JOSEPH CABELL BRECKINRIDGE
Breckinridge, Joseph Cabell major-general United States army, has filled every grade in the service up to his present rank, and has served for forty-one years. In the Santiago campaign, July 2, 1898, his horse was shot from under him; he was in command of 45,000 men at Camp George H. Thomas, at Chicamauga Park, Georgia, August, 1898; and he was inspector-general for fifteen years. He is president-general of the Society of the Sons of the Revolution. Descended from the best Virginia and Kentucky stock, he numbers among his ancestors, William Campbell, called the hero of King's Mountain, who married the sister of Patrick Henry; Colonel Wilham Preston, a distinguished Revolutionary soldier, who died from the effect of wounds received in that war; and Joseph Cabell, who served in the French and Indian wars. John Breckinridge, the reputed father of the Kentucky Resolutions, United States senator from Kentucky, and member of President Jefferson's cabinet, was his grandfather. His father, Reverend Robert Jefferson Breckinridge, moderator of the General Assembly, and United States senator from Kentucky, was a man of most marked intellectual characteristics, both in politics, before entering the ministry, and in theology afterward. His influence in holding back his state from secession, is well known. He was a leading mind in the Presbyterian church. While an opponent of slavery he wished to use only peaceful means in its removal.
His mother, Anne Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge, died while Joseph C. Breckinridge was still in his early childhood. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland, January 14, 1842. Not strong in his early life, his boyhood was passed in the country, at Breadalbane, and Cabell's Dale, country seats of his father and grandfather, in Kentucky, where he enjoyed the usual amusements and occupations of a boy with such surroundings. He studied in part at Centre college, Danville, Kentucky, and was graduated from the University of Virginia in 1860, and was already engaged in studying law, when the Civil war began. He entered the volunteer army as aide
