My Essay

I was born on April Fool’s Day 1832 on the family farm in Hardin County. Farm chores took most of my time, but I managed to attend local “log schools” when I could. Brought up in the Methodist faith, I was devout. As one contemporary put it, I became “a man of the most pronounced convictions {who} never hesitated to express them.” [Not that this would describe potential judge material].

Despite my limited formal education, by the age of twenty, I was teaching at the local school. The next year, I married Mary Ellen Bush, the niece of Sarah Bush Johnston, who had become Abraham Lincoln’s step-mother. We then moved to Paris, Illinois, where I tried my hand at surveying for a few years as I studied law in my spare time. If that sounds like a familiar story, Lincoln had followed the same course twenty years earlier.

It is likely that Cofer met Lincoln due to the family connection, although Cofer apparently never commented on it. Indeed, it was perhaps because Cofer did not care for “Yankees” that he returned to Kentucky in 1856 to practice law, becoming the partner of Ben Hardin Helm, whose wife was Emily Todd, the sister of Mary Todd Lincoln. They quickly established the most successful practice in the county.

One might think that my multiple connections to Lincoln would have positively influenced my political views. Quite the contrary, I was a solid southern democrat. And I was most certainly not one of only 1364 Kentuckians to vote for Lincoln. That is less than 1% of the statewide vote.

When war broke out, I ran for the state legislature on what was called a “conditional Union” platform. The condition was for the Union to leave slavery alone or we will leave the Union. I lost to a popular U.S. Congressman by only 92 votes. With many other Kentuckians, I progressed to urging the secession of Kentucky. I then formed a company of soldiers which became part of the famous Orphan Brigade