ntil the ensuing August. Mr. Lincoln desired to give
ample time for canvassing Kentucky for the special election, which
was immediately ordered by the governor of the State for the
twentieth of June. From the first, Mr. Lincoln had peculiar interest
in the course and conduct of Kentucky. It was his native State,
and Mr. Clay had been his political exemplar and ideal. He believed
also that in the action of her people would be found the best index
and the best test of the popular opinion of the Border slave States.
He did every thing therefore that he could properly do, to aid
Kentucky in reaching a conclusion favorable to the Union. He was
rewarded with a great victory. Of the ten representatives chosen,
nine were decided friends of the Union, with the venerable Crittenden
at their head, ably seconded by Robert Mallory and William H.
Wadsworth. Only one member, Henry C. Burnett, was disloyal to the
government, and he, after a few months' tarry in the Union councils,
went South and joined the Rebellion. The popular vote showed 92,365
for the Union candidates, and 36,995 for the Secession candidates,
giving a Union majority of more than 55,000. Mr. Lincoln regarded
the result in Kentucky as in the highest degree auspicious, and as
amply vindicating the wisdom of delaying the extra session of
Congress. The effect was to stimulate a rapidly developing loyalty
in the western part of Virginia, to discourage rebellious movements
in Missouri, and to arrest Disunion tendencies in Maryland.

Under the protection of the administration, and inspired by the
confidence of its support, the Union men of Kentucky had done for
that State what her Union men might have done for Tennessee if John
Bell and his Whig associates had been as bold and as true to their
old principles and John J. Crittenden and Garrett Davis had proved
in Kentucky. The conduct of Mr. Bell was a sad surprise to his
Northern friends, and a keen mortification to those Southern Whigs
who had remained firm in their attachment to the Union. The vote
which he had received in the South at the Presidential election
was very nearly as large as that given to Breckinridge. The vote
of Bell and Douglas united, exceeded that given to Breckinridge in
the slave States by more than a hundred thousand. The popular
judgment in the North had been that the Disunion element in the
South was massed in support of Breckinridge, and that all who
preferred the candidacy of Bell