By Todd Hatton / Berry Craig
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-992562.mp3
Murray, KY – This week on the Kentucky Civil War Dispatch, we meet American Vice-president, U.S. Senator, Confederate General and last southern Secretary of War John Cabell Breckinridge.
On this date in 1861, newly-commissioned Confederate Brigadier General John C. Breckinridge had orders to take command of a brigade of Bluegrass State soldiers at Bowling Green.
These troops would become the storied "Orphan Brigade."
Though Breckinridge had run for president in 1860 as a pro-slavery Southern Democrat, he had remained in the U.S. senate until it adjourned in August, 1861.
When Kentucky forthrightly declared for the Union in September, Breckinidge, then back home in Lexington, was targeted for arrest. He fled to Bowling Green, where he announced his resignation from the senate.
While there, Breckinridge met Brigadier General Simon Bolivar Buckner of Hart County, former commander of the Kentucky State Guard. Buckner wrote Rebel authorities in the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, suggesting Breckinridge be named commander of the First Kentucky Brigade or a similiar unit.
Breckinridge then went to Richmond to receive his commission. Southern leaders hoped that a man of Breckinridge's popularity in Kentucky could help rally the state to the Confederacy.
Meanwhile, rumors flew in the capital that Breckinridge would be named secretary of war, a post he finally received in 1865 when the war was all but lost.
Breckinridge would have been a good choice in 1861. In Breckinridge Statesman Soldier Symbol, William C. Davis writes, "The Kentuckian would have brought stature to an otherwise - save for [Attorney General Judah P.] Benjamin - lackluster cabinet, and his four years as vice-president had equipped him with more than sufficient administrative skills."
While pro-Confederate Kentuckians welcomed Breckinridge's decision to join the Rebels, Bluegrass State Unionists denounced him as a traitor. The Frankfort Commonwealth nicknamed the new Rebel general, "Judas Cataline Breckinridge." The pro-Union paper claimed Breckinridge was one of those "wily politicians who caused all this misery for the purposes of looking to their own personal aggrandizement."
On November 6th in Frankfort, Federal Judge Bland Ballard handed down indictments for treason against Breckinridge and 32 other pro-Confederate Kentuckians. On December 2nd, the Senate expelled "the traitor Breckinridge" for joining "the enemies of his country."
By then, Breckinridge had also helped encourage the creation of Kentucky's bogus Confederate state "government" at Russellville, safely behind Rebel lines. He was also well into his duties as chief of the First Kentucky Brigade.
Davis wrote, "It is doubtful if any other brigade commander in the army had so many relatives in his command. Thanks to this, and the fact that most of the officers and enlisted men in the brigade had been his political supporters in times past, the general almost immediately became the darling of the brigade, and their pride in him was fierce and unwavering."
Breckinridge's kin serving under him included his teenage son, Cabell, who in the summer had joined the Rebels against his father's will. Cabell was a private in Co. B of the 2nd Kentucky Infantry. Cabell's C.O. was Capt. Robert J. Breckinridge, his second cousin.
The Breckinridge family was more proof that the Civil War often split Kentucky families. The Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge Sr. was a leading Kentucky Unionist. While Robert Jr., and his brother, William Campbell Preston Breckinridge, donned Rebel gray, their other brothers, Joseph Cabell Breckinridge and Charles Breckinridge, opted for Union blue.
John C. Breckinridge had served as vice president under James Buchanan from 1857 to 1861. Hence, his official U.S. Senate online biography describes him as "the only vice president ever to take up arms against the government of the United States."
WKMS produces Kentucky Civil War Dispatches from West Kentucky Community and Technical College history professor Berry Craig. The Murray State alumnus is the author of Hidden History of Kentucky in the Civil War, Hidden History of Kentucky Soldiers and True Tales of Old-Time Kentucky Politics: Bombast, Bourbon, and Burgoo.