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APRIL 17TH -
Lincoln has issued a call for 75,000 troops! This means war surely - Warner wants to volunteer! Think of it, a boy only 14; of course Pa won’t hear to such a thing - even if Kentucky were not still trying to remain neutral. But that position can’t be held much longer and is really only in name - for every man, woman and child is on one side or the other. Every day we hear of some one we know going to join the Rebels in Tennessee or the Union Regiment camped across the Ohio at Louisville. Mr. Grider and Ben Bristow have more mysterious meetings. I am quite sure they are quietly enlisting men - John Ward was out today to say goodbye - he is going to his home in Greensburg - to see his father and he told me he would join the first legally organized troops Kentucky furnished to fight for the Union. Mr. Rutherford is going back to Virginia next week. He says, though he is opposed to secession as a principle he wants to go with his state. Dear old Uncle Henry says very little but when Mr. Rutherford said that - his blue eyes filled with tears and saying, “I wish I was young enough to go with you, Tom” - he left the room and later I saw the old man going slowly towards the river without his fishpole, which showed he was much troubled in mind.
Dear Pa’s position is so hard and yet he does not swerve from his duty in being true to the preservation of the Union - and yet his love for the South is just as great. In fact because he so loves the South, he does not want her ruined by disunion and giving up the old flag and government. Ma puts the situation very strongly when she says - “she never will as long as she lives consent to be driven out of the Union and give up the Flag and all its stands for, for which her father and forefathers fought, to a lot of meddling Yankees and she never will forgive the hot-headed fire eaters of the South for going out of the Union and giving the Northern fanatics such advantage.
