KMI produced generals …
Kentucky provided Civil War leaders
from nation’s two oldest private institutes

By BRYAN BUSH
Bugle Staff Writer

In 1843, Robert Thomas Pitcairn Allen and his wife, Julia, purchased the Franklin Institute, located six miles south of Frankfort on the Lawrenceburg Pike.

Several years later in 1845, Allen, a West Point graduate, changed the name of the school to the Kentucky Military Institute (KMI). The Baltimore County, Md., native obtained the school after serving as chair of mathematics and civil engineering at Transylvania University in Lexington.

After his active army duty, Allen had become an ordained Methodist Episcopal minister, but was dedicated to making Kentucky military education a success.

On Jan. 20, 1847, Allen managed to secure a Commonwealth charter, and, on Feb. 25, 1847, the Western Military Institute opened in Georgetown. Kentucky had now had the distinction of having the two oldest private military preparatory schools in the United States.

KMI was providing its share of military officers, but, with the Civil War erupting on the landscape in April 1861, many cadets left the school and had to make the decision to either join the Union or the Confederacy. Since Kentucky declared neutrality, many of the cadets were torn as to which side to join. During the war, enrollment fell dramatically, but the conflict needed military men and KMI provided its share of leaders.

Some of the more famous Civil War generals who came from the Kentucky Military Institute were:

Confederate Gen. Benjamin Hardin Helm (Class of 1847). Born June 2, 1831, in Bardstown, he was the brother-in-law of President Abraham Lincoln. On March 2, 1862, he was promoted to brigadier general and later commanded the famous Orphan Brigade. He was killed at the Battle of Chickamauga on Sept. 20, 1863. He’s buried in Elizabethtown in the Helm family plot.

U.S. Brig. Gen. Samuel Woodson Price, 27th Kentucky Infantry (Class of 1848). Price was born in Nicholasville on Aug. 5, 1828. He was brevetted Brig. Gen., US Volunteers for “gallant and meritorious services during the war of the rebellion, and for personal gallantry in leading his regiment in the assault of the enemy’s position on the Moulton and Dallas Road and Kennesaw Mountain, capturing and holding the position (although greatly outnumbered) until reinforced by the command to which he belonged, June 27, 1864.” After the war he became noted as a portrait painter. He died on January 22, 1918, and is buried in Arlington, Cemetery.

U.S. Brig. Gen. Daniel Weisiger Lindsey (Lindsay), 22nd Kentucky, (Class of 1854), was born in Frankfort, Oct. 4, 1835. After engaging for a time in other pursuits, he entered the study of law in the office of his father, the Hon. Thomas N. Lindsey, in Frankfort, followed by a course of lectures at the Louisville Law School, from which he was graduated in 1857. After traveling in the South during the winters of 1857-58, he began the practice of law in Frankfort in partnership with his father. At the commencement of the Civil War, Lindsey was a captain in the Kentucky State Guard. About Sept. 1, 1861, he was commissioned as chief of staff to Gen. Thomas L. Crittenden, who had become inspector general of Kentucky. In October 1861, Lindsey was commissioned by the Military Board of Kentucky to raise a regiment and recruited and organized the 22nd Kentucky Volunteer Infantry. The regiment participated in campaigns in the Big Sandy Valley, in the capture of and around Cumberland Gap; from there up the Kanawha; from there to Memphis, Tenn., where he was placed permanently in the command of a brigade. and with it participated in the campaigns and battles in Vicksburg and Jackson, Miss. He resigned his command to accept the position of inspector general of Kentucky, Oct. 31, 1863. In the summer of 1864, he was commissioned Kentucky adjutant general and held that position until the fall of 1867. In January 1868, he resumed the practice of law in Frankfort.

U.S. Major Gen. Eli Long (Class of 1855), was born June 16, 1837, in Woodford County. In 1856, he was appointed second lieutenant in the 1st U.S. Cavalry Regiment, serving in a variety of frontier outposts and occasionally battling hostile Indians. He was promoted to first lieutenant on March 1, 1861. At the outset of the Civil War, Long was promoted to captain in the 1st Cavalry. On Dec. 31, 1862, Long was wounded in the left shoulder at the Battle of Stones River (Murfreesboro) while commanding Company K of the regiment. On February 23, 1863, Long was appointed colonel of the 4th Ohio Cavalry, a regiment that had surrendered to Confederate raider, Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan. Long improved the morale of the regiment and led it in the Tullahoma Campaign. He commanded the regiment’s brigade, the 2nd Brigade, 2nd Division, Cavalry Corps of the Department of the Cumberland between March 1863 and August 20, 1864. President Abraham Lincoln appointed Long a brigadier general, Aug. 18, 1864, in the volunteer army. During the Civil War, Long was wounded five times and also cited for gallantry five times. On Jan. 13, 1866, President Andrew Johnson nominated Long for appointment to the brevet grade of major general of volunteers. He died Jan. 5, 1903, and is buried in Hillside Cemetery at Plainfield, N.J.

