This organization, under Buckner, existed when neutrality was instituted, and the new doctrines gave it and the traitors who led it additional strength, while it served to cloak their designs. Great numbers of the leading Unionists of the state joined with the rebel leaders in support of this doctrine, ridiculous and inconsistent as it now appears to have been. A large majority of the people who had voted against secession also became committed to the visionary doctrine, until it came to be the accepted policy of the state; so that, when Lovell Rousseau, in the Senate, in May, 1861, denounced neutrality as a mask of the secessionists on the one hand, and a disgraceful yielding of the Unionists on the other, he found few who agreed with him, and less who seconded him in his avowed purpose of abolishing neutrality, and placing the state, at all times, in her proper position as a true member of the Union, amid the disasters of war as well as in the prosperity of peace. The public were not prepared to follow him, and he was forced to accept neutrality as a compromise between union and secession, between right and wrong, but doing so under public protest in the Senate of the state, and declaring on every occasion which offered that it was a debasing position, which he intended to abandon as soon as he could induce the state to follow him. He found little support in this honorable war upon neutrality until the secessionists, under Buckner, went a step farther, and proposed, after hostilities had fairly begun, to make the neutrality of Kentucky an "armed neutrality," urging that the state troops be armed to resist encroachments from either rebel or Union troops. In this proposition Rousseau saw an opportunity for forcing a direct issue with the rebels, and he was quick to take advantage of it. He saw in it actual aid to the rebellion. Against this scheme, which proposed the appropriation of three millions of dollars to arm the "Kentucky State Guard," he at once began a crusade as earnest as it was untiring. He denounced the State Guard and its leaders as secessionists and traitors, stormed at them in Senate-halls and on the stump, and not only defeated the bill, but succeeded very happily in dividing the State Guard into two rival organizations, known as the "Home Guards" (Unionists) and "State Guardsmen" (rebels). He called it at the time "separating the sheep from the goats." It was a most fortunate achievement; for it not only saved thousands of young men belonging to the State Guard from being unwittingly drawn into the rebel army, but precipitated the designs of the rebels, and hastened the defection which was inevitable. This was accomplished under personal difficulties, opposition, and dangers, which only made the labor more delightful to a person of Rousseau's temperament. He delights in opposition; is in his element only when in the minority, and strongly opposed; and his belligerent disposition led him to gladly