Thomas E. Bramlette

Governor of Kentucky

Thomas Elliott Bramlette (January 3, 1817 – January 12, 1875) was the 23rd Governor of Kentucky.He was elected in 1863 and guided the state through the latter part of the Civil War and the beginning of Reconstruction.

At the outbreak of the war, Bramlette put his promising political career on hold and enlisted in the Union Army, raising and commanding the 3rd Kentucky Infantry.

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln appointed him district attorney for Kentucky.A year later, he was the Union Democrats' nominee for governor.

Election interference by the Union Army gave him a landslide victory over his opponent, Charles A.Wickliffe.Within a year, however, federal policies such as recruiting Kentucky Negroes for the Union Army and suspending the writ of habeas corpus for Kentucky citizens caused Bramlette to abandon his support of the Lincoln administration and declare that he would "bloodily baptize the state into the Confederacy".

After the war, Bramlette issued a general pardon for most ex-Confederates in the state.He opposed ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the establishment of the Freedmen's Bureau in Kentucky.

Among his accomplishments not related to the war and its aftermath were the reduction of the state's debt and the establishment of the Kentucky Agricultural and Mechanical College (now the University of Kentucky).

Following his term as governor, Bramlette returned to his legal practice in Louisville.He died January 12, 1875 and was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery.

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