Divided Loyalties

Kentucky's Struggle for Armed Neutrality in the Civil War

James W. Finck

• Publisher: Savas Beatie
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781611211023
• eBook ISBN: 9781611211030
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

On May 16, 1861, the Kentucky state legislature passed an ordinance declaring its neutrality, which the state's governor, Beriah Magoffin, confirmed four days later. Kentucky's declaration and ultimate support for the Union stood at odds with the state's social and cultural heritage. After all, Kentucky was a slave state and enjoyed deep and meaningful connections to the new Confederacy. Much of what has been written to explain this curious choice concludes Kentucky harbored strong Unionist feelings. James Finck's freshly written and deeply researched Divided Loyalties: Kentucky's Struggle for Armed Neutrality in the Civil War shatters this conclusion. An in-depth study of the twelve months that decided Kentucky's fate (November 1860 – November 1861), Divided Loyalties persuasively argues that the Commonwealth did not support neutrality out of its deep Unionist's sentiment. In fact, it was Kentucky's equally divided loyalties that brought about its decision to remain neutral. Both Unionists and Secessionists would come to support neutrality at different times when they felt their side would lose. Along the way, Dr. Finck examines the roles of the state legislature, the governor, other leading Kentuckians, and average citizens to understand how Kentuckians felt about the prospects of war and secession, and how bloodshed could be avoided. The finely styled prose is built upon a foundation of primary sources including letters, journals, newspapers, government documents, and published reports. By focusing exclusively on one state, one issue, and one year, Divided Loyalties provides a level of detail that will deeply interest both Kentuckians and Civil War enthusiasts alike. Kentucky's final decision was the result of intrigue and betrayal within the Commonwealth while armies gathered around its borders waiting for any opportunity to invade. And it was within this heated environment that Kentuckians made the most important decision in their history.

Chapter 1

Kentucky’s Political System:

1840 to 1860

In November of 1860, Kentucky, like the rest of the nation, gathered at the polls to elect a new president of the United States. However, this election differed from previous ones in that the very survival of the nation was at stake. Many Southerners saw the possible election of Abraham Lincoln as the ultimate betrayal of their rights and a justification for secession. Unlike the major parties during the antebellum period, the Democrats, Whigs, and Know Nothings, Lincoln and the Republican Party represented only the Northern half of the country. Southerners worried that Lincoln’s sectional views and his party’s free-soil tendencies could threaten the future of slavery. When Illinois Republicans nominated Lincoln as their candidate for the Senate in 1858, he had accepted their nomination with his now famous “House Divided Speech.” In his speech, Lincoln professed his belief that the nation could not survive half slave and half free, leading Southerners to believe that Lincoln intended to attack slavery once he took office. The platform adopted by the Republicans in 1860 even rejected the Dred Scot decision and called for the outlawing of slavery in new territories.¹

Lincoln, a native-born Kentuckian, was the sixteenth president of the United States. He did not poll well in Kentucky, winning only. 9% of the popular vote. Lincoln understood the importance of keeping Kentucky in the Union and walked a fine line between accepting its neutrality and cultivating Kentuckians’ loyalty. Library of Congress

Kentucky, like every other slave state, had strong concerns about the election of Abraham Lincoln. Although Lincoln was a native son of Kentucky, the majority of the population did not accept his sectionalism and free-soil ideology. Slavery had been an institution in Kentucky since its statehood. In the 1830s, Kentucky had one of the highest ratios of slaves to whites at 24 percent, and the number of slaves within the state grew over the next thirty years. However, the large influx of white immigrants changed the percentage of slaves from nearly one-quarter (24 percent) to about one-fifth (19 percent), with a total slave population of 225,483 by 1860.²

Most Kentuckians in 1860 did not own slaves, and a small population within the state believed slavery to be morally wrong. However, for most people, whether one owned slaves was purely a question of expense. A slave in antebellum Kentucky cost an average wage earner about two years’ salary. Even with the high expense, 28 percent of Kentucky families did own slaves. This was a very high number compared to the rest of the South, with only Virginia and Georgia having a higher percentage of slave owners. The difference between Kentucky and the cotton states was the number of slaves a family owned. Only five families in Kentucky owned more than 100 slaves; most owned around five or six. The number of slaves in Kentucky was smaller mainly due to the fact that the state’s agriculture was not as labor-intensive. The shift in Kentucky’s economy away from labor-intensive crops led to the profitable business of selling Kentucky’s surplus slaves to the cotton states.³

With families owning fewer slaves but more families owning them, slavery tied the state to the rest of the South. The slave trade from Kentucky south only strengthened the bond. With the prominence of slavery and the importance of the slave economy, Kentuckians had no interest in supporting Lincoln or the Republican Party.

