Chapter 5

The Governor and the Prisoner

Aboard a special train approaching the Pewee Valley depot, thirty-three-year-old Governor John C. W. Beckham was as nervous as only a politician facing uncertain reelection could be. His formal campaign wouldn't begin until spring, but on this trip rode a hope that he would be more than an accidental governor.

Normally self-assured for a man his age, today he was nervous. He needed the respect and support of the Confederate veterans waiting for him in Pewee Valley.

Waiting with the rest of the welcoming party on the platform of the Pewee Valley Depot, seventy-eight-year-old Lorenzo D. Holloway had time to reflect on the new governor. Thirty-three years old and managing a whole state. Awfully young to be a governor. When Lorenzo Holloway was thirty-three years old, he hadn't managed much more than the books of a small stable. At thirty-three, Holloway hadn't yet been in prison with 10,000 men. And he hadn't yet seen good men die in droves.

As dawn broke over central Kentucky on Thursday, October 23, 1902, the sky transmuted from black to indigo to cerulean blue, here and there buffed by wisps of low-hanging wood smoke. September had been unseasonably warm, and autumn was late arriving. It was a blackberry autumn, and the trees had held their fire through October.

Sixteen miles east of Louisville and about that far south of the Ohio River, Pewee Valley was a quiet village of well-bred estate homes, unpretentious stone church buildings, white fences, coffee-colored dirt lanes, and a population of fewer than 500. Originally known as Smith's Station, residents adopted the current name in the 1850s for reasons lost to legend. The pewee is a bird, a woodland flycatcher that may once have made its home in the brushwood and broomsage of the area. Pewee Valley sits 300 feet higher than Louisville, a topographic feature that accounted for the elegant summer homes built there years before by wealthy Louisvillians who thought altitude and cooler summer evenings would make them less susceptible to the night vapors blamed for most summer illness.

Two side-by-side rail tracks—one for the steam trains connecting Louisville and Frankfort, another for interurban electric rail service—bisected the hamlet; a county road paralleled the tracks. Near the center of the village was a small commercial district, including a dry goods store, a meat market, a post office, a bank, a blacksmith shop, and the rail depot.

Six hundred yards up the county road from the rail depot, the former Villa Ridge Inn stood atop a gentle hill surrounded by newly raked grounds, awaiting its dedication as the new Kentucky Confederate Home.

As a rising sun painted Pewee Valley with its daytime colors, farm families from neighboring areas were clip-clopping up the county road in work wagons and buggies. The farmers were the first arrivals for a daylong celebration of bands, bunting, dignitaries, spectacle, and Lost Cause oratory.¹

The board of trustees was desperate to open the Kentucky Confederate Home to residents as soon as possible. Bragging rights were at stake, of course, sectional pride for having financed, legislated, equipped, and opened a Home just twelve months after the meeting at which the board members set their hands to the task. (Ex-Confederates in Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Missouri, Maryland, and elsewhere spent years to do the job.) But financial considerations provided the most pressing reason for urgency. Until the state took formal possession of the Home and residents moved into it, no money would flow from the state's funding tap. Every month the Home remained unoccupied cost the trustees almost $300 in utilities and maintenance, an amount their minuscule reserve wouldn't cover for long.

Superintendent Salem H. Ford and his helpers and contractors had been working for weeks to prepare the former resort hotel for occupancy. The rooms of the old hotel needed scrubbing, sweeping, patching, repairing, painting. The building was sound and generally in good condition, but it hadn't been occupied for five years. Ford had to flush out water pipes, recharge gas cisterns, test each lamp, and replace pump gaskets, all the while dealing with loads of gifts, furnishings, and provisions that arrived daily.

There was much left undone, but by Thursday morning, October 23, 1902, the old Villa Ridge Inn was ready to reopen as the Kentucky Confederate Home.

Early-arriving farm families hitched their wagons to fences and trees surrounding the Home and roamed the grounds, determined to make a day of the celebration. Some spread blankets and baskets of food near a speakers’ platform that had been built at the top of the looping driveway that led up the hill to the Home's entry. Long wooden picnic tables dotted the grounds.

