by Michiana Covenant | Aug 3, 2013 | Breckinridge
[March 14, 2012]
My first two days in the Breckinridge Family Papers this week took me through eight volumes of correspondence, from February 6, 1862 – January 28, 1863 (boxes 220-227). Since I still have 53 volumes to go, that probably means that I will not be able to finish in the six days that remain to me on this trip! Then again, I’m in the middle of the Civil War. Virtually every letter is packed with significance. It’s hard not to slow down a bit when every letter could contain an important piece of information regarding R. J. Breckinridge’s involvement in the defense of the Union in Kentucky (not exactly the most popular stance he ever took among his fellow Kentuckians — but one that showered praise upon him from all over the rest of the Union [along with a fair share of opprobrium from the Confederacy!]).
As of July of 1862, one of his sons (RJB Jr) was serving in the Confederate Army, along with his nephew, John C. Breckinridge (the same John C. Breckinridge who was the “runner-up” to Abraham Lincoln in the presidential election of 1860). His son-in-law, Dr. Theophilus Steele, was a surgeon in the Confederate Army as well — although Mrs. Steele, R.J.’s daughter, Sophy, did not share her husband’s views on the war.
Another of RJB’s sons (Joseph) was serving in the Union Army — and apparently Joseph and Robert were both in the same battle at one point. Joseph’s letters indicate that he fought in Kentucky and Tennessee before being transferred east to Baltimore and then to Florida. A younger son, Charles, spent most of the war at West Point. Two other sons-in-law, William Warfield (Mary’s husband), and the Rev. George Morrison (Sally’s husband) were staunch Union men. Rev. Morrison was even wounded in the battle of Cynthiana, where he joined in the defense of the town from Morgan’s Raiders.
Morgan’s Raiders changed the whole complexion of the war in Kentucky. Until July of 1862, the Union forces were pushing south into Tennessee, and were likely to take control of the Mississippi River. But on July 4, 1862, Captain John Morgan quietly led a daring company into the heart of Kentucky. On July 14, RJB’s second son, William saw a band of 60-80 men pass through his father’s farm outside Lexington. Willie was rumored to be a southern sympathizer, but he had tried to stay out of the war for the sake of his father. He wrote to his father the next day saying that it had been “my purpose to keep myself entirely aloof from this war – taking no part in it and submitting in silence until God worked out the result. My affection & my duty to my wife & to you, my duty to my creditors and the force of the condition I was in, made me choose this course.” He blamed his older sister, Mary Warfield, for falsely accusing him of aiding Morgan — and then promptly rode off to join Morgan!
Two days later, William fought on the side of the Confederates against his brother-in-law, George Morrison, in the battle at Cynthiana. Word spread that Morgan had divided his troops and planned an attack on Lexington next. Morrison’s wife Sally wrote to her father on August 3 that she would feel better if he (RJB) went across the Ohio to Cincinnati, “for if they do come they would rather have you than 100 common men.” Frustrated at only being able to cook and care for the wounded, Sally added, “I wish I was a man!”
[As it turned out, they didn’t want RJB — they wanted his horses! At least two of his finest were “impressed” into the service of Morgan’s troops.]
When Joseph (who was in Florida in the Union Army at the time) heard about Willie’s defection, he wrote to his father on August 7, “It was a culminating blow I had hoped and prayed would be spared you and all of us. As a soldier may he act in the self-balanced, noble way he did before the war, reflect honor upon his political opinions and make his corps respectable. He knows how I have loved and do love him: I am sorry that that side has been joined by so fine a man.”
Willie’s wife, Issa Desha Breckinridge, whose father and brothers were staunch Confederates, urged him on — and never again would speak to her father-in-law (their eldest daughter was seven years old before she met her grandfather — even though they lived in the same town)! She said that she felt no pity for Union men who now felt the pain of being cut off from family and friends.
With hundreds, if not thousands, of southern-sympathizing Kentuckians rallying to Morgan, R. J. Breckinridge telegraphed General J. S. Boyle in Louisville, asking for immediate assistance. Boyle replied [please note: Boyle replied! Normally, when a civilian asks a general for military assistance, the general does not reply!] that his orders did not permit him to deviate from sending troops to Nashville. Central Kentucky was overrun by Morgan, and for the next four months the mails were somewhat irregular (ceasing altogether for nearly two months in the fall).