While most Kentuckians generally disagreed with Lincoln, they also disagreed with the argument that Lincoln’s election was grounds for secession. The Louisville Daily Journal declared itself full of sorrow and anxiety over Lincoln’s possible election and prayed he would not be successful. However, the paper did not believe in abandoning the Union in its time of crisis, and insisted a legally elected president should be supported. It also maintained that the Congress, being controlled by the South, would be too strong to allow Lincoln to harm slavery in any way. The Journal saw no reason to fear a Republican president. Even one of Kentucky’s most famous and respected statesmen, John J. Crittenden, tried to cool passions raised by the chances of Abraham Lincoln’s election. Crittenden delivered a speech in August of 1860 in which he questioned what would happen if Lincoln won while the South still controlled the Congress and the courts. Crittenden did not agree with Lincoln’s politics, but he knew him and believed him to be a good and decent man—and one smart enough to marry a Kentucky girl. Crittenden’s one complaint was not with Lincoln himself but with the Republican Party. Crittenden feared that Lincoln had to follow the ideology of the Republican Party, leading to more sectional agitation for the country; but this factor alone, he said, did not justify secession.⁴

One positive thing that Lincoln did for Kentucky was to unite the state. Unfortunately for Lincoln, however, it was in opposition to him. When it came to the other three candidates for the presidency, things became much more confusing. Two of the candidates, John C. Breckinridge and Stephen Douglas, considered themselves Democrats, while the third, John Bell, belonged to the Constitutional Union Party, an organization running a candidate for the first time. To better understand the confusion regarding these remaining three candidates, it is necessary to provide a brief history of political parties in Kentucky.

Since the 1830s, the Whig Party had controlled the state of Kentucky. Henry Clay, founder of the Whig Party, was arguably the most famous and respected politician in antebellum Kentucky. Clay was part of the generation that transformed Kentucky from a frontier outpost to something at least similar to tidewater Virginia. He pushed the “Bluegrass System” within his state that led to government support of industrialization. On the national level, Clay made his name fighting against President Andrew Jackson while Speaker of the House of Representatives. He outlined the policy known as the American System, which grew out of the Bluegrass System. This policy was meant to make America economically stronger by raising tariffs and building a better infrastructure for trade. He ran for the presidency in 1824, only to lose to John Quincy Adams, who then appointed him secretary of state. Between 1832 and 1844, Clay was considered a possible Whig candidate for each presidential election. He received the nomination both times, but lost on both occasions. It was not until the 1850s that the Whigs lost their hold on the state, beginning in 1852 with the death of Clay.⁵

Henry Clay served as a congressman and senator from Kentucky, as well as Secretary of State and Speaker of the House. He was one of the most powerful and influential politicians of his era and became known as the “Great Compromiser” because of his efforts to save the nation from civil war. Clay was also one of the founders of the Whig Party during the Second American Party System. Library of Congress

In the late 1840s, problems arose within the Whig Party that continued to plague it. The party ran its last presidential candidate, Winfield Scott, in 1852, only to lose to Franklin Pierce. In Kentucky, the decline began in 1848 when Clay (who had professed retirement) threw his hat into the presidential ring when it looked as if the Whigs could win. Clay’s return put Kentucky Whigs in a difficult position; many had given support to Zachary Taylor, but now Clay demanded his state’s allegiance, thus creating a split that never healed.⁶

As for the rest of the Southern Whigs, it was the perceived betrayal of Taylor that led to the party fracture. In 1850, Taylor supported the statehood of California, which wanted to enter the Union as a free state. Southern Whigs feared the admission of another free state and criticized Taylor for not protecting their welfare. They also criticized him for not addressing the issues of the fugitive slave law and the proposed ban of slavery in the capital. To solve the problem and patch up the Whig Party, Clay proposed the Omnibus Bill as a compromise. The bill would admit California as a free state, but the rest of the land gained from Mexico would be organized without restrictions on slavery. The slave trade would be outlawed in Washington, D.C., but slavery itself would be allowed to continue. Clay also called for a stronger fugitive slave law. Taylor, however, wanted California admitted immediately and did not support the compromise efforts of Clay, which caused more Southern Whigs to become frustrated with their party. When President Taylor died suddenly, the new president, Millard Fillmore, supported the compromise plan, but by then it was too late. Stephen Douglas led a movement among the Democrats and some Northern Whigs that took over the efforts to work out a plan; he passed the Compromise of 1850 based on Clay’s original Omnibus Bill.⁷

Kentuckians generally saw the Compromise of 1850 as a success. Order was restored and the fugitive slave law passed. Politically, however, the landscape changed. The Democratic Party accepted credit for the Compromise and claimed its new role as upholder of the Clay legacy of compromise. During the debates over the Compromise and the bickering within the Whig Party, many men had jumped ship and joined the Democrats to see the Compromise pass. The old issues that used to divide the parties, such as banks and internal improvements, had lost their importance to the bigger issues of slavery and states rights, and the Democrats claimed they were the party of Southern rights. After all, it was a Whig president who had created the problem.⁸

