Representative Charles Slaughter Morehead

Charles Slaughter Morehead (July 7, 1802 – December 21, 1868) was a U.S. Representative from Kentucky and the twentieth governor of Kentucky. Though affiliated with the Whig Party for most of his political career, he joined the nativist Know Nothing, or American, Party in the mid‑1850s and became the only governor of Kentucky ever elected from that party. He was born near Bardstown, Nelson County, Kentucky, to a prominent family with deep roots in the state’s early political life; he was a cousin of James Turner Morehead, who also served as governor of Kentucky. Raised in the Bluegrass region, he came of age in a period when Kentucky was transitioning from frontier society to a more settled, commercially oriented state, a context that shaped his later political views.

Morehead received his early education in local schools before pursuing formal higher education. He attended Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, one of the leading institutions in the West at the time, and studied law there. After reading law and completing his legal training, he was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Kentucky. His legal abilities and family connections quickly brought him into public life, and he established himself as an attorney of standing in the state, which in turn provided a platform for his entry into elective office.

Morehead’s political service began in the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1828, marking the start of a long and varied public career. In 1832 he was appointed attorney general of Kentucky, a position he held for five years, during which he gained statewide prominence as the chief legal officer of the Commonwealth. After leaving that office, he returned to the Kentucky House of Representatives, where his colleagues chose him Speaker of the House three times, reflecting his influence within the Whig Party and his skill in legislative management. During these years he was closely identified with the Whig program of internal improvements, economic development, and a cautious approach to national controversies.

In 1848 Morehead was elected as a Whig to the Thirtieth Congress and was subsequently re‑elected, serving two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1849, to March 3, 1853. In Congress he represented Kentucky during the turbulent period surrounding the Compromise of 1850, aligning with other border‑state Whigs who sought to preserve the Union while protecting Southern interests. After his congressional tenure ended, he returned to Kentucky politics at a time when the Whig Party was fragmenting under the pressures of sectional conflict and the rise of new political movements.

By 1855 Morehead had joined the Know Nothing, or American, Party, which capitalized on widespread anti‑immigrant and anti‑Catholic sentiment. That year he was chosen as the party’s candidate for governor of Kentucky and was elected to a four‑year term. His campaign and early administration were overshadowed by intense nativist agitation, and the 1855 election in Louisville was marred by violence known as “Bloody Monday,” when anti‑immigrant and anti‑Catholic rhetoric helped ignite riots that resulted in numerous deaths and extensive property damage. As governor, Morehead presided over a state increasingly divided by national issues, and his tenure reflected both the strengths and limitations of the Know Nothing movement in a border state.

As the sectional crisis deepened, Morehead emerged as a leading advocate of compromise and neutrality. In early 1861 he served as a delegate to the Peace Conference in Washington, D.C., an eleventh‑hour effort by representatives of various states to avert civil war through constitutional amendments and guarantees to the slave states. He also participated in the Border States Convention, which sought to coordinate the efforts of the slaveholding states that remained in the Union to find a middle course between secession and coercion. Although he favored Kentucky’s declared neutrality at the outset of the Civil War, Morehead sympathized with the South and became an open critic of the Lincoln administration’s policies, particularly its use of military power in the border states.

Morehead’s outspoken opposition to federal policy and his perceived Southern sympathies led to his arrest during the first year of the Civil War. In September 1861 he was imprisoned by Union authorities on charges of disloyalty, although no formal indictment was ever brought against him. He was held for several months, including confinement at Fort Lafayette in New York Harbor, before being released in January 1862. Following his release, he left the United States and spent the remainder of the war years abroad and in exile, traveling to Canada, Europe, and Mexico. During this period he remained outside the active political life of Kentucky and the Union, effectively ending his public career.

After the conclusion of the Civil War, Morehead returned to the United States but did not reenter politics. Instead, he settled on his plantation near Greenville, Washington County, Mississippi, where he lived as a planter during the early years of Reconstruction. There he spent his final years removed from the center of Kentucky public affairs in which he had once played a prominent role. Charles Slaughter Morehead died on December 21, 1868, at his plantation near Greenville, Mississippi, closing a career that had spanned service as state legislator, attorney general, Speaker of the Kentucky House, U.S. Representative, and governor during one of the most contentious eras in American political history.