Articles.--An Introduction to Rebel Dignitaries.--Governor
Jackson.--Sterling Price.--Jeff. Thompson.--Activity at
Cairo.--Kentucky Neutrality.--The Rebels occupy Columbus.


The Border States were not prompt to follow the example of the States
on the Gulf and South Atlantic coast. Missouri and Kentucky were
loyal, if the voice of the majority is to be considered the voice of
the population. Many of the wealthier inhabitants were, at the
outset, as they have always been, in favor of the establishment of
an independent Southern Government. Few of them desired an appeal to
arms, as they well knew the Border States would form the front of the
Confederacy, and thus become the battle-field of the Rebellion. The
greater part of the population of those States was radically opposed
to the secession movement, but became powerless under the noisy,
political leaders who assumed the control. Many of these men, who were
Unionists in the beginning, were drawn into the Rebel ranks on
the plea that it would be treason to refuse to do what their State
Government had decided upon.

The delegates to the Missouri State Convention were elected in
February, 1861, and assembled at St. Louis in the following April.
Sterling Price, afterward a Rebel general, was president of this
Convention, and spoke in favor of keeping the State in the Union. The
Convention thought it injudicious for Missouri to secede, at least at
that time, and therefore she was not taken out. This discomfited the
prime movers of the secession schemes, as they had counted upon the
Convention doing the desired work. In the language of one of their
own number, "they had called a Convention to take the State out of the
Union, and she must be taken out at all hazards." Therefore a new line