Beriah Magoffin (April 18, 1815 – February 28, 1885) was the 21st Governor of Kentucky, serving during the early part of the Civil War.

Nevertheless, when the Kentucky General Assembly adopted a position of neutrality in the war, Magoffin ardently held to it, refusing calls for aid from both the Union and Confederate governments.

In special elections held in June 1861, Unionists captured nine of Kentucky's ten congressional seats and obtained two-thirds majorities in both houses of the state legislature.

Despite Magoffin's strict adherence to the policy of neutrality, the Unionist legislature did not trust him and routinely overrode his vetoes.

[3] His father was an immigrant from County Down, Ireland, and his mother was the daughter of Samuel McAfee, a prominent pioneer in early Kentucky.

[3] To that end, he wrote a circular letter to the governors of the slave states on December 9, 1860, detailing a plan to save the Union.

[5] Magoffin's plan was to unite the slave states around a set of minimum concessions to see if the North would accept them as an alternative to war.

[6] After the slave state governors refused Magoffin's plan, he endorsed the Crittenden Compromise, authored by fellow Kentuckian John J.

[7] In response to President Abraham Lincoln's call for troops on April 15, 1861, Magoffin defiantly declared by telegram, "I will send not a man nor a dollar for the wicked purpose of subduing my sister Southern States.

[3] Later that month, Magoffin sent a letter to Confederate President Jefferson Davis asking that he recognize and honor Kentucky's neutrality.

[7] In the state's special elections in June 1861, Unionist candidates swept nine of Kentucky's ten congressional districts and obtained two-thirds majorities in both houses of the General Assembly.

[7] In November 1861, a self-constituted convention of southern sympathizers met at Russellville, Kentucky, in order to form a provisional Confederate government for the state.

They found agreement only on the most menial of legislation, such as a bill to allow the common schools to continue the sessions that had been interrupted by the outbreak of hostilities in 1861.

[3][12] Because Lieutenant Governor Linn Boyd had died in office in 1859, Speaker of the Senate John F. Fisk was next in line for the governorship.