(Excerpt from Message of Governor Magoffin, to the General...)
Excerpt from Message of Governor Magoffin, to the General Assembly of Kentucky: At the Regular Session, Sept., 1861 Kentucky, earnestly anxious to preserve and perpetuate the Union and the government established by our fathers, presented the olive branch to their northern brethren, in the form of proposed amend ments to the constitution. Those amendments, presented by a d1stin g'uished Senator from Kentucky,p11oposed no aggression upon any northern rights. They asked no new rights for the South. They simply required fresh guarantees for existing rights; and they de manded less for the South than the Supreme Court had solemnly decided the South to be constitutionallyentitled to enjoy. These amendments, accepted by the North, would have been satisfactory to the South. The now President and the late Secretary of State of the Confederate States, then Senators of the United States, avowed their willingness to accept the Crittenden amendments as satisfactory to the South. Their acceptance by the dominant party in Congress would have diminished no earthly right or enjoyment of the North; nor added one earthly right to the South, except a pledge of future tranquility in the. Enjoyment of existing constitutional rights. The olive branch thus tendered was rudely repelled by the North; All other proposals of compromise, adjustment, and peace were arroa gantly rejected, and the insolent menace of coercion was insultingly I held in terrorem over a free people! About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Beriah Magoffin was a brother of James Wiley Magoffin, was born on April 18, 1815, in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. His father, Beriah Magoffin, was a native of County Down, Ireland; his mother, Jane McAfee, was a daughter of Samuel McAfee, an early Kentucky pioneer.
Magoffin attended Centre College at Danville and was graduated there in 1835. Thereupon he began the study of law privately and afterward entered the law department of Transylvania College at Lexington where he finished his course in 1838.
Immediately after his graduation, Magoffin moved to Mississippi and began the practice of law in Jackson. He remained in Mississippi only about a year, however, returning to Kentucky in 1839 in ill health. He now began the practice of law in his native town, and upon the death of his partner, he succeeded to a remunerative business.
In 1840, Gov. Rober P. Letcher, a Whig, appointed him, a Democrat, police judge for Harrodsburg. Ten years later, he ran for the state Senate and was elected, but the next year, 1851, he refused to make the race for Congress. He ran for Democratic elector in 1844, 1848, 1852, and 1856, but it was only in the last year that he served since Kentucky was lost by the Democrats in the other years. He was also delegated to the Democratic national conventions in 1848, 1856, and 1860.
In 1855, he was nominated for lieutenant governor, but the Know-Nothings won the state that year. In 1859, he was nominated for governor and was elected over Joshua F. Bell by a vote of more than 8, 000. He took office just on the eve of secession. Realizing the dangers which would beset this strategic border-state, Magoffin did all he could to prevent the disruption of the Democratic party at Charleston.
Stripped of his power and threatened with assassination he resigned in August 1862, though he was allowed to designate his successor. He retired to Harrodsburg for the remainder of the war and did not reenter politics except from 1867 to 1869 when he represented his county, Mercer, in the legislature.
After the war, he took the position that Kentucky should accept with resignation the results of the conflict. He advocated Kentucky's ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and the granting of civil rights to the negroes. This position lost him the friendship of many Democrats. In 1878, President Hayes appointed him an honorary commissioner to the Paris Exposition.
Magoffin died on February 28, 1885, on his ancestral estate in Harrodsburg.
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(Excerpt from Message of Governor Magoffin, to the General...)
On December 9, 1860, Magoffin presented to the governors of the slave states a plan for saving the Union, but it failed to be accepted. He then became an ardent advocate of the Crittenden Compromise. Although a believer in secession as a right, he was opposed to the piecemeal process of leaving the Union.
He pleaded for a convention of all the Southern states and declared that a solution could be worked out within forty-eight hours which would suit both sections. Believing that the people of his state should vote on what they wished to do, he called the legislature to meet in January 1861. But the legislature, which had elected John C. Breckinridge United States senator, refused to call a sovereign convention.
Magoffin defiantly refused Lincoln's call for troops, and a week later, he refused Davis' call for troops, though secretly he allowed Confederate recruiting agents to raise their banners in the state. He summoned another session of the legislature in May, which again refused to call a sovereign convention. Instead, it allowed six arbiters, chosen in party caucus, and including Magoffin, to work out a plan which the legislature pledged itself to adopt.
This move resulted in the state's declaring its neutrality, the House and Senate passing separate resolutions, and the governor issuing his proclamation on May 20. Magoffin came to terms with McClellan, in command of troops in Cincinnati, and established understandings with both President Davis and President Lincoln. But neutrality was not enough; he sought to secure the adhesion of Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, and Tennessee to a plan for mediation, but the Northern states refused to entertain the idea.
Kentucky's position was impossible. By September her neutrality had been broken so many times by both sides that the Confederates decided to march into the state in full force, thereby beating the Federals in by a short time. The legislature passed a resolution calling upon the Governor to order the Confederates out.
Magoffin vetoed it, but the legislature, by this time strongly Union in its feelings, passed it over his veto, as indeed it did many other bills looking toward Kentucky's full participation on the side of the Union. Magoffin obstructed this policy wherever he thought the constitution was not being observed and thereby incurred the ill will of the Unionists.
Through judicious investments in Chicago, Magoffin became one of the wealthiest men in the state.
Magoffin had married, in April 1840, Anna Shelby, a granddaughter of Gov. Isaac Shelby, and to them were born five sons and five daughters.
1773 - 1843
Born in 1779.
31 March 1801 - 23 April 1888
1799 - 27 September 1868
1818 - 3 November 1893
14 August 1824 - 25 February 1883
1817 - 1865
1808 - 24 December 1892
August 5, 1818 - 1880
August 1854-1919
25 June 1849 - 20 August 1873
17 February 1859 - 2 October 1934
1843 - 1932
3 October 1851 - 24 May 1936
