Personal Recollections of Distinguished Generals

General Rousseau, of whom it is proposed to speak in this chapter, is not a strategist nor a tactician according to the rules of West Point, in whose sciences he is uneducated save by the practical experience of the past four years of war. He makes no pretensions to a knowledge of engineering, or strategy, or grand tactics, is not even versed in the details of logistics; but of all those who have won reputation as hard, pertinacious, and dashing fighters, none more deserve their fame than he. His battles have been brilliant, if short; desperate and bloody contests, in which more has resulted from courage and the enthusiasm imparted to the men than from strategy and tactics. If examination is made into Rousseau's career, it will be found that he has ever been in the front line of battle, not only at Buena Vista, in our miniature contest with Mexico, at Shiloh, Perryville, and Stone River, but in every aspect, and under all circumstances of his career, always ahead, and leading his people in politics as in war. A self-educated and self-made man, of strong intellectual and reasoning powers, quick to resolve and prompt to act, he appears at all times in that noble attitude of one who has led instead of following public sentiment. In youth he was left the junior member of an orphaned family, of which his habit of decision made him the head and chief dependence. Emigrating in 1841 to Indiana, he made himself, by his talents, the leader of a party which had never attained success before his advent, and never won it after his retirement. His personal popularity retained him a seat in the Senate of Indiana for six years. In the middle of the term for which he was elected in 1848, he returned to Kentucky, and began the practice of law at Louisville. The Democrats of the Indiana Senate insisted he should resign, because a non-resident, but his constituents would not allow him to retire; and Rousseau threatened in retaliation to return to reside in Indiana and again run for the Senate. The Democrats were afraid of this very thing, and opposition to Rousseau's retention of his seat for the rest of the term was silenced. The Democrats contented themselves with trying to throw ridicule on him by calling him "the member from Louisville."

Returning to Kentucky in 1849, Rousseau was one of the few of her sons who were prepared to second or adopt the views then agitated by Henry Clay in regard to emancipating slaves. In 1855, when "Know-Nothingism" had swallowed up his old party – the Whig – and held temporarily a great majority in his city, county, and state, Rousseau became the leader of the small minority which rejected the false doctrines of the "American" party. His bitter denunciation of its practices, its tendencies to mob violence, and his persistent opposition to its encroachments on individual rights, nearly cost him his life at the hands of a mob who attacked him while defending a German in the act of depositing his vote. He was shot through the abdomen, and confined for two months to his bed, but had the satisfaction to know, when well again, that the party he had fought almost single-handed had no longer an organized existence. He was also instrumental, in 1855, in saving two of the Catholic churches of Louisville from destruction at the hands of a mob of Know-Nothings, and gained in popularity with both parties, when the passion and excitement of the time had passed away, by these exhibitions of his great courage and sense of right and justice.

It was not merely, however, through the political excitement of the day that Rousseau won his popularity and established his character. For many years past – for at least two generations before the war – the courts of Kentucky have been noted for the many important and exciting criminal trials which have come up in them, and no bar presented finer opportunities for a young criminal lawyer. From the time of Rousseau's return to Kentucky in 1849 to the period when he went into the army in 1861, no important criminal case was tried in the Kentucky courts in which he did not figure on one side or the other. In 1843, the old system of pleading in the common law courts of England, as it existed before it had been clipped and modified by legislation, was in vogue at the Indiana bar, and on his advent in that state Rousseau soon found that no lawyer could practice respectably there without special pleading. A lawyer who was not a special pleader would in those days frequently find his case and himself thrown out of court, without exactly understanding how it was done. He therefore studied special pleading as a system in itself, taking the old English authors on the subject, and, after a few years' hard study and practice, soon made himself one of the best special pleaders in the West. When he returned to Kentucky, this system, not so thoroughly in use there, gave him several triumphs, which at once established his character and gave him plenty of practice. As a jury lawyer Rousseau has had no rival in his district since 1855; and the late Attorney General of the United States, James Speed, acknowledges himself indebted to Rousseau for several of his worst defeats before juries. Knowing the particular and peculiar legal talents of Rousseau, the attorney general employed him to aid in the prosecution of Jeff Davis for treason, and to assist Hon. John H. Clifford and William M. Evarts in the important duty of endeavoring to define treason.

