster, except for two things—Mr. Lincoln’s disavowal of the proclamation, and the abrupt appearance on Kentucky soil of a full-fledged Confederate Army, which on September 3 crossed the Tennessee line, occupied the towns of Hickman and Columbus, and began to plant heavy guns on the bluffs which overlook the Mississippi River at the latter point. Kentucky’s neutrality was ended forever.
The occupation of Hickman and Columbus was accomplished by soldiers under contentious Brigadier General Gideon J. Pillow, but the movement had been ordered by Pillow’s superior, Major General Leonidas Polk. Polk was a close friend of Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate who years ago had left the Army to take holy orders, becoming at last a bishop in the Episcopal Church, as grave and as lacking in impetuosity as any bishop need be; a man who had returned to the Army when the war came, who had been given a general’s commission by his old friend the President, and who somewhat against his will had been entrusted with the top Confederate command along the central portion of the Mississippi.
Polk knew as well as anyone that Kentucky needed very careful nursing, but he also believed that the Federals were going to send armies into the state any day now, and the immense weight of military necessity was on him. General Grant was moving to Cairo, building up forces which obviously would come down the river sooner or later, and there was no better place to stop such forces than Columbus. Armed Federals had recently appeared at the Missouri hamlet of Belmont, just across the river from Columbus, apparently designing a seizure of the Columbus bluffs, and a Federal gunboat had anchored off the town, looking menacing and sending a party ashore to tear down a Confederate flag which some incautious civilian had hoisted; and, altogether, General Polk believed that it was time for him to act. Grant had in fact been told by Frémont in complete disregard of Kentucky’s neutrality that he was to take possession of Columbus as soon as he conveniently could, and although Polk did not know about these orders he could easily see what Grant’s next move was likely to be, and as a soldier he was bound to beat his enemy to the punch if he could. On September 1, Polk wrote to Governor Magoffin, saying that it was “of the greatest consequence to the Southern cause in Kentucky or elsewhere that I should be ahead of the enemy in occupying Columbus and Paducah”; and not long after that he got Pillow’s men in motion. He sent a hasty wire to President Davis, telling what he had done and explaining the reasons for it, and asserting that now that he had a force in Columbus he proposed to keep it there.9
There was an instantaneous dust-up; naturally enough, because the horizons of the war had been pushed out beyond calculation. The Confederate Secretary of War, L. P. Walker, ordered Polk to withdraw at once, and Governor Isham G. Harris of Tennessee wired that both he and President Davis were pledged to respect the neutrality of Kentucky: could not General Polk get his troops out of there immediately? (A neutral Kentucky was a perfect shield protecting Tennessee from invasion; with Kentucky in the war Tennessee was wide open, as Governor Harris could not help but realize.) Secretary Walker assured Governor Harris that Polk’s movement was wholly unauthorized and that the prompt withdrawal of the Confederate force had been ordered, but Mr. Davis quickly overruled him, telegraphing to Polk that “the necessity justifies the action.” Polk wrote to Harris explaining that the invasion had been ordered “under the plenary powers delegated to me by the President,” adding that he knew of no especial commitment to honor Kentucky’s neutrality and closing with a polite expression of regret that he could not concur with the governor’s views.10
The first consequence was a brisk move by the Federals; the man Frémont had stationed at Cairo was capable of acting quickly. Learning what had happened, General Grant put all the infantry and artillery he could spare on steamboats and, with gunboats for escort, moved fifty miles up the Ohio to take possession of Paducah, Kentucky—another of those strategically important little cities, like Cairo, whose possession could mean so much. Having occupied the place on September 6, Grant hurried back to Cairo to round up reinforcements for the Paducah contingent, to get Frémont’s approval of what he had just done—he had sent Frémont a telegram, earlier, proposing the seizure of Paducah, but had gone ahead and made the move without waiting for a reply—and to send a telegram to the Kentucky legislature announcing that the Confederates had violated the state’s neutrality.11 The legislature had just convened with a strong Unionist majority—27 out of 38 Senators, and 74 out of 100 in the House—and it reacted as might have been expected, requesting Governor Magoffin to call out the militia “to expel and drive out the invaders,” meaning Bishop Polk’s Confederates, and inviting the United States government to give Kentucky “that protection against invasion which is granted to each one of the states by the fourth section of the fourth article of the Constitution of the United States.”12
