Sidney Breese (July 15, 1800 – June 27, 1878), a lawyer, soldier, author and jurist born in New York, became an early Illinois pioneer and represented the state in the United States Senate as well as served as Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court and Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, and has been called "father of the Illinois Central Railroad".
Breese was born in 1800 in Whitesboro, New York, the second son of Arthur Breese (1770–1825) and his first wife, Catherine Livingston (1775–1808). His maternal grandfather was Henry Beekman Livingston and a member of the Livingston family. His elder brother became U.S. Navy commodore Samuel Livingston Breese, and he also had elder sisters Sarah Breese Lansing (1795–1879) and Elizabeth Breese Sands (1796–1890) as well as a half-sister, Sarah Ann Breese Walker (1811–1882). Painter and telegraph inventor Samuel Finley Breese Morse was a cousin.
Breese's mother died when Sidney was eight, and although his father remarried, Rev. Jesse Townsend helped raise Breese. During this time, Sidney befriended his distant (and slightly elder) cousin Elias Kent Kane, also a member of the Schuyler family of New York. Under Townsend's guidance Breese entered Hamilton College at just 14 years old, then transferred to Union College in 1816. In 1818, he graduated third in his class of 64 and was a member of the New York Alpha of the Phi Beta Kappa. In Illinois, as discussed below, Breese also read law under Kane in 1820.
In 1823, Sidney Breese married Eliza Morrison (1808–1895), daughter of wealthy merchant William Morrison. They owned slaves and had fourteen children, including daughters Eloise Philips McClurken (1824–1885) and Elizabeth Breese (1841–1845), and sons William Arthur Breese (1826–1838), Charles Broadhead Breese (1828–1844), (Samuel) Livingston Breese (1831–1899; who served in the U.S. Navy during the Civil War, attaining the rank of Commander by war's end), Daniel L. Breese (1832-after 1860, who was a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1860), Sidney Samuel Breese(1835–1891), Edward Livingston Breese (1837–1838), William Morrison Breese (1838-after 1860, when he was a land agent and living at home), James Buchanan Breese (1846–1887, who would serve as a Second Lieutenant in the Marine Guard during the Civil War), Elias Dennis Breese (1848–1851) and Alexander Breese (1850–1851).
Kane had moved to Illinois following his graduation from Yale College in 1814, and suggested Breese join him after his graduation. Breese accepted, and would become a pioneer of Illinois.
Illinois became a state in 1818 and after Kane had become Illinois Secretary of State, he appointed Breese his assistant (as well as continued to oversee his legal studies). Breese also was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1821.
In 1820, Illinois's capital was moved from the flood-prone Kaskaskia in Randolph County, Illinois, on the Mississippi River to Vandalia, on the National Road. Breese was responsible for moving the State Department's records, which he did by wagon. He remained Asst. Secretary of State until the end of the legislative session in 1821, when he returned to Kaskaskia and began a private law practice.
By chance in 1821, he was approached in his law office one day by the Post-Office Department to assume the duties of Postmaster for Kaskaskia. Breese accepted and thereafter earned commissions on postage stamp sales.
In 1822, Breese was appointed as the Circuit-Attorney for the Third Judicial District in Illinois. He served in that capacity until 1826, when he was removed by the new Governor, Ninian Edwards. In 1827, U.S. President John Quincy Adams, a Whig appointed Breese United States Attorney for the State of Illinois. He remained in that capacity until newly inaugurated Democrat Andrew Jackson replaced him in 1829.
Having removed to private practice following his dismissal in 1829, in 1831 Breese also began compiling the reports of the Illinois Supreme Court. These were the first books published in Illinois, and were known as the "Breese Reports". Also during this time under the pseudonym R. K. Fleming he edited the Western Democrat.
In 1831 he ran for the US congress on a platform favoring transfer of all public lands to each state.
Following the outbreak of the Black Hawk War in 1832, Breese volunteered for military service, enlisting as a private. He was thereafter elected a Major. The battalion assembled at Beardstown, Cass County, Illinois, and marched to the Illinois River near Peru. After arriving at Camp Wilborn, the Lieutenant-Colonel Theophilus W. Smith (a Judge on the Illinois Supreme Court) resigned, and Breese was elected to fill the open position. Under his command were future Civil War General Robert Anderson and future U.S. President Zachary Taylor.
Following the war, he returned to private practice. In 1833, he was the lead counsel in the defense of Illinois Supreme Court Justice Theophilus W. Smith, whom he had replaced in military command earlier, during his impeachment trial by the Illinois House of Representatives. The defense team also included future-Illinois Governor Thomas Ford and future-U.S. Senator Richard M. Young. Judge Smith remained in office as the legislature failed to achieve a 2/3ds vote required for conviction.
Breese also platted an addition to the new town of Chicago, and helped early settler and trader Jean Baptiste Beaubien with his land claim which included the soon-decommissioned Fort Dearborn, which succeeded with the Illinois Supreme Court but was reversed by the United States Supreme Court, despite the efforts of appellate counsel Francis Scott Key and Daniel Webster in Wilcox v. Jackson (1837).
Following the establishment of the circuit courts in Illinois in 1835, the legislature appointed Breese a judge, responsible for the 2nd Circuit. A case filed in his court in 1838 concerned whether the Governor (then Whig Joseph Duncan) could remove a Secretary of State (Democrat Alexander Pope Field) and appoint another. In a heated partisan atmosphere, Breese delivered a purely legal opinion which upheld the Governor's power. The opinion was appealed to the supreme court, where his opinion was overturned. In retaliation, during the aftermath of the Panic of 1837, Democrats in the state legislature increased the number of judges on the court from four to nine (although the number would again be reduced following the adoption of a new state constitution in 1848), and Breese received one of the new positions.
Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court
In 1841, following the contested legal dispute, Breese assumed the duties as a Justice in the Illinois Supreme Court on February 22. Among the five new appointees to the court made by the legislature, along with Breese, was future-U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas. Of the 131 opinions rendered by the court during his tenure, Sidney delivered 34 of them.
In December 1842, Breese was elected as a U.S. Senator from Illinois as a Democrat. During his term he was considered a poor politician by insiders because he devoted his time and energy to the official duties of his office and people of Illinois versus the financiers and special interests of the Democratic Party and Washington establishment. Rumors circulated about his possible candidacy for the U.S. Presidency, but Breese was more interested in working for his state. He was an associate of future-President Abraham Lincoln during this time, as Lincoln served in the Illinois delegation of U.S. House of Representatives.