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Polk breaks Kentucky's neutrality; Confederate troops occupy Columbus
Residents wave rebel flags at the landing, but the bishop-general has just handed the state to the Union.
Kentucky had tried to sit the war out, declaring neutrality between Washington and Richmond. On September 3, 1861, Confederate General Leonidas Polk ended that fiction, sending troops under Gideon Johnson Pillow to occupy Hickman and then Columbus, to beat a feared Union move on the same ground. Crowds at Columbus greeted the soldiers waving Confederate flags the next day. Within days the Kentucky legislature asked the United States for help expelling the invaders, a request that helped keep the state under Union control for the rest of the war…
