John Crittenden: Kentucky politician who pushed for compromise amid the Civil War
Editor’s Note: As Lexington celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, the Herald-Leader and kentucky.com each day throughout 2025 will share interesting facts about our hometown. Compiled by Liz Carey, all are notable moments in the city’s history — some funny, some sad, others heartbreaking or celebratory, and some just downright strange.
On Sept. 10, 1787, John J. Crittenden was born in a small cabin that still stands just outside of Versailles.
He would go on to represent Kentucky in the U.S. House of Representatives, Senate, and was the U.S. attorney general.
As a child, he attended school at the Pisgah Academy near Pisgah Church outside of Versailles. Later he moved to Lexington to study law with Judge George Bibb, before moving on to more advanced studies at Washington and Lee College and the College of William and Mary.
After returning to Central Kentucky after graduating in 1806, he found that there were enough lawyers in the Lexington area and moved his practice to Russellville. At 22, he moved to the Illinois Territory and joined Gov. Ninian Edwards’ administration as attorney general.
By 1811, he had returned to Kentucky and served in the Kentucky House of Representatives. Kentucky Gov. Isaac Shelby appointed Crittenden to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the death of Bibb, who had trained Crittenden, in 1814.
After the appointment, Shelby realized Crittenden was three years too young to meet the seat’s constitutional age requirement, so he returned to the Kentucky state legislature, where he was elected Speaker of the House.
Not long after returning to Kentucky, Crittenden was recruited by Henry Clay to help with the legal defense of Charles Wickliffe, who was accused of murdering the editor of Lexington’s Kentucky Gazette newspaper.
Crittenden argued that Wickliffe acted in self-defense, and Clay delivered a passionate closing argument in support of Wickliffe’s actions. The jury found Wickliffe not guilty after only minutes of deliberation.
Role in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate
Crittenden would eventually go on to serve as a U.S. representative and senator for Kentucky, as well as the U.S. attorney general.
In 1834, he returned home and served as Kentucky’s secretary of state. In 1848, he was elected Kentucky’s 17th governor. In 1853, he returned to the Senate at the age of 69.
He was present when U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks (D-S.C.) attacked U.S. Sen. Charles Sumner (R-Mass.) with a cane on the floor of the Senate in 1857. The attack stemmed from a speech given by Sumner that called out slaveholders, including U.S. Sen. Andrew Butler (D-S.C.), one of Brooks’ relatives.
During the attack, Brooks’ allies prevented people from helping break up the attack to help Sumner. Crittenden tried to intervene by pleading with Brooks not to kill Sumner. Others then had to intervene to protect Crittenden.
The beating nearly killed Sumner and contributed to the country’s polarization over slavery. Many considered it to be indicative of the willingness to resort to violence, which led to the Civil War.
The Crittenden Compromise
Crittenden is most known for a compromise that aimed to delay secession prior to the Civil War. In 1860, Crittenden drafted legislation that allowed for the permanent existence of slavery in slave states and prohibited slavery in northern states.
The compromise guaranteed slavery would remain legal in Washington, D.C., as long as it was legal in either Maryland and Virginia, and that slaveholders would be reimbursed for runaway slaves. The amendments also denied Congress any power to intervene with interstate slave trade and slavery’s existence in Southern states, while making the fugitive slave law and the Three-Fifths Compromise permanent.
Although the bill was opposed by President Abraham Lincoln for allowing slavery to continue, it provided Southern states with guarantees to delay secession.
One of a series of last-ditch efforts to provide Southern states with a reason not to secede, the measure failed, leading to the onset of the Civil War.
The Civil War, and the issue of slavery, deeply impacted and divided Crittenden’s family.
Despite his anti-slavery stance, one of his sons joined the Confederate Army, and another son joined the U.S. Army. His grandsons also joined the two different armies.
His brother, Thomas Leonidas Crittenden, had been a member of Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner’s state guard formed to protect Kentucky’s neutrality, but resigned to join the U.S. Army in 1861.
Once the Civil War broke out, Crittenden voiced a desire to retire from public service.
However, after negotiations with President Lincoln, Crittenden served as a U.S. Representative again from 1861 to 1863. In March 1863, when the 37th Congress ended, Crittenden returned to Kentucky, complaining of ill health. Despite this, friends and colleagues convinced him to run again.
Shortly after his nomination, he and his wife were traveling to Indiana when he collapsed in Louisville. Crittenden was treated by a local doctor, then sent home to Frankfort, where he died on July 26, 1863.
Crittenden County is named in his honor.
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