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- 3rd cousin to my ancestor Cornelius Breckenridge. ss
Spelled his name "Breckinridge".
Vice President of US under President James Buchanan, 1857-1861, presiding over the Senate with impartiality despite his strong Southern sympathies. In 1860, he was the Southern Democrats' presidential nominee, running against Abraham Lincoln, and carried 11 states in the campaign. He was a lawyer, and fought in the Mexican War and served in the Kentucky legislature (1849-1850) and US House of Representatives (1851-1855) as a Democrat.
Breckinridge worked to prevent secession and civil war, but late in 1861 he fled to join the Confederacy. Made a general, he participated in several major battles, motsly in the West. He also administered a territorial command in western Virginia and on February 6, 1965, was named Confederate secretary of war. After the war he went abroad. Returning to Kentucky in 1868, he practiced law and was vice-president of a railroad company.
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Wikipedia:
John Cabell Breckinridge (January 16, 1821 - May 17, 1875) was an American lawyer and politician. He served as a U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator from Kentucky and was the 14th Vice President of the United States, to date the youngest vice president in U.S. history, inaugurated at age 36.
In the 1860 presidential election, he ran as one of two candidates of the fractured Democratic Party, representing Southern Democrats. Breckinridge came in third place in the popular vote, behind winner Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, and Stephen Douglas, a Northern Democrat, but finished second in the Electoral College vote.
Following the outbreak of the American Civil War, he served in the Confederate States Army as a general and commander of Confederate forces prior to the 1863 Siege of Port Hudson, Louisiana, and of the young Virginia Military Institute cadets, at the 1864 Battle of New Market in Lexington, Virginia. He also served as the fifth and final Confederate Secretary of War.
A member of the prominent Breckinridge family of Kentucky, Breckinridge was the grandson of John Breckinridge (1760?1806), who served as a Senator and Attorney General; the father of congressman and diplomat Clifton Rodes Breckinridge; and the great-grandfather of actor John Cabell "Bunny" Breckinridge
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1821 - 1875 (54 years)
