University of Virginia Library

VIII. Joseph C. Cabell

Joseph Carrington Cabell, who was born in the tumultuous
atmosphere of the Revolution, was the grandson
of William Cabell, an English gentleman who emigrated
to Virginia, patented a principality in the valley
of the upper James, and founded a family of social and
political importance in itself, and of remarkable ramifications
by inter-marriage. Joseph's mother was sprung
from the Carrington family, which occupied a corresponding
position of distinction in the general history of the
Colony and State. The course of his education followed
the normal groove of those times,—first, he sat under a
tutor in his father's house; next, attended two private
schools in Albemarle county; and then, after one term
passed at Hampden-Sidney College, recommended perhaps
by its nearness to his maternal kinsfolk, he entered
the College of William and Mary. Here he soon won
the affectionate interest of the venerable president, Bishop
Madison, by his accurate scholarship, uncommon talents,
and genial temper. The same superior qualities made an
equally strong appeal to his companions among the students;
his friends felt for him a tenderness so deep and
true that it continued to soften the tone of their letters
to him many years after they had become absorbed in
their callings; and that they were entirely worthy of him
in character and abilities alike, is proven by the eminence
which they reached in their native State,—Isaac Coles,
private secretary of President Jefferson; Henry St.
George Tucker, Presiding Judge of the Court of Appeals;
Benjamin Watkins Leigh, Senator of the United States;

Philip P. Barbour, Justice of the Supreme Court; Chapman
Johnson, Robert Standard, and John T. Lomax,
famous lawyers; and finally, John Hartwell Cocke.
Graduating in 1798, he began the study of the law under
St. George Tucker, professor of jurisprudence and politics
in the College; but seems to have found constant
distractions in the gaieties and political demonstrations
that diversified the life of the little town.

Cabell was fettered throughout life with a delicate
constitution. Alarming pulmonary weakness began to
assail him even before his final departure from Williamsburg.
In 1801, he made his first voyage for the restoration
of his strength; his tour, in this instance, did not
carry him further than Norfolk; but after spending several
months in the office of Daniel Call, in Richmond,
during the autumn of that year, he made a second voyage,
which reached as far as Charleston, where he passed the
winter. His taste for travel, which had its earliest stimulus
in this search for health, was not yet satisfied, for,
during the following summer (1802), he visited the principal
resorts in the mountains of Virginia, and in the
autumn, set out on horseback on a long journey; Turkey
Island, on James River, was his first goal; from that place,
he rode to Fredericksburg, Mt. Vernon, Western Maryland,
Harper's Ferry, and Winchester; and from Winchester
returned to his home. He derived so little permanent
benefit from this excursion in the open air that he
decided to pass a winter in Southern France. "While I
am compelled to spend time and money in pursuit of
health," he wrote his father, Colonel Nicholas Cabell, in
November (1802) "is it not better, at the same time, to
travel for improvement, and where can I turn my attention
with more propriety than to the two most cultivated
countries on earth, England and France?"

During the detention of his ship in the port of Norfolk
by unfavorable winds, he made his first and last application
for a Federal office. James Monroe had been appointed
by the President to settle the irritating differences
which still hung on between the United States, on the one
side, and France and Spain, on the other. Cabell sought
the position of private secretary to the envoy, or the
secretaryship of legation attached to the mission, should
the former place have been already filled. "I hope," he
wrote Monroe, "that you will favor the views of one who
has impaired his constitution in the pursuit of science,
and who now goes to Europe chiefly with the view to
widen the sphere of his knowledge." But this highminded
aspiration for office was frustrated so soon as it
expressed itself. Arriving at Bordeaux in February,
1803, very much debilitated by a rough voyage, he, nevertheless,
at once resumed his journey to Paris, and after
he reached that city, had opportunities to enjoy many of
the public and private pleasures which it offered,—witnessed
a brilliant review of troops by Napoleon; dined
with Volney and Kosciusko; and went on long rambles
through the streets with Robert Fulton, who had come
over from London to continue his experiments with the
submarine in the waters of the Seine. Fulton urged his
companion to interest himself in internal improvements
on his return to Virginia; and the advice was not lost,
as the course of Cabell's future career will reveal.

During a visit to Italy, with the view of inspecting the
celebrated universities of that country, Cabell, while
stopping in Naples, was brought into delightful intercourse
with Washington Irving. They strolled through
the famous museums and palaces of the city together,
climbed to the crater of Vesuvius, and were nearly suffocated
with gas from its crevices by a sudden shift in the

wind. Together they slowly travelled to Rome, where
they passed Holy Week in the enjoyment of all those ceremonies
of the Church which made that part of the year
so splendid in the Eternal City. After his return to
Paris, in the same genial companionship, Cabell started
upon a second tour, which carried him, by measured
stages, into Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland, and later
still into England, where he was introduced into the literary
circle that had as its centre the unconventional William
Godwin.

