General John Breckenridge Castleman

Lincoln, the Forgiving Foe by General John B. Castleman: Lincoln Memorial Dedication Ceremony, November 10, 1911

Gen. Castleman Speaks

The Courier-Journal

November, 10, 1911

[Article transcribed]

General Castleman Speaks

Gen. John B Castleman delivered the final address. His subject was "Lincoln, the Forgiving Foe." Mr. Folk, in introducing Gen. Castleman, called attention to the fact that he had fought under the stars and bars during the Civil War, and, later, during the war with Spain, he had fought under the stars and stripes.

Asserting that he did not know until this morning that he was to be called upon to speak, Gen. Castleman said the occasion was too sacred for one to participate in without first having prepared himself. He said Mr. Collier had called upon him, however, and that any Kentuckian of the worth of the publisher of Collier's Weekly could never refuse to comply with his request, if possible, or at least to make the effort.

"Even if Robert Collier could not induce me to attempt a thing that I feared I might not be able to carry out, the memory of his father would," Gen. Castleman said.

Getting down to his subject, Gen. Castleman, without mentioning names, related a story of how Lincoln had intervened in behalf of a young Confederate soldier who was in grave danger of execution at the hands of the "Yankees." The sister and brother-in-law of the young soldier had appealed to Lincoln, he said, and the latter, after listening to their story, wrote an order to Maj. Gen. Hovey, instructing him to suspend execution in case the Confederate youth was found guilty.

Some one among those on the speakers' platform called upon Gen. Castleman to give the name of the young solder, be he refused. Gov. Wilson then announced so that all could hear, that the name of the soldier was John B. Castleman, and the requested President Taft to read the original order to Maj. Gen. Hovey, which Gen. Castleman held in his hand. The President complied setting at rest all doubt as to the identity of the young Confederate soldier, whose life probably was spared by the intervention of President Lincoln.

Gen. Castleman related other instances illustrative of the forgiving spirit of Lincoln. He said the martyred President had set an example that had been followed by many of his successors in office, in support of which statement he pointed to the fact that Gen. Basil W. Duke, who fought for the South, is now a member of the Shiloh Battlefield Commission.

Instancing the good Lincoln's attitude toward those who fought against the North, coupled that of later Presidents who folloed in the "Emancipator's" footsteps, had brought about, Gen. Castleman told how Confederate solders all over the South responsed to McKinley's call for 200,000 volunteers when the blowing up of the Maine made the war with Spain inevitable.

"President McKinley called for 200,000 volunteers," he said, "and 1,000,000 men responded, the Confederate soldiers all over the South entering instantly the service of the country."

In this connection, Gen. Castleman said that the first regiment that offered its service to the Government was a Kentucky regiment and was commanded by a Confederate soldier. He was called upon to give the name of the commander of that regiment, and when he hesitated someone again answered for him, informing the assemblage that the commander referred to was Gen. Castleman.

Source: [Gen. Castleman Speaks, The Courier-Journal, November, 10, 1911]

These articles are among several posted at Bryan Castleman's blogger page here.

From John B. Castleman

Indianapolis Ind. June 7th 1865

To the President of the U.S.

Sir.

    In the Summer of the year 1862, being then less than Twenty one years of age and living near Lexington Kentucky, I was induced to engage in the Rebellion, and joined the Rebel Army. I continued in that service, and was arrested in Southern Indiana in the month of September 1864, and have been since that time a prisoner and held under charges for trial. In what I did, I was led to believe, and at the time thought, I was doing my duty. I am now convinced that my action was wrong from the beginning, and that I have committed grievous errors.

    For what is past, I can only express my sincere regret, and promise to strive by my future action to atone for it by faithful efforts to discharge my duty as a citizen of the United States.

    With this preliminary statement, I desire now to ask that I may be permitted to take the Oath of Allegiance, and be released on such terms as may to you seem best. And if it is not possible for proper in your judgement that this should be done, I ask that I may be allowed to become a voluntary exile to some other country, for life or such shorter time, as may be deemed by you sufficient, Subject to such penalties for returning as may be imposed, and giving my obligation in such form as may be required, to observe strictly the terms of the order and to do no act of hostility in any way to the United States.

   I hope it will be found consistent with your views of duty and of the public interests to grant my request.

I am, Very Respectfully

Your Ob't Sv't J.B. Castleman. 

Colonel John Breckinridge Castleman Speech 1898, Spanish-American War

Speech of Col. John B. Castleman

"Gen. Henry, Mr. Alcade, Gentlemen: My esteemed commander has elected to refer to me in terms of commendation and to invite your attention to matters personal to myself in order to illustrate the liberality of the Government to whose protection you are assigned.