When the Confederate Army was driven out of Kentucky, Willie wrote once more to his father on October 27, asking him to forward a letter to his wife. He added, “I am glad that if we are driven from Kentucky & she is lost to us, that you & Joseph & Charles & Mary [those] I love will be benefitted by our loss.” Recognizing that he might never return to Kentucky — or see his father again — he concluded, “I can not avoid expressing my unchanged love & gratitude for & to you for the kindness & love you have ever shown me. It was once my hope & desire that I should be the child who would be the peculiar support of your old age — the staff upon which you would most confidently lean. God has ordered it otherwise — another son may be worthier — he could not be more loving.”
That son — for the rest of the war — was William Warfield (Mary’s husband — and father of Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield). There was no one else! Robert and Willie, the two oldest sons, now fought for the Confederacy. His next two sons were in the Union Army. His youngest son, John, was only 12 — and so Warfield, a leading Kentucky horse-breeder in his own right, took over the task of keeping an eye on RJB’s daily affairs.
I hope you can see how the “late unpleasantness” (as the Civil War was euphemized) truly divided father from son, husband from wife, brother from brother.
[All quotations from Breckinridge Mss. Library of Congress]
by Michiana Covenant | Aug 1, 2013 | Breckinridge
March 15, 2011
I have had four days so far in the Library of Congress, and have already found quite a lot of useful information. I have been averaging at least six volumes of correspondence per day, so I have a reasonable chance of getting to the Civil War on this trip (my goal is to get through 1862 — which would leave me with 60 volumes for next time). So far I have worked through the Breckinridge letters from 1854 to 1856.
R. J. Breckinridge’s nephew, John C. Breckinridge, was elected Vice President of the United States in 1856. The election of 1856 was notorious for its violence. Candidates and stump speakers were frequently attacked (physically) by “ruffians” (as RJB called them). Of course, what made Kentucky especially interesting was that RJB was a well-known leader of the “American Party” (sometimes called the Know-Nothings), while JCB was the Vice Presidential candidate for “the Democracy” (as the Democrats billed themselves at that time). At one point JCB wrote to his uncle, asking him if he would please do something to prevent the violence of the Know-Nothings, suggesting that he might have to bring a gang of Democratic thugs to their home town of Lexington to prevent trouble.
This is RJB’s reply:
“That such a necessity as you suppose to be possible should arise, is infinitely to be deplored; and that such a state of excitement should exist, that any considerate man would judge liable to terminate in outrages not be endured, is what every wise and good man must condemn. Supposing all you say to be true, there is, I fear, one point in which you are wholly mistaken; namely, any adequate influence on my part to make things any better. I shall, however, be in Lexington on Friday next – and will most gladly do whatever may be possible, to promote peace, and to ensure the fair exercise of every man’s rights. The course I have long taken in public affairs has been one, in a great degree peculiar to myself – and eminently calculated to render any influence, with any body, impossible, except so far as men would hear & respect reason; whch, it has seemed to me, was the very thing which, in general, they were the very least inclined to do. Every body seems bent on success, no matter by what means: and half the nation ready to destroy the nation itself – unless their own passions are gratified. Riot, bloodshed, sedition, revolution, flow as inevitably from such a state of the public mind, and as other effect follows any other cause. That men of real importance in a coutnry, should persist in such ignorble seditions, is the last form of degration a people reaches: and, as yet, has not been maifested amongst us. Nor need it be, if such men retain a true sense of their own position, a true conception of their real relation to society, no matter what phase society may put on. Believe me, one word of yours fitly uttered from your true position, is more effectual, than any form of public violence it is possible for your head – no matter what counter violence it might be intended to resist. Of course, I would not have you act a part, either unmanly or _. But if violence on your part, is indispensable, the only becoming and the only effectual form of it, is to hold to a personal responsibility the chief authorities, whose connnivance or neglect is the cause of the outrages you will not endure: just as I would, if I had been a public man, have held governor Power & Col Preston, personally responsible for the atrocious abuse concetrated in the Resolutions of the Democratic Convention of this state, a year or two since: a proceeding on the part of that convention which explains much of the violence now so shockingly exhibited over the land – and for which, I doubt not, all parties are responsible, each in its degree. If the ruffians of all parties, may call the leaders of parties and the eminent men of the land, to take personal part in their broils (in their defence, as they may choose to call it), that is a new, and the last step, before society has lost every element of self-control. I cannot agree, that you can, under any conceivable circumstances, have a proper call to mingle in such issues, or to fight them out on any such basis. The element of which such seditions are recruited, is as perfectly distinct, as the element of which presidents are chosen; and no illusion can justify a gentleman, much less one whose mission is _ a most exalted one, either to commit homicide in such a broil, or to fall by the hand of some ruffian in such a cause. Since the world began, no such man as you fell in such a broil, upon such a question as either of those stated in your letter, or as either of them can properly lead to. In short, there are two matters wholly distinct, in the case: one regarding the deplorable state of public excitement; the other regarding the form & extent of the interferance, in the way of force, allowable in those who though of a party – are not of its ruffians.
