Short answers, pulled from the story.
Breckinridge was inaugurated as the 14th vice president on the 4th of March 1857, at age 36, exceeding the constitutional minimum age by only one year. No one younger has held the office before or since.
After finishing second in the Electoral College with 72 votes to Lincoln's 180, Breckinridge took his seat as a U.S. Senator from Kentucky. He was expelled from the Senate on the 4th of December 1861, by a vote of 36-0 after fleeing behind Confederate lines and enlisting in the Confederate army.
The Orphan Brigade was a Confederate Kentucky infantry unit whose soldiers felt orphaned because their home state remained in the Union. Breckinridge was given command of the 1st Kentucky Brigade on the 16th of November 1861, and led these men through major battles including Shiloh and Stones River.
Appointed by Jefferson Davis on the 6th of February 1865, Breckinridge promoted Robert E. Lee to general-in-chief as his first act and recommended replacing the ineffective commissary general Lucius B. Northrop. He preserved Confederate archives before Richmond fell and urged Davis to accept a national surrender, arguing the war was hopeless.
Breckinridge fled southward through Georgia and Florida after the Confederate government dissolved in May 1865. He joined John Taylor Wood in Florida and, using a lifeboat obtained from Confederate Colonel John Jackson Dickison, traveled down the St. Johns River and along the Indian River before ultimately escaping the country. He lived abroad for over three years until President Andrew Johnson extended amnesty to former Confederates in 1868.
At the Battle of New Market on the 15th of May 1864, Breckinridge commanded about 4,800 men, including 261 cadets from the Virginia Military Institute, and defeated Union General Franz Sigel's force of 6,300. The victory protected a crucial railroad junction, defended the Shenandoah Valley's wheat supply, and secured Lee's flank during the Lynchburg Campaign.