
Charles Slaughter Morehead (7 July 1802-21 December 1868) was a member of the US House of Representatives (W-KY 8) from 4 March 1847 to 3 March 1851 (succeeding Garrett Davis and preceding John C. Breckinridge) and the Know Nothing Governor of Kentucky from 4 September 1855 to 30 August 1859 (succeeding Lazarus W. Powell and preceding Beriah Magoffin).
Biography[]
Charles Slaughter Morehead was born in Bardstown, Kentucky in 1802, the cousin of James Turner Morehead, and he became a lawyer in Hopkinsville in 1822 and also came to own plantations in Texas and Mississippi. He served as a National Republican state representative from 1828 to 1832, as the Whig Attorney General of Kentucky from 1832 to 1838, in the US House of Representatives from 1847 to 1851, and as Governor from 1855 to 1859. Morehead oversaw the takeover of the Know Nothings by unionist Whigs, but he also directed anger at Catholics and immigrants in Louisville during his campaign. He moved to Louisville in 1859, and he supported his state's initial neutrality during the American Civil War, before being arrested by the Union Army as a Southern sympathizer. After the war, he moved to his Greenville, Mississippi plantation, and he died in 1868.