JOHN M. HARLAN IN KENTUCKY, 1855-1877 THE STORY OF Hm ...

24 The Filson Club History Quarterly [Vol. 14states in favor of a return to the national union."•0 Thereupon,he continues with confidence, "the eyes of the country would bedirected alone to a National Convention as the only peaceablemode to settle our present troubles.",, Desperate refusal toface the deeper issues involved, probably more than an inabilityto understand them, explains this pathetic eleventh-hour plea ofyoung Harlan. Indeed at this moment his fear of war clearlytranscends his attachments to national solidarity for he writes:"It must be conceded that whenever it becomes a settled factthat the people of the seceding states are unalterably opposed tothe Federal Government they should be allowed to go in peace.'",One month after Harlan communicated his proposal to Holtthe guns boomed out against Fort Sumter. However much hemay have preferred peaceful secession to bloodshed, Harlan knewnow that he must choose one military camp or the other and thathis choice could only be Unionist. Yet he did not then realizehow ruthlessly the vicissitudes of war and concomitant socialrevolution were to tear him away from the framework of valuesand beliefs he had hitherto cherished. Like our own generationof young men he had been flung by history upon a road the socialdirections of which he could not envision.IIThe firing on Fort Sumter--Aprfl 12, 1861--initiated acritical period of plot and counterplot within the divided state ofKentucky. Encouraged by the gubernatorial proclamation of neutrality,leading Confederate sympathizers at Frankfort mappedplans for a state convention which would either secure theproclamation as permanent or bind Kentucky to the South.But they were outwitted by Union leaders, with young Harlandeserting his Louisville law practice to aid in defeating the conventionscheme. Upon his return he discovered in the virtualclosing of the courts the signal for full-time labor in the desperatedrive to stem the Confederate tide in Kentucky until the Unionranks were equipped with arms.-Events caught momentum as the summer of 1861 broughtwith it crucial state elections. Forsaking campaign dignities,speaking on street corners and on store-boxes, and hiring a band of40 Letter to Joseph Holt, March 11, 1861, Holt Mss. in Library of Congress.4,/b/d.4, Ibld.4s Harlan Mss. printed in Captain T. Speed, The Union Cause in Kentucky, with aForeword by Justice Harlan (1907), page 117.