John C. Breckinridge (born January 21, 1821, nearLexington,Kentucky, U.S.—died May 17, 1875, Lexington) was the 14thvice president of the United States (1857–61), an unsuccessful presidential candidate of Southern Democrats (November 1860), and aConfederate officer during theAmerican Civil War (1861–65).

Descended from an old Kentucky family distinguished in law and politics, Breckinridge was the only son of Joseph Cabell Breckinridge and Mary Clay Smith. Graduating from Centre College inDanville, Kentucky, he studied law atPrinceton University and Transylvania University. He became an attorney and began his political career in 1849 as a member of the state legislature. In 1851 he was elected to the U.S.House of Representatives. During this troubledantebellum period, he established his reputation as a faithful Democrat, and, when his party nominatedJames Buchanan ofPennsylvania for president in1856, Breckinridge was a natural choice to balance the ticket between North and South. Once in office, however, Buchanan and Breckinridge—at age 36 the youngest vice president in American history—were unable to fend off the sectional conflict.

Challenged by the newly formedRepublican Party, which resisted extension ofslavery into the territories, theDemocratic Party broke apart at its national convention in the summer of1860. The Northern wing nominatedStephen A. Douglas on a platform favouring the doctrine ofpopular sovereignty, whereby the people of each territory would decide whether to allow slavery within their region’s boundaries, while the Southerners chose Breckinridge on a separate ticket demanding federal intervention to protect slave holdings. Breckinridge insisted that he was not anti-Union but held that slavery could not be banned in a territory until it had become a state. Defeated in the November election by RepublicanAbraham Lincoln, Breckinridge succeededJohn J. Crittenden asUnited States senator from Kentucky in March 1861 but resigned later that year. He worked foraccommodation and compromise, but after Confederate forces fired onFort Sumter,South Carolina (April 12), in the first engagement of theAmerican Civil War, he maintained that the Union no longer existed and urged Kentucky to feel free to secede (it temporarily remained neutral).

His formal expulsion from theSenate in December was a meaningless gesture because he had already been commissioned abrigadier general in the Confederate army in November. After theBattle of Shiloh (April 6–7, 1862), in which he commanded the reserve, he was promoted to the rank of majorgeneral and thereafter took part in many campaigns, includingVicksburg (June 1863), theWilderness (May 1864), andShenandoah Valley (1864–65). In the final months of the war, Breckinridge served asConfederate secretary of war, and at the end of the hostilities he fled to England. After a self-imposedexile of three years, he returned to resume his law practice in Lexington, where he died seven years later.