Confederate Governor at Frankfort
Frankfort, Franklin County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
Confederates Here. The Kentucky State Government moved to Louisville before CSA entered Lexington Sept. 2, 1862. Confederate cavalry moved through Sept. 3 on way toward Louisville. Richard Hawes was inaugurated second Confederate Governor October 4. Generals Bragg and Kirby Smith with large CSA force were present. They withdrew and Union forces occupied Frankfort, Oct. 7, 1862. Dedicated September 27, 1962. For more information, see ExploreKYHistory: CSA Governor at Old State Capitol and ExploreKYHistory: Confederates Here
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
During the Confederate invasion of Kentucky in the fall of 1862, the state government fled Frankfort for Louisville as Southern forces entered Lexington. Confederate cavalry passed through on September 3, and on October 4 Richard Hawes was inaugurated as the second Confederate governor of Kentucky, with Generals Bragg and Kirby Smith present. The ceremony was short-lived: the Confederates withdrew and Union troops reoccupied Frankfort on October 7.
Why it matters
Frankfort was briefly the only Union state capital to fall to Confederate occupation, and Hawes's fleeting inauguration marked the high tide of the Southern bid to claim Kentucky.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the late summer and fall of 1862, the Confederacy made its great bid for Kentucky. Southern armies pushed north in what became known as the Confederate Heartland Offensive, hoping to draw the border state — with its farms, its river access, and its manpower — firmly into the Confederacy.
Kentucky's loyalties were genuinely split. The state stayed in the Union, but it held deep Southern sympathies in many quarters, and both governments courted it. The Confederacy had even recognized a rival, secessionist state government, so that when its armies advanced, they came not only to occupy ground but to install a claim: that Kentucky truly belonged to the South.
Frankfort, the capital, became the symbolic center of that claim. To hold the statehouse, even briefly, was to say to the nation and the world that Kentucky had a Confederate government seated in its own capital. That is what made the events of early October 1862 matter far beyond the small city where they unfolded.
People & events
As Confederate forces moved into the region, Kentucky's Union state government did not wait to be captured. It removed to Louisville before Southern troops entered Lexington on September 2, 1862, and the next day Confederate cavalry passed through, riding toward Louisville. The capital lay open.
On October 4, 1862, Richard Hawes was inaugurated at Frankfort as the second Confederate governor of Kentucky. It was meant to be a moment of legitimacy — a Confederate governor formally installed in the state capital — and it was staged with weight to match: Generals Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith, commanders of the offensive, were present with a large Confederate force.
The ceremony's triumph was fleeting. Within days the Confederates withdrew, and Union forces occupied Frankfort on October 7, 1862. Hawes's governorship in the capital lasted a matter of days. What was intended as the founding act of a Confederate Kentucky became instead its high-water mark — the closest the South ever came to making its claim on the state real.
Its place in the American story
Frankfort holds a singular place in the story of the war: it stands as the one Union state capital that fell, however briefly, to Confederate occupation. That fact alone gives the quiet statehouse an outsized significance in the national memory of the conflict.
The inauguration of Richard Hawes marked the peak of the Confederate effort to win Kentucky — and its collapse marked the effort's failure. The Heartland Offensive did not secure the state, and Kentucky remained in the Union for the rest of the war. The dream of a Confederate Kentucky, seated in its own capital, dissolved almost as soon as it was proclaimed.
It is a reminder that the Confederacy's boldest ambitions in the border states were real, and that they came closer than we sometimes assume — and yet fell short. The high tide of that ambition rose in Frankfort in October 1862, and then receded.
If you visit
Frankfort is an unhurried capital, and the old statehouse quarter carries the memory of that strange, brief autumn. Come and imagine the town in early October 1862: a government fled to Louisville, Confederate soldiers in the streets, and a rival governor taking his oath in the seat of state power.
Let the marker set the scene for you — the flight of the Union government, the cavalry passing through, the inauguration attended by two Confederate generals, and the sudden reversal a few days later. The drama lasted less than a week, but it is written into this ground.
It pairs well with a wider tour of Kentucky's 1862 campaign, and it rewards a traveler who likes the where-history-turned kind of place. Stand in the capital and consider how close, and how briefly, it wore a different flag.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Richard Hawes
- · Braxton Bragg
- · Edmund Kirby Smith
Related events
- · Confederate Heartland Offensive
Themes & tags
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