At midmorning Salem Ford hoisted a U.S. flag and a Confederate flag to fly side by side from flagstaffs atop the four-story building. Red, white, and blue bunting was draped along the speakers’ stand and the Home's gallery echoed the colors of the two national flags flying overhead.²

By 11:00 A.M. the broad lawn surrounding the Home was teeming with more than 4,000 people. “In keeping with the true spirit of Southern hospitality,” a visitor wrote, “ample provision had been made to feed all who had come.”

Churchwomen of Pewee Valley set out food and lemonade on the outdoor tables, while clubwomen from throughout the state distributed hampers of picnic fare. A detachment of cadets from the Kentucky Military Institute gathered in rank to rehearse their duty as honor guard for the dignitaries who would arrive later. The lively sound of popular tunes and patriotic marches rose from a brass band that wove through the crowd.

Every hour, it seemed, another thousand men and women from all parts of the state arrived by cart, carriage, trolley, train, and the occasional motorcar. The rail companies offered a discounted round trip fare to Pewee Valley for the day. The later arrivals were townspeople mainly, the shopkeepers, physicians, bankers, and small businessmen of Kentucky's increasingly influential middle class. They found seats at the outdoor tables or spread picnic blankets on the raked grounds. Families gathered with other families of the same town, until congregations of visitors from Kuttawa melded into the visitors from Carrollton and Hopkinsville and Prestonsburg and Somerset.

“When the crowds began to gather in numbers on the broad lawn and under the trees it was first feared there would not be enough to give all a plenty,” a reporter observed. But the women of Pewee Valley continued to produce hampers, steaming dishes draped with tea towels, and platters of sliced meats for the new arrivals.

The veterans—men of the Civil War generation, now in their sixties, seventies, or older—were scattered among the throng, and many were in the company of their wives, children, and grandchildren. Some wore old gray jackets or hats, remnants of uniforms that had been saved in trunks for decades. Others wore newer gray suits of a martial cut, the now-standardized uniform of the United Confederate Veterans organization. Here and there an old man would let out an excited yip as he recognized, then embraced, another old man. “[The veteran's] elastic step and joyous laugh belied his age as he met in happy reunion with his old comrades in arms,” noted one visitor.

Kentucky's major newspapers gave the dedication front-page play in the early editions, and by midday Pewee Valley was jammed with more than 10,000 visitors, the largest gathering of Kentucky ex-Confederates, sympathizers, family, and friends since the end of the Civil War.

A quarter mile away, Lorenzo D. Holloway waited on the platform of the Pewee Valley rail depot for the governor's train with Home superintendent Salem Ford. Holloway had been the first to register as a resident of the Home, and he would be among the first that day to size up Kentucky's Boy Governor.

Lorenzo Holloway was almost forty years old when he left his farm in Scott County and the horse ranch where he worked to join John Hunt Morgan's cavalry in the autumn of 1861. He was a well-read man, good with figures, and trusted by the younger men of Smith's Regiment, Fifth Kentucky Cavalry. In the summer of 1863, he was a captain and regimental quartermaster when Morgan's cavalry swept northward on the ill-fated Ohio raid. Holloway was captured and imprisoned with sixty-odd other officers—including Thomas Eastin, Basil Duke, and General Morgan himself—in the Ohio state penitentiary.

“I am becoming quite fond of my cell,” he wrote his mother in October 1863. “I can eat as much as I want and no limit to sleeping. Can keep warm, dry, clean, read my Bible, sing in a whisper and pray for myself, my family, friends and enemies.”³

Conditions at the Ohio prison may have been too relaxed, a situation some prisoners exploited in November 1863. Aided by smuggled weapons (and a bribed guard or two), Morgan and a handful of officers escaped from the penitentiary. Humiliated Federal officers sent Holloway and the rest of the remaining prisoners to Fort Delaware.

Located on a small island at the mouth of Delaware Bay, Fort Delaware was a recommissioned Union fort intended to hold the thousands of Confederate prisoners captured at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. By the time Holloway and the other Ohio prisoners arrived, Fort Delaware was a hellhole.⁴

The last years of the war produced a quantity of Confederate prisoners of war the Federal bureaucracy was simply unprepared to handle. Southern prisons (such as Andersonville) couldn't obtain the resources needed to feed, clothe, and house large numbers of Federal prisoners; Union prison officials couldn't get the resources in place quickly enough to care for the prisoners they were capturing. Fort Delaware was ill-equipped to handle the number of prisoners arriving there.

