[347] war, with all the energy and ability of his great intellect, has fought against secession and rebellion. Such a spirit, too, were many of his kinsmen-such would have been his brother, Rev. John Breckinridge, had he lived to see the day of trial, and such was the spirit of the children of that eminent departed minister. One of these, Judge Samuel Breckinridge, of St. Louis, has been one of the most earnest Union men of that region; a man who has striven earnestly to undo, so far as lay in his power, the wrongs which his cousin, John C. Breckinridge, has done to his country.
But among all the members of the family there was none who combined more perfectly the characteristics of the heroine, the saint, and the martyr, than the sister of the judge, Miss Margaret E. Breckinridge. She was highly educated, and gifted beyond most of her sex with intellectual ability, of fragile form, but attractive in person and manner, and possessing a soul all aflame with the holiest patriotism, and at the same time of the most angelic purity. Her love of her country and of its cause knew no limits, for it she was willing to sacrifice her property, her health, her life itself; and she counted no sacrifice dear which should enable her to fulfil the duty which she felt she owed to its gallant defenders. From the first she had wielded her eloquent pen in its behalf, and early in the spring of 1862, she determined to consecrate herself to the work of caring specially for the sick and wounded soldiers. Her first experiences of hospital life were in the Baltimore hospitals, where she contracted the measles, and was sick for some time. Thence she went to Lexington, Ky., when it was in the possession of the rebel General E. Kirby
