HOLDING KENTUCKY FOR THE UNION.

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sippi. Hearing of this, on the 5th General Grant moved from Cairo andoccupied Paducah . A few days afterward General Zollicotfer advanced withfour Confederate regiments through Cumberland Gap to Cumberland Ford.The Union Legislature had met on the 2d. Resolutions were passed on the11th requiring the governor to issue a proclamation ordering the Confederatetroops to leave the State. They were promptly vetoed and promptly passedover the veto, and the proclamation was issued. In spite of the governor’sopposition, acts were passed putting the State in active support of the Gov-ernment. The governor was reduced to a nullity. General Robert Anderson,who was assigned on May 28th to command the Department of Kentucky ,was invited to remove his headquarters to Louisville , and the State’s fullquota of volunteers was called for. Recruiting was pushed with energy,and by the end of the year 28 regiments of infantry, 6 of cavalry, and 3batteries had been organized.

On September 15th General Albert Sidney Johnston assumed command ofthe Confederate forces in the West, and at once ordered General Buckner withfive thousand men from Camp Boone and another camp in the vicinity toproceed by rail and occupy Bowling Green . Buckner reached that pointearly on the 18th, having sent in advance one detachment by rail to seize thebridge over Green River at Munfordville, and another to go as far as Eliza-bethtown and bring back all the rolling-stock possible. This was success-fully accomplished, a part of the advance detachment going as far as thebridge over the Rolling Fork of Salt River, within thirty-three miles of Louis-ville , and burning the bridge.

Buckner’s movement was supposed in Louisville to have that city for itsobjective, and great excitement prevailed there. Rumor magnified his forces,but there was abundant ground for apprehension without that. GeneralAnderson was in command, but he was without troops. The only forces inhis department in Kentucky were the unorganized regiment of Colonel Buck-ner near Hopkinsville, the few hundred recruits gathered at Greensburg byGeneral Ward, and Nelson’s forces at Camp Dick Robinson,— none of whichwere ready for service,— the Home Guard Brigade of Louisville , and the scat-tered companies of Home Guards throughout the State. Opposite Louisville was Rousseau ’s camp, in which were some two thousand men not yet preparedfor the field. Very few troops were in reach. Owing to the neutrality ofKentucky, the regiments recruited in Ohio, Indiana , and the North-west gen-erally had been sent as fast as organized to the Potomac or Missouri armies.Fortunately, Governor Oliver P. Morton, of Indiana , had received infor-mation, about the 1st, which had led him to reserve a few regiments forKentucky , and in response to General Anderson’s appeal he hurried themforward. Anderson had learned of Buckner’s intended advance the day itwas made, and the non-arrival of the regular train from the south showed himthat it had begun. The Home Guards of Louisville were at once ordered outfor ten days, and, assembling at midnight, eighteen hundred of them underColonel A. Y. Johnson, Chief of the Fire Department, started by rail for Mul-

&Thus the neutrality of Kentucky was first broken by the Confederates.— Editors.