Horatio Washington Bruce (February 22, 1830 – January 22, 1903) was a Confederate politician during the American Civil War.
Early life
Horatio Bruce was born February 22, 1830, about one mile south of Vanceburg in Lewis County, Kentucky.[1] He was the son of Alexander and Amanda (Bragg) Bruce and named for two of his uncles, Horatio and Washington Bruce.[2] His paternal grandfather was a soldier in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, and his father was a wealthy landowner who served as a Whig in the Kentucky General Assembly in 1825 and 1826.[3] His maternal grandfather also served in the Revolutionary War.[3] He was of Scottish ancestry on his father's side and English ancestry on his mother's side.[3]
Bruce was educated in private schools in his native Lewis County, as well as Manchester, Ohio.[3] At age sixteen, he began work as a salesman in a general store, a job he held until 1849.[4] Concurrently, he was postmaster of the post office in Vanceburg.[1] In 1849, Bruce taught at a school in Vanceburg for a five-month term.[1] The following year, he taught for five months in another school in Lewis County.[1] In December 1850, he relocated to Flemingsburg, where he read law in the office of Leander M. Cox.[1] He was admitted to the bar in July 1851 and opened his practice in Flemingsburg.[2][3] Later that year, he was appointed examiner by the circuit court of Fleming county, and soon after was elected to the Flemingsburg Board of School Trustees.[1]
On June 12, 1856, Bruce married Elizabeth Hardin Helm, daughter of two-time Kentucky Governor John L. Helm, at "Helm Place", the bride's home in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.[5] The couple had five children: Helm Bruce, Elizabeth Barber Bruce, Maria Preston Pope Bruce, Mary (Bruce) Smith, and V. Alexander Bruce.[6] In August 1856, Bruce was elected Commonwealth's Attorney for the Tenth District, comprising Mason, Lewis, Greenup, Rowan, Fleming and Nicholas counties.[1] He held this position until 1858.[6]
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Bruce sided with the Confederacy and left Louisville for Bowling Green, the headquarters of the state's Confederates, on August 17, 1861.[2] He was a delegate to Kentucky's first Confederate sovereignty convention, held at Russellville from October 29–31, 1861.[3] This self-constituted convention laid the groundwork for Kentucky's secession from the Union, and called for a second convention to be held in Russellville November 18 and 19, 1861.[1] This second convention passed an ordinance of secession, declaring Kentucky to have withdrawn from the Union.[3][4] The convention also established a provisional Confederate state government, and Bruce was elected a member of its legislature.[3] Shortly thereafter, Kentucky was admitted to the Confederate States of America.[3]
On January 22, 1862, Bruce was elected as a Representative in the First Confederate Congress.[4] He was chosen to represent Kentucky on a committee to arrange and conduct the inaugural ceremonies of Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens as Confederate President and Vice-President, respectively.[5] He was also named to the Foreign Relations Committee and the Committee on Patents.[7] On January 10, 1864, he was re-elected to the Second Confederate Congress, serving until the end of the war.[4][5] Records of his service in the Confederate Congresses have been lost to history.[5]
Bruce returned to Louisville June 19, 1865, and in August 1865, formed the law firm of Bruce and Russell with Samuel Russell, his former pupil.[5][8] They dissolved the partnership in 1868 when Bruce was elected to the circuit court in Kentucky's ninth district, comprising Jefferson, Oldham, Shelby, Spencer, and Bullitt counties.[1] He was elected by the overwhelming majority of 10,611 votes in a contest where only 14,817 votes were cast.[8] Bruce was among the first Kentuckians to call for courts to recognize negros' testimony as competent and valid, writing a letter to the Chicago Evening Post in support of this cause on February 20, 1869.[8]
Beginning in 1872, despite never having attended college, he served as a law professor at the University of Louisville, holding the chair of history and science of law, law of real property, and contracts and criminal law.[5] He also served as president of the Louisville Medical College.[5] In 1873, Governor Preston Leslie appointed Bruce as a chancellor of the Louisville Chancery Court to fill a vacancy caused by the death of Chancellor Cochran.[8] At a special election held in February 1874, he was elected to fill the remainder of the unexpired term.[4] In August 1874, he was re-elected to a full, six-year term.[1] He resigned from the chancery court on March 10, 1880, to accept the position of attorney for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad.[5] Shortly after taking this position, he also resigned his professorship at the University of Louisville.[9]
Connelly, William Elsey; Ellis Merton Coulter (1922). History of Kentucky. Vol. 5. The American Historical Society. ISBN9780598572943. Retrieved 2010-06-23.
