March 21, 2012
The women of the Breckinridge family are a remarkable lot as well. Since my research during this trip has focused on the years 1862-1866, the stories have tended toward the dark, painful, and tragic.
One remarkable providence is that while Robert Jefferson Breckinridge had three sons and two sons-in-law in harm’s way (four of whom were captured at one point or other), none of them died in the war. But as Lee surrendered his sword at Appomattox Court House in Virginia, one of his children lay dying — “one of the victims of this diabolical insurrection.” [1] His daughter, Sally (the one who said, “I wish I was a man,” as I wrote last week), suffered a series of heart attacks that took her at the age of 32. She had spent four years living in Cynthiana — the center of Confederate support in Kentucky — as a staunch Union supporter. During a brief respite in Maryland, she had heard of the capture of her (Union) brother Joseph. She wrote to her father, “I feel so bitter since Josey’s capture. I can hardly stand a rebel in my presence, though the rebels here are not at all like our Kentucky rebels….I dread going back to Cynthiana.” [2]
Of course, for those of you who know something about Civil War history, the timing of Sally’s death was particularly grievous:
April 9, 1865 — Lee surrenders
April 15, 1865 — Lincoln is assassinated
April 23, 1865 — Sally Breckinridge dies
And so as the nation first rejoiced — and then mourned the death of Lincoln — RJB faced a particularly private grief. “[T]he burden…was too great for her frail and sensitive temperament. Whatever idea is most gentle & most powerful, at once, in the words, ‘heroic Christian woman’ — this noble creature realised.” As he commented to Miss Binnie, “Three of my sons, and two of my sons in law — were exposed…as continually, and terribly, to every form of death — as any like number, during this frightful war. And yet the whole five were in this room with me, & with each other but a few days since….The Master came to my flock — and took one noble creature — perhaps the one readiest for the work above…” [1]
The death of Sally, perhaps, was instrumental in drawing those “whole five” together. The Breckinridge children had been drawn close together by the death of their mother in 1844. Mary, the eldest, had cared for the younger children (even wet-nursed the youngest, Charley, who was only four months old when his mother died). But when she married William Warfield in December of 1848, the task of managing the family fell to her 17 year old sister, Sally, who practically reared the younger children for eight years before she married George Morrison in 1856.
Of course, when Sally died — just two weeks after Lee’s surrender — her Confederate brothers were absent: Robert (and brother-in-law Theophilus Steele) in a Union prison in Ohio and William serving in the Confederate Army in North Carolina — only her Union brother, Joseph (recently recovered from his stint in a Confederate prison), and her Union husband, George Morrison, were there.
But less than a month later, all the Breckinridge sons (and sons-in-law) gathered together in RJB’s house, and in most respects, life very quickly returned to some semblance of normalcy. The brothers made occasional references to the “terrible war” (no one at that time would have ever trivialized the War by calling it “the late unpleasantness!”), but never in spite or malice — and the undying love that bound them together once again was made manifest in their daily lives.
In the title of this “chapter,” however, there is a name that has not been mentioned since. There was one Breckinridge who was not reconciled. Yes, the sons and sons-in-law all resumed regular interaction. Even Kate Breckinridge — Robert Jr’s wife — would cheerily invite her father-in-law over for dinner. But Issa Desha Breckinridge, Willie’s wife, remained shrouded in darkness.
Issa was 17 when she married Willie, September 19, 1861. Shortly after her 18th birthday, she gave birth to her first child, Ella (June 7, 1862 — hey, the math works!). Five weeks later, Willie joined Morgan’s Raiders — he had always been a southern sympathizer, but had tried to stay out of the war for his wife’s sake (and blamed his departure on his sister, Mary, accusing her of threatening to denounce him to the Federal authorities) — and did not see his wife or daughter again for nearly three years.
I will not try to adjudicate between Willie and Mary here. But Issa spent the next three years trying to figure out a way to get to her husband. Her parents were concerned that she was too frail — that her health could not survive the rough conditions of the hot, humid, southern summers. She submitted petition after petition to Union Generals, requesting a pass to go to her husband. Denied. She sought assistance from leading men in the county to intercede with the Generals. Denied. She wrote to the President, Abraham Lincoln, who replied that if her father-in-law (RJB) requested it, he would approve.
Issa was furious. RJB was the one man on earth that she would not ask.
