idge, "a believer in the old
Democratic creed and a supporter of the South and her institutions,"[4]
took the same, if not higher ground. Referring to the Dred Scott decision
in a speech delivered in Ashland, Kentucky, in 1859, Breckenridge said:
"After this decision we had arrived at a point where we might reasonably
expect tranquillity and peace. The equality of rights and property of all
the states in the common Territory, having been stamped by the seal of
judicial authority, all good citizens might well acquiesce."[5] When the
Southern States seceded because of the threatened infringement of these
rights, the President of the United States, according to Breckenridge, had
no right to enlist men and no right to blockade the Southern ports, in
short, no right to wage war on these commonwealths. Lincoln had thus
overthrown constitutional government. If he was trying to preserve the
Union, he must do it in a constitutional way. Breckenridge wanted the Union
but contended that it would be no good without the Constitution.[6] To sum
up, as Southern Democrats they had helped to disrupt the Charleston
Convention, and developing into a strict Southern rights party, they had
through bolting made possible the election of Abraham Lincoln. They then
finally joined the States' rights party, which, boldly declaring the
election of Lincoln a just cause for the dissolution of the Union,
undertook to secede.[7]

With such radical leaders in control it might seem strange that, in a
State formed from an aristocratic commonwealth like Virginia and extending
into the fertile region of the Mississippi, these protagonists of States'
rights did not turn Kentucky over to the Confederacy. Exactly what part
did the rich slaveholders play during this crisis when the State was
called upon to decide the question between the North and South? What was
the position of such influential men as James B. Clay, George B. Hodge,
Cerro Gordo Williams, T. P. Porter, Roger W. Hansom, and S. B. Buckner?[8]

Other representative citizens, however, had been equally outspoken in
favor of the Union. Voicing the sentiment of the Union party, which on the
eighth of January met in Louisville to take steps to support the Federal
Government, Bell said: "Let us offer everything we can to avert the
torrent of evil, but let us always stand ready to support our rights in
the Union: the State is deeply and devotedly attached to the Union."[9]
Garrett Davis inquired: "Will