“I write in more haste than I could desire, in order to get my letter into the mail: and have only time to add that all I have said is on supposition that matters may come to a more serious issue in Lexington, than I can persuade myself they will. I trust in God, we shall see nothing worse, than it has been our misfortune to see often before; and bad as that may be, it seems incident to popular institutions, and must be endured, for the benefits they confer.”
RJB’s reply is interesting — both because of what it reveals about the principles RJB espoused, and also because of what it reveals about the times: namely, that political campaigns in the mid-19th century were brutal and bloody affairs. Some people were willing to kill for their beliefs (and at least a few were ready to die for them).
[And in spite of RJB’s suggestion that this seems to be a recent phenomenon, he himself had experienced the same sort of violence — albeit of a slightly different form — when he ran for the state legislature in the 1820s! When the partisans of RJB and his opponent began attacking each other, and bloodshed seemed imminent, RJB and his opponent bound their arms together and marched out into the fray shouting for order! Does that help you understand what he is saying to his nephew?]
Oh, and by the way — he voted for his nephew for Vice President. (As far as I can ascertain, the only time in his life that he ever voted Democrat!) And it wasn’t simply because JCB was his nephew. In the election of 1856, there were three candidates: James Buchanan (Democrat), John C. Fremont (Republican), and Millard Fillmore (Know-Nothing). Since the Know-Nothings had fallen apart, and the abolitionists had formed the “Black Republicans,” RJB feared that both the (abolitionist) Republicans and the (southern) Democrats were driving the nation toward disunion. While the Know-Nothings were the only party that he trusted, he knew that they had no chance to win (Fillmore took 21.6% of the popular vote — and only carried Maryland). Therefore, while he distrusted the Democratic party, he trusted his nephew to remain true to the Union — and so voted for Buck and Breck (as the Democratic ticket was nicknamed). It probably didn’t hurt that both men were Old School Presbyterians as well…
The irony of all this is that Uncle Robert was losing touch with his beloved nephew — as he would learn most painfully in 1861 when John C. Breckinridge became the arch-traitor of the Union — being the highest ranking U.S. official (former Vice President and sitting Senator from the supposedly Union state of Kentucky) to join the Confederacy! Two of his own sons, Robert and William, would also become Confederate officers — while two others, Joseph and Charles, would serve with the Union.
by Michiana Covenant | Jul 25, 2013 | Breckinridge, Preaching
April 10, 2010
RJB was a Christ-centered preacher. I include below selections from my notes on a sermon he preached around 1850 while he was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Lexington, Kentucky. It was published in Elijah Wilson, The Living Pulpit: or Eighteen Sermons by Eminent Living Divines of the Presbyterian Church (Philadelphia: William S. & Alfred Martien, 1865).
His text was one of my favorites: “Christ, who is our life” Colossians 3:4. I’ll give you a few excerpts to show that R. J. Breckinridge, for all his faults, had a firm grasp on the gospel!
