Kentucky remained officially "neutral" throughout the war due to the Union sympathies of a majority of the Commonwealth's citizens. Despite this, some 21st-century Kentuckians observe Confederate Memorial Day on Confederate leader Jefferson Davis' birthday, June 3, and participate in Confederate battle re-enactments. Both Davis and U.S. president Abraham Lincoln were born in Kentucky. John C. Breckinridge, the 14th and youngest-ever Vice President was born in Lexington, Kentucky at Cabell's Dale Farm. Breckenridge was expelled from the U. S. Senate for his support of the Confederacy. Modern historians such as Aaron Astor, Maryjean Wall, and Anne Marshall argue that many of Kentucky's white leaders and influential figures embraced a romanticized Southern identity, drawing from misleading and mythologized conceptions of the Old South and on the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, in the decades following Reconstruction. This phenomenon mirrors similar cultural trends in other states during the nadir of race relations.