Morehead, C. S. (Charles Slaughter), 1802-1868

At the time the letter was written, Charles Morehead was a practicing attorney. He also served in the state legislature, became speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives, and was elected to the U.S. Congress as a Whig candidate. He served as the governor of Kentucky from 1855 to 1859.

Kentucky lawyer, state legislator, U.S. congressman, and governor of Ky., 1855-1859.

Kentucky Governor, U.S Congressman.

Morehead, a native of Nelson County, Ky. received a law degree from Transylvania University. His political career included six years as state attorney general, lengthy service in the Kentucky House of Representatives, and two terms as House Speaker. Morehead represented Kentucky in the U. S. House of Representatives as a Whig and was a presidential elector for Winfield Scott on the 1852 Whig ticket. With the demise of that political party, Morehead joined the American or "Know-Nothing" Party, which esposed nativist principles.

He was the Whigs' gubernatorial candidate in 1855, winning the election by a narrow margin in a race marred by the anti-foreign riot in Louisville known as "Bloody Monday." He declared the rights of slaveholders inviolate in any territory when he was governor and as a private citizen, strongly advocated neutrality for Kentucky as a private citizen at the beginning of the Civil War. Morehead was imprisoned after criticizing the cutoff of trade with the South. Paroled in 1862, Morehead fled the country rather than take an oath of allegiance. He returned to a plantation in Mississippi after the war, where he died in 1868.