U.S. Major Gen. Stephen Gano Burbridge, (Class of 1858). One of the most controversial Union generals from Kentucky during the Civil War, Burbridge owned a plantation and was a successful lawyer in Russellville before the war. He was present at Shiloh and commanded a brigade at Chickasaw Bluffs and Arkansas Post as a brigadier general. He served throughout the Vicksburg Campaign and in the early part of the campaign at Jackson, Miss. After a few months in the Department of the Gulf, he was given a district command in Kentucky. He was despised by the local population for his harsh rule, especially for his Order Number 59 which stated that for every Union soldier or Union sympathizer killed by a “Confederate guerilla” he would select four “Confederate guerillas” and execute them on the area in question where the Union soldier or Union sympathizer was killed. He was brevetted a major general for repulsing Confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan’s raid in 1864. Even though he was a rising star in the Union army, his arbitrary arrests and system of retaliations forced the Union government to remove him from command. He resigned on Dec. 1, 1865. After years of trying to live in Kentucky, he was forced to move his family and relocated in New York where he died. He’s buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

C.S.A. Major Gen. Robert Frederick Hoke (Class of 1858) was born in Lincolnton, N.C. With North Carolina’s secession from the Union, Hoke enlisted in Company K of the 1st North Carolina Infantry and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. Within months, he was promoted to captain and was commended for “coolness, judgment and efficiency.” He subsequently was promoted to major. Following the reorganization of North Carolina troops, Hoke was appointed as the lieutenant colonel of the 33rd North Carolina Regiment. He was cited for his gallantry at the Battle of New Bern in March 1862, where he assumed command of the regiment following the capture of its colonel. He led the 33rd throughout the Peninsula Campaign and was promoted to colonel before the Northern Virginia Campaign and fought at the Second Battle of Bull Run, in addition to the Maryland Campaign at the Battle of Antietam. Hoke was promoted to major general on April 23, 1864, and was given command of what was called Hoke’s Division in the Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia. After the war, Hoke returned to civilian life and engaged in various businesses, including insurance and gold mining. Hoke and his wife, Lydia Van Wyck, had six children, one of whom, Michael Hoke, became a famous orthopedist in Atlanta, and a founder of the Shriner’s Children Hospital. Hoke died in Raleigh, N.C., and was buried with full military honors in Oakwood Cemetery.

U.S. Major General Charles Carroll Walcutt (Class of 1858), born in 1838, was a Ohio surveyor. In his first major battle at Shiloh, he was severly wounded and the bullet never was removed from his shoulder. As colonel, he led his men in the seige operations at Vicksburg from June 12, 1863, until the city’s fall on July 4, 1863. He took part in the recapture of Jackson and at Chattanooga succeeded to brigade command. He led a brigade throughout the Atlanta Campaign and was named a brigade general. On the March to Sea, he was again wounded at Griswoldville. Brevetted major general for this fight, he did not return to duty until the next spring. He led a brigade and then a division during the Carolinas Campaign. He was mustered out on Janaury 15, 1866, and was named lieutenant colonel of the 10th Cavalry, black regiment, but resigned later that year. He was then a prison warden, tax official, and mayor of Columbus, Ohio. He died in 1898.

C.S.A. Brig. Gen. Cassius E. Merrill (Class of 1859) graduated 20th of 34 at West Point. He was promoted to 1st Lieutenant, 2nd Dragoons, on April 24, 1861. He was appointed Captain, 1st Cavalry, on Aug. 3, 1861, and was promoted to colonel, 2nd U.S. Missouri Volunteer Cavalry, and fought in numerous battles in northern Missouri, Arkansas and Georgia. From March 1871 to June 1873, he suppressed Ku Klux Klan activities in South Carolina and from late 1874 to 1876, while he was stationed in Shreveport, La., he was detailed to the Chief of the Military Staff to the President for the 1876 Centennial celebrations. He missed the Battle of the Little Big Horn in which most of his regiment was killed. On February10, 1877, he returned to Fort Lincoln, N. D., and guarded railroad crews from 1877 to 1883. He retired with disability in 1891.