HOLDING KENTUCKY FOR THE UNION.
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the Union men of East Tennessee, and for an escort was empowered to recruitthree regiments of infantry and one of cavalry in eastern Kentucky . Heselected his colonels, commissioning them “for the Tennessee expedition” andappointing a rendezvous at Hoskin’s Cross Koads, in Garrard county, on thefarm of Richard M. Robinson, a stanch Union man, for the day after the legis-lative elections in August.
During this period of neutrality Kentucky history seemed to be repeatingitself. As before its occupation by white men it was the common hunting-ground for the Indian of the North and ofthe South on which by tacit agreementneither was to make a permanent home,so now it had become the common re-cruiting-ground of Northern and South-ern armies on which neither was toestablish a camp. The Kentucky seces-sionists had opened a recruiting rendez-vous near Clarksville, Tennessee , a fewmiles from the Kentucky boi'der, whichthey called Camp Boone, and recruitsbegan to gather there early in July.
Buckner resigned from the State Guarda few days after the battle of Bull Runand soon took his way southward. r l Hisexample was followed by most of thehigher officers, and the State Guard be-gan rapidly to disintegrate. It was nouncommon sight in Louisville , shortlyafter this, to see a squad of recruits forthe Union service marching up one sideof a street while a squad destined for theConfederacy was moving down the other.
In the interior, a train bearing a company destined for Nelson’s camp tookaboard at the next county town another company which was bound forCamp Boone. The officers in charge made a treaty by which their men werekept in separate cars.
On the day after the August election Nelson’s recruits began to gather athis rendezvous. Camp Dick Robinson was situated in a beautiful blue-grasscountry, near where the pike for Lancaster and Crab Orchard leaves the Lex-ington and Danville Pike, between Dick’s River and the Kentucky . By Sep-tember 1st, there had gathered at this point four full Kentucky regiments andnearly two thousand East Tennesseeans, who had been enlisted by Lieutenant
JUS:
JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE, MAJOR-GENERAL , C. S. A ;VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES ,1857-61 ; CONFEDERATE SECRETARY OPWAR, APPOINTED JAN. 28, I 860 .
FROM A DAGUERREOTYPE TAKEN ABOUT 1850.
j During the neutrality period it would appear a brigadier-general of volunteers. It is to be putthat the Union authorities were in doubt as to into the hands of General Anderson, and deliveredwhich side General Buckner would espouse, since to General Buckner or not, at the discretion ofon August 17th, 1861, President Lincoln wrote General Anderson. Of course it is to remain ato the Secretary of War: “ Unless there be reason secret unless and until the commission is de-to the contrary, not known to me, make out a com- livered.” This letter bears the indorsement, “thismission for Simon [B. ] Buckner, of Kentucky , as day made.”— Editors.