This invitation actually asked the United States government to do nothing that it had not been planning to do anyway, but it did put a heavy load on a soldier who had already been overtaxed—Robert Anderson, who as a major in the Regular Army had had to take the heat at Fort Sumter, and who now was a brigadier general charged with the Federal command in Kentucky. Anderson was in wretched health. Fort Sumter had taken much out of him, and the summer had been even worse. As a native Kentuckian who had strong ties and deep sympathies with the South but who was also completely loyal to the Union, he had been torn two ways by powerful emotions, and he lacked the cold inner hardness to endure such a strain; apparently he was on the edge of what would now be called a nervous breakdown. When Polk made his move Anderson was in Cincinnati, conferring with eminent Kentuckians, just as he had been doing for months, on the delicate business of getting control over a state whose virginal neut
rality was still intact. It was undoubtedly a relief to come to the end of these under-the-counter deals and to be able to make war out in the open, but in order to make war General Anderson was going to need more troops than were anywhere in sight. Thus far, the troops raised by the Middle Western states had mostly been sent either to Washington or to St. Louis; the general had to occupy a large state, expelling invaders, and he did not have very many soldiers.
He did have two valuable subordinates whom he had persuaded the War Department to assign to him, men who were to play large parts in the war; two West Point-trained brigadier generals, William Tecumseh Sherman and George H. Thomas. Anderson sent Sherman off to get help from Frémont, if possible, and to urge the Governors of Illinois and Indiana to send along any troops they had, and he dispatched Thomas to take command of Camp Dick Robinson. He himself established headquarters in Louisville and set about recruiting Kentuckians for the Federal service.13
Meanwhile, the citizens of Kentucky began to get grim evidence that they were in a civil war, with strange new rules, or perhaps no rules at all, to govern them. United States marshals were going about arresting people on broad charges of disloyalty, and the legalities ordinarily involved in arrests and imprisonments were wholly lacking. As a sample there was the case of former Governor Charles S. Morehead, who was lodged in a cell in Fort Lafayette, far off in New York, after a marshal accused him of treason. Morehead could get no formal arraignment or hearing. His son-in-law appealed to President Lincoln, who presently told Secretary Seward that it would be all right to release Morehead, and others arrested with him, provided the release was approved by James Guthrie and James Speed. Guthrie and Speed were private citizens of Kentucky—estimable men, who had worked hard for the Union but who could not (under any statute readily brought to mind) legally say whether or not suspected traitors must stay in prison. Reuben T. Durrett, acting editor of the Louisville Courier, was arrested because some of his editorials seemed disloyal, and Joseph Holt, who had been Secretary of War in the last weeks of James Buchanan’s administration, warned Lincoln that even if the man took the oath of allegiance he ought not to be freed: “I say that he would take the oath if necessary on his knees, and would stab the Government the moment he rose to his feet.” An Associated Press correspondent, Martin W. Barr, was suspected of using his position “to advance the insurrectionary cause”; marshals came to his house at night and took him away, and from a cell in Fort Lafayette he gave his wife a fairly correct appraisal of his situation when he wrote: “I am here beyond the reach of law or liberty or juries.” Bitterly, he added: “There remains but one outrage—to cut my head off.”14 Correspondent Barr was spared that final outrage, but he did not immediately get out of prison, either. The war had been slow in reaching Kentucky, but once it arrived it was rigorous. Kentucky’s neutrality may have been an unrealistic venture, but from mid-April to September it had spared the people something.…
