and that it would revive and engender public spirit in the South."[1]
But there was one southern editor and one southern journal that maintained independence, and that was George D. Prentice and his Louisville Journal. It was said of Prentice that "he built the city of Louisville,"[2] and to him is also given the credit of "preventing the secession of Kentucky."
Henry Watterson, his distinguished successor, says that "from 1830 to 1861 the influence of Prentice was perhaps greater than the influence of any political writer who ever lived." Prentice was a Connecticut Yankee, who could shoot as well as write, and when he established himself in Louisville, he identified himself at once as a man ready and willing to fight. iHis course after that was smoother.
When Fort Sumter was fired upon. Prentice wavered, and his "indecision was fatal to his national influence. He opposed the Rebellion but not for radical reasons and not with zeal."[3] Behind the arras, even here, there was tragedy. Prentice fought to keep Kentucky in the Union, he was loyal—but both his sons, his only children, were in the Confederate arniy.
