Creator: Hathaway, Leeland.
Collection number: 2954
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Abstract: Leeland Hathaway (b. 1834) was a Confederate Army officer. Recollections concerning Hathaway’s early life at Deer Park Plantation in Montgomery County, Ky.; his education at Western Military Institute (Georgetown, Ky.); Kentucky Military Institute (Frankfort, Ky.), and Transylvania University (Lexington, Ky.); slavery; Kentucky politics prior to the war; and his Civil War experiences as a lieutenant in the 14th Kentucky Cavalry, serving with John Hunt Morgan during cavalry raids into Indiana and Ohio in 1863, and as a prisoner at Western Pennsylvania Penitentiary (Allegheny, Pa.), Point Lookout, Md., Fort Delaware, and Ft. McHenry (Baltimore, Md.). The reminiscences also concern Hathaway’s accompaning Varina and Jefferson Davis on their flight south after the fall of Richmond, and gives some idea of the war’s effect on the Hathaway family fortunes.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Hathaway devotes several pages to the justification of the institution of slavery (1834-1861) and mentions aid given him by his father’s slaves in his preparations to join the Confederacy (1861); the shooting of Confederate prisoners of war in Maryland by black guards (1864); his reunion with a black Union officer who was a former childhood playmate (1865); and discusses at length the loyalty of one freed slave who remained with the Hathaway family after emancipation.