Breckenridge, John
lawyer, legislator, United States senator, author, was born Dec. 2, 1760, in Augusta county, Va.
He was the author and advocate of the celebrated Resolutions of 1798-99, in the legislature of Virginia. He emigrated to Kentucky; and was elected United States senator in 1801. He was appointed attorney general of the United States and served during 1805-06. He died Dec. 14, 1806, in Lexington, Ky.
BRECKENRIDGE, JOHN CABELL, soldier, general, vice-president of the United States, was born Jan. 16, 1821, near Lexington, Ky.
He served as a major of infantry during the war with Mexico, and while in that country distinguished himself as the counsel of Major-General Pillow during the famous court martial. On his return from Mexico he was elected to the state legislature.
He was a representative in congress from the Ashland district from 1851 to 1855.
He was elected vice-president of the United States in 1856, on the ticket with James Buchanan, and entered upon the duties of his office in March, 1857, as president of the United States senate. In 1860 he was nominated by the southern democratic party as their candidate for president. In 1861 he went into the senate as the successor of Mr. Crittenden. He took part in the great rebellion as a general; and in 1865 was appointed secretary of war of the confederacy. He died May 17, 1875, in Lexington, Ky.
BRECKENRIDGE, ROBERT JEFFER- SON, clergyman, author, was born March 8, 1800, in Cabell's Dale, Ky. He was a noted presbyterian clergyman of Lexington, Ky.; and the author of Popery; Internal Evidence of Christianity; Memoranda of Foreign Travel; and Travels in France, Germany, etc. His chief work was a system of theology, The Knowledge of God, Objectively and Subjectively Considered. He was a writer of very positive views, and one of the leaders in the division of the presbyterian church into old and new school in 1837. He died Dec. 27, 1871, in Danville, Ky.
BRECKENRIDGE, WILLIAM CAMP- BELL PRESTON, soldier, journalist, lawyer, jurist, congressman, was born Aug. 28, 1837, in Baltimore, Md. In 1862 he entered the confederate army as cap. tain of cavalry; rose to the rank of colonel, and, at the time of the surrender, was in command of a brigade of Kentucky cavalry. He was editor of the Lex-- ington Observer and Reporter from 1866 to 1868; county attorney from 1866 to 1870; member of the city council of Lexington from 1870 to 1879; and professor of equity, jurisprudence and pleadings in the law department of the Kentucky university in 1872. He was presidential elector in 1872; delegate to the democratic national conventions of 1876 and 1880, and was elected a representative from Kentucky to the forty-ninth, fiftieth, fifty-first, fifty-second and fifty-third congresses as a democrat.