- John Cabell Breckinridge, Confederate Major General, 1 st Kentucky Brigade, U.S. Congressman from Kentucky, U.S. Senator from Kentucky, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES under James Buchanan, Confederate Secretary of War - KENTUCKY. LAWS. Acts Passed at the First Session of the Twenty-Eighth General Assembly for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, begun December, 1819. Frankfort: Kendall and Russells, 1820. [3], 806-1000 p. Modern law cloth, red and black leather spine labels. Light occasional foxing, damp stain in gutter of first few leaves, else very good. From the library of J. Cabell Breckinridge, signed on the title page. Laws passed December 1819 through February 1820. Shoemaker 1844. From Wikipedia: After Southern Democrats walked out of the 1860 Democratic National Convention, the party's northern and southern factions held rival conventions in Baltimore that nominated Douglas and Breckinridge, respectively, for president. A third party, the Constitutional Union Party, nominated John Bell. These three men split the Southern vote, while antislavery Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln won all but three electoral votes in the North, allowing him to win the election. Breckinridge carried most of the Southern states. Taking his seat in the Senate, Breckinridge urged compromise to preserve the Union. Unionists were in control of the state legislature, and gained more support when Confederate forces moved into Kentucky. Breckinridge fled behind Confederate lines. He was commissioned a brigadier general and then expelled from the Senate. Following the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, he was promoted to major general, and in October, he was assigned to the Army of Mississippi under Braxton Bragg. After Bragg charged that Breckinridges drunkenness had contributed to defeats at Stones River and Missionary Ridge, and after Breckinridge joined many other high-ranking officers in criticizing Bragg, he was transferred to the Trans-Allegheny Department, where he won his most significant victory in the 1864 Battle of New Market. After participating in Jubal Earlys campaigns in the Shenandoah Valley, Breckinridge was charged with defending supplies in Tennessee and Virginia. In February 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis appointed him secretary of war. Concluding that the war was hopeless, he urged Davis to arrange a national surrender. After the fall of Richmond, Breckinridge ensured the preservation of Confederate records. He then escaped the country and lived abroad for more than three years. When President Andrew Johnson extended amnesty to all former Confederates in 1868, Breckinridge returned to Kentucky, but resisted all encouragement to resume his political career. War injuries sapped his health, and he died in 1875. Breckinridge is regarded as an effective military commander. Though well liked in Kentucky and other Southern states, he was reviled by many in the North as a traitor.