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.