By the advice of his physician, he dropped his books,
and filled up his time with lectures and conversation only.
His principal aim was always the acquisition of knowledge,
—especially in the several departments of natural
science,—and this led him to sit at the feet of Cuvier and
other eminent professors, in the study of zoology, vegetable
chemistry, chemistry proper, anatomy, and mineralogy.
"France," he wrote, "presented to my view all
the branches of natural history under the aspects of new
and captivating splendor." He assisted an American
friend, MacClure, in collecting a valuable quantity of minerals,
in the course of which they explored together the
hills of Auvergne, and sauntered as far as the Alps; and
in order to extend and perfect his information about botany,
he spent a winter at the University of Montpelier,
famous at that time for the thoroughness of its instruction
in this province of Nature. So keen was his interest in
education that he visited Pestalozzi at Yverdon to observe
the original methods of that celebrated teacher of
the young. His intimacy with Washington Alston stimulated
his native taste for the fine arts; he made detours in
his travels to inspect the most renowned galleries; and
during his stay at Rome, purchased many engravings of

Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican, and also of the noblest
paintings by Poussin, Guido, and Domenichino.

When Cabell was on the point of setting out from Virginia
for Europe, his brother, William H. Cabell, had
warned him "not to suffer anything to shake his attachment
for his own country, or to render him dissatisfied
with the American state of society, manners, and customs."
"The moment you feel any disposition of the
kind," he concluded, "fly back to America." There was
no need of this counsel, amiably designed as it was. Cabell's
thoughts, in all his travels, researches, and studies
abroad, were principally directed towards serving his native
State by gathering up all sorts of knowledge that were
likely to be useful to it when applied for its benefit later
on. He returned to the United States in the spring of
1806, after an absence of three years, which had quadrupled
his stores of information without weakening his
loyalty to the land of his birth. He brought back with
him a letter of introduction to Dr. Barton, of Philadelphia,
who possessed a wide reputation for his attainments
in the sciences of botany and natural history. Through
a letter of introduction from Barton, Cabell for the first
time, made the personal acquaintance of Jefferson, whose
reception of him was marked by uncommon warmth and
cordiality, for Cabell was a friend of his secretary, Isaac
Coles; belonged to a family of high social station in Virginia;
and was known to be interested in the sciences
which appealed most directly to the President's taste.
Jefferson tried to induce him to enter the Federal service,
—offered him in turn the consulate at Tunis, the UnderSecretaryship
of State, the Secretaryship of Orleans Territory,
and finally, the Territorial Governorship; but Cabell
had been too long abroad to be seduced into accepting

offices that would further prolong his absence from Virginia,
with which he was now anxious to identify himself
again in both social and civic life.

He soon found a charming wife in Williamsburg in
the stepdaughter of the eminent jurist, St. George
Tucker, the daughter of Mrs. Tucker by her marriage
with George Carter, in early life. Mrs. Tucker herself
was a daughter of Sir Peyton Skipwith. In the veins of
the youthful and lovely Mrs. Cabell there ran, from these
two sources, the most aristocratic blood to be found in a
State that could rightly boast of the gentle descent of its
leading families. She was also the wealthiest heiress in
Eastern Virginia; her Corrotoman estate spread over an
area of nearly seven thousand acres of land, peopled by
several hundred slaves and many white tenants; and in
some years, the products of its soil swelled in volume to
four thousand bushels of wheat and three thousand barrels
of corn.

Although the laws of the State, at that time, vested in
the husband the property of the wife, Cabell kept the
splendid estate thus acquired entirely detached from his
own; administered its affairs in his name as trustee with
the most scrupulous care; and at his death, it reverted to
her trebly augmented in value through his sagacious management.
With his own inheritance thus largely increased,
he was in the position of a man of handsome fortune,
who could follow his own inclinations in the pursuit
of a calling, without being harassed by the necessity of
earning his daily bread. Should he begin again the study
of law? "Watkins Leigh was here yesterday," wrote
W. H. Cabell to him in April, 1807, "and said that you
ought not to think of law except as a politician, or except
as it will advance your political aims. He thinks there
is a moral obligation on every man in your situation to be

a politician." St. George Tucker, who was one of the
best, wisest, and most accomplished men of that day, held
a different opinion: he urged Cabell, with characteristic
earnestness, to aim at eminence in the law. Cabell replied
that he "meant to begin as a lawyer, and allow the
passage of time to settle the question whether or not he
should diverge permanently into the field of politics."
In the meanwhile, he resolved to attend the course of lectures
on jurisprudence which Judge Nelson was delivering
in Williamsburg, where Cabell was now residing with his
wife; but this turned out to be only an excellent preparation
for the political career upon which he was so soon
to embark, and which he was to pursue so usefully and so
honorably for so many years. His most intimate friends,
Watkins Leigh, Isaac Coles, and John Hartwell Cocke,
understood the predominant bent of his tastes. "You
have been a wanderer long enough," wrote Coles in December,
1807, "it is now fit that you should have a home.
... Build a box on your Warminster farm and become
a candidate for the Legislature from Amherst."

