James Guthrie (December 5, 1792 – March 13, 1869) was an American lawyer, plantation owner, railroad president and Democratic Party politician in Kentucky. He served as the 21st United States Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, and then became president of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. After serving, part-time, in both houses of the Kentucky legislature as well as Louisville's City Council before the American Civil War (and failing to win his party's nomination in the Presidential election of 1860), Guthrie became one of Kentucky's United States Senators in 1865 (until resigning for health reasons in 1868 shortly before his death). Guthrie strongly opposed proposals for Kentucky to secede from the United States and attended the Peace Conference of 1861. Although he sided with the Union during the Civil War, he declined President Abraham Lincoln's offer to become the Secretary of War. As one of Kentucky's Senators after the war, Guthrie supported President Andrew Johnson and opposed Congressional Reconstruction. Guthrie also was a director of the Louisville and Portland Canal Company, the first president of the University of Louisville, and presided over the Kentucky Constitutional Convention of 1849 (which explicitly ratified slavery in the state until its abolition after the Civil War). During the Civil War, Guthrie resisted federal pressure to nationalize the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, but allowed the Union to use it to move troops and supplies. Early and family life James Guthrie was born on December 5, 1792, near Bardstown, Nelson County, Kentucky, to General Adam Guthrie (1762–1826) and his wife, the Pennsylvania-born Hannah Polk (1765–1842). Though his grandparents emigrated from Ireland, Guthrie was of Scottish descent. and his ancestor James Guthrie was a Scottish clergyman executed in 1661 after the Restoration of King Charles I (although the Scottish parliament in 1690 posthumously reversed the bill of attainder that led to his execution). Adam Guthrie moved from Virginia across the Appalachian Mountains into Kentucky and married Hannah Polk in 1788. They had three sons and five daughters who survived to adulthood. Having fought Native peoples until they left the area after the American Revolutionary War, the senior Guthrie developed a large plantation in Nelson County, and twice won election to the Kentucky General Assembly (serving from 1800 to 1805, and again in 1808). James Guthrie received some of his early education in a log schoolhouse. During his father's military campaigns, Guthrie studied