John Cabell Breckinridge was an American lawyer, politician, and soldier. He represented Kentucky in both houses of Congress and became the 14th and youngest-ever vice president of the United States. He served in the U.S. Senate during the outbreak of the American Civil War, but was expelled after joining the Confederate Army. In 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis appointed him Secretary of War. He died in 1875, and his daughter and granddaughter are buried at Hampden–Sydney College.
About John C. Breckinridge in brief
John Cabell Breckinridge was an American lawyer, politician, and soldier. He represented Kentucky in both houses of Congress and became the 14th and youngest-ever vice president of the United States, serving from 1857 to 1861. He served in the U.S. Senate during the outbreak of the American Civil War, but was expelled after joining the Confederate Army. In 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis appointed him Secretary of War. He died in 1875, and his daughter and granddaughter are buried at Hampden–Sydney College in Hampden, Kentucky. He was a member of the Democratic Party, and served as a non-combatant during the Mexican–American War, and in the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1849 to 1851. He allied with Stephen A. Douglas in support of the Kansas–Nebraska Act, and was nominated for vice president at the 1856 Democratic National Convention to balance a ticket headed by James Buchanan. He joined Buchanan in supporting the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution for Kansas, which led to a split in the Democratic party. In 1859, he was elected to succeed Senator John J. Crittenden at the end of Critt enden’s term in 1861. After the fall of Richmond, he fled the country and lived abroad for more than three years. He returned to Kentucky in 1868, but resisted all encouragement to resume his political career. Though well-liked in Kentucky, he is reviled by many in the North as a traitor.
He is regarded as an effective military commander, and is remembered as one of the best generals of the Civil War. In August 1823, an illness referred to as \”the prevailing fever\” struck his mother and one of his children. On his return to Lexington, he took his children to stay with his mother in Frankfort, Kentucky, so that his father could better attend to his duties as Secretary of State. He had previously served as Kentucky’s Speaker of the House of Representative, and had been appointed Secretary of state just prior to his son’s birth. In February 1821, the family moved to the Frankfort Mansion, where his father was the Governor of Kentucky. His mother was the daughter of John Witherspoon Smith, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who founded Hampden-SydNEY College in 1717. He married Mary Clay BreckInridge, who was the only daughter of Samuel Stanhope Smith, the founder of Hampden College, in 1821. He went on to become a prominent lawyer, and later served as the Secretary of the State of Kentucky from 1823 to 1828. He also served as Governor of the Kentucky from 1830 to 1834. He later became the first African-American to be elected to the Kentucky Supreme Court, serving as its Speaker from 1836 to 1838. He became a member and served in both the Kentucky and Kentucky Houses of Representatives until his death in 1874.
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