of these rights, the President of the United States, according to Breckenridge, had no right to enlist men and no right to blockade the Southern ports, in short, no right to wage war on these commonwealths.  Lincoln had thus overthrown constitutional government.  If he was trying to preserve the Union, he must do it in a constitutional way.  Breckenridge wanted the Union but contended that it would be no good without the Constitution.[6] To sum up, as Southern Democrats they had helped to disrupt the Charleston Convention, and developing into a strict Southern rights party, they had through bolting made possible the election of Abraham Lincoln.  They then finally joined the States’ rights party, which, boldly declaring the election of Lincoln a just cause for the dissolution of the Union, undertook to secede.[7]

With such radical leaders in control it might seem strange that, in a State formed from an aristocratic commonwealth like Virginia and extending into the fertile region of the Mississippi, these protagonists of States’ rights did not turn Kentucky over to the Confederacy.  Exactly what part did the rich slaveholders play during this crisis when the State was called upon to decide the question between the North and South?  What was the position of such influential men as James B. Clay, George B. Hodge, Cerro Gordo Williams, T. P. Porter, Roger W. Hansom, and S. B. Buckner?[8]

Other representative citizens, however, had been equally outspoken in favor of the Union.  Voicing the sentiment of the Union party, which on the eighth of January met in Louisville to take steps to support the Federal Government, Bell said:  “Let us offer everything we can to avert the torrent of evil, but let us always stand ready to support our rights in the Union:  the State is deeply and devotedly attached to the Union."[9] Garrett Davis inquired:  “Will you preserve the Union or rush into the vortex of revolution under the name of secession?"[10] J. T. Boyle said in the same convention that there could be no benefit or advantage, no civil or political rights, no interest of any kind whatever, secured by government in the Southern Confederacy which the people did not then enjoy in the “blessed Union formed by our fathers.”  In his opinion, it was the duty of Kentuckians “to stand by the Star Spangled Banner and cling to the Union."[11] Some of the most influential newspapers were fearlessly advocating the Union cause.  Among others were the Frankfort Daily Commonwealth, the Louisville Courier and the Democrat.

Exactly what support these leaders of the differing factions would obtain was determined by forces for centuries at work in that State.  Southerners who thought that, because Kentucky was a slave State it should go with the South, had failed to take these causes into consideration.  In the first place, not every slaveholder was an ardent proslavery agitator.  There were masters who like Henry Clay considered