There occurred in Louisville in 1857 a trial of a very remarkable character, which illustrates in a very interesting manner Rousseau's legal ability and his decision and daring. A family of five or six persons, named Joyce, were murdered, and their bodies burned in their house near the city. Suspicion fell upon some negroes on the adjoining plantation, and they were seized by the neighbors and threatened with hanging if they did not confess. One or two of them were hung up for a few moments and then let down nearly exhausted, but still persisted in declaring their innocence. Another, however, tied to a stake, and the fagots fired around him, agreed to confess, and, to avoid death by burning, confessed that himself and the others arrested with him had committed the murder. The negroes – four of them, all belonging to one man – were thrown into jail to await their trial. Their master was satisfied that they were innocent, and determined to engage the best available counsel for them. This was easier to propose than to do, for so great was the excitement among the people that, extending to the lawyers, no other counsel besides Rousseau could be retained, and he was compelled to undertake the defense unaided. He had always been very popular in the district in which the murder had been committed, and many of his old friends from the neighborhood visited him, and urged him not to sacrifice his popularity with them by defending such abased and brutal criminals as these negroes. In vain Rousseau urged that the greater the guilt the greater the necessity for a lawyer. His friends could listen to no reason, and saw no justification in defending negroes who deserved to be hung according to their own confession. When Rousseau intimated that he did not believe the confession, and alluded to the manner in which it had been extorted, they would go away in disgust, and many cursed him for "a damned abolitionist."

When the trial came on, the people of the district in which the murder had been committed crowded the court-house night and day. The sole surviving member of the family, a young man also named Joyce, occupied a seat within the railing of the court-room, while the crowd of his friends were kept outside of the bar. The feeling of animosity in the crowd against the negroes was only kept from breaking out into fury by the certainty of their conviction and punishment by law; but fears were justly entertained that some development of the trial might so excite the by-standers as to cause the instantaneous hanging of the negroes. This fear was fully justified, and an attempt to hang them was only frustrated by the prompt action and daring of Rousseau. The sole evidence for the prosecution was that of the negro who had confessed, and he was put upon the stand, after the usual preliminaries, to give his statement in open court. The negro went on, in a hesitating manner, to give, with many contradictions, the story of how the murder had been committed, and the house fired in several places. He stated that, after the house was almost encircled in flames, the youngest child of the murdered family, a little girl of two years, who had been overlooked in the hurry of the massacre, aroused by the light, sat up in bed and asked, calling to her mother, to know "if she was cooking breakfast." At this part of the evidence there was a deathlike stillness through the court-room. The crowd, horrified, seemed afraid to draw a breath for a moment, and the negro witness himself appeared to fully comprehend the danger of the situation and hesitated. At last one old gentleman – I think he was one of the jury – shading his eye with his hands as if to shut out the scene, uttered, in a pitiful tone through his clenched teeth, the sound which I can only express by "tut! tut! tut! tut!" The half hissing sound could be heard all over the court-room, and as it was heard a cold shudder ran through the crowd, followed a moment after by crimson flushes of passion on bronzed cheeks. In the midst of the silent excitement – for it was an excitement so profound as almost robbed men of the power of speech – young Joyce sprang to his feet and exclaimed,

"I want all my friends who think these negroes are guilty to help me hang them."

