"KENTUCKY was the first state to enter the union, and will be the last to leave it," has long been a popular expression in that commonwealth to indicate the loyalty of her people. In this attachment to the union we perceive some of the influences of a master mind. Had Henry Clay never lived, it is extremely doubtful whether Kentucky would have remained loyal to our common country. His influence there for the right may be compared to that of John C. Calhoun in South Carolina for the wrong-both were idolized by their respective peoples: the name of Henry Clay stands with the nation as one whose affections were filled with the idea of the glory and welfare of the American republic: that of John C. Calhoun, as one believing in a government founded upon an oligarchy, the most terrible of all despotisms—yet a man of purer personal character has rarely been known.

The impression made by Clay was strengthened by the lamented Crittenden, who, by words and deeds until his latest breath, proved himself to be a true patriot, for when Buckner, Marshall, Breckinridge and many others threw their influence on the side of the rebellion, he remained "faithful among the faithless."

Kentucky socially sympathized with the south, in consequence of the common bond, slavery: and extensive family ties, the results of a large southern emigration. The young men of the state who had come on the stage since the decease of Mr. Clay, were more generally southern in their sympathies than their fathers. The governor of the state, the late vice president and many leading politicians were of the same school. When the rebellion broke out the position of Kentucky was extremely precarious. For months it seemed uncertain on which side of the balance she would finally throw her weight. When hostilities were first inaugurated thousands of her brightest young men left to volunteer in the secession army; very few joined that of the union. With her northern frontier lying for hundreds of miles alongside the powerful free states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, containing nearly five times her own population, Kentucky might well pause before she decided to bring upon her soil the horrors of civil war. That she suffered to any considerable degree was mainly owing to the disloyalty of a part of her population.

When upon the fall of Sumter, a call for 75000 troops was made from the loyal states to defend the flag of the country, she refused to furnish her quota. Her governor, Beriah Magoffin, replied to Secretary Cameron-Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister southern states." On the 20th of May he issued a proclamation of neutrality to the people of Kentucky, forbidding alike the passage of troops of the United States or of the Confederate States, over the soil of the state, or the occupation of any point within it, and declaring the position of Kentucky to be one of self defense alone. The state senate also passed resolutions to the same effect and tendered the services of Kentucky as a mediator between the government and her intended destroyers.

On the 9th of June the convention of the border slave states, holden at Frankfort, of which Hon. J. J. Crittenden was president, and consisting of one member from Tennessee, four from Missouri and twelve from Kentucky, issued an address to the nation, in which they declare that something ought to done to quiet apprehension within the slave states that already adhere to the Union. The people of Kentucky are advised to adopt a neutral course and to mediate between the contending parties.

On the 8th of June, Gen. S. B. Buckner, commanding the state guard of Kentucky, entered into an arrangement with Gen. Geo. B. McClellan, commander of the U. S. troops north of the Ohio, by which the neutrality of Kentucky was guaranteed; that if the soil of the state was invaded by the confederate forces, it was only in the event of the failure of Kentucky to remove them, that the forces of the U. S. were to enter.

On the 15th of June, Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner wrote to Gov. Magoffin, that as the Tennessee troops under Gen. Pillow were about to occupy Columbus, on the Mississippi, he had called out a small military force to be stationed at that place and vicinity. These consisted of six companies of the state guard under Col. Lloyd Tilghman, ostensibly summoned into service "to carry out the obligation of neutrality which the state had assumed." Two months later Gov. Magoffin opened a correspondence with President Lincoln on this subject of "Kentucky neutrality;" the former complaining of the formation of union military camps in the state. The president replied that these were composed entirely of Kentuckians (home guards), having their camps in the immediate vicinity of their own homes, which had been formed at the earnest solicitation of many Kentuckians. "I most cordially," said Mr. Lincoln, "sympathize with your excellency in the wish to preserve the peace of my native state Kentucky. It is with regret I search and can not find in your not very short letter, any declaration or intimation that you entertain any desire for the preservation of the federal union."

At the election held early in August, the vote showed that Kentucky was largely for the union. In the western portion, in which the slaveholding interest was the strongest, the majority of the people were secessionists: the county of Trigg alone supplied 400 men to the rebel army.

Notwithstanding the drain of hot-blooded young men to the rebel side, Kentucky had furnished to the union cause to the beginning of

1865, 76,335 troops, of which 61,317 were whites, and 14,918 colored. Beside this, thousands of her citizens in various parts of the state were, during the rebellion, actively employed as home guards, state guards, state forces, etc., in battling against a common foe, which the successive invasions of the state by the enemy, and the distressive guerrilla raids made necessary. And her union officers, Nelson, Wood, Rousseau, Canby, Wolford, Jacobs, Fry, Burbridge, Crittenden, Garrard and others performed most efficient service on the fields of blood.

The

On the 2d of September, the state legislature met at Frankfort, three fourths of the members being unionists. On the 5th, the confederate forces under Gen. Polk took possession of Columbus. About the same time Gen. Grant from Cairo, acting under the orders of Gen. Fremont, landed a body of union troops at Paducah. Prior to this the neutrality of Kentucky had been respected by both parties. No troops for the defense of the union had been encamped upon her soil, other than home guards; and many of these were secretly secessionists. first and second Kentucky regiments, composed mostly of citizens of Ohio had rendezvoused at Camp Clay, near Cincinnati; and a body of Kentucky volunteers under General Lovell S. Rousseau, an eloquent orator of the state, had formed a camp on the Indiana shore opposite Louisville. On the 12th, the legislature, by a vote of three to one, demonstrated their loyalty by directing the governor to order out the military power of the state, to drive out and expel "the so-called southern confederate forces." At the same time, General Robert Anderson, who had been ordered to the command of the troops of this department, was requested to immediately enter upon the active discharge of his duties.

Gen. Buckner, in command of the state guard, being in sympathy with the rebellion, had seduced to their cause a large number of the young men of Kentucky, and, at this time, came out openly for secession, taking with him thousands who had been armed under the guise of protecting the state from the invasion of either union or rebel troops. In an address, issued at Russellville on the 12th, he said "Freemen of Kentucky, let us stand by our own lovely land. Join with me in expelling from our firesides, the armies which an insane despotism sends among us to subjugate us to the iron rule of puritanical New England."

This man Buckner, and his fellow-conspirator, Breckinridge, can never be forgiven by the union loving people of Kentucky, for the manner in which the youth of the state were ensnared into the ranks of treason through their wicked ambition. What mother or sister can read the fate of this one poor boy, as related by Gen. Rousseau, without a tear to his memory; and a burning anathema upon his mur derers?

Two days after the battle of Shiloh, I walked into the hospital tent on the ground where the fiercest contest had taken place, and where many of our men and those of the enemy had fallen. The hospital was exclusively for the wounded rebels, and they were laid thickly around. Many of them were Kentuckians, of Breckinridge's command. As I stepped into the tent and spoke to some one, I was addressed by a voice, the childish tones of which arrested my attention: "That's General Rousseau! General, I knew your son Dickey. Where is Dick? I knew him very well?"

Turning to him, I saw stretched on the ground a handsome boy about sixteen