John C. Breckinridge

John C. Breckinridge is one of the most loathesome people in American history, summed up very well here. The presidential nominee of the southern Democrats in 1860, Breckinridge played no small part in destroying the Union. Plus, when in Lexington, Kentucky last year I couldn't find his grave, which made his perfidy personal.

In a recent discussion with frequent commenter "Murderface," I come to find out that he is a direct descendant of Breckinridge. He pointed out to me this New York Times editorial from December 7, 1863, after Breckinridge was believed to have been killed fighting for the Confederacy.

The Times was somewhat less than charitable to Breckinridge. The editorial begins, "If it be true, as is now positively declared, that a loyal bullet has sent this traitor to eternity, every loyal heart will feel satisfaction and will not scruple to express it.

It goes on to discuss Breckinridge's disgusting behavior in 1860 and then ends this way:

"We know that it is not easy to draw distinctions between the shades of this black treason against the Union. Yet we can recognize that some sort of charity may be given to a man as Stonewall Jackson, who bred to the doctrine of paramount State sovereignty, and conscientiously believed that it was his duty to obey the decision of his State expressed through constitutional forms. But no such extenuating plea can be advanced for John C. Breckinridge. In one of his last speeches in the Senate, he declared that he was a son of Kentucky, and would follow her destiny. And yet, in spite of the fact that Kentucky, within a week afterward declared, by a majority of sixty thousand votes at the polls, that she would not go out of the Union, he went home and issued a manifesto, declaring that "there is no longer a Senate of the United States within the meaning and spirit of the Constitution; the United States no longer exist; the Union is dissolved;" and that he was now about to "exchange, with proud satisfaction, a term of six years in the Senate of the United States for the musket of a soldier." The declared intention he made good by soon afterward rallying his friends at Russellville, where a resolution was passed, in so many words, bidding "defiance both to the Federal and State Governments," and delegates were appointed to the Provisional Congress of the Confederacy. Breckinridge was soon afterward as thoroughly identified with the rebels as Jeff. Davis himself; though in doing it he had to turn his back, not only upon the Union, but upon his own State, whose destiny he had solemnly protested that he would follow. Of all the accursed traitors of the land there has been none more heinously false than he -- none whose memory will live in darker ignominy. God grant the country a speedy deliverance of all such parricides.

Awesome.