Note 95 — TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY (continued 2)

An incident well told by his son-in-law, General Joseph C. Breckinridge, is characteristic of Dudley. When, during the Civil War, a struggle was imminent between the secessionists and the Home Guard for possession of a large shipment of arms and ammunition sent into Kentucky by the United States Government for the arming of Union soldiers and citizens, Dudley, fearing the Home Guard at Lexington would be overpowered and the munitions captured on arrival, sent as a trusty messenger to General Nelson, at Camp Dick Robinson, to ask for troops—a midnight journey of twenty miles through a hostile country—his only son, Scott Dudley, a youth scarcely seventeen. He saddled the horse and armed the boy himself, at dead of night, the better to insure secrecy, for in his own household were foes. This mission was successful. (See speech of General Joseph C. Breckinridge, United States Army, at the reunion of the Army of the Cumberland, Chattanooga, October 10, 1900.) Ensign J. Cabell Breckinridge, United States Navy, the first life lost on the threshold of the Spanish War, and Lieutenant Ethelbert D. Breckinridge, seriously wounded almost at the very instant that his General, the well-beloved Lawton, fell beside him in the Philippines, were grandsons of Doctor Dudley.