Humphrey Marshall

Humphrey Marshall (January 13, 1812 – March 28, 1872) was an American lawyer, politician, and military official from Kentucky. During the Antebellum era, he served four terms in the United States House of Representatives, interrupted by a brief stint as ambassador to China. When the American Civil War broke out, he sided with the Confederacy, becoming a brigadier general in the CS Army and then a Confederate Congressman.

Early life and career Marshall was born in Frankfort, Kentucky, to John Jay (1785–1846) and Anna Birney Marshall. John Jay Marshall was a legislator, law reporter and judge, whose father, also named Humphrey Marshall, was a member of the United States Senate from Kentucky. This elder Humphrey Marshall was a nephew of Chief Justice John Marshall's father, Thomas Marshall. The younger Humphrey Marshall's uncle James G. Birney was a well known abolitionist, and two first cousins, William Birney and David B. Birney, served as major generals in the Union army. Another cousin, James M. Birney, served briefly as Lieutenant Governor of Michigan, and later Minister to the Netherlands.

Marshall graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1832, was assigned to the mounted rangers, served in the Black Hawk War,

Returning to Kentucky, he was elected on the American Party ticket to the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Congresses (1855–59). He was renominated by acclamation, but declined to run for a fifth term. In 1856, he was a member of the national council of the American Party in New York City, where he was instrumental in abolishing all secrecy in the political organization of the party.

Civil War and later career Marshall's native Kentucky was a border state. Marshall, a moderate in his political views, supported John C. Breckinridge for president in the Election of 1860 and advocated the commonwealth's neutrality. When his efforts failed and Union troops occupied Kentucky, Marshall enlisted in the Confederate army with the rank of brigadier general, and aided the recruitment effort. He was stationed in western Virginia, but saw limited combat. In January 1862, he lost a battle at Middle Creek in eastern Kentucky to future President James A. Garfield. Garfield's Federal cavalry had chased off Marshall's cavalrymen at Jenny's Creek near Paintsville, Kentucky. Marshall withdrew to the forks of Middle Creek, two miles from Prestonsburg, on the road to Virginia. Garfield attacked on January 9, precipitating the Battle of Middle Creek. He eventually forced Marshall to withdraw after a day's fighting.

Frustrated by his inability to secure a good assignment following his victory at Princeton Court House in present-day West Virginia in May, Marshall briefly resigned his commission in June 1862. However, he soon returned to the army and participated in Braxton Bragg's Kentucky operations in the fall of 1862. Resigning again from the army in June 1863, he moved to Richmond, Virginia, and continued the practice of law. In November, he was elected to the Second Confederate Congress as a representative from Kentucky's 8th District. With the collapse of the Confederacy, he briefly fled to Texas.

After the war, Marshall moved to New Orleans. His citizenship was restored by President Andrew Johnson in December 1867. He later returned to Louisville and resumed his law practice. He died in Louisville and was buried in the State Cemetery in his native Frankfort.

Author daughter Humphrey Marshall's daughter, Nelly Nichol Marshall (born in Louisville, Kentucky, 8 May 1845; died in Washington, D.C., 19 April 1898), was an author. In addition to numerous poems and many magazine articles, she published novels entitled: Eleanor Morton, or Life in Dixie (New York, 1865), Sodom Apples (1866), Fireside Gleanings (Chicago, 1866), As by Fire (New York, 1869), Wearing the Cross (Cincinnati, 1868), Passion, or Bartered and Sold (Louisville, 1876), and A Criminal through Love (1882). She married Col. John J. McAfee, of the Confederate army, in 1871.