Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/257

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JOSEPH CABELL BRECKINRIDGE
175

of the American Wars, and junior vice-commander of the Loyal Legion. He has traveled extensively throughout Europe and Southeastern and Western Asia and in all parts of the United States. In sentiment he is a Republican, but like most of our army officers, he has not taken an active part in politics. His reading has been of the most varied nature, as might be expected from one of his antecedents and tastes. He has given attention to physical culture, chiefly as it affected the education and welfare of the enlisted men of the army; though personally he is fond of out-of-door exercise and of travel.

In his case, as in that of so many others who have been distinguished for their service to the country at that time, "the Civil war determined his choice of a profession." At the outbreak of the war, he was "merely a boy of nineteen, and he was eager to fight for the preservation of the Union." He says he "can hardly estimate the relative strength of the influences that surrounded him in youth; but every successful life is indebted, more than to anything else, to the influence of home and school, which helps to form habits of study; and also to the companionships formed at that early time."

General Breckinridge married, July 21, 1868, Louise Ludlow Dudley, of Lexington, Kentucky. They have had thirteen children, eight of whom are living in 1905.