It is true that against the great republic beyond the seas, to which you are now united by the inseparable strength of governmental union, I fought a third of a century ago as a Confederate soldier. It is true that the Government whose commission I now hold is one which then I united in a common effort to destroy. But the spirit of patriotism which then animated a great people in an heroic struggle, now prompts the same people, through their survivors of that war, to demand that no effort of mankind shall cause to be effaced any star from the flag of the Union, but that where self-respecting, intelligent citizenship shall warrant it, those represented in that sisterhood of States shall aid other territorial communities in enjoying whatsoever privileges they may demonstrate that they are entitled to receive. Your position in the future is with yourselves. Your respect for law and your enforcement of order are matters which will determine your right to the respect and confidence of your new associates. You will be required to exercises courage and firmness and manhood in controlling the ignorant and vicious and the unwise. Every citizen of Porto Rico, no matter what his antecedents shall receive the protection and support of the constituted authorities of the United States. And every citizen shall be compelled to respect his neighbor's right to equal freedom. "

[General John Breckinridge Castleman, 1898]

A tribute to John B. Castleman by William R. Goodwin, on November 8, 1913

William R. Goodwin, a member of the American Saddle Horse Breeders' Association, and editor of the Breeder's Gazette came from Chicago to attend the unveiling.

Profound indeed is the esteem which led a city and a state to erect a statue of one of its distinguished citizens while he yet dwelt among men. Such supreme honors are wontedly reserved for the dead. Singularly appropriate is this precedent-breaking man. The unselfish, lavish devotion of General John B. Castleman to the interests of his state and country are written on the imperishable tablets of the hearts of his people. Public service has ever been the animating spirit of his career. Never has a man devoted more of his time and talent, unsparingly, intelligently and effectively, to the service of his city and state than General Castleman, and the results of his labors bless the present and future generations. Had he but served his own interests with half the fidelity with which he has served his fellow citizens, he would have been numbered among the financial captains of the South. The bronze statue, on its eternal granite base, commanding the entrance to beautiful Cherokee Park in Louisville, dedicated in the songs of the school children, the concerted sounds of the players on many instruments, the fanfare of military trumpets, the eulogies of state and city officials, and the plaudits of his fellow citizens, proved that John B. Castleman chose to serve the people, not Mammon. 

Flowers at the funeral are so prescribed by conventionality that appreciative words while yet in the flesh seems fairly strange. Small wonder it is that some out of touch with the man and his work marveled that so distinguished an honor should be done him while yet he walked the earth. They had but to feel the thrill of the dedication atmosphere to understand it was an outpouring of the appreciation and love of a people loyally and intelligently served. His most familiar appearance in Louisville, either at the head of the Louisville Legion or pursuant of his labors as president of the Board of Park Commissioners, was on the back of a five-gaited horse. The model selected from a competition to which numerous sculptors contributed was designed by R. Hinton Perry of New York and the statue was erected at a cost of $15,000 by popular subscription from city, state and other commonwealths to General Castleman "as a man, a citizen, a soldier and a true friend." It may be seriously doubted if ere a more life-like presentation of man and horse in bronze has ever been achieved. With infinite pains the artist labored with his equine model, and the sculptor's art has finally been able to ask of horsemen unqualified approval of a bronze presentment of the noblest of man's animate aids. The statue breathes the form, pose and life of man and mare.

General Castleman is known to the live stock world as the foremost advocate of the most beautiful creation of the breeder's art — the American saddle horse. For nearly a quarter of a century as president he has guided the destinies of the American Saddle Horse Breeders' Association, inviting and compelling the attention of the lovers of the pleasure horse to the matchless beauty, finish and service of the saddle horse as developed under the auspices of the association, and has lived to see the complete triumph of the type in America, measured by the prominence, intelligence and wealth of its patrons. Of his civic and military services this journal does not treat, but promising as the fundamental fact of his life, the animating motive of his actions, his high sense of public duty, it can only be said that the Honorable Edward J. McDermott, lieutenant-governor of Kentucky, sketched with altogether adequate eloquence the career of Gen. Castleman with which the people of his state have been familiar since he entered the Confederate service as a mere youth and returned home from the Spanish War with a general's commission, to receive this unprecedented honor from his people in the seventy- second year of his age. His services to the state in times of riot and profound political disturbance, when his diplomacy and decision wrought for peace and tranquility, were fittingly set forth, as were also his courage and his courtliness "A gentleman of the old school," all delighted to term him — rare example in these latter days which possess not the environment which makes for their development.

(source: 'Active Service', John B. Castleman)

The John Breckinridge Castleman Statue, Louisville Times, November 7, 1913

(From the Louisville Times, November 7, 1913.) 

THE CASTLEMAN STATUE. 

Life is very short. Must we then wait until the next generation discerns the proper judgments and rewards? Must all recognitions be tardy? Surely not, and it is the happy realization of that truth that prompted the graceful tribute, which, on Saturday next, is to be paid to General John Breckinridge Castleman. 

General Castleman's monument was secure, even though it were never raised — it stood firm in the hearts of his friends and the memories of his fellow- citizens. Fame would still be busy with his name if no visible remembrance existed; but, in bestowing upon him honor and recognition while yet in full enjoyment of a vigorous and useful life, a noble impulse has received its legitimate fulfillment. It has been said that the love of a few faithful ones, the personal devotion of those who know you best, is all that any man deserves; we cannot accept so narrow a view, and we could never understand why those who are censorious and critical throughout all the changing vicissitudes of a man's career should be so generous with flowers when his heart is still and his eyes closed forever. 