Willie tried to persuade his wife to change her attitude toward RJB: “If I am at all worthy of your love — if in my character & culture & training there is anything of which you can be proud or that can add to your happiness, to his love & kindness & influence we should be grateful. I was a delicate child — he was as tender as a mother [remember that Willie’s mother died when he was 8] — I was an obstinate boy — he was patient; I was sensitive & proud — he was kind & indulgent; I was hot-tempered — he was forbearing; I was an eager questioner — he was a willing & oh how patient explainer…. He is old — his life has been a most laborious one — a very great part of it full of suffering — most of it very full of sadness; and my precious loving darling, my heart goes out to him in his old age when I know he has so much to sadden him, with a tenderer warmer love than ever when I loved him better than any one living.” [3]
But when (at Willie’s suggestion) RJB tried to reach out to Issa in March of 1864, her reply stung: “Twenty months and more have passed since Willie was forced to leave Ella & I at your house, and since that time we have had no reason to think that have had even ‘kindly thoughts,’ and I do not now care to accept them, given too only because my husband asks them, and I hope you will no longer feel this as a ‘solemn charge’ when I assure you that neither I nor our child expect or desire any thing from you.” [4] After calming down slightly, she wrote to her husband, saying that in twenty months RJB had never taken the slightest notice of her — or of Ella, “our little child the only child of a son that ought to be so dear to him.” [5]
Since the mails between the Union and the Confederacy were somewhat slower than normal, it was September 1 before RJB could explain his side of the story to Willie: “she had long before that avoided me, and refused to see John….I have occasionally seen your child by accident in the streets; and each time…blessed it, which God, I trust, will ratify.” [6]
Meanwhile, in July of 1864, Issa and her parents heard that the wives of Confederate officers were to be forcibly removed from the state and sent down the Mississippi River. Fearing that Issa could not handle such treatment, her father quickly took her to Toronto, where she joined a group of Kentucky exiles, led by Stuart Robinson (a long-time friend of RJB, who had become his arch-nemesis during the War). Two-year old Ella remained with her grandmother Desha in Kentucky until the fall, when they joined Issa in Canada. Issa wrote to Willie that her health began to improve almost immediately upon arrival in Ontario. She astutely attributed it to the change in the people around her. In Kentucky, “Every time I looked at a Yankee, and our streets were full of them, I felt that I was looking upon the would-be murderer of my husband. My hatred and intense loathing increased every moment.” [7]
Finally, at the request of Dr. Desha, General Burbridge [the commanding general in Kentucky] wrote to Abraham Lincoln on October 24, 1864, requesting Lincoln to grant Issa’s request. Given that Burbridge resided in Lexington and regularly consulted with RJB, I am firmly convinced that RJB knew and approved of this — but also knew that his intercession was not desired, and so (for once) remained silent! And on November 3, 1864, with Issa and her father coming personally to Washington, D.C., Abraham Lincoln granted the pass.
But by the time Issa got back to her hotel, the last “truce boat” had already left Washington. The next one was not scheduled for another month. [Did Lincoln know? One could argue that Lincoln knew what he was doing — and was toying with her. One could also argue that Lincoln knew what he was doing — and was sparing her from the horrors of the final chapter of the war. Atlanta had already fallen to the Union Army. Sherman was marching across Georgia — and Sheridan had begun to make his way down the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Where could she have gone? She couldn’t live with Willie at the front!] So she returned to Toronto. Shortly thereafter, she received word that she was welcome to return to Kentucky.
She returned by the beginning of April — Willie returned at the end of May. More than 3/4 of their married life had been spent apart. Ella had not seen her father since she was five weeks old.
When Willie had to leave on business three months later (he was gone for three days), Issa feared that the darkness would return: “such a long, long, weary day it has been, recalling those wretched ones when you were far away — days all gloom, anxiety, suspense, almost despair. Thank God they are gone! Would to God I could forget them — so dark is even the recollection of them that to have the remembrance of them blotted out I would gladly forget all the pleasures of childhood, all the hopes of girl-hood — every thing in the past save the remembrance of the happiness with which your love crowned me — and the precious days that followed.” [8]
So perhaps, then, you will understand that when the family gathered in RJB’s house at the end of May of 1865, there was one face that was conspicuously absent. Issa Breckinridge would not go to her father-in-law’s house for more than two years after the war.
I’m sorry to end there — but that is where I am in my research. The Breckinridge family is “sort of” back together again — but now battle-scarred and weary. And RJB, now past his 66th birthday, is beginning to fade from the scene. He had saved Kentucky for the Union — or, more precisely, he had saved Kentucky for the Confederacy (Because Kentucky had remained in the Union — but a majority of the population had favored the Confederacy — they had the legal rights of a Union state, with the voting power of a Confederate state!). Very quickly, the vast majority of Kentuckians wanted nothing more to do with him.
[1] RJB to Miss Binnie, June 9, 1865 (Miss Binnie was one of RJB’s former parishioners from Baltimore in the 1830s; the Binnie family continued to write regularly to RJB long after he left).
[2] Sally to RJB, August 28, 1864
[3] Willie to Issa, March 11, 1864
[4] Issa to RJB, April 2, 1864
[5] Issa to Willie, April 2, 1864
[6] RJB to Willie, September 1, 1864
[7] Issa to Willie, July 30, 1864
[8] Issa to Willie, August 29, 1865. When she wrote the next night, she commented that their servant, Billy, had laughed at her, “Lord, Miss Issa, you ain’t writing to that man already, are you — does you love him so you can’t give him nor rest?”
[All quotes from the Breckinridge Family Papers, Library of Congress]
