A course of straightforward loyalty could not have been misunderstood.

As it was, all kinds of rumors as to proposed disunion movements, and as to the intrigues with Spain, got afloat; and there was no satisfactory contradiction.

The stanch Union men, the men who "thought continentally," as the phrase went, took the alarm and organized a counter-movement.

One of those who took prominent part in this counter-movement was a man to whom Kentucky and the Union both owe much: Humphrey Marshall, afterwards a Federalist senator from Kentucky, and the author of an interesting and amusing and fundamentally sound, albeit somewhat rancorous, history of his State.

This loyal counter-movement hindered and hampered the separatists greatly, and made them cautious about advocating outright disunion.