Joseph Cabell Breckinridge, Sr.

Who was Joseph Cabell Breckinridge, Sr.?

Joseph Cabell Breckinridge, Sr. was a Union Army officer from Kentucky during the American Civil War. In later life, he became a brigadier general in the U.S. Regular Army and Inspector General of the Army as well as a major general of volunteers in the Spanish-American War. His cousin, John C. Breckenridge, a Confederate major general and former Vice President of the United States and his two oldest brothers fought for the Confederacy, while he and another younger son of Robert Jefferson Breckinridge, a Presbyterian minister, politician, public office holder and abolitionist, fought for the Union.

Joseph C. Breckinridge, Sr., was born in 1842, a member of the prominent Breckinridge family, in Baltimore, Maryland. His father, Robert Jefferson Breckinridge, a minister, was one of the most distinguished divines and one of the most prolific writers of the century; a leader of the Kentucky emancipation party in 1849; and a strong Union man in 1861 at the outbreak of the Civil War.

Joining the Army in August 1861, Joseph C. Breckinridge was appointed an aide-de-camp to George H. Thomas, and served with him at Mill Springs and Shiloh.