After 1852, the Whig Party ceased to play a significant role as a national institution. The Northern and Southern wings of the party could not agree on the issue of slavery, and with Scott’s failed bid for the presidency and the Democrats capturing states-rights Whigs, the party dissolved. The border states, however, never lost their Whig loyalty and attempted to hold on to the party as long as possible, or resurrect it as part of the American Party. In the mid-1850s elections, the former Whigs, in the American Party, stood their ground as best they could against the Democratic onslaught that captured the cotton states. In most of the border states, the Democrats did gain the advantage, but never by large majorities. In Kentucky, the last election with an official Whig candidate was 1853, a good year for the Democrats, who finally pulled even with Whigs. The difference between Kentucky and most other border states, however, was that Kentucky Democrats would have to wait until 1856 to overtake their opponents. In 1853, ten United States Congressional seats were up for grabs, and the two parties won five each. The Whigs kept their majority in both houses of Congress that year, but they lost the most important federal congressional race. The Ashland district, Clay’s old district, was captured by John C. Breckinridge, who tied himself to the legacy of Henry Clay and supported the Compromise of 1850. Even with important wins in 1853, the Democrats would not hold a majority in Kentucky until 1856, and in Kentucky as well as many other border states, the Whigs—under the names of the Opposition and Constitutional Unionists—took back those majorities in 1859 and 1860.⁹

The year 1854 brought new challenges to American politics. During that year, two seminal events occurred: the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the formation of the Republican Party. In order to build a new railroad across the country to California, the territory over which it would run had to be organized. In 1853, Congress created the Nebraska Territory, made up of the land between Indian Territory and the Canadian border. The political problem with the new territory was that it sat north of the Missouri Compromise line. In 1820, Congress had decided that all new states created above the 36’ 30” parallel would be free states, while all the new states south of that line would be slave states. Southerners saw the organization of Nebraska and new states that might come from it as a loss of more political power. They had just lost California, and they were determined not to lose Nebraska as well. To solve the new national crisis, Stephen Douglas once again took the mantel of Clay and proposed a compromise. His proposal embraced what had been a key part of the Compromise of 1850, popular sovereignty. Douglas believed that when a territory became a state, the people of the new state should decide whether it would be a slave state or a free state. The second part of his plan divided the land into two territories, Kansas and Nebraska.

Douglas’ Kansas-Nebraska bill caused more of an uproar than the original problem. If passed, the bill would overturn the Missouri Compromise, and Northerners, with a growing population of free-soilers and abolitionists, would fight that possibility every step of the way. Northerners saw the split of the territory as a compromise with slavery, which might allow Kansas to become a slave state.

Once again in Kentucky, Democrats supported Douglas and the new bill. They saw popular sovereignty as the best way to keep slavery out of the national discussion by making it a local issue, not a national one. In Kentucky, Democrats also saw the Kansas-Nebraska bill as an opportunity to rid their party of all free-soilers, by making the bill a touchstone for party membership. Democrats wanted to show Kentuckians they supported Southern rights—and what better way than to push out any member who did not believe the people themselves had the right to slaves in a new state if they chose to have them. In doing this, Democrats could paint the Whigs as the abolitionist party. Democrats claimed that most Northern Whigs and some in the South opposed the Kansas-Nebraska bill; Democrats spun such opposition to be the equivalent of abolitionism. Within Kentucky, the bill divided the already fragile Whig Party even more. The Whig party’s gubernatorial candidate, Charles Morehead, supported the bill, with the idea of solving sectional issues in the state. The pro-Nebraska wing of the Whigs also did not want to look soft on Southern rights and slavery, which would lend credibility to the Democratic portrayal of their party as anti-slavery. Crittenden, with his ever-faithful national views, led his wing of the Whigs to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska bill. He correctly foresaw the crumbling of what was left of any type of national Whig alignment. Northern members simply could not accept the dismantling of the Missouri Compromise, and Southern Whigs had little choice but to accept it or risk being called abolitionists. Crittenden’s worst fears came true...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction and Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Kentucky’s Political System: 1840 to 1860
• Chapter 2. The Presidential Election: October to November 1860
• Chapter 3. Secession, Slavery, and Economic Prosperity: November 1860 to February 1861
• Chapter 4. Choosing Sides: January to February 1861
• Chapter 5. Compromise: January to April 1861
• Chapter 6. Neutrality: March to May 1861
• Chapter 7. Border Conventions and Lincoln Guns: April to May 1861
• Chapter 8. The Struggle to Remain Neutral: May to June 1861
• Chapter 9. The End of Neutrality: July to September 1861
• Chapter 10. After Neutrality: September to December 1861
• Appendix. Proclamations, Speeches, Party Platforms, and Other Documents
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author