“I am very poor, bones nearly through,” Holloway wrote his sister several months after arriving at Fort Delaware, “but by my regular habits and the grace of God, my health is unimpaired.”

Thirty thousand prisoners were housed there; Holloway was fortunate to have a strong constitution. The death rate rose as high as 30 percent as overcrowded prisoners coped with smallpox, cholera, bad water, poor nutrition, and insect infestation, as well as sadistic guards.

Facing the winter of 1864–65 in prison, Holloway begged his sister to send him a few food items and a stout Kentucky comforter. “It may be the last act of kindness you may have to extend to an only and unfortunate brother,” he told her. “If I should have to winter on this island, I don't want to have to freeze and die of rheumatism or pneumonia.”

Thousands of younger men died of cold, hunger, or despair that winter in Fort Delaware; but forty-year-old Lorenzo Holloway survived. In May 1865 he was released from prison and returned to Kentucky.

Governor Beckham's special train arrived from Frankfort at the Pewee Valley depot near high noon. From the window of his private rail car, Beckham could see the welcoming committee jostle themselves into a rough receiving line on the platform.

Beckham had endured welcoming ceremonies at countless rail depots all over the state during the three years of his governorship. But in the year since President William McKinley was shot to death during a stop in Buffalo, these routine events carried more than a tinge of worry, particularly for a governor who had gained office only after his predecessor was gunned down.

But that was just one more layer of anxiety added to an already worrisome day. The young governor was facing his first real reelection campaign, and he needed the unqualified support of Kentucky's ex-Confederates.

The gunshots that killed William Goebel still echoed in Kentucky politics three years later. Kentucky's moderate Democrats—including Bennett Young, John Leathers, W. N. Haldeman, and others of the state UCV leadership—had bolted the Democratic Party to vote against Goebel in 1899, and they were lukewarm about Beckham. In a special election to fill Goebel's unexpired term, Beckham squeezed out a razor-thin margin of 3,700 votes (out of a half million votes cast), then set out to mend fences with the state's traditional Democrats. He slavishly supported Bennett Young's plan for the Kentucky Confederate Home and helped grease legislative skids in the General Assembly, all the while expressing his fealty to the Lost Cause—this despite rumors that Bennett Young was contemplating his own run for the governorship against Beckham.⁵

Kentucky's state UCV organization and local camps were avowedly apolitical, but the men of the Confederate generation were Democrats down to their bootlaces. Governor Beckham needed all their support, all their clout, and every one of their votes to keep his office in the upcoming election.⁶

Beckham and his mother appeared at the door of his rail car and stepped onto the platform of the Pewee Valley depot. Even from a quarter mile away, they could hear the noise of the growing crowd gathered on the grounds of the Kentucky Confederate Home. After a brief greeting by the chairman of the welcoming committee and an equally brief response, Beckham and his mother turned to the receiving line.

Lorenzo Holloway stood next to Superintendent Salem H. Ford on the depot platform, somewhere between a Pewee Valley town committeeman and several gussied-up ladies of the UDC, all waiting a turn for their handshake with the governor.

Holloway had spent the years since Fort Delaware working at a variety of state bookkeeping and auditing jobs. A widower, he left Frankfort to return to farming in Scott County when Fayette Hewitt resigned as state auditor, and his friendship with Hewitt earned him early acceptance to the Kentucky Confederate Home. Holloway arrived in Pewee Valley before the formal opening to help Superintendent Ford prepare the building for occupancy. He and Ford had been detailed to the depot to meet the governor.

Holloway's first impression of Governor Beckham was likely the same as all who saw him for the first time: he was so young. The governor was well barbered, beardless, with oiled hair parted down the middle in the current style for young men. Beckham was hatless; he dressed carefully and well without looking dandified.

But Beckham was no fragile youngster who had to be handled with sugar tongs. Despite his youth, Governor Beckham betrayed no lack of confidence as he worked his way down the receiving line, every move graceful and practiced without seeming so. He gave the impression of being someone who knew how the world turned and was willing to keep it spinning in the right direction. Maybe he was up to the job.

