McDowell wished him "God speed" in the undertaking, and they parted. Buckner returned to Louisville, halted but a day, and hastened southward to the rebel "Camp Boone" to doff his garb of neutrality for the Confederate gray. A change can not be said to have been necessary, for, as the rebels practiced neutrality in Kentucky, it was _bona fide_ rebellion, and wore the same outward garb. Three nights after the countermanding of the order to Rousseau to march to Missouri, Buckner invaded Kentucky and occupied Bowling Green. On the next day, September 17, 1861, he advanced with a large force upon Louisville, and Rousseau, the rejected, with the "Home Guards," which he had preserved from the defection which seized the State Guard, were the only defenders of the city to be found. On the night of September 17, 1861, Rousseau crossed the Ohio River, and marched through the uproarious streets of the excited and endangered city to meet the invader. With this little band he penetrated forty miles into the interior of the state, hourly expecting to meet the enemy, and intending to fight him whenever and wherever he did meet him. He made the passage of Rolling Fork River, and occupied the heights of Muldraugh's Hills, where Buckner was reported to be, but found the rebel had retired to Green River. Ever since this memorable era, Kentucky has persisted in showing herself on every important occasion as belonging to the neuter gender of states, and her unenviable position on several questions of national interest within the last five or six years has all been owing to the influence of the same class of politicians as those who opposed action in 1861. A few independent, energetic men, with opinions of their own, and a spirit of progress consonant with that of the Union, like Rousseau, Cyrus H. Burnham, and one or two others, have hardly proven the leaven to the corrupt whole. Many of those who were neutral when the success of secession was doubtful, when the constitutional amendment was pending, would now like to present a different record; and one or two of this class have written me, since the publication of this sketch in "Harper's Magazine," to prove that they were not neutrals in 1861. I have not considered their claims worth notice. There are any number of men in Kentucky who would now like to have it appear that they stood with Rousseau in 1861, but it would be falsifying history to say so. I have written here the true story of Kentucky neutrality, and do not propose to alter it. The sponsor of that neutrality--the editor of the Louisville Journal--has corroborated this story as I tell it. On the evening of the 17th of June, 1862, exactly one year after having rejected Rousseau, and driven him to encamp his troops in another state, the Union men of Louisville welcomed him from the battle-field of Shiloh at a grand banquet, at which George D. Prentice, the editor of the Journal, thus narrated the