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.The Breckinridgesof Kentucky likewise were subjected to a point-by-point comparison of twofamily members: Unionist and Danville Theological Seminary professorRobert J.Breckinridge a great thinker and his nephew, Confederategeneral (and former U.S.vice president) John C.Breckinridge a greattalker and soul-sacrificing, vote-catching villain. Kentuckian Henry Clay,long identified with his compromises for staving off civil war, was featured forhaving several grandsons who fought for the Confederacy.Their service was 34 union father, rebel sona sad postscript to the storied life of that illustrious statesman, accord-ing to the Louisville Daily Journal.Most troubling, however, was the familyof Thomas Jefferson. Alas, how his descendants are divided in this war! exclaimed the Nashville Daily Press, noting that all of the former president sgrandsons were fighting for the Confederacy while his granddaughters sidedwith their Union husbands.52tracing the political lineage of these prominent families remindedSoutherners of where they came from and gave Northerners additional ballastfor their charge of Confederate treason.The newspaper articles, regardlessof their veracity, illustrate the high value that midcentury Americans placedon inheritance and genealogical ties as a source of national loyalty.It wasdifficult, in many minds, to separate family identity from national identityor kinship from citizenship.To do so was to raise uncomfortable questionsabout the origins of national identity.The rebel sons of Unionist fathers weretherefore sorely tested when they volunteered to fight for the South.Theywere forced to argue either that their family ties had little bearing on theirnational sympathies, or that they understood more clearly than their fathershow that family inheritance translated into Confederate loyalty (rather thanfidelity to the Union).Few Unionists, if any, were willing to accept their rebelsons defection as an expression of rational political calculation.They choseinstead to see a disturbing connection between nation and family in theirsons Confederate service and to interpret their wartime division as a familiar,yet lamentable, generational conflict.In this way, they could contain theirwartime division as a more manageable form of domestic strife.Neither the fathers nor the sons may have seen it, or may have wanted tosee it, but in their arguments they hit upon common ground.Both wanted,in contrasting ways, to protect their family from the pressures of war: fathersfocused on restoring their lost paternal authority, whereas sons wished tomaintain their filial position regardless of their political stance.Both sawsomething wrong in the mixing of domestic and political affairs and soughtto restore normalcy again by defending the border between their private andpublic lives.Exactly where that border should fall was unclear, somethingthat other families would encounter as they faced other types of division. 8 2 7Marriage and Courtshipthe civil war represented a marital crisis for Catherine Brown Hopkins.Bythe time the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter, her year-old marriage wasshowing strains despite the recent birth of her first child.Looking back on herrelationship with her husband Henry, she began to wonder if their union hadbeen doomed from the start.Catherine was a native of Philadelphia, whereasHenry was born and raised in Virginia.The marriage seemed like a goodone at the beginning, but it quickly disintegrated into conflict.Their mixedbackgrounds proved troublesome just months after their wedding, when thecouple began to argue over secession. Our sentiments on political subjectswere entirely opposed, Catherine recalled; on one occasion in December1860 she had even grown fearful for her safety when Henry urged his seces-sion views with such violence
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