All fired up for the Union: Reverdy Johnson (LOC - LC-BH82- 29 B )
From The New-York Times May 13, 1861:
FROM KENTUCKY.; PLAIN AND SQUARE TALK FOR THE UNION AND THE GOVERNMENT KENTUCKY UNIONISTS GROWING BOLDER AND BOLDER LOYALTY TO THE UNION BEGINNING TO PREDOMINATE, NOT ONLY OVER SECESSION, BUT ALSO OVER “NEUTRALITY” MAGOFFIN FOR RETALIATION AND PRECIPITATION OF ARMED COLLISION ALONG THE BORDER.
Correspondence of the New-York Times.
LOUISVILLE, Thursday, May 9, 1861.
The spirit of REVERDY JOHNSON, of Maryland, and of ANDREW JOHNSON, of East Tennessee, is possessing and arousing some of the noblest sons of old Kentucky. Some of our most prominent men along the frontier and throughout the interior are beginning to speak out pointedly, boldly and decidedly for the Union, the Constitution and the Government. They intend to hold their own, and keep down secession in this State, if nothing more. If they shall need help from the Government for this object they will call for it, and perhaps they soon will, for the Secessionists, thanks to MAGOFFIN & Co., hold most all the arms and munitions. The Unionists of Kenton and other counties, knowing that companies of the “State Guard” in their localities are controlled by Secessionists, demand their disbandment.
Magoffin (with Bourbon) in cahoots with cat Jeff Davis (Harper's 6-29-1861 LOC - LC-USZ62-132564)
All honor to the County of Kenton — the pioneer and banner county in the cause of the Union. It has set the Union ball in motion against secession, and against “neutrality” as well. Its citizens, on the 4th, resolved that they are opposed to any act of the Legislature which tends in any manner towards secession; that, whatever the Legislature may do, their loyalty to the Union is their first duty; that no appropriations for arming the State should be voted by the Legislature, so long as we have Secesionists in our midst, into whose hands most of the arms might fall; that, while true and loyal citizens of Kentucky, they are at the same time true and loyal citizens of the United States, and will forever maintain their allegiance to the United States Government and flag, “peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must”.
State senator Whitaker: Breckinridge is an "archtraitor"
Franklin County, too, is displaying the same spirit. The Frankfort Commonwealth, of yesterday, expresses the popular feeling of that County when it says: “Kentucky will never permit a rabid and fanatical majority to saddle her with secession, and bully her out of the Union as Virginia was saddled and bullied. Never; no, never. The Union men of Kentucky will not consent to being transferred to JEFF. DAVIS like so many chattels. Mind that. If any such attempt is made in this State it will be the signal for civil war, and the Union men will rise in their might and crush out and wipe out the last vestige of secessionist in Kentucky. On that we are determined. We are for the United States Government, and we don’t care a Continental anathema who knows it.” And so talk the people and their organ, the Lexington Observer, in the County of Fayette — the home of BRECKINRIDGE and JIM CLAY. And I notice, also, that Col. WALLACE, an associate editor and Frankfort correspondent of the Louisville Journal, in his letter of the 7th, writes: “No man can be so insane now as to assert that our State can be precipitated into secession without bringing on a conflict here on our own soil, of Kentuckians against Kentuckians. To-morrow, 100,000 Kentuckians would proclaim for the Union as it is, without an if or a proviso.”
Stamped "Traitor" - J.C. Breckinridge (Civil War Union envelope LOC - LC-USZ62-53598)
I am satisfied from the tone of the Governor’s Message that he will do nothing to prevent a border war, and, if it comes, will charge it upon our neighbors. According to him, “they furnish the cause of irritation from which collision is to be apprehended.” He lauds our citizens for “abstaining from any acts of retaliation, in the face of flagrant violations of our rights. It will be impossible to restrain retaliatory measures, and to prevent the early precipitation of armed collis[ion?] -along our whose borders, unless effective measures are taken to remove the increasing provocation.” I strongly suspect that he “assumed the responsibility of appointing agents to purchase arms” for the express purpose of precipitating armed collision with the Government troops concentrating at Cairo. He and JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE, — “the archtraitor,” as Senator WHITTAKER styles him, — ought to be arrested, arraigned and punished for high treason. They will be, one of these days, if they don’t look out how they behave themselves. PONTIAC.
From the Wikipedia article about Walter C. Whitaker: “While in the state senate, Whitaker proposed the resolution that set Kentucky on the side of the Union, ending the state’s brief period of neutrality in the war”
He would have a big role in the war as a Union officer.
Reverdy Johnson was a lawyer who served as Attorney General in the Zachary Taylor administration. Also according to Wikipedia:
A conservative Democrat, he supported Stephen A. Douglas in the presidential election of 1860. He represented the slave-owning defendant in the famous 1857 case Dred Scott v. Sandford. He was personally opposed to slavery and was a key figure in the effort to keep Maryland from seceding from the Union during the American Civil War.
Taylor's cabinet - Reverdy on the far right (1849 photo)
