D. D., LL. D Breckenridge Robert Jefferson, uncle of the preceding, and brother of the Rev. John Breckenridge, an American divine, born at Cabell's Dale, Ky., March 8, 1800, died at Danville, Ky., Dec. 27,1871. He studied successively in Princeton, Yale, and Union colleges, and practised law in Kentucky for eight years from 1823, being several times a member of the state legislature. In 1829 he joined the Presbyterian church, and in 1832 was ordained pastor of the first Presbyterian church in Baltimore, in which position he remained 13 years. In 1845 he was elected president of Jefferson college, Pennsylvania, where he remained two years, at the same time being pastor of the church in a neighboring village; after which he removed to Kentucky, and became pastor of the first Presbyterian church in Lexington, and superintendent of public instruction for the state. In 1853 he was elected professor of theology in the seminary at Danville, Ky. During the controversies which led to the disruption of the Presbyterian church, he became the acknowledged leader of the Old School. It was chiefly through his agency that the managers of the American Bible society, after voting to adopt the revised edition of the Bible as their standard, subsequently receded from that action.

He was the principal author of the common school system of Kentucky. In the anti-slavery discussion he took a decided course in opposition to extreme opinions on either side, and advocated the passage of a law for manumitting the slaves in Kentucky. When the civil war broke out he took a firm stand in favor of the Union, but he wrote against Mr. Lincoln's emancipation proclamation. In 1864 he presided over the republican national convention which renominated Mr. Lincoln for the presidency. While in Baltimore he edited the " Religious and Literary Magazine," and at Danville the "Danville Review." He published two works of foreign travel (1 vol., 1839; 2 vols., 1845); "Papism in the United States" (1841); "Internal Evidences of Christianity" (1852); "The Knowledge of God objectively Considered" (1857); and "The Knowledge of God subjectively Considered" (1859).