biography
| name: |
Crittenden, John J(ordan)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1787–1863)
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| biography:
| US statesman, senator, and lawyer, born in Versailles, Kentucky, USA. He studied at the College of William and Mary (1807), then returned to Kentucky to practise law. He became a prominent defence attorney before serving several terms in the US Senate (Whig, Kentucky, 1817–19, 1835–41, 1842–8, 1854–61). In between his time in the Senate, he served as governor of Kentucky (1849) and US attorney general (1841, 1850–3). After his proposed Crittenden Compromise (1860) – extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, thus allowing but restricting the spread of slavery – failed to avert the Civil War, he moved over to the US House of Representatives (1861–3), where he continued to press for Kentucky's neutrality, the containment of the Union's expanding war aims, and for restraining radicals on both sides. |
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