After a sovereignty convention at Russellville on November 18-20, 1861, a newly constituted state of Kentucky established Bowling Green as its capitol. Its commissioners to the Confederate Congress in Richmond were William Preston of Louisville, William E. Simms of Bourbon, and Henry C. Burnett of Trigg. On December 10, 1861, Kentucky was admitted into the Confederacy by act of the Confederate States, declaring that the State of Kentucky was admitted as a member of the Confederate States of America on an equal footing with the other states of the Confederacy. Kentuckians sympathetic with the cause of States Rights founded a state and a country they could call their own. Its Kentucky senators were Henry C. Burnett, William E. Simms, and Thomas B. Monroe, and its representatives were H.W. Bruce, R. J. Breckinridge Jr., Ely M. Bruce, Willis B. Machen, James S. Chrisman, John W. Crockett, John M. Elliott, George W. Ewing, George B. Hodge, James W. Moore, Henry E. Read, George W. Triplett, and Theodore L. Burnett.