Within a few moments, Beckham had made his way down the receiving line. He, his mother, Senator J. C. S. Blackburn, and the other out-of-town dignitaries stepped into decorated carriages for a quarter mile parade to the grounds of the Kentucky Confederate Home, escorted by an honor guard of Kentucky Military Institute cadets.

Seventy-eight-year-old Lorenzo Holloway and Superintendent Ford walked back to the Home behind the parade of open carriages.

Thirty minutes later the special train from Louisville arrived, six cars carrying 100 boisterous state UCV reunion delegates and their own brass band. The band struck up “Dixie,” and the ex-Confederates formed into ranks. Flag-bearers flanked the procession—Stars and Stripes in the place of honor at the head of the right-hand column, Stars and Bars on the left—as they marched in column (mostly in step) up the crushed-rock carriageway to the grand building they would later dedicate for the use of Kentucky's invalid and indigent Confederate veterans. Wild cheers from the crowd greeted the flags, the sound of “Dixie,” and the waving veterans.⁷

Some of the arriving dignitaries joined Governor Beckham and Senator Blackburn to inspect the building. Visitors marveled at the sheer luxury of the Home, surrounded on three sides by a wide, comfortable verandah. At a time when only city dwellers knew such amenities, the Home had gaslight in every room, steam heat throughout, and roof cisterns that allowed for indoor bathrooms on the first and second floors. There were seventy-two guest bedrooms already furnished, two oak-paneled parlors, and a dining room that could seat 125 comfortably. The former lobby had been converted to a library, and more than a thousand volumes lined the shelves. Just the week before, movers had delivered a pipe organ and an upright piano, along with box after box of sheet music.

Governor Beckham pronounced the home “beautiful,” a splendid place where noble old veterans could weather the storms of winter while receiving the necessities of life.

Bath County stockman A. W. Bascom and his wife, Mary, were among those who bypassed the tour. “Do you remember the band coming in from Louisville about one o'clock and the veterans marching behind?” Mary Bascom asked a friend later. “A. W. and I fell in just behind the standard bearers and wove on through the crowd and out to the tables for dinner. We then came back and stood twenty feet left from the speakers stand.”⁸

Having been fed and entertained, the crowd was ready for the speechifying to begin.

At two o'clock, to the strains of “My Old Kentucky Home,” the governor, the chairmen of the various dedication committees, and the invited orators filed onto a temporary platform erected on the driveway in front of the Home. Bennett Young, John Leathers, Leland Hathaway, and other officers of the state veterans’ organization wore their gray UCV uniforms. (Major General J. M. Poyntz, commander of the Kentucky division, the man who had presided over the statewide meeting that sparked creation of the Home and who appointed the Committee of Twenty-Five, was absent. His only son had been shot and killed in a duel several days earlier, and Poyntz couldn't bear to leave his family.)

Six feet tall, ramrod straight, his hair and mustache shining white in the bright sunshine, Bennett Young stepped to the podium to begin a ceremony that would celebrate the ex-Confederates and honor their gift, while hitting all the notes of the Lost Cause ritual.

Young first introduced the state UCV chaplain, the Reverend E. M. Green, who invoked God's blessing on the veterans, the Home, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and the United States of America.

Next, Young called H. M. Woodruff, mayor of Pewee Valley, to the podium. Obsequious as a hotel desk clerk, Woodruff began with a clumsy apology for the town's earlier opposition to the Kentucky Confederate Home. “We feel somewhat like the old folks did when the daughter ran off and married the man of her choice: after the knot was tied, the best thing was to receive the young couple back into the bosom of the family.” After a few more halfhearted words of welcome, the perspiring mayor returned to his seat on the platform.

But these were just the warm-up acts. As the band struck up “Dixie” once again, Colonel Leland Hathaway, vice president of the Home's board, strode to the podium.

“It is my duty and pleasure to introduce to you … a man who needs no introduction to Confederate soldiers,” Hathaway began, “and a man who in days gone by needed none to our friends, the enemy.”

Cheers broke out before Hathaway could finish. “I have the honor of presenting to you General Joseph H. Lewis of the Confederate army.”

