An Honorable Position: Joseph Holt’s Letter to Joshua F. Speed on Neutrality and Secession in Kentucky, May 1861

An Honorable Position Joseph Holt' s Letter toJoshua E Speed on Neutrality and Secession in Kentucky,May 1861 Edited by Jacob E Lee stateshadsecededfromtheUnion,withfourmorepreparedtodoso. April 1861, the United States was disintegrating. Seven southern Following the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter,Kentuckians debated whether they would remain in the Union or join the Confederacy The state's governor,Beriah Magoffin, and other politic·al leaders sympathetic to the South encouraged the commonwealth to join its fellow slaveholding states in the new Confederate States of America. Opposing them were Kentucky unionists,centered in Louisville,who worked diligently to prevent the state's secession. For a month after the beginning of A the war,the Union party and its Southern Rights TITE FAI* 1+ ACY OF NEUTI.\ 1.ITY. opponents debated Kentzicky's course. In the midiN ADI,RESS '· i ./ 3 dle ofMay,thestatedecideditwoulddeclareitself 1311 85. 4, 14*= 11110 neutral, refusing to join either side. Both factions = 1 ION .1OSE1VT -11 -OIA;fj*quickly realized the untenable nature ofthis posiff '1 tion. Throughout the summer of 1861, unionists 1 TO T[IE PEOPLE,; F KENT[' CKY, 4 and secessionists worked to gain the upper hand @.] 8...:.. ........ K JULY .. 1, 1861: 1 and determine Kentucky's future. 1 In April and May,Joshua Fry Speed, a close 4' friend of Abraham Lincoln and a prominent 1 Kentucky unionist,corresponded frequently with NEW 111RK : other stalwart unionists in Washington, D.C. 3im JAMES G. GREGORY, WALKER # TNEP. 14 Among them was Joseph Holt,a Kentucky attor1861 7 T ney,the former secretary of war,who w: is a year 4 later named the army's judge advocate general, The Fallacy ofNeutrality:An Address by the charged with superintending the system of miliHon .Joseph Holt, to the People ofKentucky, Delivered at Louisville, July 13th,1861; tary justice. Reports from Speed and other politalso a Letterto J. F. Speed, Esq. 1861). ical · allies kept Holt abreast of affairs in Kentucky, THE FILSON HISTO R ICAL SOCIETY and in return he wrote and spoke against secession in his home state. Historians have long recoenized Holt's . ictivities as one of the key reasons Kentucky,a deeply divided state, remained loval. Because of his long political career,Holt provided an influential voice for Kentucky' s unionist movement. OHIO VALLEY IlISTORY 32 JACOB F LEE I . 41 ': 4* 14 Ic . 1 l,I . 44», Jib *5421 Ld,Ay.f i5 fi' Lj1 " ff c» t «©* 3.-' .- . t. Ttik / 1£, t« Liz t. t.,LJZZUEQU L., c414( 7kck # Lic-J1£-= C - */ F V S '# i r if * 3& »" 10* 19154 I : st»A #4 The first page of Holt's letter to Speed THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY WINTER 2007 33 AN lIONORABLE POSITION 1 ' Holt s most important contribution came after the Kentucky legislature declared that the state would remain neutral in the war. Following its decision for neutrality,Joshua Speed wrote to Holt asking him to produce an argument that could be distributed in Kentucky to help strengthen the unionist cause. On May 31, Holt responded with · a long letter,laying out a number of reasons Kentucky should remain in the Union. Intended for publication, the letter quickly appeared in pamphlet form and Holt's allies distributed over thirty thousand copies of it. Unionists from across the state responded favoribly to Holt's argument,claiming that it would greatly influence the upcoming congressional elecj „ tion. The popularity of the letter resulted 31 « ,' ': in its publication in sever· al editions: A thirtyfive page analysis of the t r Ir,Ed secession crisis, Holt's letter provides 0 significant insight into the antiseces 4 j=,» , * sion arguments employed by Kentucky' s unionists. In it,he attacked both secession and neutrality,admitting only that if C. I s . I forced to choose, he preferred the 1atter. 1 He argued that the secess]. on crisis rep51 9' resented the final step in a southern plot 2- :- that had existed since the 1830s and that 3 „ the actions of the southern states proved that they,and not the Lincoln administration ,were the aggressors. Holt assailed secessionist leaders as a deceitful minority intent on destroying the union of states for their own benefit. Kentucky' s interests...