Kentucky has been the birthplace of one US president, four US vice presidents, the only president of the Confederacy, and several important jurists, statesmen, writers, artists, and sports figures.
Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) the 16th president of the US, was born in Hodgenville, Hardin (now Larue) County, and spent his developing years in Indiana and Illinois. Elected as the first Republican president in 1860 and reelected in 1864, Lincoln reflected his Kentucky roots in his opposition to secession and the expansion of slavery, and in his conciliatory attitude toward the defeated southern states. His wife, Mary Todd Lincoln (1818–82), was a native of Lexington.
Kentucky-born US vice presidents have all been Democrats. Richard M. Johnson (1780–1850) was elected by the Senate after a deadlock in the Electoral College; John C. Breckinridge (1821–75) in 1857 became the youngest man ever to hold the office; Adlai E. Stevenson (1835–1914) served in Grover Cleveland's second administration. The best-known vice president was Alben W. Barkley (1877–1956), who, before his election with President Harry S Truman in 1948, was a US senator and longtime Senate majority leader.
Frederick M. Vinson (1890–1953) was the only Kentuckian to serve as chief justice of the US. Noteworthy associate justices were John Marshall Harlan (1833–1911), famous for his dissent from the segregationist Plessy v. Ferguson decision (1896), and Louis B. Brandeis (1856–1941), the first Jew to serve on the Supreme Court and a champion of social reform.
Henry Clay (b.Virginia, 1777–1852) came to Lexington in 1797 and went on to serve as speaker of the US House of Representatives, secretary of state, and US senator; he was also a three-time presidential candidate. Other important federal officeholders from Kentucky include attorneys general John Breckinridge (b.Virginia, 1760–1806) and John J. Crittenden (1787–1863), who also served with distinction as US senator; treasury secretaries Benjamin H. Bristow (1830–96) and John G. Carlisle (1835–1910); and US senator John Sherman Cooper (1901–91). Zachary Taylor (1784–1850), 12th US president, spent much of his adult life in Kentucky and is buried there.
Among noteworthy state officeholders, Isaac Shelby (b.Maryland 1750–1826) was a leader in the movement for statehood and the first governor of Kentucky. William Goebel (1856–1900) was the only US governor assassinated in office. Albert B. ("Happy") Chandler (1898–1991), twice governor, also served as US senator and as commissioner of baseball.
A figure prominently associated with frontier Kentucky is the explorer and surveyor Daniel Boone (b.Pennsylvania, 1734–1820). Other frontiersmen include Kit Carson (1809–68) and Roy Bean (1825?–1903). During the Civil War, Lincoln's principal adversary was another native Kentuckian, Jefferson Davis (1808–89). Davis moved south as a boy to a Mississippi plantation home, subsequently serving as US senator from Mississippi, US secretary of war, and president of the Confederate States of America.
Other personalities of significance include James G. Birney (1792–1857) and Cassius Marcellus Clay (1810–1903), both major antislavery spokesmen. Clay's daughter Laura (1849–1941) and Madeline Breckinridge (1872–1920) were important contributors to the women's suffrage movement. Henry Watterson (1840–1921) founded and edited the Louisville Courier–Journal and was a major adviser to the Democratic Party. Carry Nation (1846–1911) was a leader of the temperance movement. During the 1920s, Kentuckian John T. Scopes (1900–70) gained fame as the defendant in the "monkey trial" in Dayton, Tenn.; Scopes was prosecuted for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution. Whitney M. Young (1921–71), a prominent black leader, served as head of the National Urban League.
Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866–1945), honored for his work in heredity and genetics, was a Nobel Prize winner. Journalists born in Kentucky include Irvin S. Cobb (1876–1944), who was also a humorist and playwright, and Arthur Krock (1887–1974), a winner of four Pulitzer Prizes. Notable businessmen include Harland Sanders (b.Indiana, 1890–1980), founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants.
Kentucky has produced several distinguished creative artists. These include painters Matthew Jouett (1787–1827), Frank Duveneck (1848–1919), and Paul Sawyer (1865–1917); folk song collector John Jacob Niles (1891–1980); and novelists Harriette Arnow (1908–86) and Wendell Berry (b.1934). Robert Penn Warren (1905–89), a novelist, poet, and critic, won the Pulitzer Prize three times and was the first author to win the award in both the fiction and poetry categories.
Among Kentuckians well recognized in the performing arts are film innovator D. W. Griffith (David Lewelyn Wark Griffith, 1875–1948), Academy Award–winning actress Patricia Neal (b.1926), and country music singer Loretta Lynn (b.1932). Kentucky's sports figures include basketball coach Adolph Rupp (b.Kansas, 1901–77), shortstop Harold ("Pee Wee") Reese (1919–99), football great Paul Hornung (b.1935), and world heavyweight boxing champions Jimmy Ellis (b.1940) and Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay, b.1942).