Background
Humphrey Marshall was born on January 13, 1812, in Frankfort, Kentucky, United States. He was a son of John Jay and Anna Reed Birney Marshall. His father was a son of Humphrey Marshall, and his mother was a sister of James G. Birney.
West Point, NY, United States
At the age of sixteen, Marshall received an appointment to the Military Academy at West Point, where he was graduated in 1832, and he became lieutenant of the mounted rangers.
Humphrey Marshall was born on January 13, 1812, in Frankfort, Kentucky, United States. He was a son of John Jay and Anna Reed Birney Marshall. His father was a son of Humphrey Marshall, and his mother was a sister of James G. Birney.
At the age of sixteen, Marshall received an appointment to the Military Academy at West Point, where he was graduated in 1832, and he became lieutenant of the mounted rangers.
Humphrey Marshall resigned his commission in April 1833, studied law, and the same year began practice in Frankfort. In 1834 he moved to Louisville, where he practiced law until 1846. He developed political inclinations, served in the city council in 1836, and the following year was unsuccessful in the election for state representative. In 1836 he raised a company of Kentuckians and prepared to lead them to Texas, but on the arrival of news of Houston's victory at San Jacinto, he disbanded the company. Taking an active part in the development of the state militia, from 1836 to 1846 he held successively the ranks of captain, major, and lieutenant-colonel.
On the outbreak of war with Mexico in 1846, Marshall raised the 16t Kentucky Cavalry and, on June 9, was commissioned its colonel. He took a prominent part in the battle of Buena Vista, in which he executed some brilliant cavalry charges. For a short period after the war, he carried on farming operations in Henry County. After a hard fight for election, in 1849 he entered Congress as a Whig and was reelected two years later. Receiving a few votes for the speakership in the strenuous contest of 1849, he immediately took a position of prominence in the debates that developed around the many questions growing out of the Mexican War.
Marshall upheld the orthodox position of the Southern Whigs and spoke in favor of various points in Clay's compromise scheme. So prominent did he became in Whig affairs that in 1852 when a vacancy occurred in the Supreme Court, he was urged for the position. Since geographical considerations prevented his appointment, President Fillmore offered to appoint him minister resident to Central America, but he refused the honor. Thereupon Fillmore offered to send him to China. He accepted and resigning from Congress on August 4, 1852, he arrived in China in January 1853, where he spent the next year in dealing with the details of American shipping in the free ports of China. He was also busied with the increasing Chinese emigration to the United States as well as with the delicate problems arising from China's unwillingness to be drawn into the maelstrom of western commercial and political relations. On his return to America early in 1854, finding the Whig party disrupted, he joined the Know-Nothings and became an important force in their national councils. Serving from 1855 to 1859 in Congress, he again took a prominent part in the proceedings. He tried to evade the slavery issue wherever possible, but he insisted on the rights of slave-holders and the South's right to equality in the Union.
By 1859 he refused to run for Congress again; instead, he settled down in Washington to practice law. In 1860 he supported Breckinridge for the presidency. With the coming of war, he returned to Kentucky and sought to hold the border states to a peaceful course. Failing, he retired to Nashville, Tennessee, in the fall of 1861 and, on receiving a commission as brigadier-general in the Confederate Army, set out for Eastern Kentucky. He was obsessed with the idea that he could swing Kentucky into line if he were given a free hand and proper support. During the winter of 1861-1862, he fought a few engagements in the Big Sandy region and then retired into southwestern Virginia, where in May 1862 he surprised the Federals at Princeton, West Virginia, and defeated them. He took part in Bragg's invasion of Kentucky in the autumn of 1862, after which he retired into southwest Virginia. He always wanted an independent command and never found conditions quite to his liking.
In 1863 Marshall resigned from the army, went to Richmond to practice law, and the next year was elected to the Second Confederate Congress in which he served to the end. When the war was over he fled to Texas and in November 1865 got permission to go to New Orleans. The next year he returned to Kentucky and practiced law in Louisville until his death.
Marshall served in the United States House of Representatives as a Whig and later as a member of the American party when he defeated General William Preston for election in 1855. In 1859, he became a secessionist, although he later tried to save the Union and favored armed neutrality. In 1860, he supported John C. Breckinridge for president.
He attempted to keep Kentucky neutral in 1860, but when Lincoln called for the invasion of Kentucky he joined the Confederate Army. He was elected to the second Confederate House from Kentucky as a Democrat where he served on the Military Affairs Committee and was an administration opponent.
On January 23, 1833, Humphrey married Frances McAlister, by whom he had six children.