March 5, 1864---Once the Vice-President of The United States, now a Confederate General

MARCH 5, 1864:        

General John C. Breckinridge, C.S.A., the former U.S. senator, U.S. Vice President, and runner-up to Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election, takes control of Confederate forces in the Appalachian Mountains of western Virginia. He commanded all troops in this increasingly obscure theatre until he was elevated to the position of the Confederacy's Secretary of War in the closing weeks of the Civil War.