Manuscript Database
Creator/Title
McKinley, J. T. (James Thomas), 1837-1917. Recollections, 1915. 15 pp.
Call No.
Mss. C M
Content
Written in 1915, James Thomas McKinley's Civil War recollections describe his brief service in the Confederate Army in the fall of 1862. In the spring of 1861 he joined Capt. Solomon Redman Norman's company of Kentucky State Guards. This unit apparently dissolved later that year. In the fall of 1862, at the height of the Confederate offensive in Kentucky, he traveled to Lexington and enlisted as a private in Co. E of the 1st Kentucky Cavalry on September 10th. Commanded by Col. J. Russell Butler this unit was attached to Gen. Abraham Buford's cavalry brigade. McKinley describes the skirmishes he fought in during the Confederate retreat from the state, his illness and capture in East Tennessee and his subsequent return to Kentucky where he was briefly confined at the Louisville Military Prison.