March 22, 2011
Right now I am reading about the travails of Kentucky in 1860-1861. With the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 (over RJ’s nephew, John C. Breckinridge), and the secession of South Carolina, the question for Kentucky was whether to join the Confederacy to preserve slavery — or whether to trust the Union. Many Kentuckians wanted no part of a “Cotton Confederacy” — and even RJB favored at one point a southwestern Confederacy of Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana and Texas. He suggested that an independent Kentucky would be better than domination by either abolitionists or South Carolina.
Throughout the 1850s RJB had made occasional forays into national politics by writing public letters to prominent individuals (e.g., Charles Sumner, William Seward, and his nephew, Vice President John C. Breckinridge). These carefully crafted letters won him high praise from conservatives — and guaranteed that when RJB spoke on national issues, people from all over the country would pay attention.
On January 4, 1861, on the national Day of Humiliation, RJB gave a discourse in Lexington, Kentucky, which quickly made it into print in newspapers all over the country. He began with the thesis “that our duties can never be made subordinate to our passions without involving us in ruin, and that our rights can never be set above our interests without destroying both.” Shortly thereafter, he began editing the Danville Quarterly Review — which regularly included his political commentary on the political and military course of the Civil War.
One of his first subscribers was Edward Bates — an Old School Presbyterian ruling elder (and Abraham Lincoln’s Attorney General!). Among those who wrote to encourage and thank him for his literary efforts was Francis Lieber, an influential political theorist at Columbia University (and a long-time colleague of James Henley Thornwell at South Carolina College!). Many people noticed at the time (and since) a number of statements in Abraham Lincoln’s speeches that reflect at least a similar mode of expression as Breckinridge, and some were convinced that Lincoln had been influenced by RJB’s arguments. (Certainly Lincoln viewed RJB as a crucial figure to holding Kentucky in the Union).
But it was not merely the bigwigs who paid attention to him. When the Governor of Kentucky proposed holding a convention to decide whether to secede from the Union, a lady from Louisville wrote him, “to implore you to go forthwith to our Capitol and exert every power and influence you possess to overcome such high handed treason. I feel that everything rests upon Kentucky’s course – and that course I am satisfied you alone can direct – God never bestowed such gifts upon you without holding you responsible for their proper use. Go — Oh for God’s sake go — and save your name a name so dear to every Kentuckian — your state and your Country.”
Plenty of other ministers wrote on political matters. But I do not find other ministers receiving anywhere near the attention that Breckinridge did.
Even before the war started, I find that death continues to play a large role in my research.
First, sickness and death plagued the Breckinridge home. RJB himself was terribly ill almost every winter, and sometimes he never really recovered for 6-9 months. Then, in 1859 his second wife, Virginia, died (possibly breast cancer), followed shortly by his son William’s wife Lucretia (seizures after childbirth), two grandchildren, and finally, a year after her mother, his twelve-year-old daughter, Virginia (apparently of diptheria that weakened her heart).
But there is another sort of death that RJB spoke of: controversy. Many people thought that RJB loved to fight — but he disagreed. “I never fight merely for fun: only when it is needful to fight. I don’t understand that there is any fun in it. Fighting means death. Therefore I attack no one — and I advise no one to attack me.”
Fighting means death. I had been thinking this about RJB for some time — so I was pleased to hear him say it! RJB never entered a controversy just for “fun.” He only fought when truth and honor were at stake (in other words, when life was on the line). Of course, I think he erred sometimes in his judgment — but in principle I agree: fighting means death. Is it worth dying over? If not — don’t fight!