He was answered by a wild shout and by the click of hundreds of pistols. As he had spoken, young Joyce drew a huge knife from a sheath fastened to his body, and, encouraged by the answering cry of his friends, sprang toward the negroes. As he did so, however, Rousseau, who stood between him and the prisoners, caught him by the throat with one hand, and with the other clasped the wrist of the arm which held the uplifted knife. It was but the work of a moment for a powerful man like Rousseau to thrust Joyce back again in his seat and pinion him there while he turned and confronted the crowd, who had made a rush for the negroes, but who were being beaten back by the sheriff and one or two policemen. As soon as they saw the position of young Joyce, still held in his chair by the powerful arm of Rousseau, the crowd made a rush in that direction. Rousseau was again prompt and decisive.

"Mr. Joyce," he said, "tell your friends that while they hang the negroes I'll attend to you."

Joyce waved his friends back with the only hand left free, and quiet again succeeded. It is hardly probable that even this promptness would have saved Rousseau had he not been personally popular with the crowd. As the crowd shrank back he released Joyce and turned abruptly to the judge, who had ordered the sheriff to summon a force of the police to protect the prisoners, and said,

"Don't do any thing of the sort. Don't do any thing of the sort, your honor. We can protect the prisoners and ourselves. There are enough true men here to protect them from the fury of this young man."

"Where are your friends?" cried the still furious crowd.

"You are!" exclaimed Rousseau, turning abruptly to them – I might say on them. And then, without a single second's hesitation, he began a brief speech, in which he passionately urged and entreated them to aid him in preventing Joyce, whom he characterized as "this unfortunate young man," from committing a deed which would forever be a curse to him as long as he had a memory of it, and which would forever disgrace them as a law-abiding community. While he was yet speaking the crowd calmed down, and when he had finished painting the enormity of the offense and the remorse of the young man if he had been permitted to commit so great a crime, they cheered him, and through the room went frequent and repeated whispers, "He's right;" "he's right;" "Rousseau's always right!"

The trial thenceforth proceeded in quiet until the announcement of the verdict of "not guilty," when another terrible scene ensued; but provision having been made for such an occurrence, the negroes were carried off to jail for protection. The people were satisfied that the negroes were guilty, and the verdict (obtained by Rousseau by showing the inconsistencies of the confession and the circumstances, the threats and the terror, under which it was extorted) only increased their passion. The jail was surrounded, and the night after the acquittal the negroes were taken out by the mob and hung on the trees in the City Hall grounds. During the riot the mayor of the city, Mr. Pilcher, while endeavoring to quiet the crowd, was struck by a missile in the head, and died soon after from the effects of the injury received.

This and several other trials eventually resulted in increasing Rousseau's popularity. Two or three of his most important cases embraced the defense of men accused and undoubtedly guilty of aiding negroes to escape from slavery. It is hardly comprehensible that less than a decade ago this offense was considered the most criminal act a man could commit in Kentucky, or that men were sentenced to fifteen years' hard labor for such offenses, or that convicts are still working out their term for these offenses in Southern penitentiaries. To engage in the defense of such criminals a few years ago, even in the latitude of Louisville, was to be set down as an "abolitionist," and but few of the Kentucky lawyers of the decade just before the war cared to bear such a character. Rousseau, without courting the reputation, did not fear it; and his manly bearing in all such cases, and in the political excitement of the time, so advanced him in popular estimation that in 1860 he was elected to the State Senate of Kentucky without opposition and as the candidate of both parties, whose only rivalry with regard to him was as to which should first secure his acceptance of the nomination. It was while holding this position as state senator that Rousseau began his bold opposition to Kentucky neutrality, which brought him so prominently before the country, and opened to him that career in which he has won so much honor and such a high rank.

