As Mr. Markland, a prominent Kentuckian, relates, in his reminiscences of the period:  “Immediately a campaign for the Union was begun in Kentucky.  The State could not be dragooned into open secession, therefore the neutrality policy was adopted.  That policy was more rigidly observed by Mr. Lincoln than it was by his opponents, but he was not misled by it.  Judge Joseph Holt made eloquent appeals for the Union through the columns of the press and from the forum, as did the Speeds, the Goodloes, and many others of prominence.  Rousseau, Jacobs, Poundbaker, and others, stood guard in the Legislature, and by their eloquence stayed the tide of disunion there.  The labors of Judge Holt, the Speeds, the Goodloes, Cassius M. Clay, and their followers, had brought forth fruit for the Union.  The patriotic men in the Legislature had done their work well.  The men in the camps on the north side of the Ohio river moved over into Kentucky, and the invasion of Confederates which was to sweep Kentucky into secession was at an end.  Kentucky was saved to the Union by the wise counsel and pacific policy of Abraham Lincoln.”

A special session of Congress convened on the 4th of July, in obedience to the summons of the President in his proclamation of April 15.  The following day the message of the Executive rehearsed to the joint Houses the circumstances which had rendered their assembling necessary.  It portrayed in clear and succinct words the situation of affairs, the aggressive acts of the States aiming to disrupt the Federal Union, and the measures adopted by the administration to frustrate their attempts.  The assailants of the Government, said the President, “have forced upon the country the distinct issue, ‘immediate dissolution or blood.’  And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States.  It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional Republic or Democracy—­a Government of the people by the same people—­can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes.  It presents the question whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration according to organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily, without any pretense, break up their Government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth.  It forces us to ask, ’Is there, in all Republics, this inherent and fatal weakness?  Must a Government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?’” The message requested of Congress “the legal means for making this contest a short and decisive one; that you place at the control of the Government, for the work, at least four hundred thousand men and $400,000,000.  That number of men is about one-tenth of those of proper ages within the regions where, apparently, all are willing to engage; and the sum is less than a twenty-third