Breckinridge County native Joseph Holt was a lawyer and government official who helped keep Kentucky in the Union during the Civil War and later prosecuted the Lincoln assassination conspirators. Born on January 6, 1807, he attended Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, practiced law in Elizabethtown, became Commonwealth's Attorney of Louisville in 1833, moved to Mississippi two years later, built a lucrative law practice, then retired by age thirty-five and returned to Louisville. Beginning in 1857, he served under President James Buchanan as commissioner of patents, postmaster general, and secretary of war, with his tenure as secretary ending when Abraham Lincoln was elected president. During the summer of 1861, Holt played a major role in orchestrating Unionist political victories across Kentucky and helped keep the state loyal to the Union. In 1862, Lincoln appointed him judge advocate general of the United States, and in that position Holt presided over the trial of the eight Lincoln conspirators, obtaining convictions against all of them; four were sentenced to be hanged and four to imprisonment with hard labor. He declined Lincoln's 1864 offer to appoint him attorney general and instead supported fellow Kentuckian James Speed. Holt resigned his post in 1875, lived in Washington, D.C., until his death on August 1, 1894, and was buried in Breckinridge County next to the Holt homestead.