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Two years later, he ran for a seat in the U.S. Returning home, he was elected to the Kentucky House in 1849. Service as a major of Kentucky volunteers in the Mexican War delayed his entry into public life. He began to attract notice as an orator and potential candidate for office while still in his early twenties. Unlike most of his family, Breckinridge chose the Democrats over the Whigs for his party allegiance. That same year he married Mary Cyrene Burch, a cousin of his law partner, Thomas Bullock. His ties to Kentucky remained strong, however, and he returned to his native state in 1843. Admitted to the bar in 1840, he moved to Iowa Territory a year later and practiced law there. Jersey (now Princeton University) and completing his legal studies at the Transylvania Institute in Lexington, Kentucky. After graduating from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky in 1839, Breckinridge read law under Judge William Owsley, a future Kentucky governor. senator and attorney general under Thomas Jefferson his father had been a Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives. He eventually returned home and, at the time of his death, was hailed by old friends and opponents alike as a statesman of courage and integrity.īreckinridge seemed destined to enter politics. He fought valiantly in some of the bloodiest conflicts of the Civil War as a Confederate general and went into exile at the war's end. After running on a proslavery ticket and losing to Republican Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Breckinridge reluctantly joined the newly formed Confederacy and took up arms against the nation he loved. Many saw him as a potential president until events caused him to align himself with the Democratic Party's most vehement states' rights faction. House of Representatives to serve as vice president under James Buchanan from 1857 until 1861. A strikingly handsome man with impressive oratorical skills, he advanced from a seat in the U.S. A rising star in his native Kentucky by age 30, he advocated compromise and understanding between North and South at the start of his career. Few American leaders of the mid-19th century underwent as tragic a political evolution as did John Cabell Breckinridge.