He adopted this counsel, went back to his native county,
offered himself for office, was successful, and took his seat
in the House of Delegates in December, 1808. He continued
a member of that body during two very notable
terms, and was one of the committee that reported in
favor of the establishment of the Literary Fund, the most
vital legislative stroke of those times. He represented
the new county of Nelson in the Lower House; but, in
1810, was elected to the Senate as the member for the
district composed of the counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna,
and Nelson. He retired from that body in 1829,
and from 1831 to 1833, sat again in the House of Delegates,
as that division of the General Assembly was the
one in which he could uphold and push the interests of

the James River and Kanawha Canal to the most signal
advantage. In 1833, he was pressed to become a candidate
for the Governorship, but declined to permit his
name to be used; and although an opportunity was frequently
open to him to enter Congress, he was content to
be of use to his State exclusively within its own borders.
He pointedly discouraged the effort to bring about his
nomination in 1822, with these simple and modest words,
"I have devoted the prime of my life to the service of
our district. I shall endeavor to close my course with
fidelity to my friends. ... My mind feels relieved, now
that the world will be pleased not to regard my zeal on
certain subjects as sprung from a thirst for office and
popular favor."

In political as well as in personal intercourse, Cabell
was in the closest harmony with Jefferson. We shall
soon come to that epic chapter in the history of the University
which records their great struggle, with tongue and
pen, to obtain the necessary appropriations for its construction;
but they were together interested in numerous
other questions of hardly less importance in principle.
In their voluminous correspondence, they are discovered
exchanging views on all sorts of subjects: on the right
of one generation to bind another by legislative enactment;
on whether a member of the House of Representatives
could legally represent a district in which he did
not reside; or whether it was expedient to divide a State
into townships rather than into counties. "My object,"
wrote Cabell, in 1814, "is to be useful to my country in
the station which I occupy (Senate), and in availing myself
occasionally of your valuable aid, it would be highly
improper to disturb the tranquility of your retirement,"
and he, therefore, assures the venerable statesman of the
scrupulous privacy in which all his letters would be kept.

Again and again he seeks that aid, either for a general or
a particular purpose bearing directly on his legislative
duties. In September, 1814, before setting out for Richmond,
he writes, "I would wish to carry some useful
ideas with me when I join the Senate, and I take the liberty
once more to ask you to furnish me with such suggestions
as you may deem useful." And a few weeks afterwards,
he writes again, evidently in acknowledgment of
Jefferson's prompt compliance with this previous request,
"I should be extremely thankful for any further communication
you may, at any time, be pleased to make me,
feeling myself always highly gratified and instructed by
any views which you take of any subject."

Cabell's sense of integrity as a public servant was so
pure and delicate that it amounted at times to feminine
sensitiveness. "Why will you suffer your peace of mind
and your happiness," wrote his brother, William H. Cabell,
in 1814, "to be at the mercy of any man who chooses
to assail you, or to make even an insinuation against the
propriety of your conduct? I believe I should be less
concerned, were I convinced that ninety-nine one hundredths
of the world thought me a villain than you would
if you thought an obscure individual, one thousand miles
away from you, believed you only incorrect."[11]

The faithful and lofty spirit that animated him
throughout his political career is transparent in all he
did, spoke, and wrote. "I think the greatest service a
man can render," he remarked in one of his letters, "is
to speak the truth and to show that is his only object,"
and these simple words epitomized his personal as well
as his political motives. "You have pursued an erect

and honorable course," said Cocke to him, in 1819, "and
as an enlightened and high-minded public servant ought,
you must be satisfied with the approbation of your own
conscience." Such was the attitude towards him of all
who had observed his actions, whether calculated to bring
to him universal popularity or general disfavor.

There were three great public interests of which Cabell
was an ardent and indefatigable supporter: Internal Improvements,
Education, and Agriculture. We have already
mentioned Robert Fulton's advice to him to make
the question of Internal Improvements a part of his political
platform on his return to the United States. He
lived long enough to earn the name of the DeWitt Clinton
of Virginia by his unwearied exertions for the revival,
construction, and extension of the James River and Kanawha
Canal, which, before the building of many railroads
in the Commonwealth, was looked upon as an enterprise
as imperial in its scope as the Erie Canal itself; and
justly so, for had it been situated in a community of large
financial resources, and not been obstructed by a vast
mountain crossing, it would have been extended to the
Ohio and Mississippi, and by pouring the wheat and corn
of the West into the lap of Norfolk, would have made
that city a second New York, and changed the destinies
of the State. Previous to 1821, only twenty miles of
the canal, beginning at Richmond,—where it united with
tidewater,—had been completed, and that only partly
at public expense. With the assistance of Chapman
Johnson, the distinguished lawyer, Cabell drew up a
charter for the new James River and Kanawha Canal
Company, and then undertook to obtain popular support
for the resuscitated enterprise. From the shores of
Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio, he travelled through county
after county, addressing the people from the steps of the

