September 25, 2012
I’m only eight months away from RJB’s death, and it isn’t pretty. I’m reading letters from old friends — those who had known him for fifty years or more — and they are begging him to come back to Lexington (his hometown — 40 miles from Danville) to see them again. Sure, maybe they disagree on politics — or on whether to join the southern Presbyterian Church — or whether the Old School should have reunited with the New School…
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If the telephone had been invented, Breckinridge would have hung up on them. 75% of the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky was now part of the southern General Assembly — and then 90% of the 1/4 of Kentucky that remained in the Old School had the temerity to vote for reunion with the New School. And then the reunited northern Presbyterian General Assembly removed him from his professorship at Danville Theological Seminary — some said because he had dared to oppose the Reunion. His brother, William, fled to Missouri, where the independent Old School Synod of Missouri would refuse to join either Assembly until 1874.
In Kentucky politics, it was no better. Anyone who had been pro-Union during the War was now an outcast. Lawyers couldn’t find clients. Shopkeepers couldn’t find patrons. Pastors couldn’t find churches. Many sought out R. J. Breckinridge, seeking his assistance in obtaining the patronage of the Ulysses S. Grant administration (in the old “spoils system” the President could appoint every post master, tax assessor, etc., in the country!). More simply left Kentucky for the north.
R. J. Breckinridge simply hung up.
Of course, in the age of letters, it was easier to say (and in fact it was true) that he was too ill. His long-standing pattern of being deathly ill every winter got worse in 1869 when he was hit with neuralgia — one of the most intense facial pains imaginable. During the last year of his life he was rarely able to write. As he wrote to his son, Willie, one letter could take an entire day to write.
But write he did. He had to make sure that his estate was tidied up for the sake of his children. The Panic of 1870 had severely affected several of them, and he hastened to arrange his affairs so that his death would not add to their troubles. His sizeable estate would guarantee that all of them (with some continued exertion of their own) could live comfortably.
Death continued to stalk him. Two grandchildren died — only weeks apart. Then, a few weeks later, his brother, William, lost a grown son and his wife of 46 years in the span of two months.
By the spring of 1871, RJB’s world had contracted to a very close circle of family, and a very few close friends.
