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The grand mansion and the extensive domain of Riverlawn had been occupied by the Lyon family hardly more than a year when the political excitement in Kentucky began to manifest itself, though not so violently as in some of the more southern States. Abraham Lincoln had been elected President of the United States, and south of Mason and Dixon's line he was regarded as a sectional president whose term of office would be a menace and an absolute peril to the institution of slavery. Senator Crittenden of Kentucky proposed certain amendments to the Constitution to restore the Missouri Compromise, by which slavery should be confined to specified limits, and Congress prevented from interfering with the labor-system of the South.
Before Christmas in 1860, South Carolina had unanimously passed its Ordinance of Secession, the intelligence of which was received with enthusiasm by the Gulf States, all of which soon followed her example. The more conservative States held back, and all but the four on the border seceded in one form or another after some delay.