Moving Day in the House Divided: Contextual Substantiation and Constitutional Unionism in Vice President John C. Breckinridge’s Address on the Removal of the Senate to its New Chambers, January 4, 1859

This essay examines the speech delivered by Vice President John C. Breckinridge on the occasion of the removal of the United States Senate to its new chambers on January 4, 1859. Drawing upon Kenneth Burke’s concept of contextual substance, I argue that Breckinridge constructs the Senate’s transition to its new quarters as a defense of constitutional unionism, a conservative political ideology holding that the survival and prosperity of the Union depended upon its continued adherence to the compromises enshrined in the Republic’s founding document. In an age dominated by increasingly strident rhetorical extremes, constitutional unionism represented a beleaguered vision of Union that was soon eclipsed by the Civil War and today is all but forgotten. Analysis of the Removal Address thus illumines the rhetoric of an important yet neglected political ideology while disclosing the rhetorical “alchemy” by which geometric, familial, and directional substance reconcile continuity and change in leave-taking discourse.