“The grand point of view in which we should habitually contemplate the Scriptures, is as a divine revelation of the only mode in which lost sinners can be saved. As a history…As a spiritual system…As a code of morals…As a source of support, of consolation, of peace, and of joy…it can avail us nothing, except as we receive its precepts, and accept its doctrines, and believe its statements, as one and the other bear directly upon the grand conception of the Gospel—salvation for lost sinners. Every thing short of this is little better than trifling with our own souls. Every thing inconsistent with this is little else than handling the word of God deceitfully.” (263-364)
“Amongst ten thousand other passages, my text is all alive with this precious Saviour, and this great salvation. To him as our life, and to the nature of the life we enjoy in him, in our spiritual, or mortal, and our eternal being, the apostle, in this passage, directs our thoughts…” (266)
Then RJB took them through a brief summary of the history of creation, fall and redemption, before showing three aspects of our life in Christ:
First, Everything else in scripture hinges on this new spiritual life created by the Spirit in our regeneration. Warns against low view of the Spirit, because “the life of God in the soul remains the fundamental necessity of every renewed heart, as it is the first and simplest element of practical Christianity.” (274-275) And Paul “does not content himself with saying, that we have a life derived from Christ, nor yet that Christ has bestowed on us a life essentially like his own; but he mounts to the loftiest height, and declares that Christ is himself our life! Christ is found in his people, the hope of glory. In receiving, accepting, and relying upon him, there is a lofty and hallowed sense in which they are nourished by him.” (275)
Second, it shows that the imputation of Christ’s righteousness is necessary (and the imputation of Adam’s sin). “you will perceive how absolutely our life depends on Christ, and how completely the whole scheme of the resurrection rests upon him and terminates in him. Since the fall, we are as essentially mortal as we are depraved.” (283) But in Christ, “Death and resurrection will produce on the bodies of the righteous a change so far analogous as is possible to the change wrought upon their souls by regeneration and sanctification.” (284)
Third, “Christ as the life of our eternal being. The Scriptures hardly recognize what we ordinarily call life, as an estate worthy of that name.” (286) God alone has life in himself – which is also in the Lord Jesus. Turns to the glorious resurrection of the just, and then the judgment of the just made perfect – not to ascertain whether they will be saved, nor worthy of eternal life-“for every one of them has already received it at the hands of Christ.” At this judgment all the good and ill of his life are revealed – and the glorified savior pronounces them blessed and welcome. And then the judgment of the unjust. (291)
RJB concludes his sermon by summarizing the rest of Colossians 3 in the light of this central truth. “We ought, says he, to seek those things which are above, and set our affections on them, and not on things on the earth; remembering that we are dead, and that our life is hid with Christ in God. We ought to mortify our members which are upon the earth; for the lack of doing which, we are prone to fall into those sins, for the sake of which the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience, and in which we once lived ourselves. But now, seeing that we have put off the old man, with his deeds, and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him; we ought continually to shun all evil, and pursue all good; under the fixed and felt conviction, that to us Christ is all and in all.”
I am beginning to understand why Breckinridge was so well beloved by the congregations where he preached, and by the young men who studied under him (whether at Jefferson College in 1845-1847, or at Danville Theological Seminary in 1853-1869). As a preacher he always sought to hold forth Christ. He once commented that he preferred not to divide the “exposition” from the “application” but tried to weave the two together.
by Michiana Covenant | Jul 18, 2013 | Breckinridge
April 10, 2010
I take scads of photos in my research. I’m trying to keep a quick pace, taking pictures of everything important, rather than stop to read everything now, but the middle of the 1840s were a busy time for RJB.
1844
December — his wife, Sophonisba Preston, dies
1845
He resigns from 2nd Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, in the spring in order to accept the presidency of Jefferson College in western Pennsylvania. He spends the summer in Kentucky with his children, but since there is no house large enough for his eight children, he only takes Robert (11) and Willy (8) with him to Pennsylvania, and sends his 13 year old daughter, Sally, with her Aunt Eliza (Sophy’s sister) in Richmond, Virginia (where she runs a boarding school), and sends his 9 year old daughter, Marie, to stay with her mother’s cousin, Louisiana Hart Gibson near New Orleans. Her sister, Sarah Hart Thompson, takes 6-year-old Sophy and 3-year-old Joseph, and the other sister, Virginia Hart Shelby, takes 17-year-old Mary and 1-year-old Charles.
