John C. Breckinridge
John Cabell Breckinridge was born and raised in the Blue Grass region of central Kentucky. He was educated in law at both Centre College and Transylvania University and received his degree and his license to practice law in 1841. After first attempting to establish a legal practice in Illinois he journeyed to Iowa, where he developed a successful law office. On a visit back to Kentucky he met and soon married Mary Burch, and soon was practicing law first in Georgetown, and later Lexington, Kentucky. In 1847 he served in the Mexican War in a non-combat role, after which he returned to his Kentucky law practice and his first forays into politics.
Breckinridge’s first term in Congress was in 1851, and he was quickly one of the faction which opposed tariffs (which at the time was the federal government’s chief source of revenue as there was no income tax) and upheld slavery. Breckinridge remained in the House until 1855, gradually coming around to endorse the voluntary manumission of slaves and their colonization of Africa with federal support. He also supported the rights of the states to secede from the Union, but strongly opposed the act of secession as a means of resolving the conflict over slavery. Breckinridge, despite coming from slaveholding Kentucky, became a political ally of Stephen Douglas of Illinois.
In 1855 Breckinridge returned to Lexington and his law practice. Still involved with party politics, he attended the 1856 Democratic Convention which was held in nearby Cincinnati, and emerged as the party’s nominee for Vice President. James Buchanan was elected President that year, with Breckinridge his Vice President. In Washington, Breckinridge found little to do and his relationship with the President was strained as a result of pre-nomination political maneuvering by both men. In 1860 the Vice President chose to run for President, in an election which saw Abraham Lincoln elected to the Presidency, and Breckinridge was appointed to an empty Senate seat by the Governor of Kentucky.
Breckinridge was expelled from the Senate in December 1861, when it was learned that he had enlisted in the Confederate Army and had been indicted for treason. Breckinridge served in several of the major engagements of the ensuing Civil War, including at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee, where his performance earned him a promotion to Major General. He later fought in the Battles of Chickamauga, Jackson, and Chattanooga. He was transferred to the Eastern Theater and the Army of Northern Virginia, where he assumed the role formerly held by the late Stonewall Jackson. He was eventually brought to Richmond to serve as the Confederate Secretary of War in the waning days of the conflict.
Following the collapse of the Confederacy Breckinridge fled to Cuba, thence to England, where he was joined by his wife and family. The former Vice President toured Europe and Northern Africa before returning to the United States via Canada after President Andrew Johnson issued a blanked pardon to those whom had supported the Confederacy. Breckinridge returned to Lexington, refusing for the rest of his life to engage in politics or accept a government position, and invested in several ventures during the railroad boom which followed the Civil War. He died in 1875, probably of cirrhosis of the liver, after a lifetime in which he was often noted for his capacity for whiskey.