Subscribe: RSS Podcast iTunes
wikiofthedaymasto.ai
  Buy WotD Stuff!!
Episode 620             Episode 622
Episode 621

Political career of John C. Breckinridge
Wed, 2019-Jan-16 00:45 UTC
Length - 4:12

Direct Link

Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.

The featured article for Wednesday, 16 January 2019 is Political career of John C. Breckinridge.

The political career of John C. Breckinridge included service in the state government of Kentucky, the United States federal government, and the government of the Confederate States of America. In 1857, at 36 years old, he was inaugurated as James Buchanan's vice president, and remains the youngest person to ever hold the office. Four years later, he ran as the presidential candidate of a dissident group of Southern Democrats, but lost the election to the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln.

A member of the Breckinridge political family, in 1849 John C. Breckinridge became the first Democrat to represent Fayette County in the Kentucky House of Representatives, and in 1851, he was the first Democrat to represent Kentucky's 8th congressional district in over 20 years. A champion of strict constructionism, states' rights, and popular sovereignty, he supported Stephen A. Douglas's Kansas–Nebraska Act as a means of addressing slavery in the territories acquired by the U.S. in the Mexican–American War. Considering his re-election to the House of Representatives unlikely in 1854, he returned to private life and his legal practice. He was nominated for vice president at the 1856 Democratic National Convention, and although he and Buchanan won the election, he enjoyed little influence in Buchanan's administration.

In 1859, the Kentucky General Assembly elected Breckinridge to a U.S. Senate term that would begin in 1861. In the 1860 presidential contest, he captured the electoral votes of most of the Southern states, but finished a distant second among four candidates. Lincoln's election as President prompted the secession of the Southern states to form the Confederate States of America. Though Breckinridge sympathized with the Southern cause, in the Senate he worked futilely to reunite the states peacefully. After the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, beginning the Civil War, he opposed allocating resources for Lincoln to fight the Confederacy. Fearing arrest after Kentucky sided with the Union, he fled to the Confederacy, joined the Confederate States Army, and was subsequently expelled from the Senate. He served in the Confederate Army from October 1861 to February 1865, when Confederate President Jefferson Davis appointed him Confederate States Secretary of War. Concluding that the Confederate cause was hopeless, he encouraged Davis to negotiate a national surrender. Davis's capture in April 1865 ended the war, and Breckinridge fled to Cuba, then Great Britain, and finally Canada, remaining in exile until President Andrew Johnson's offer of amnesty in 1868. Returning to Kentucky, he refused all requests to resume his political career and died of complications related to war injuries in 1875.

This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:45 UTC on Wednesday, 16 January 2019.

For the full current version of the article, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_career_of_John_C._Breckinridge.

This podcast is produced by Abulsme Productions based on Wikipedia content and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

Visit wikioftheday.com for our archives, sister podcasts, and swag. Please subscribe to never miss an episode. You can also follow @WotDpod on Twitter.

Abulsme Productions produces the current events podcast Curmudgeon's Corner as well. Check it out in your podcast player of choice.

This has been Aditi. Thank you for listening to featured Wiki of the Day.

Archive
2017:MayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
2018:JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
2019:JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
2020:JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
2021:JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
2022:JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
2023:JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
2024:JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNov

Most Recent Episodes


Feedback welcome at feedback@wikioftheday.com.

These podcasts are produced by Abulsme Productions based on Wikipedia content.

They are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Creative Commons License

Abulsme Productions also produces Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.

If you like that sort of thing, check it out too!


Page cached at 2024-11-13 04:50:51 UTC
Original calculation time was 0.1971 seconds

Page displayed at 2024-11-13 09:15:57 UTC
Page generated in 0.0014 seconds