Whereas, the Federal Constitution, which created the Government of
the United States, was declared by the framers thereof to be the supreme law of
the land, and was intended to limit and did expressly limit the powers of said
Government to certain general specified purposes, and did expressly reserve to
the States and people all other powers whatever, and the President and Congress
have treated this supreme law of the Union with contempt and usurped to
themselves the power to interfere with the rights and liberties of the States
and the people against the expressed provisions of the Constitution, and have
thus substituted for the highest forms of national liberty and constitutional
government a central despotism founded upon the ignorant prejudices of the
masses of Northern society, and instead of giving protection with the
Constitution to the people of fifteen States of this Union have turned loose
upon them the unrestrained and raging passions of mobs and fanatics, and because
we now seek to hold our liberties, our property, our homes, and our families
under the protection of the reserved powers of the States, have blockaded our
ports, invaded our soil, and waged war upon our people for the purpose of
subjugating us to their will; and
Whereas, our honor and our duty to posterity demand that we shall
not relinquish our own liberty and shall not abandon the right of our
descendants and the world to the inestimable blessings of constitutional
government: Therefore,
Be it ordained, That we do hereby forever sever our
connection with the Government of the United States, and in the name of the
people we do hereby declare Kentucky to be a free and independent State, clothed
with all power to fix her own destiny and to secure her own rights and
liberties.
And whereas, the majority of the Legislature of Kentucky have violated
their most solemn pledges made before the election, and deceived and betrayed
the people; have abandoned the position of neutrality assumed by themselves and
the people, and invited into the State the organized armies of Lincoln; have
abdicated the Government in favor of a military despotism which they have placed
around themselves, but cannot control, and have abandoned the duty of shielding
the citizen with their protection; have thrown upon our people and the State the
horrors and ravages of war, instead of attempting to preserve the peace, and
have voted men and money for the war waged by the North for the destruction of
our constitutional rights; have violated the expressed words of the constitution
by borrowing five millions of money for the support of the war without a vote of
the people; have permitted the arrest and imprisonment of our citizens, and
transferred the constitutional prerogatives of the Executive to a military
commission of partisans; have seen the writ of habeus corpus susupended without
an effort for its preservation, and permitted our people to be driven in exile
from their homes; have subjected our property to confiscation and our persons to
confinement in the penitentiary as felons, because we may choose to take part in
a cause for civil liberty and constitutional government against a sectional
majority waging war agasint the people and institutions of fifteen independent
States of the old Federal Union, and have done all these things deliberately
against the warnings and vetoes of the Governor and the solemn remonstrances of
the minority in the Senate and House of Representatives:
Therefore, Be it further ordained, That the unconstitutional edicts
of a factious majority of a Legislature thus false to their pledges, their
honor, and their interests are not law, and that such a government is unworthy
of the support of a brave and free people, and that we do therefore declare that
the people are thereby absolved from all allegiance to said government, and that
they have a right to establish any government which to them may seem best
adapted to the preservation of their rights and liberties.