Confederate Monuments at the Old Fayette County Courthouse
The above statute represents John Hunt Morgan, "the Lighting Bolt of the Confederacy." He was a calvary officer for the Confederate Army during the American Civil War who staged many raids into Union territory, including Kentucky. He was a Lexington native, but chose to side with slavery's defenders, perhaps because of his substantial human property. It makes me wonder why we would have a statue celebrating a traitor against the U.S. government. Treason is to be avoided, right?
On the other side of the lawn in front of the old courthouse (which is now the Lexington History Center) is the above statue of John C. Breckinridge. Breckinridge was a Kentucky politician who served as U.S. Vice President under James Buchanan and ran for President unsuccessfully in 1860. However, once the Civil War broke out in response to the election of Abraham Lincoln, Breckinridge decided to join the Confederacy, in which he served as a brigadier general and eventually Secretary of War in the final months of the conflict when the C.S.A. was collapsing. The fact that he held positions in both governments seems like ti makes the "treason" charge even more convincing.
Like the Morgan statue, the Breckinridge monument makes me wonder how we got so twisted around in our memory of that time period. Where are the statues to the real heros of the conflict? Why are black Kentuckians who boldly asserted their freedom and joined the Union ranks and turned the tide of the war not honored here? Or the enslaved population that labored for nearly 100 years to make the Bluegrass the agricultural success story that is it? How might we improve the public's understanding of this essential period?
