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
Famous quotes containing the words political, career, antebellum and/or period:
“Most of the money given by rich people in “charity” is made up of conscience money, “ransom,” political bribery, and bids for titles.... One buys moral credit by signing a cheque, which is easier than turning a prayer wheel.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The 19-year-old Diana ... decided to make her career that of wife. Today that can be a very, very iffy line of work.... And what sometimes happens to the women who pursue it is the best argument imaginable for teaching girls that they should always be able to take care of themselves.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)
“There is a period near the beginning of every man’s life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)