Political Career in The Antebellum Period
In June 1849, the Fayette County Democratic committee nominated Breckinridge to one of the county's two seats in the Kentucky House of Representatives. Most of his family members were Whigs, but Breckinridge identified with the Democrats, in part due to the influence of his paternal grandmother, who taught him the philosophies of his grandfather. He received 1,481 votes in the election, over 400 more than his nearest competitor.
Breckinridge received a plurality of votes for Speaker when the House convened, but fell at least eight votes short of a majority on the first three ballots. Unable to break the deadlock, he withdrew from the race, but the Democrat who replaced him was not able to muster as much support, and the position eventually went to a Whig. Breckinridge was assigned to the standing committees on Federal Relations and the Judiciary. He authored a minority report for the Federal Relations committee that denied the Congress's power to interfere with legality of slavery in the states. By this time, he personally owned five slaves, although he had previously expressed support for voluntary emancipation and the Kentucky Colonization Society, which was dedicated to the relocation of free blacks to Liberia.
While Breckinridge favored the calling of a convention to revise the Kentucky Constitution in 1850, he resisted the efforts of abolitionists to influence the resultant document. His uncle, Robert Jefferson Breckinridge, was a leader of the abolitionist movement in Kentucky, and from this point on, the two well-known kinsmen differed on nearly every political subject. Breckinridge did not seek re-election to the House after his son, John Milton Breckinridge, died shortly after that body adjourned.
Read more about this topic: John C. Breckinridge
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