John Jordan Crittenden (September 10, 1787 – July 26, 1863) was an American statesman and politician from the U.S. state of Kentucky. He represented the state in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and twice served as United States Attorney General in the administrations of William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, and Millard Fillmore. He was also the 17th governor of Kentucky and served in the state legislature. Although frequently mentioned as a potential candidate for the U.S. presidency, he never consented to run for the office.
During his early political career, Crittenden served in the Kentucky House of Representatives and was chosen as speaker on several occasions. With the advent of the Second Party System, he allied with the National Republican Party before joining the Whig Party, and was a fervent supporter of, and eventually a protege of Henry Clay and opponent of Democrats Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren.
Lame duck president John Quincy Adams nominated Crittenden to the U.S. Supreme Court on December 17, 1828, but senators who supported president-elect Jackson voted to postpone confirmation until Jackson could nominate his own man. After his brief service as Kentucky secretary of state, the state legislature elected Crittenden to the second of his four non-consecutive stints in the U.S. Senate. Upon his election as president, William Henry Harrison appointed Crittenden as Attorney General, but five months after Harrison's death, political differences prompted him to resign rather than continue his service under Harrison's successor, John Tyler.
He was returned to the Senate in 1842, serving until 1848, when he resigned to run for governor, hoping his election would help Zachary Taylor win Kentucky's vote in the 1848 presidential election. Taylor was elected, but Crittenden refused a post in his cabinet, fearing he would be charged with making a "corrupt bargain", as Clay had been in 1825. Following Taylor's death in 1850, Crittenden resigned the governorship and accepted Millard Fillmore's appointment as attorney general.
As the Whig Party crumbled in the mid-1850s, Crittenden joined the Know Nothing (or American) Party. After the expiration of his term as attorney general, he was again elected to the U.S. Senate, where he urged compromise on the issue of slavery to prevent the breakup of the United States. As bitter partisanship increased the threat of secession, Crittenden sought out moderates from all parties and formed the Constitutional Union Party, though he refused the party's nomination for president in the 1860 election. In December 1860, he authored the Crittenden Compromise, a series of resolutions and constitutional amendments he hoped would avert the Civil War, but Congress would not approve them.
John Jordan Crittenden was born September 10, 1787, near Versailles, Kentucky. He was the second child and first son of Revolutionary War veteran Major John Crittenden and his wife Judith Harris. John and Judith Crittenden had four sons and five daughters; all but one survived infancy. On his father's side, he was of Welsh ancestry, while his mother's family was French Huguenot. His father had surveyed land in Kentucky with George Rogers Clark, and settled there just after the end of the American Revolution. Two of Crittenden's brothers, Thomas and Robert, became lawyers, while the third, Henry, was a farmer.
Crittenden began a college preparatory curriculum at Pisgah Academy in Woodford County. He was then sent to a boarding school in Jessamine County. Among his classmates were Thomas Alexander Marshall and Francis P. Blair. Crittenden became especially close friends with Blair, and later political differences did little to diminish their friendship. After a year at boarding school, Crittenden moved to the Lexington, Kentucky, home of Judge George M. Bibb to study law. He began more advanced studies at Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia. During his brief tenure there, he studied mathematics and belles-lettres and became friends with Hugh Lawson White. Dissatisfied with the curriculum at Washington College, Crittendon moved to Williamsburg and transferred to the College of William and Mary. He studied law under St. George Tucker and became acquainted with future president John Tyler.
Completing his studies in 1806, Crittenden was admitted to the bar the following year. He began his practice in Woodford County, but found central Kentucky already well supplied with able lawyers. Crittenden then moved to Logan County, Kentucky, on the then western frontier and opened his practice in Russellville. At age twenty-two, he moved across the Ohio River to Illinois Territory, and Governor Ninian Edwards appointed him Attorney General of the Illinois Territory from 1809 until 1810. The following year, Edwards also made Crittenden his aide-de-camp.[a]
In addition to his legal practice when he returned to Kentucky, Crittenden also operated plantations and owned enslaved people. In 1830, his household included 12 free white persons and 6 enslaved people. In 1850, Crittenden owned 44 enslaved people (11 women above age 16, 7 men, 13 boys and 13 girls). In 1860, after distributing some property to his now-adult children, Crittenden owned ten enslaved people, all mulattos (females aged 60, 25, 21, 18 and 16 and males aged 28, 16, 14, 10 and 1).
Crittenden's career as an elected official began in the Kentucky House of Representatives, where he represented Logan County from 1811 to 1817. After the 1811 legislative session, he volunteered as an aide to General Samuel Hopkins in an expedition against the Indians. On the outbreak of the War of 1812, Kentucky governor Charles Scott appointed him as an aide-de-camp for the First Kentucky Militia. In 1813, he became an aide-de-camp to Governor Isaac Shelby, serving at the Battle of the Thames in Canada. Following the war, the governor issued him a special commendation for faithfulness in carrying out his orders. He then resumed his law practice in Russellville.
In 1814, Governor Shelby appointed Crittenden to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by his former teacher, George M. Bibb; later, however, Shelby learned that Crittenden was only twenty-seven years old, three years shy of the constitutional age requirement for senators. Hence he returned to his seat in the Kentucky House, where he was elected speaker over John Rowan. He would retain the position from 1815 to 1817.
As speaker, Crittenden presided over a particularly tumultuous time in the legislature. In October 1816, recently elected governor George Madison died. He was succeeded by Lieutenant Governor Gabriel Slaughter. Slaughter immediately made two extremely unpopular appointments, and quickly fell out of favor with many Kentuckians. A group of legislators, led by John C. Breckinridge, pointed out that the Kentucky Constitution provided only that the lieutenant governor would serve as governor until a new gubernatorial election was held and a qualified successor was chosen. Slaughter, they claimed, was only the "acting governor". The group presented a bill to the House that called for new elections. The bill was defeated, but Crittenden supported it.
Crittenden's support of a new election was both popular and politically expedient. When the U.S. Senate term of Martin D. Hardin, one of Slaughter's unpopular nominees, expired in 1817, the Kentucky General Assembly chose Crittenden to fill the vacancy. Though he was the youngest member of the body, he served as the second-ever chairman of the newly created Committee on the Judiciary. He was also a member of the Committee on Naval Affairs. During his term, he introduced legislation to reimburse and indemnify persons who were fined under the 1798 Sedition Act. He found state politics more interesting, however, and this fact, coupled with increased financial responsibilities incurred by the birth of his third and fourth children, prompted his decision to resign his seat on March 3, 1819.