Charles S. Morehead, Governor

Charles Slaughter Morehead (July 7, 1802 – December 21, 1868) was a U.S. Representative from Kentucky, and served as the 20th Governor of Kentucky. Though a member of the Whig Party for most of his political service, he joined the Know Nothing, or American, Party in 1855, and was the only governor of Kentucky ever elected from that party.

Morehead was a delegate to the Peace Conference of 1861 and the Border States Convention that attempted to stave off the Civil War. Although he favored Kentucky's neutrality, Morehead sympathized with the South and was an open critic of the Lincoln administration. He was imprisoned for disloyalty in September 1861, although no formal charges were ever brought against him. He was released from prison in January 1862, and afterward fled to Canada, Europe, and Mexico. After the war, he returned to the United States and settled on his plantation in Greenville, Mississippi, where he died on December 21, 1868.

Notes

• Attorney General of Kentucky, 1830-1835; United States Representative from Kentucky, 1847-1851; Governor of Kentucky, 1855-1859; Delegate to the Peace Convention in Washington, D. C., 1861; confined in Fort Lafayette, New York, by Federal authorities for disloyalty, 1861-1862. 

Links

• http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/morehead.html
• http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6864748
• http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/w/i/n/Margaret-R-Winders...
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_S._Morehead