The true story of Kentucky neutrality is one of the most romantic episodes of the war. The visionary schemers who planned the Southern Confederacy were guilty of dozens of chimerical and fallacious schemes, whose shallowness is now so apparent that one wonders how the Southern people were ever deceived by them. The rebel leaders declared – and declared it so often that they actually believed it themselves – that the Northern people would not fight. They boasted, and boasted so frequently that they began after a time to believe, that one Southern man could really whip five Yankees. They deceived themselves for so many years with the doctrine of States Rights that leaders and people began to believe that a fraction of the body corporate could exist without the aid of the rest, and offered to this modern and enlightened age a national illustration of Æsop's fable of the stomach's folly. When the schemes of the rebel leaders were culminating, and they found that the people of the Border States were not disposed, like those of the Cotton States, to be hurried, regardless of consequences, into a war in which they had nothing to gain and every thing to lose, they instituted, with a shrewdness worthy the fame of a Philadelphia lawyer, the no less visionary schemes that there could be law without power, and that a portion of the body, and that portion the heart, could suspend its operations while the rest was being violently agitated. In Tennessee, where the first-named scheme was successful, the rebels deceived the Union men into advocating the doctrine of "no coercion." In Kentucky, where their complete success in carrying out the second design was frustrated only by the sagacity of Rousseau, the rebels deceived the Unionists into advocating the doctrine of "neutrality." Twice the people of Tennessee voted against co-operation with the rebel states; and when the rebels again dared to test the question at the polls, they embodied in the contest the principle that "the general government could not coerce a sovereign state," and into the support of this doctrine the anti-secessionists foolishly acquiesced. The first act of the President in calling for troops to enforce the laws was construed into coercion, and the state seceded. Three times the State of Kentucky voted by large majorities against secession, but the rebels did not despair, and, having failed to get the people to secede, or to declare against the right of coercion, they endeavored, with but partial success, to commit the authorities and the Unionists to what was called "a strict neutrality."

The rebels in Kentucky were under the leadership of a Cassius-like character named Simon Bolivar Buckner. He had been in the secrets and the interests of the dis-union leaders for years before the first overt act of secession was committed, and for three or four years previous to 1861 had been engaged in schemes for carrying the state out of the Union, and for furnishing troops to the rebel army that was to be. The principal of these schemes was the organization of the very irregular militia of the state into a strong body, known as the "State Guard." Buckner, by every means in his reach – and his associates in treason, who were also in power, gave him great assistance – fostered this scheme. He created a martial spirit among the young men of Kentucky, and by the aid of Tilghman, Hunt, Hanson, and others, who eventually became rebel generals, extended this spirit to every part of the state. He was a man eminently fitted for such a task, and by his duplicity and skill undermined the faith in and love for the Union existing among the young men who formed the State Guard. Years before the majority of them suspected that secession would ever be attempted, they had grown to look upon the institutions, doctrines, and even the flag of the Union with indifference, if not contempt. The flag of Kentucky became the flag of the guard, and Buckner even attempted to expel that of the government from the organization. The various uniforms of the different militia organizations of different districts were discarded, under Buckner's orders, for a uniform of gray, which eventually proved to be that of the rebel army. The various arms of the different companies were discarded for weapons of a uniform calibre. The organization, which had originally embraced only companies, was extended to divisions and regiments, and brigades were formed and drilled in encampments as such. In fact, nearly a year before South Carolina seceded, the State Guard of Kentucky, with Simon Bolivar Buckner as Inspector General commanding, was simply a body of recruits for the embryo rebel army. It is slightly foreign to the subject, but I may as well add here the fact I have never heard stated before, that, at the same time, and undoubtedly for the same purpose, the martial spirit of the youth of all the Southern States was being encouraged. Militia organization of the various states were being thoroughly remodeled and systematized, the best of arms obtained, uniforms of the same kind purchased, and, to all appearances, the rebel army, as it afterward existed, was being recruited in 1858-9 and '60.

This organization, under Buckner, existed when neutrality was instituted, and the new doctrines gave it and the traitors who led it additional strength, while it served to cloak their designs. Great numbers of the leading Unionists of the state joined with the rebel leaders in support of this doctrine, ridiculous and inconsistent as it now appears to have been. A large majority of the people who had voted against secession also became committed to the visionary doctrine, until it came to be the accepted policy of the state; so that, when Lovell Rousseau, in the Senate, in May, 1861, denounced neutrality as a mask of the secessionists on the one hand, and a disgraceful yielding of the Unionists on the other, he found few who agreed with him, and less who seconded him in his avowed purpose of abolishing neutrality, and placing the state, at all times, in her proper position as a true member of the Union, amid the disasters of war as well as in the prosperity of peace.

