John Jordan Crittenden, a Kentucky statesman and orator of national
reputation, was born near Versailles, Kentucky, September 10, 1787. He
was graduated from the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg,
Virginia, studied law, and was admitted to the Frankfort bar.
Crittenden served in the War of 1812; and in 1816 he was a member of
the Kentucky legislature. In the following year he was elected United
States Senator from Kentucky, his party, the Whig, then being in power
in this State. From 1827 to 1829 Crittenden was United States
Attorney for the district of Kentucky; and in 1835 he was again sent
to the Senate, with Henry Clay as his colleague. President William
Henry Harrison made him his Attorney-General, in 1841, and he resigned
his seat in the Senate. When John Tyler succeeded to the presidency
six months later, on the death of Harrison, Crittenden withdrew from
the cabinet portfolio, and he was almost immediately returned to the
Senate by the legislature of Kentucky. He served until 1848, when he
was elected Governor of Kentucky. Governor Crittenden was the most
distinguished, if not indeed the ablest, chief executive this
Commonwealth has ever known. He resigned the governorship, in 1850, in
order to become President Fillmore's Attorney-General, which position
he held for three years. In 1855 Crittenden was for the fourth time
elected United States Senator from Kentucky. As the war between the
States approached, Senator Crittenden, though a Southerner, chose the
cause of the Union, lining up with the administration heart and soul.
In the beginning he did his utmost to prevent the war, and, failing,
he exerted his entire energies to aid Abraham Lincoln and the North to
prosecute it. In 1860 the Senator urged his famous Compromise,
providing for the reëstablishment of the old slave-line of 36' 30 N.,
and for the enforcement of the fugitive-slave laws, but it was never
moulded into law. The last two years of his life were spent as a
member of the lower House of Congress, where he continued his fight
for the supremacy of the Constitution. Senator Crittenden died near
Frankfort, Kentucky, July 26, 1863, thus surviving his greatest friend
and fellow patriot, Henry Clay, more than eleven years.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Life of John J. Crittenden_, by Mrs. Chapman
Coleman (Philadelphia, 1871); _History of Kentucky_, by R. H.
Collins (Covington, 1882).