Whoops and yawps and Rebel yells exploded from the crowd, a thunderous ovation lasting a minute or more as Lewis rose from his seat on the platform and made his way to the podium.

Lewis needed no introduction. Every Confederate infantryman in Kentucky knew him.

Forty years earlier, Joseph H. Lewis had shuttered his law practice to recruit an armed regiment when Kentucky's rump convention seceded from the Union. Lewis's regiment joined with others to become the First Kentucky Brigade, under the command of Brigadier General John C. Breckinridge, former vice-president of the United States. This Kentucky brigade, organized and trained outside its home state, fought across the South, but would never return to fight in Kentucky. By the end of the war—following the deaths of Roger Hanson and Ben Hardin Helm—Kentucky's Orphan Brigade was under the command of General Joseph Lewis.⁹

Most of the ex-infantrymen in Pewee Valley that day were veterans of the Orphan Brigade, Kentuckians who were never able to return as a unit during wartime to their home state. For those years they were “orphans,” their only home the Confederate army.

General Lewis was brief in his remarks, and in less than five minutes touched all the Lost Cause bases. He praised the valor of his Confederate veterans (“the fight we made was a manly and upright one”), the constancy of their beliefs (“steadfast and true to our convictions”), ultimate reconciliation (“our ill will against the Union of States ceased”), and unremitting patriotism (“despite political ostracism attempted by mad men and bad men”).

These men of the Lost Cause had proven themselves worthy, the general pronounced.

“The foundation [of the Home] teaches a lesson which should not be lost on our young men,” the old warhorse concluded to more cheering. “It shows that men who do their duty honestly and fearlessly are not forgotten in their old age.”

Bennett Young wanted to be sure the financial needs of the Home weren't forgotten, either. When applause for General Lewis subsided, Young stepped to the podium to receive a donation of $110 in gold from two Union veterans. In a few words, Young expressed his appreciation for the gift and the spirit of brotherly love in which it was rendered.

Veteran J. L. Haines, backed by the Confederate Quartet, brought the crowd to its feet once again with “Tenting on the Old Camp Ground” and a medley of old camp songs before Young returned to the podium to introduce Captain William T. Ellis.

Like Young, Ellis was one of those Civil War boy wonders whose fuse was lit by the war and whose career rose like a rocket. He enlisted in the First Kentucky Confederate Cavalry at age sixteen, returned home to Daviess County relatively unscathed after four years, then graduated from Harvard Law School by the time he was twenty-five. Ellis opened a law practice in Owensboro in 1870, and the same year won election as county attorney. In 1886 he mounted a campaign for U.S. Congress and served two terms in Washington. He was an active organizer of Confederate veteran camps in western Kentucky and a powerhouse in Democratic politics.¹⁰

An experienced stump speaker, Ellis knew how to grab an audience, even one made drowsy by a warm day and a heavy lunch. Grinning down from the podium at the hundreds of gray-clad veterans in his audience, Ellis broke the elegiac spell cast by earlier speakers.

“It is evident that all the young Kentuckians who, some forty years ago, served in the Confederate Army are not yet dead,” he began, gaining an appreciative chuckle. “And if we're to judge from present indications, they have no intentions of voluntarily capitulating as long as their rations hold out.”

From his years in politics, Ellis could deliver a respectable stemwinder. He quoted the Bible, cited scholars, and recited poetry, all in oratorical service to the Lost Cause touchstones of valor, constancy, reconciliation, and patriotism.

The crowd interrupted Ellis time after time with thunderous applause during his hour-long oration, but he earned the greatest roars of approval when he spoke of the debt his audience owed the men of the Confederate generation:

“The young men Kentucky gave to the Confederate army rendered their state some service,” he bellowed from the podium, “and are, as they and their friends believe, entitled to a respectable place in its history.”

As the congressman concluded his speech and the audience cheered, Bennett Young led a schoolgirl with a large box of flowers to the podium. She presented the flowers to Ellis, and Young introduced Miss Laura Talbot Galt to the audience, who recognized her name immediately. Little Laura had been turned out of her Louisville public school for refusing to sing “Marching through Georgia” in a school assembly. Indignant newspaper editorials throughout the South brought about Laura's reinstatement and the removal of the despicable Yankee song from schools throughout the Southland.¹¹

For a full two minutes Laura stood at the front of the platform with Ellis's arm on her shoulder, the Lost Cause heroine and the Lost Cause orator enveloped by adoring cheers from the crowd.

