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“Stop Thief!”

The Honorable and Neutral Position occupied by the Hon. JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE, of Kentucky. (Drawing his Salary as U.S. Senator, and furnishing Valuable Information to JEFF DAVIS, at the same time.)

This
cartoon labels Senator John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, former vice
president of the United States, as a thief for continuing to draw his
senatorial salary from the federal government while he supposedly
conspires with Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. The
post-dated cartoon appeared only a few days after the Kentucky
legislature vowed its allegiance to the Union, after months under a
formal declaration of neutrality, and announced that its two
U.S. senators, Breckinridge and Lazarus Powell, "do not represent
the will of the people of Kentucky." Both men, however,
continued on the federal payroll for a few more months.
John Cabell Breckinridge was
born in Lexington Kentucky in 1821. In 1839, he graduated from
Centre College (Kentucky), and then studied law at the College of New
Jersey before completing his degree at Transylvania University
(Kentucky) in 1841. He
established a law practice in Burlington, Iowa, but two years later
returned to Kentucky, where he prospered in the profession. During
the Mexican War (1846-1848), he served as a major with the Kentucky
volunteers.
At the war’s conclusion,
Breckinridge was elected to Kentucky's lower house (1849-1851) as a
states’ rights Democrat before winning a seat in the U.S. House of
Representatives (1851-1855). He
played a key role in incorporating the repeal of the Missouri Compromise
ban on slavery into Stephen Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act and in
securing House approval for the final bill (1854).
Breckinridge himself sponsored no major legislation, but was a
popular political figure. In 1856, delegates to the Democratic National Convention
selected him as James Buchanan’s vice-presidential running mate.
Inaugurated when only 36 years old, he has the distinction of
being the youngest vice president in American history.
When the Democratic Party split
into sectional factions in 1860, Breckinridge was nominated for
president by the Southern wing. Concerned
that a divided party would allow the Republicans to triumph, he offered
to decline the nomination if Douglas would reject his nomination by the
Northern wing. Douglas
declined the proposition, and both men remained in the race.
Although Breckinridge was a slaveowner who supported the
constitutional protection of slavery and the right of secession, he was
not one of the radicals. In
the November 1860 election, Breckinridge captured all the states in the
Deep South, but as he had feared, Republican Abraham Lincoln won the
presidency with an Electoral College majority.
During the interval between
Lincoln's election and his inauguration in March 1861, Breckinridge
worked for a compromise between the North and South. In early
1861, the Kentucky legislature again elected him to the U.S. Senate, and
he took his seat in March. When the Kentucky state government
declared in late May 1861 that it was officially neutral in the Civil
War, Breckinridge supported its right to do so, even though he
personally opposed the policy. A Confederate invasion of western
Kentucky in early September prodded an angered Kentucky legislature to
throw its support to the Union cause. A few days later, the body
declared that Breckinridge and Powell no longer represented the state of
Kentucky.
On October 8, Breckinridge
responded in a heated speech against the Union's allegedly harsh
treatment of Missouri and Maryland, two other important Border States
(slave states loyal to the Union). He warned that Kentuckians
would henceforth have "to deal with a power which respects neither
the Constitution nor laws, and which, if successful, will reduce you to
the condition of prostrate and bleeding Maryland." In early
November, a federal court in Kentucky returned indictments for treason
against 32 prominent Kentuckians, including Breckinridge. Within a few weeks, he left the halls of
Congress, was commissioned a brigadier general in the Confederate Army,
and took command of the First Kentucky Brigade. On December 4, 1861, the U.S. Senate expelled John C.
Breckinridge from its membership.
Breckinridge accumulated a
notable military record during the Civil War, fighting at Bowling Green,
Shiloh, Baton Rouge, Stones River, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, and
Missionary Ridge. He rose
to the rank of major general, and then served as the Confederacy’s
last secretary of war during the closing months of the war.
He opposed efforts to prolong the war with guerrilla fighting
after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. Following
the war Breckinridge fled to Cuba, then to England, and finally to
Canada. President Andrew
Johnson pardoned him on Christmas Day 1868, allowing him to return to
Kentucky a few months later. Although
he forswore electoral politics, Breckinridge urged sectional
reconciliation and criticized the Ku Klux Klan.
He was employed as a railroad executive until his death in 1874.
Robert C. Kennedy
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