1846
Long-distance courtship with Virginia Hart Shelby
Long-distance correspondence with his daughter Mary about the children (and about her various potential marriages)
1847
Resigns from Jefferson College and engages in lengthy correspondence with a couple different churches in Kentucky that want to call him
(Can you see why there just might be a lot of correspondence those years?)
Two items for those who are following this so far:
1) Do you remember the story of the near duel in 1821/22? On March 12 I told you that he was at the theatre in Louisville with two Prestons. As it turns out, the theatre was in Frankfort, and he was there with Sophy Preston (later his wife), and her Hart cousins (probably Sarah and Louisiana — since Virginia was only 12 or 13 at the time). Now, 23 years later, the other two cousins who were present that night in Frankfort offer to take their cousin’s children for a time!
2) Also in 1845, RJB falls in love with their younger sister, Virginia Hart Shelby, reputed to be the most beautiful widow in all of Kentucky — and the daughter-in-law of Governor Isaac Shelby. Their correspondence includes some incredibly beautiful love letters, but also not a few hints of what would come in the future. Virginia broke off their first engagement, but insisted that she wanted to continue their correspondence and indicated that if she ever married, she would probably marry him. She also told him on one occasion that she preferred to end the relationship by letter — since she was unable to resist him when he was present! (Any guess what he did?)
So from the summer of 1845 (when he begins to fall for Virginia) through the spring of 1847 (when they get married), there are usually two letters from Virginia each week. I had worked through his letters in Kentucky. Now I’ve worked through her letters (or in some cases, just photographed them, since I know how important they are from his responses!).
In addition, there are Mary’s letters. She was 16 when her mother died, and 19 when he married Virginia. When she was 16 — and living with Virginia, she told her father to press his cause with “cousin Virginia” and was delighted at the prospect of having her as her stepmother. But by 1847, after the wedding, she will tell her father to give her love to “Susan and Isaac and Alfred” (Virginia’s teenage children), but will “forget” to mention Virginia. In her last letter to her father before his marriage, she tells him that five-year old Josey wants “no mother but sister.”
And of course, Mary Breckinridge herself was going through the joys and woes of courtship. When she was 16, she fell in love with Samuel Miller Breckinridge (her first cousin — who was living with them in Baltimore). It was all RJB could do to pry them apart. Then cousin Virginia took her on a trip to New Orleans to visit relatives there — and on the steam boat back up the Mississippi, she fell head over heels for George Forman, a 35 year old bachelor. This romance lasted for six months, with the now 18-year old Mary pleading with her father to let her marry Mr. Forman. The final conversations between father and daughter happened face-to-face in the summer of 1846. All we have recorded is the first draft of a letter from Mary to Mr. Forman stating that he need not make another trip to Kentucky, because she has changed her mind and is going with her father to Pennsylvania. (There are also veiled references in Mary’s later letters to her father that suggest that she traded her happiness for his in that decision!)
But in the winter of 1846-47, RJB had his whole family back together. And in the summer of 1847, he added his new wife and her 17-year old daughter Susan (who, at least at first, was fast friends with Mary).
But in the middle of the family matters, RJB is frequently called upon to advise the session of his former congregation in Baltimore (they try calling James Henley Thornwell — who agrees to come, but the South Carolina College refuses to let him go — and Benjamin Morgan Palmer, whose Presbytery will not release him!). RJB tries to stay out of the pastoral search, but they won’t let him! Further, there are pastoral care issues — in one case a feud starts between two elders, and they beg him to come and help them resolve it — which he does, with excellent results.
What’s more, in 1846, when the Senior Class of Jefferson College revolts (a rebellion that diverts attention in Kentucky from the Mexican War!), it was RJB’s wise and patient handling of the young men that restored order and honor to the college.
