John Marion Porter (1839--1898) grew up working at his family's farm and dry goods store in Butler County, Kentucky. The oldest of Reverend Nathaniel Porter's nine children, he was studying to become a lawyer when the Civil War began. As the son of a family of slave owners, Porter identified with the Southern cause and wasted little time enlisting in the Confederate army. He and his lifelong friend Thomas Henry Hines served in the Ninth Kentucky Calvary under John Hunt Morgan, the "Thunderbolt of the Confederacy."

When the war ended, Porter and Hines opened a law practice together,...