court-houses in the spirit of another Peter the Hermit, as
was said at the time, and earnestly soliciting subscriptions
to carry the bed of the proposed waterway far beyond
the crest of the Alleghanies. Under his Presidency, the
line was constructed westward for a length of two hundred
miles. In the administration of its affairs, he exhibited,
according to Governor Wise,—a man particularly
competent to judge him correctly,—"such conspicuous
zeal, ability, and decision, such unsullied integrity and
becoming dignity, and yet so much amenity, with so
choice, vigorous, and discriminating an intellect, and bore
himself with so much honor and justice, that he carried
with him, in his retirement, the universal respect, confidence,
and regard of those who knew him."

Cabell's interest in general education in Virginia was
not limited to one great seat of learning: he used his
influence on every occasion, and by every means, to improve
all the facilities for secondary and primary instruction
also, and for both sexes too. At the hour that he
was the Atlas of the fortunes of the University in the
General Assembly, he was acting as one of the trustees
of the Charlottesville Ladies' Academy. He apparently
went so far as to have the methods of Pestalozzi adopted
in the schools of Nelson county; and he also made a
patient investigation of the Lancasterian system, which
was based on the social principle. He also planned to
erect so ambitious an institution as a college at Warminster
in the immediate neighborhood of his home at
Edgewood, and would probably have successfully carried
out this scheme by means of a public lottery, had not his
friends united in warning him of its supposed impracticability,
which dispirited him for its further prosecution.
"My great object," he wrote to one of the critics, who
had described the projected college as a lighthouse in the

sky, owing to the remoteness and seclusion of the site
chosen for it, "was to prove how much could be effected
by studious measures judiciously directed, and to encourage
their introduction into other parts of Virginia."

Cabell's unfailing support of all bills before the General
Assembly to improve the condition of agriculture in
Virginia had its stimulus in part in his keen interest in the
diversified operations of his own plantation. In correspondence
with Cocke, his most intimate friend, who was
an enthusiastic farmer, he is repeatedly making or replying
to inquiries that played about all sides of the farmer's
life. Fruit trees, grass, wheat, tobacco, buildings, timber,
rams, overseers, hedges, lime, machinery and ploughs,
one after another, are the subjects upon which special information
was either sought or given. In September,
1818, he writes to another friend, Isaac Coles, that he is
too busy with surveying his lines to compose certain essays
which he had promised to read before the Agricultural
Society. "Confound politics," he exclaimed in a letter
to Cocke, in 1821, "welcome my native fields." "I am
jogging on here," he wrote to the same correspondent, in
1828, from Edgewood, "riding over my farms and
superintending the servants." He was not in sympathy
with the impatient sentiment that prevailed among many
Virginians, about 1830, in favor of Abolition, because
he was convinced that slavery was so intertwined with
all the roots of the community's life that it could not be
torn up without jeopardizing the health, even should it
not destroy the existence, of every associated interest.
But no master was ever more benevolent or more watchful
in his relations with his slaves; in 1848, when he was
far advanced in years, a typhoid epidemic broke out on
his plantation; notwithstanding his physical infirmities,
he passed four or five hours daily on horseback engaged in

visiting the sick, comforting them with kind and encouraging
words, and administering their medicines with his own
hands. He declined to accept Cocke's invitation to
Bremo at this time. "It is quite inadmissible for us," he
replied, "to leave those dependent on our care for their
lives to visit even the most valued friends."

Cabell died in 1856, and the last scene of his life was
consistent with the noble tenor of it throughout.
"Never," reported his nephew, N. F. Cabell, who was
present at the closing hour, "have I seen more dignity,
calmness, and resignation to the divine will." His death
was appropriately announced by the Governor of the
State, who spoke of him as emphatically and peculiarly
"the Virginia Statesman," the man whose entire public
services had been absorbed in building up and advancing
the general welfare of his native commonwealth. Having
possessed the close personal friendship of Jefferson,
Madison and Monroe, he had caught that spirit of wise
moderation, in both word and act, which had given them
such preeminence as political sages. And there was something
too about his temper and demeanor that recalled
to those who knew him a still loftier example of manhood
and statesmanship. "No one could be much with Mr.
Cabell," remarks a friend of his in his last years, "without
seeing that he had taken George Washington for his
model. In his principles and his conduct, in the dignity
of his character, and even in the gentlemanly and becoming
particularity of his dress, you could not fail to observe
the resemblance."[12]