To be a first-rate orator at the beginning of the twentieth century required lungs like leather saddlebags, a diaphragm as solid as a manhole cover, and vocal cords more resilient than piano wire. In those days before electronic amplification, a man—there were few top-tier women orators—had to address a group of people large enough to fill a minor league ballpark and make his every word heard and understood. Moreover, he had to modulate his voice sufficiently to convey emotion and maintain interest. And, to make things even more difficult, he often had to do this in an outdoor setting, his voice competing with crying babies, the natural rustle of a crowd, a whistling breeze, or even passing trains.¹²

Captain Ellis was an excellent stump speaker; but, by all accounts, Bennett H. Young was an inspired orator.

His eulogy for Winnie Davis in 1899 and his high-spirited invitation to Louisville for the 1900 UCV reunion earned Bennett Young a seat (literally) on the national Confederate veterans’ stage. He had learned all the movements of the Lost Cause symphony, and it was a tune he could play by heart. Behind a lectern Young was scholar, storyteller, teacher, and poet. When he chose to turn on the charm, it flowed in irresistible waves; when he intended pathos, women sobbed and men reached for handkerchiefs. By 1902 there was hardly a monument ceremony, battlefield dedication, or Confederate reunion where Bennett Young wasn't invited to be the featured speaker.

Shortly before three o'clock he returned to the podium before the 10,000 men, women, children, and babies awaiting formal dedication of the Kentucky Confederate Home.

“Comrades, ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “[Today] witnesses the speedy consummation of the most important enterprise ever inaugurated by the Confederate soldiers of this Commonwealth.”

Young went into a brief (and prideful) recap of the founding of the Home. “It is less than a year since the state reunion of the UCV … declared its purpose and formulated plans to establish on a liberal scale and secure foundation a Kentucky Confederate Home.”

Kentucky's Confederates have, in this and other ventures, Young reminded his audience, “reflected on the state nothing but credit and renown.”

Turning to look at the building behind him, he mused on the nature of the men who would come to live there.

“There will be men here in this Home who, with their comrades, marched with unblanched cheeks into the fires which belched from Federal guns up and down the slopes of Chickamauga's hills.”

A cheer arose from the veterans who remembered Chickamauga all too well.

“There will be men here to pass the closing years of their lives who charged down along the valley of Stones River on that dreadful afternoon of January 2, 1863.”

More cheers from the men who survived that bloodbath.

“The men who will come here will be those who walked without fear amid the awful carnage of Shiloh.”

Rebel yells now, and more cheers from a crowd that had been primed to respond to these legendary names.

“There will be men here to live out the closing days of their lives who rode with … the valiant Forrest.”

The audience erupted over mention of Tennessee's brilliant cavalryman.

“ … the peerless Breckinridge …”

The roar from the crowd was almost constant, but Young continued with the names of battles and leaders dear to Kentuckians’ hearts.

“ … the Federal lines at Harrisburg, Mississippi …”

The roar increased in volume.

“ … that memorable campaign from Dalton …”

Louder still.

“ … to Atlanta …”

By this point the call-and-response between speaker and audience was at a sonic volume sufficient to blow the windows out of any Baptist church. At the absolute crescendo of excitation, however, at the precise moment when this roaring mob of 10,000 seemed ready to strip bark from the trees in their frenzy, Young went silent.

The crowd was confused, and its sound spluttered away to nothing.

For a long moment Young simply stared at his audience, letting their attention focus on him alone. He spread his arms wide and finally, in a low, steely voice that was almost sepulchral, continued.

“Today we swing wide these hospitable doors and bid these heroes come in.” Young slowly closed his arms to his chest, as if embracing the whole of the crowd.

“Here with sheltering love no want shall go unsupplied… . Here they can abide in peace, plenty, quiet and comfort until they shall answer the divine roll call and cross over to the unknown shore to keep company with the immortals.”

