Louisville Under Martial Law: A Civilian Remembers the Opening of the Kentucky Campaign

“After a season of seeming peace, our beautiful city has put on its war mask again.”

          In the early days of September 1862 as the rumors of Kirby Smith’s invasion spread through the state, Marie Butler wrote back to her family in Ohio describing the panic that gripped the city of Louisville, Kentucky.

          “Louisville is under martial law and every male citizen between 18 and 45 is ordered to enroll himself in the militia and exempts are to form a reserve,” she said. “The Rebel forces are said to be advancing on Louisville and every preparation is being made to meet them. Meanwhile, bank specie and hospital stores are being sent across the river to Indiana for safe keeping. Arrest of disloyal citizens are being made every day by scores and traitors in our midst are beginning to feel that the government which they have insulted so long has not lost its power or dignity.”

          Marie Butler’s letters describing life in wartime Louisville first saw publication in the September 18, 1862, edition of the Summit County Beacon published in Akron, Ohio.

 

The entrance of General Lovell H. Rousseau's brigade into Louisville was the first of thousands of reinforcements that would arrive in the city in September 1862. In the meantime, the city was declared under martial law and all able-bodied men were called upon to help erect the city's defenses. Near the end of the month, Don Carlos Buell arrived with his army after a 300-mile march from northern Alabama. In the coming days, Buell would add dozens of newly raised regiments to his army and by early October was marching south to confront Braxton Bragg. 

          Doubtless your correspondence can have little of vital interest to write which has not already appeared in your columns, but in this time of public and private conflict between loyalty and rebellion, no Union voice can be raised without a listener and no Union tongue can be silent.

          With the exception of the guerilla excitement, Louisville has been quiet for several months but now all is commotion again. The city is threatened by an invading foe without and a treacherous one within. With the return of the beautiful autumn days, we are living over again the hopes and fears and the scenes of a year ago. Again, our beautiful state is invaded by a large force of the Rebel army under Smith and Morgan. Lexington is taken, Frankfort is evacuated, and ere this probably in the hands of the Rebels. The legislature now, for the first time in the history of our commonwealth, is convened in Louisville having brought with it all the valuable papers and archives of the state.

Louisville is under martial law and every male citizen between 18 and 45 is ordered to enroll himself in the militia and exempts are to form a reserve. The Rebel forces are said to be advancing on Louisville and every preparation is being made to meet them. Meanwhile, bank specie and hospital stores are being sent across the river to Indiana for safe keeping. Arrest of disloyal citizens are being made every day by scores and traitors in our midst are beginning to feel that the government which they have insulted so long has not lost its power or dignity.

Troops are coming in from the North and South. An hour ago, the Louisville Legion under General Rousseau came in on the Nashville train. This gallant general and his brigade are citizens of Louisville and were organized during the days of Kentucky neutrality when they were not even allowed to encamp on Kentucky soil. One year ago, this noble band were the first to meet the Rebel Buckner when at the head of an invading force he was marching on to Louisville. Afterwards, the names of Rousseau and the Louisville Legion were recorded on the bloody field of Shiloh and now these brave men have come home again to stand between danger and their beloved city.

General Lovell H. Rousseau

After a season of seeming peace, our beautiful city has put on its war mask again. All through the busy day and the unquiet night, long lines of glistening bayonets and the steady rumble of long government trains tell us that an army is near and war is upon us. Even as I write my pen is keeping time to the roll of a drum and three times, I have laid it down and rushed to the door with our dear old flag whose well-worn and faded stripes have, during the last year, waved a welcome to more than 150,000 men.

It would make many a Northern heart leap with an unwonted thrill of patriotic joy could he stand on Broadway, our military thoroughfare, and see the cry of soldering coming bring to the gates of every loyal dwelling, a motley crowd of black and white faces, while here and there a patriotic family are ventilating their patriotism and flags. Slowly they come, a broad line of weary men, toiling through the heat and dust with colors flying and bayonets gleaming. But at the first sight of the stars and stripes waved to welcome them, cheer after cheer rises, answered by the cheers of women and children and our brave men seem to look through the gloom of the present to a time emblemed by our stars and stripes which are indeed to them bright rainbows on the cloud of war.

We have just received the latest news; the star and bars, the flag of the rebellion, is floating from our capitol at Frankfort. Kentucky seems doomed to reap at last the bloody, bitter harvest sown in her early indecision. Many prophesied this to the writer, during a late visit to your patriotic county, and now dear old friends, now that these things have come upon us, we cannot refrain from reminding them that the same wicked hands that a year ago bound Kentucky hand and foot, are still laboring to cast her forth out of the Union. The same brave Union men who saved her from utter shipwreck then are laboring and suffering for her still as we Northern patriots are called upon to labor and suffer.

Louisville is full of refugees who have fled from devastated homes to our loyal city, stripped of all earthly possessions but a loyal country rather than live under the shade of the flag of rebellion. In view of this, we would say to our Northern friends, give us a deeper love, a more enduring sympathy in this, our hour of trial. It is easy for you to be loyal. Your houses are not marked for waving the dear old flag of the Union. You lie down in peace and arise in safety and pay not for your patriotism the price of a desolated home.

For several months our hospitals have been well supplied and not overfull, but now the sick and wounded are being brought in from the surrounding country. Lebanon and Bardstown have been evacuated and the sick brought to our city, and now with a near prospect of a battle within sight and sound of our homes, we have nerved ourselves to renewed exertions, feeling that our labor is not yet done. To our Northern friends, to whom we have never appealed in vain, we still look for sympathy and aid. Again, we appeal to them for something for our wounded men. Next to God, our country is in our soldiers’ hands, our soldiers are in ours.

Source:

Letter from Marie R. Butler, Summit County Beacon (Ohio), September 18, 1862, pg. 1

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