I honestly did not expect to find out that RJB would be praised as a peacemaker who was able to restore harmony and tranquility. He has always seemed to me so combative, that I did not think he would be so gracious and humble as he was in convincing the faculty not to expel the students who had insulted him (in the end, only two were expelled — and that was for continued defiance after the rest of the senior class had been pacified).
But needless to say, all of these events required reams of paper (since the parties lived hundreds of miles away from each other!). This is good for me — since most pastoral difficulties are handled in person, not by letter — and most father/daughter interactions over suitors are likewise handled face-to-face. And RJB was kind enough to live so much of his life on the road that even when he had his family at home, he was frequently traveling to General Assembly, or taking business trips to deal with estate matters (or being called to testify in Maryland against Governor Thomas!!).
Finally, in August of 1847, RJB accepted the call of the First Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Kentucky.
by Michiana Covenant | Jul 11, 2013 | Breckinridge
April 20, 2010
My RJB research continues to go well — though since I’m in 1852, I’m heading into one of the worst stretches, as RJ’s marriage to Virginia is falling apart. They married in 1847 and seem to have done pretty well for a couple years. But Virginia never got along well with his eight children. I came across a couple letters in 1851-52, where the 15 year old Marie (who prided herself on being only the third fattest girl in her school) told her father that she couldn’t write to her brother or sister because she feared that she would misspell the word “which.” The first time I saw that, I wondered. After the second time (by which point I had come across other unmistakable indications), it became clear that the Breckinridge children may well have been the ones who came up with the “Witch of Danville” nickname.
This is not to absolve RJ. While he seems to have gotten along fairly well with her children at first, her two sons died in 1848, and her 19-year old daughter soon married and wound up in a protracted legal battle with RJ over her father’s estate. I don’t think that was wise. He plainly had the law on his side (and so was able to gain a sizeable piece of the Shelby estate for their daughter, Virginia), but his wife was furious. She wanted the entire Shelby estate to go to her daughter, Susan. RJ’s comment to his nephew, John C. Breckinridge, who had served as his lawyer for the case, reveals something of the strain in the marriage: the news of the verdict was “to the inexpressible distress and rage of your Aunt; and to my perfect satisfaction.”
It has been interesting to watch the Breckinridge children grow up. Mary was four years older than any of the others (she was the only one of the first four children to make it past the age of four), so she was the responsible sixteen-year-old who took care of her younger siblings after the death of their mother in 1844. But when Mary married William Warfield in 1848, her younger sister Sally began to step into her place. By the time she was 19 in 1851, RJB felt comfortable letting Sally take seven-year old Charley from Baltimore (where he was at the General Assembly) to Richmond to visit family for a few weeks. A few weeks turned into a few months (after all, no one in those days would dream of sending an unaccompanied 19-year old girl across or around the mountains from Virginia to Kentucky), and so Sally and Charley wound up traveling with cousins who were visiting relatives in Virginia, South Carolina, and New Orleans, before finally coming up to Louisville with Cousin Sally McDowell (yes, the same Sally McDowell who six years before had divorced Governor Thomas — and five years later would marry John Miller — it turns out that she spent a couple months in Kentucky with RJ and Virginia in the spring of 1852, which gives her letters to John a whole lot more weight than I first gave them). Sally’s letters to her father reveal a very confident young woman who sought to respect her father’s wishes — but also (given the fact that her father’s wishes might take a week to become known!) was capable of making responsible decisions for herself and her brother. She even counseled her father in how to handle her 17-year-old brother RJ Junior (who was the black sheep of the family — a drunk, a gambler, and a womanizer by the age of 17! Oh, how his father must have rued the day that he named a son after himself!), and professed to be eager to get back to Lexington and resume the charge of RJ’s children — which again demonstrates that Virginia was simply not interested in them.
by Michiana Covenant | Jul 4, 2013 | Breckinridge
April 1, 2010
In 1836 Sally McDowell was fifteen years old – and like many fifteen year old girls, she was something of a flirt. Her father, the governor of Virginia, sent her to live with her Uncle Benton (a US Senator from Missouri) in Washington, D.C., so that she could attend a “female academy” there. One of the boarders at Senator Benton’s house, was the 36-year old bachelor congressman, Francis Thomas of Maryland.
