Most people who study the Civil War have heard of “Lincoln guns,” the Union’s supplying of guns to supporters in Kentucky at the outset of the war.
But the story of who headed the project, how the guns were distributed, and even why they were distributed requires more explanation.
The Knights of the Golden Circle and Confusion
One element that most are not aware of was the role of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret organization with several “castles”—or places for members to meet—mostly in the Southern and border states. The organization was led by its founder, George W. Bickley, whose purpose in Kentucky was to lead the Commonwealth out of the Union and into the Confederacy. In fact, most members of the KGC were in sympathy with the Southern cause. Many of these same individuals later left the state and joined the Confederate Army. Consequently, many were prominent people and rabid secessionists who met secretly to plot how the organization could assist those who were trying to get Kentucky to leave the Union.
A Future Governor as a Member
Among those were prominent physician Luke Blackburn, a KGC member who became governor of Kentucky after the war. During the war, Blackburn worked from Canada—Nova Scotia, in particular—by sending disease-ridden blankets to Union installations. He eventually became one of the many Kentucky governors who supported or served in the Confederate Army.
Magoffin Founds the State Guard
After John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry Arsenal in late December 1859, Gov. Beriah Magoffin reasoned that an attack of a similar kind would be forthcoming in Kentucky. “At that moment, we may have need of an active, ardent, patriotic, well-disciplined and thoroughly organized militia,” he said. A state guard, in particular. In that effort, Magofflin was successful—to some degree.
To head the State Guard, Magoffin chose retired Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, a 37-year-old West Point graduate and Kentuckian whose political leanings in a short time were revealed to be with the South. Although it is difficult to muster evidence, it seems likely that Buckner was indeed a KGC member.
At the start of the war, Kentucky said it was neutral, that it supported neither side, North or South, including commerce from the South and the North. The state in its neutrality had received a promise from Tennessee Gov. Isham Harris that troops from his state would respect the state’s neutrality. A similar response came from Gen. George McClellan, Union commander of forces north of the Ohio River.
Crittenden Meets with Lincoln
Sen. John Jay Crittenden met with President Abraham Lincoln and Buckner at the White House. The president offered a rather curious response to the question about respecting neutrality for Kentucky: “So far, I have not sent an armed force into Kentucky, nor have I any present purpose to do so. I solemnly desire that no necessity for it may be presented; but I mean to say nothing which shall hearafter embarrass me in the performance of what may be my duty.” This was a rather shifty position that Lowell Harrison called “this masterful noncommitment,” a statement Lincoln did not even sign.
Not surprisingly, membership in the KGC soon became a political problem with the legislature that was pro-Union in sentiment and a governor who sided with the Confederacy—so much so that the governor’s Southern position soon prompted the Unionists in the legislature to call for establishment of the Home Guard, Unionists loyal to the federal government. According to the powerful newspaper The Louisville Journal, the establishment of the Home Guard absolutely was needed to keep Kentucky in the Union. For example, the same newspaper noted the Unionists needed a militia to counter the State Guard. In fact, Editor George Prentice wrote of “the secessionists of Kentucky [as] moving in a secret conspiracy to take the state out of the Union by a sudden, violent and if necessary, bloody process.” Because of the State Guard’s Southern-leaning position, then, the state needed a militia that would counteract the “secessionistic tendency of the State Guard.” One resident of the state said that the State Guard “was daily becoming insolent and overbearing and disposed to violence.” The hapless Southern-leaning governor had a legislature that regularly overrode his veto on bills that became law in spite of the governor’s opposition and rendered him merely a figurehead.
In fact, because the KGC was so active and influential in the early history of the war when Kentucky tried neutrality for a time, it seemed the KGC’s influence might instead sway the Bluegrass State toward succession. Sen. Garrett Davis, a supporter of the Union cause in Kentucky, thought so. Davis described the state as at a “flash point.”
The Plan for the ‘Lincoln Guns’
But the Home Guard, largely untrained, needed arms. Fortunately for the Home Guard cause and anxious to secure Kentucky for the Union, the President had a plan in the works. Lincoln appointed William “Bull” Nelson to coordinate an effort of distributing some 5,000 guns to loyal supporters of the Union. Historian David Keehn said that “to counter-balance the secessionists’ machinations, Lincoln and his allies began secretly to supply arms to the Kentucky Unionists.”
Gen. Nelson’s initial shipment of guns was routed to Cincinnati on May 5, 1861, but he needed someone in the state to coordinate the shipment. Lincoln chose his longtime friend, Joshua Speed. Earlier, Nelson had met secretly with James Harlan, Charles A. Wickliffe, Garret Davis, Thornton F. Marshall and John Crittenden in Frankfort to work out plans on where and how to put the guns in Union supporters’ hands.
The first 5,000 “Lincoln guns” were distributed to places like Jeffersonville, Indiana, across the river from Louisville; Paris; Danville; and Lexington as well as to other counties in the state. In all, later shipments totaled 23,000 guns that were distributed to Union supporters. Many Kentuckians felt assured that the secessionists would not now carry the day. The shipment of guns had a “wonderfully quieting effect in the communities into which they were introduced,” Unionist Speed Fry observed. Another Kentuckian noted that the “Lincoln guns” were “thus made to have the moral effect of three or four.”
What had at one time been a secret soon became public knowledge to most Kentuckians. Lincoln himself was quite pleased at Kentuckians’ acceptance of the arms for the Home Guard and felt more confident that Kentucky would remain in the Union despite the considerable efforts of the Knights of the Golden Circle.
The “Attack” on Columbus, Kentucky, and Grant’s Move into Paducah
While the KGC tried to lure the Union to attack Kentucky military facilities, it was unsuccessful. The state, many thought, would not be that foolish. That “honor” was left to Confederate Gen. Gideon Johnson Pillow, who moved north from his post in western Tennessee to occupy Columbus, Kentucky, convinced that the small western Kentucky river town needed to be protected from Union troops. Despite the determination of Gov. Harris that the incursion was a mistake, President Jefferson Davis wavered at first, but he later acquiesced to Pillow’s decision.
In retaliation, Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant occupied Paducah days later.
The Legislature Votes for Union
As a result of June elections, the legislature was strongly in favor of the Union supporters, with a 76-24 edge in the House and a lead of 27-11 in the Senate. To these Union supporters, the “invasion” by the Confederates was inexcusable. With majorities in the legislature and the results of June elections, Kentucky’s Unionists dropped any pretense of neutrality and sided with the Union.
By aligning with the Union cause, Kentuckians felt that belonging to the Union meant that the state’s farmers and plantation owners could keep their slaves. To these supporters, the war was being waged to restore the Union. In fact, most Kentuckians felt that slavery was guaranteed by the Constitution.
Little did those same supporters know that the purpose of the war would change. It was not being waged to restore the Union but to free the slaves.
Harder days were still ahead.
Dr. Marshall Myers, Richmond