In Kentucky the wealthy planters and slaveholders, with many prominent exceptions, were inclined to share the lot of the seceding States; but the majority of the people still clung to the Union. Both sides of the exciting question were largely represented, and the contest between them was violent and bitter. For a time the specious compromise of neutrality was regarded as the panacea for the troubles of the State by the less violent of the people on both sides. Home Guards were enlisted and organized to protect the territory from invasion by either the Federal or the Confederate forces. The occupation of Columbus and Hickman on the Mississippi River by Southern troops, immediately followed by the taking of Paducah by General Grant with two regiments of Union soldiers from Cairo, practically dissolved the illusion of neutrality. The government at Washington never recognized this makeshift of those who loved the Union, but desired to protect slavery. It was honestly and sincerely cherished by good men of both parties, who desired to preserve the Union and save the State from the horrors of civil war. The government did not regard the seceded States as so many independent sovereignties, as the Secessionists claimed that they were, but as part and parcel of a union of States forming one consolidated nation, with no provision in its Constitution for a separation of any kind, or for the withdrawal of one or more of the individual members of the Union. The States which had pretended to dissolve their connection with the other members of the compact were considered as refractory members of the Union, in a state of insurrection against the sovereign authority of the nation, who were to be reduced to obedience and subjection by force of arms; for they had appealed to the logic of bayonets and cannon-balls in carrying out their disruption. With the duty of putting down the insurrection and subduing the refractory elements in the South on its hands, the government could not respect or even tolerate a neutrality which placed the State of Kentucky, four hundred miles in extent from east to west, between the loyal and the disloyal sections of its domain. If for no other purpose, armies of Federal troops must cross the country south of the Ohio in order to reach the seat of the Rebellion. The Home Guards were powerless to prevent the passage of the loyal armies through the State; and any attempt to do so would have been to fight the battle of the Confederate armies, and would have at once robbed neutrality of its transparent mask. A portion of these military bodies were doubtless honest in their intentions. Those who were not for the Union in this connection were practically against it. Later in the course of events, the Home Guards were incorporated in the armies of the Rebellion; and no doubt these organizations were used to a considerable extent to recruit the forces of the enemy.