Thomas fell in love with her – and his attentions were not objectionable to Sally either. They married on June 8, 1841, when she was 20 and he was 42 (over the objections of Governor McDowell – who prophesied trouble, but permitted the match because of the insistence of his daughter). Five months later, Francis Thomas was elected governor of Maryland.
But the marriage was already in danger. Francis Thomas had a jealous streak a mile wide. Any man who dared to look at his charming young wife was suspect. He accused her of multiple affairs within the first four months of their marriage – including one with his own dentist (a close relative of his). He would tell her that if she would only confess and admit it, then he would forgive and everything would be okay – and the poor girl did. But the accusations only got worse (he accused her of having an abortion at one point – claiming that she was trying to get rid of the evidence of her unfaithfulness: but the only evidence he could produce was her “confession” that he coerced!).
For all practical intents and purposes, the marriage ended on January 28, 1842, in the drawing room at “Uncle Robert’s” in Baltimore, Maryland. Uncle Robert J. Breckinridge (Sally’s mother and RJ’s wife were sisters) had been enlisted by Governor McDowell to “rescue” Sally from Governor Thomas – a delicate maneuver in antebellum southern society, where the husband’s authority over his wife was pretty near absolute.
I’ll spare you all the gory details (once he realized that he was never going to get her back, Governor Thomas published a pamphlet detailing his allegations against Sally – but when the matter went to court, he couldn’t prove any of it). Suffice it to say that RJB played an important role in helping Sally realize that Governor Thomas was not going to change.
Now, I know that my story is about RJB – but some of you will no doubt wonder, “what happened to Sally?” Divorce was exceedingly rare in antebellum Virginia. And while a divorcee had the legal right to remarry, who would want to marry a woman who had been at the center of such a scandal? whose ex-husband continued to harass her for years, periodically renewing his request for reunion?
The divorce was granted in 1845 (when she was 24). In 1846 ex-Governor Thomas accused his dentist of trying to poison him (the same man he had accused of having an affair with Sally), he called on Sally to testify against his dentist. She came to Frederick, Maryland, (with her parents) and testified before the grand jury (thankfully the judge kept Thomas on a short leash and refused to allow any questions beyond the precise point in the case! And, no, the grand jury did not indict the dentist – in fact, Thomas’s own lawyers quit as soon as they realized that Thomas was utterly deluded and probably insane). But while in Frederick, she went to church. The pastor of the Presbyterian church was John Miller (whose sister had married RJB’s brother).
Eight years later, now a widower with two small children, John Miller wrote to Sally McDowell. Her parents had both died, leaving her as the functional head of the McDowell family, and the owner of the family estate near Lexington, Virginia. He was now a pastor in Philadelphia. Their correspondence between 1854-1856 now fills nearly 900 pages of a volume entitled, “If You Love That Lady, Don’t Marry Her” – the nearly unanimous advice given to him. Indeed, Sally herself told him that if he married her, he would be ruined – no church would want her as a pastor’s wife. For two years they wrote non-stop about everything (including quite a bit about “Uncle Robert” and “the Witch of Danville” – I’ll save that one for a future epistle!). Finally, she yielded – against her fears that he would turn out to be like Governor Thomas, and against his fears that she would be too much like her cousin Virginia Shelby (the aforementioned “Witch of Danville”) – and in 1856 they married.
I would like to say that John Miller’s congregation welcomed this much maligned and falsely accused woman – but they didn’t. They immediately and peremptorily demanded his resignation. It was true: no church would call a man who was married to Sally McDowell. So he moved with his two children to Virginia, where he supplied vacant churches in the Shenandoah Valley. (I believe that after the Civil War he was able to find a call)
But while I cannot say much for the Presbyterian church’s response to this – I will say that John and Sally appear to have had a truly happy marriage. They added two more children – and lived affectionately for thirty-nine years together, dying only one week apart in 1895.
And Governor Thomas? He never remarried – but his political career was ruined. For twenty years he remained in retirement, only returning to political office during the Civil War (curious how the War seemed to wash away all prior blemishes…). He died in 1876 when a train ran over him.
