John J. Crittendon Quotes
It is an admitted fact that our Union, to some extent, has already been dismembered; and that further dismemberment is impending and threatened. It is a fact that the country is in danger. It is our duty, if we can, to provide a remedy for this.
Crittendon, at the outbreak of the Civil War, had a Governor who wanted Kentucky to secede and join the Confederacy, but he and other leaders thwarted that and the state legislatures defied the governor and forced him to resign. 16 percent of Kentucky men held slaves and keeping Kentucky and Maryland in the Union was a very high priority for President Lincoln. See {633812}.
John J. Crittendon, 1787-1863, U. S. Senator & U. S. Congressman (Whig & Unionist, KY), U. S. Attorney General, March 2, 1861
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Kentucky was a slave state but public opinion was not clearly in favor of secession. Governor Magoffin was a Southern sympathizer and wanted Kentucky to secede with the other slave states. However, the education level of Kentucky was greater than those of the deep South and the State Legislature and many Union patriots. Only 16% of Kentucky were slaves. The economy of Kentucky was much more involved with the Northern States than the other Southern states. The legislature rebuffed the Governor’s call for a secession convention. Then Magoffin demanded that President Lincoln remove the Federal Troops that had been stationed in Kentucky. Lincoln did not want the Southern forces to occupy Kentucky and then use their occupation to pressure the State into joining the confederacy. Also, Lincoln took the position that as long as Kentucky was a state of the United States they were obligated to assist in putting down the rebellion. At this time, the Kentucky Congressional Delegation was overwhelmingly pro Union, as was the new State legislature which had such a pro-Union majority that they could override the Governor’s veto. Less than two weeks later, September 4, 1861, Confederate Major General Leonidas Polk tried to occupy Kentucky as Lincoln had feared, and the Legislature asked the Federal Government to send more troops and eject the Southern forces from the South of Kentucky. Kentucky Confederate sympathizers formed a rump government and voted to secede, and despite Jefferson Davis’s concerns that the State Legislature was being bypassed, Kentucky was accepted in the Confederacy. The result was that there were Kentucky military units in the Confederate Army and in the Union Army with the latter being in the majority. Kentucky was on both sides. This delicate balance and that of Maryland was why Lincoln did not include those states in his Emancipation Proclamation.
Duke of Northumberland. When King James VI of poorer Scotland assumed the English throne (as James I) most of the Scots, and especially the Highlanders, were anti-English and concerned about the integrity and independence of Scotland. Together with dissident Englishmen, Dudley foresaw the schism that was to engulf England and Scotland in bloody civil war.
When the first Southern States seceded, each appointed a whose job it was to persuade the other Southern States to also secede. In this case Hale was marketing secession to Kentucky which with Maryland were the only two Southern States to reject what they regarded as treason and rebellion. The importance of the quotation however is in his argument which was all based on enmity to racial equality and abolition. Later Southern apologists would argue that the Civil War was fought, not about slavery and racism butt about different philosophies of government. See {623715} .
Fortunately he was wrong, but the threat of a breakup of the American Union intimidated most members of Congress to avoid anything that would offend a state or group of states. Thus slavery became more and more entrenched till it exploded into the Civil War. At the time the issues of contention included the fact that Louisiana was primarily Roman Catholic and ALL other states were majority Protestant. The territory functioned under French Law—the Napoleonic Code, while all the other states operated under the English Common Law (even today this is so), and there was concern with the French and Creole language and whether the Creoles would fit into American Culture.
It would be almost 30 years until Jackson would have been proved correct and the Civil War had begun.
In many respects, it is amazing that secession did not take place earlier.
The South had attacked Fort Sumter