As the audience cheered these words Young reached into the lectern to produce a set of golden keys. He displayed them to the crowd, then turned to Governor Beckham's seat on the platform.

“And to you, governor of our beloved Commonwealth … I tender these keys with unfaltering faith that Kentucky will never forget her brave and chivalrous sons, who at Shiloh …”

Again, the audience exploded at mention of that fateful name.

“ … Hartsville …”

The call-and-response began once more, louder even than the first time.

“ … Kennesaw Mountain …”

“ … Jonesboro …”

“ … Resaca …”

“ … Murfreesboro …”

Men who had yelled themselves hoarse threw hats in the air and waved handkerchiefs; women swooned and kissed their hands to him; children stood paralyzed by the incredible explosion of noise surrounding them. Few heard (or needed to hear) the final few words of Young's dedicatory address.

When the audience finally regained its composure, they saw that Governor Beckham was standing at the podium, golden keys in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other.

“There is a certain lady in this crowd who has me very much intimidated,” the Boy Governor began. “During the war her work of sending supplies to the Confederate soldiers in the South was carried on to such an extent that it attracted the attention of Federal authorities, and she concluded that the climate of Canada would be more congenial to her than the prospect of a Northern prison. That lady was my mother.”

The audience chuckled; most knew of Julia Tevis Wickliffe Beckham's wartime activities. She was the adventuresome daughter of Kentucky's beloved governor Charles A. Wickliffe and the sister of Louisiana's Governor R. C. Wickliffe. Now an attractive dowager, she enjoyed the rare distinction of being the daughter, sister, and mother of governors of states.¹³

Julia Beckham, former Confederate spy, acknowledged the polite applause without leaving her seat.

“She said that if I dared say anything that was not complimentary to the Southern soldiers or the cause they espoused, she would get right up and disown me,” Beckham said with a shy grin. “So to avoid running the risk of anything of the kind, I have committed to paper what I have to say.”

Beckham formally accepted the Home on behalf of the State of Kentucky. His speech was unremarkable, but it was well received by the ex-Confederates, lauding as it did their wartime patriotism and assuring them that the people of Kentucky would care for them in their old age. The governor's voice was confident and clear, and he did not attempt the oratorical flourishes or bombast that might have been more appropriate for an older man. Beckham read his speech rather than deliver it from memory. The youthful governor basked in the warmth, if not adulation, of the crowd, and he gave his mother no reason to disown him.

As the festivities wound to a close, Bennett Young motioned for a fragile old man to join him at the podium. Slowly, almost painfully, the man rose from his seat on the speaker's stand, his eyes sunken and lusterless. Assisted by his matronly daughter, a black manservant, and an ebony walking stick, he wobbled toward Young, looking not unlike a giant mantis in a black wool suit.

Captain Daniel G. Parr, whose gift of a house and lot sparked the final push for a Confederate veterans home eighteen months before, leaned close to Young in utter confusion as he was introduced to the crowd. On behalf of their family, Parr's daughter, Virginia Sale, presented a silk streamer—a red, white, and blue guidon inscribed “The Confederate Home”—and it was hoist on the flagstaff.

A final benediction sent the crowd on its way.

The ceremonies in Pewee Valley on October 23, 1902, marked a clear dividing line for Kentucky's ex-Confederates. In less than two years they had completed the tasks necessary to build a veterans’ home. From that day forward they would have to provide for its management.

Governor Beckham and his mother departed Pewee Valley that afternoon on the governor's special train. He carried with him the golden keys, symbolic of his proprietorship of the Kentucky Confederate Home. Beckham would sleep that night in his Frankfort apartment, comfortable that he had done nothing to embarrass himself in front of the veterans. A year later he would win reelection, his victory ensured by the near unanimous support of Kentucky's ex-Confederates.

Lorenzo Holloway would sleep that night at what was now officially the Kentucky Confederate Home. As a young man he had spent three ugly years in a Federal institution, and he had chosen to spend the final years of his life in another type of institution. Under the management of the board of trustees and the eyes of other interested parties, the Kentucky Confederate Home promised to be a more benevolent institution than the one that imprisoned Holloway during the war years.

The Kentucky Confederate Home would be a respectable place, but an institution nonetheless.