With the sectional crisis increasingly engaging the state, large meetings were held in Kentucky aiming to demonstrate citizen's loyalty to the Union and to plead for a political solution that would preserve it.  The first of these was held at the court-house in Maysville, Mason county, in northern Kentucky and on the border with Ohio.  (By John Osborne) 

Senator William M. Gwin of California said in the U.S. Senate Chamber that  "I believe that the slave-holding states of this confederacy can establish a separate and independent government that will lie impregnable to the assaults of all foreign enemies" and that that if the southern states went out of the union "California would be found with the south."  He erased these remarks from the official record, however, fearing political damage at home. (By John Osborne)