More below:

>>>>I’m looking at "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government," by Jefferson Davis, Volume 1, page 392. Davis quotes in full from Polk’s September 4 dispatch to him. The wording differs very slightly from the OR’s. Polk explains the situation at Columbus and opposite, and cites the Federal “intention to seize and forcibly possess said town.” He says nothing about Camp Dick Robinson or any other Federal presence in Kentucky. Polk says, “It is my intention to continue to occupy and hold this place.” Davis then writes, “On the same day [September 4] I sent the following reply to Major-General Polk: ‘Your telegram received; the necessity must justify the action.’” The OR version, also dated September 4, has it “The necessity justifies the action.” The Walker order was also on September 4. Davis’ next letter to Polk is dated September 15. In it, he affirms his support of Polk’s presence in Columbus. Polk’s other explanations for seizing Columbus were public relations. He didn’t need that with Davis.>>>>>

Is this all that Polk ever wrote to Davis? Have you been through his papers at the University of the South and the other place that has some (that I forget where right now)? I have not. But I know from years of digging into the national Archives that Confederate Correspondence in the OR and other sources is a mere fraction of what's there to work with.

Polk did not have to let Davis know why he immediately went to Columbus like he had to let the KY Senate guy know why. Polk probably explained to Davis somewhere what was going on in KY while he was gathering his intel as to the political and military events. I have never been through the Davis Papers either so what else is out there that we do not know?

But my point remains that Polk clearly stated his plethora of reasons why he moved to Columbus, the most immediate one being Waagner at Belmont. This is like the starting of our Revolutionary War. It was a plethora of reasons why it began - the Stamp Tax, the Quartering Act, seeking an American side legislature instead of dealing with Parliament, the Boston Tea party and the massacre there, etc. The immediate start was the English move to Lexington and Concord and the Shot Hear Around the World - but that shot came due to a number of years of earlier events. Same goes for the movement to Columbus by Polk.

>>>Was it more than one in this time frame? I have it that only the W. B. Terry was seized at Paducah and found to be carrying contraband South. Paducah people countered by taking the Samuel Orr up the Tennessee River. Ironically, it was the W. B. Terry that broke down when Grant tried to use it to transport troops from Cairo to Paducah. He replaced it with the W. H. Brown.>>>

There was only the WB Terry - the way I wrote it was just to be part of the overall events series of Union violations and not meant to have been more than one boat. My apologies for a lack of clarification.

>>>Your comment does not address my point, which is the degree, the seriousness of the violation. I created a hypothetical as an illustration. In relation to occupying Hickman and Columbus, fortifying the latter and blockading the river, and deploying troops east into Kentucky, establishing Camp Dick Robinson miles from nowhere pales by several degrees of magnitude. I made the same point with my U-2 vs. occupying Moscow analogy, but you didn’t address that correctly either.>>>>>

A violation i9s a violation, degree does not matter. Two guys drive up to a bank. One gets out and goes in and pulls a gun on the tellers demanding money. They fill his bag, he goes out and gets into the waiting car which drives off. The cops bust them later on and BOTH guys get charged with the robbery. This does not look at degrees of the crime for the guy did not get there without the car nor did he get away without the car and the guy driving it.

The U2 violation was an act of war by all legal definitions that I know of. That the Soviets chose not to go nuclear or run tanks at NATO was their call to make - same as it would have been if they had done overflights of the USA during the cold war. The stakes here are so much higher that any comparison with anything in the Civil War is meaningless as nothing back then could destroy life on the entire planet like the US/USSR could do. So it would have taken a LOT more to make the missiles and bombers fly as the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly did, which was a tit for tat with our putting medium range nukes in Turkey. I remain a firm believer in the strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction as it was highly successful in preventing nuclear war. You think very carefully when a loaded gun is at your head. The proxy wars were how we fought the Soviets and both sides were good with that being the case so long as certain lines were not crossed, like Israel taking Damascus in 1973.

The modern stakes were far higher but a violation still remained a violation in the Cold War and it came down to how the other side was going to react and play his cards. In the Civil War, as the Rev War, the series of events in KY brought the Confederate move. So it was actually the Union that maneuvered the Confederates into doing what they did with this series even though I have seen no proof that it was a detailed plan to do so at least on Lincoln's level. After the August (and June) KY elections, a case can be made, as Prentiss told Wickliffe's agent. So on some level there was it seems.

>>>>That’s right! Polk’s move to Hickman and Columbus was not a tit for tat per Camp Dick Robinson or any other minor violation of Kentucky’s neutrality by the Federals. He wanted to beat Fremont and Grant to the punch. Polk was in Memphis by early July. The Federals established Camp Dick Robinson in early August. Polk occupied Hickman and Columbus in early September. If the occupation was in response to Camp Dick Robinson, Polk would have gone earlier. >>>>

And the Rev War did not start after the Boston Tea Party of massacre. The immediate catalyst was Waagner but the fire had started well before this time and that is what Polk explained in his OR letter to the KY senator. This was the last straw but it took a lot of straws. That does not diminish one bit the importance of Camp Dick Robinson nor does it absolve the Federals from this total violation of KY's neutrality. They totally knew that it did and did not care, from Lincoln on down.

Greg Biggs