It is not a little thing that this gallant soldier, this urbane, courtly gentleman, has done for a city and a state that delights to distinguish those who distinguish them; hi these later days we cannot disassociate him from those wonderfully beautiful parks that are his pride and in great measure his 'creation, and, when the history of the nation was being written in the lifeblood of its best and bravest, where shall we find pages more inspiring than those that tell the deeds of this lateborn cavalier, this knight sans peur et sans reproche?

The secret of a man's charm is an elusive and indefinable as the secret of a writer's style; the hold he has on us, the place he fills, the loyalty he arouses — how explain them? General Castleman is a man of the world, the big world; there are few experiences that are foreign to him, no activities in which he takes no interest, no traditions of breeding, of manner, of gallant bearing that do not center in him. It is inconceivable that such a man should sit in the shadow. He could not be commonplace if he would. His character has been touched with bold, broad touches, generously, lavishly even, and he brings with him the sense of a spacious outlook. Geniality is of his essence; children know that he is not un fathomable, and it is peculiarly fitting that the school children for whose welfare he has been so solicitous, so intelligently providing, should join in the exercises of the day. It was a pleasant thought pleasantly carried out. There at the entrance to the park whose beauty is so much his work, will stand, appropriately, an equestrian statue, attracting and arresting attention by the sweep of its lines, the vigor of its pose, the evidence of its truth. For felicity of situation as of design it stands alone among our memorials; it has succeeded in catching something of the irresistible verve of its delightful model — more cannot be asked of any artist; it denies forever and to all men that "the days of our youth are the days of our glory." To have caught this veteran of two wars young and eager has been the happy idea of Mr. Charles F. Grainger; to him and to Mr. Marion Taylor, his industrious colleague, the community owes a debt of very real gratitude.

John B Castleman on Slavery, Lincoln, and the Union, 1918

"In Louisville today the remains of General John Breckinridge Castleman lie in state. General Castleman's story is not without significance in these troubled times. As a youth of nineteen he rushed into Confederate service at the outbreak of the war. He was opposed to the institution of slavery but he was a hot-headed advocate of the principle of state's rights and to him every state was a republic unto itself. He was the dashing kind of soldier who would naturally be drawn to the audacious trooper, Morgan." 

"At the entrance of Cherokee park which is the product of his generosity and constant care and watchfulness stands a modest little frame cottage in a spacious park-like yard where arching trees abound. That little house for nearly half a century has been General Castleman's home. In the large central window of this home, facing the thorofare, there has always hung an American flag.The flag was General Castleman's passion. In the days of his youth on his return from exile he, like General Gordon of Georgia, became a great reconstructionist. He went among the people of the south, telling them what the flag meant, how wrong their war was, how the lost cause was a wrong cause, how they should rejoice in their defeat tho never losing their love and enthusiasm for their hero dead who gave their valor for that which they thought to be right but which they now found, to their sorrow and to their gladness, was wrong. He was the sympathetic southerner who love the South so much that he could love North and South more."

When the Lincoln Memorial at Hodgenville was dedicated a few years ago General Castleman with President Taft was an honor guest of Kentucky. When all the services and exercises were over, and the 17,000 spectators on the grounds had dissipated, gone on their way and the Presidential train was standing on its siding with impatient engine three mile distant from the isolated shrine, General Castleman expressed the wish to return to the Memorial that he could see it in the silence of its setting, with the multitude away.

When, with a few friends present, he paid this second visit to that shrine that day he said, "“ I cannot describe my feelings. Here from a home of lower birth than that which I knew, the humblest hut of a cabin, came a man who lived to have the power to save my life. Had Lincoln lived, I always knew that I would have returned from exile not two years after but at the close of the war In giving me my life this man gave me the light to see the wrong cause I had championed, the right cause that he battled for. I have given my life in a humble effort to carry on his work, to bring his divided people once more,” then pointing to the inscription on the pediment of the building, he read “ into union, peace and brotherhood among these United States.” A few years ago in front of his own home at the entrance of the park which was the result of his own generosity and handiwork, Louisville unveiled in his presence, Kentucky ’s great man on a horse, GENERAL CASTLEMAN.

General Castleman lived the repentance of a mistake against a just cause and a flag that was borne into battle for liberty and for a government that stood for both freedom and fellowship. No one ever worked more faithfully to correct a wrong against his country's flag. No one ever learned to love his country's flag more than did Kentucky s great horseman. He was one of the rebuilders of the South, and as a rebuilder he became one of the builders of the nation.

General Castleman is dead. His mortal remains lie in state in Louisville today. Kentucky honors in this hour the memory of one who was more than her son; he became a great, soldier son of America. This was his pride. The flag that always made brilliant the big window of his home he loved better than life itself. The spirit of General Castleman is one that cannot be laid at rest. In the words ; of Webster it will march on and on in the cause of “ union, one and inseparable now and forever-”

THE WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL. SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1918.