John Cabell Breckinridge, the youngest of the American
vice-presidents, distinguished as a public speaker, was born near
Lexington, Kentucky, January 21, 1821. He was educated at Centre
College, Danville, Kentucky, and then studied law at Transylvania
University. Breckinridge lived at Burlington, Iowa, for a year, when
he returned to Lexington, Kentucky, to practice law. He served in the
Mexican War, and was afterwards a member of Congress. In 1856, when he
was about thirty-five years of age, he was elected vice-president of
the United States, with James Buchanan as president. In 1860
Breckinridge was the candidate of the Southern slaveholders for the
presidency, but Abraham Lincoln received 180 electoral votes to his
72, Kentucky failing to support him. He took his seat in the United
States Senate in March, 1861, as the successor of John J. Crittenden,
and he at once became the champion of the Southern Confederacy in that
body. He was expelled from the Senate on December 4, 1861, on which
occasion he delivered his farewell address. Breckinridge then went
South. He was appointed a major-general, and he saw service at Shiloh,
Chickamauga, Cold Harbor, Nashville, and in several other great
battles. From January to April, 1865, General Breckinridge was
Jefferson Davis's secretary of war. When the Confederacy surrendered,
he made his escape to Europe, where he remained for three years, when
he returned to Lexington and to his law practice. General Breckinridge
died at Lexington, Kentucky, May 17, 1875. Ten years later an imposing
statue was erected to his memory on Cheapside, Lexington. He was a man
of most attractive personality, an eloquent orator, a capable
advocate, a brave soldier, an honest public servant, the greatest
member of the house of Breckinridge.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Library of Oratory_ (New York, 1902, v. x); J.
C. S. Blackburn's oration upon Breckinridge; _McClure's Magazine_
(January, 1901). For many years Col. J. Stoddard Johnston has been
engaged upon a life of Breckinridge.