John J. Crittenden: The Compromise of 1860 and Sons in Blue and Gray

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John J. Crittenden was born in Kentucky in 1787 to a Revolutionary War veteran, became attorney general of the Illinois Territory at 22, and served as an aide at the Battle of the Thames in the War of 1812. Governor Isaac Shelby appointed him to the U.S. Senate in 1814 at 27, below the constitutional minimum age, so he returned to the Kentucky legislature and became speaker. In the Old Court and New Court fight over debt relief after the Panic of 1819, he defended the old Court of Appeals, and after the killing of Attorney General Solomon P. Sharp he proposed a $3,000 reward and refused to defend the killer, Jereboam Beauchamp. John Quincy Adams nominated him to the Supreme Court in December 1828, but Andrew Jackson's allies stalled the nomination.

A loyal ally of Henry Clay and a pillar of the Whig Party, he became Attorney General under William Henry Harrison in 1841 and led the cabinet resignation against John Tyler. In 1848 he backed Zachary Taylor over Clay, left the Senate to run for governor, and then declined Taylor's offer to be Secretary of State. As Attorney General under Millard Fillmore he wrote the opinion that let Fillmore sign the Fugitive Slave Law, and in 1854 he won an acquittal for Matt F. Ward in the killing of principal William Butler, after which he was burned in effigy. In 1860, at 73, he proposed the Crittenden Compromise, six unamendable constitutional amendments, which Republicans blocked on Lincoln's instructions.

• In one deadlocked Senate election he declined to vote for himself so that Clay could take the seat.
• The 1850 census records him owning 44 enslaved people.
• His Fugitive Slave Law opinion called the commissioner's hearing an extradition proceeding rather than a final trial.
• The July 1861 Crittenden-Johnson Resolution declared the war was being fought to preserve the Union, not to interfere with slavery in the Southern states.
• His son George became a Confederate major general and his son Thomas a Union brigadier general, and he died in July 1863.