The public were not prepared to follow him, and he was forced to accept neutrality as a compromise between union and secession, between right and wrong, but doing so under public protest in the Senate of the state, and declaring on every occasion which offered that it was a debasing position, which he intended to abandon as soon as he could induce the state to follow him. He found little support in this honorable war upon neutrality until the secessionists, under Buckner, went a step farther, and proposed, after hostilities had fairly begun, to make the neutrality of Kentucky an "armed neutrality," urging that the state troops be armed to resist encroachments from either rebel or Union troops. In this proposition Rousseau saw an opportunity for forcing a direct issue with the rebels, and he was quick to take advantage of it. He saw in it actual aid to the rebellion. Against this scheme, which proposed the appropriation of three millions of dollars to arm the "Kentucky State Guard," he at once began a crusade as earnest as it was untiring. He denounced the State Guard and its leaders as secessionists and traitors, stormed at them in Senate-halls and on the stump, and not only defeated the bill, but succeeded very happily in dividing the State Guard into two rival organizations, known as the "Home Guards" (Unionists) and "State Guardsmen" (rebels). He called it at the time "separating the sheep from the goats." It was a most fortunate achievement; for it not only saved thousands of young men belonging to the State Guard from being unwittingly drawn into the rebel army, but precipitated the designs of the rebels, and hastened the defection which was inevitable. This was accomplished under personal difficulties, opposition, and dangers, which only made the labor more delightful to a person of Rousseau's temperament. He delights in opposition; is in his element only when in the minority, and strongly opposed; and his belligerent disposition led him to gladly accept not only the numerous stump and street discussions and disputes, but even street quarrels and fights with the secessionists. The rebel sympathizers seldom dared attack him openly, his bold front, at all times maintained, making them prefer to exercise their strategy and trickery against him rather than come to open warfare. Upon him, as the head and front of the offending party, they poured all their abuse and vituperation, but dared to do little more.

This split in the State Guard soon proved a serious affair, and the "defection," as the traitors called the retirement of the Union men, became quite general. Every incident increased the feeling; every day saw the differences of opinions and the breach grow wider. On one occasion Buckner was reviewing the regiment of the Guard which was stationed at Lexington, Ky. The feeling between the partisans composing the regiment had become quite demonstrative, and on this occasion Captain Saunders D. Bruce, a Union officer of the regiment (subsequently colonel of the Twentieth Kentucky Infantry, now a resident of New York, and editor of the "Field, Turf, and Farm" newspaper), made his appearance in the line with two small United States flags as guidons for his company. Buckner, noticing them, approached Captain Bruce, ordered him to the front, in full view of the regiment, explained to him that Kentucky was neutral in the "unfortunate struggle" then going on, and directed him to replace the guidons by flags of the state. Bruce, without replying, turned to his company, and, as if about to obey, gave the orders, "Attention, company;" "Shoulder arms;" "Right face;" "Forward march," and away went the "Lexington Chasseurs" out of the line, and for that matter out of the State Guard. No attempt was made to stop the company, or to call Bruce to account for his "insubordination."

No sooner had the work of dividing the State Guard been thus accomplished, than Rousseau hastened to Washington to obtain permission from the President to raise troops in the state for the United States service. While on the way to Washington, he had an interview with General McClellan, then commanding the Western Department, at Cincinnati, and found him opposed to his scheme. McClellan sent to Washington his aid, Colonel Key (subsequently dismissed the service for disloyal utterances), to represent Rousseau's scheme as rash and ill-advised. At the same time, others were sent to Washington by the "mild-mannered" Unionists to urge the President not to grant Rousseau permission to raise troops, arguing that it would at once precipitate the invasion of the state by the rebels. Rousseau consequently found great difficulty in obtaining the required authority, but went at the question boldly.