University of Virginia Library

III. PART III

VIRGINIA UNDER THE FEDERAL
CONSTITUTION, 1789-1861

CHAPTER I

FEDERALIST DOMINATION OF THE UNION, 1789-1801

That the Constitution did not reflect the wishes of the
people of Virginia was shown by the complexion of the House
of Delegates—the popular branch of the Virginia Legislature.
This body had been elected in April, 1788, a month after the
members of the Convention had been chosen. They must
have been selected with reference to their opinions about the
proposed Constitution, which was the absorbing topic. The
Legislature held a short session beginning June 23, two days
after the State Convention adjourned, and after transacting
business of an ordinary character, the members returned
home, as we are told, to gather in their harvest. But that
short visit to their constituents appeared to have instilled
into the minds of a great majority, if it was wanting before,
a most determined opposition to the Constitution, which had
just been accepted by the Convention. Jefferson wrote to
William Short that the Assembly was "possessed by a
vast majority of anti-Federalists," and that "Henry was
supreme."

When the Assembly convened again in the month of October
Henry's supremacy was quickly shown by ridding the
Assembly of Mr. Madison, who was elected to be sent to the
Continental Congress at New York. Despite the talk of his
enemies, it is not necessary to suppose that in doing this
Henry was actuated by any other than patriotic motives,
for the Assembly was too pronounceably anti-Federalist for
any fear to be entertained of Madison's influence. No Federalists
of much prominence were left in the Legislature
except Francis Corbin, Richard Bland Lee, Zachariah Johnston

and Richard Turberville, while Henry had on his side
old veterans in debate, like Benjamin Harrison, William Grayson,
and James Monroe. The receipt of a circular from the
New York Convention, in which opposition to the Constitution
prevailed for very different reasons than in Virginia,
inviting cooperation for a second convention to propose
amendments, impelled Henry to give further evidence of his
influence.

On October 30 Henry proposed and the Assembly adopted
a series of resolutions calling for a new convention, and a
substitute, favored by the Federalists, providing that Congress
be allowed to prepare amendments to be accepted by
the states, as set forth in that instrument, was voted down
by 85 to 39—more than two to one. Later, on November 14,
both houses—the Senate and the House of Delegates—
declaring the cause of amendments to be the "Common
Cause," adopted a petition to Congress, drawn up by the
same great leader, that a convention be immediately called
with full power to enter into consideration of the defects of
the Constitution, suggested by the State Conventions. They
were passed in the House by a vote of 72 to 50. Following
this, two pronounced anti-Federalists, Richard Henry Lee
and William Grayson, were elected the two first Virginia
senators, over Madison, who was a candidate of the
Federalists.

The election for the members of the House of Representatives
occurred on February 2, and the interval seems to have
had a cooling effect upon the suspicions of the people of
Virginia. The unanimous selection of Washington as first
President under the Constitution gratified their pride, and
from fear that a new convention might imperil the Union
itself a change of opinion resulted; and out of ten members
elected seven were Federalists—including Madison, who
had been opposed by James Monroe. The same contemptible
spirit which had slandered the noble Henry in other particulars
attributed to him in the arrangements of the Congressional

districts by the Legislature a plan "to gerrymander"
Madison out of his election.

Madison's talents assured him the leadership in the House
of Representatives, and when Theodoric Bland laid before
Congress the petition of Virginia for a second convention,
he prevented its consideration. He proposed and carried
through Congress nine amendments, chiefly declaratory in
their character, but the great body of the Virginia amendments
were not supported by him and they were rejected.
Prominent among these was the one requiring a two-thirds
vote for the passage of a commercial law.

Madison proposed a bill laying an impost to provide
revenue and another to establish three executive departments
of the Government—Foreign Affairs, Treasury and
War. Other things considered were titles to the executive,
tonnage duties, taxation of slaves, and the seat of government.
On these questions the real difference in the Union
constantly showed itself. The heat of party feud was cold
and dull compared with the fervor of sectional hate, the hate
that sprang up between the East as the East and the South
as the South. This rancor increased at the second session
of this First Congress, when Hamilton, the secretary of the
treasury, proposed his plans for providing for the support
of the public credit, embracing a funding scheme, assumption
of the state debts, a national bank and a tariff.

These measures were all in the interest of the North.
Most of the national debt in the shape of certificates were
held and owned in the North by speculators who had bought
them up at ten cents on the dollar. The state debts were
largely owing by northern states; the natural habitat of the
bank was in a commercial center, and the North had all the
large cities; and the tariff, even if its aim was revenue, promoted
the interest of commerce rather than of agriculture, and
the North had the commerce and the South had the agriculture.

In the discussion of these questions the incompatibility of

states, some given to commerce and others given to agriculture,
was startlingly made manifest. In a letter dated September
29, 1789, written to Patrick Henry, immediately after
the close of the first session of Congress, Senator Grayson
stated the differences as follows:[1]

"Gentlemen now begin to feel the observations of the
Antis, when they informed them of the different interests in
the Union, and the probable consequences that would result
therefrom to the southern states, who would be the milch cow
out of whom the substance would be extracted. If I am not
mistaken, they will e'er long have abundant cause to conclude
that the idea of a difference between carrying states and
productive states and manufacturing states and slave states
is not a mere phantom of the imagination. If they reflect
at all on the meaning of protective duties, by way of encouragement
to manufactures, and apply the consequences to
their own constituents, I think they would now agree that
we were not totally beside ourselves in the convention. In my
opinion, whenever the impost bill comes into action, the
friends of the South will be let into some secrets that they
do not or will not at present apprehend. You would be astonished
at the progress of manufactures in the seven easternmost
states; if they go on in the same proportion for seven
years, they will pay very little on impost, while the South will
continue to labor under the pressure. This, added to the
advantage of carrying for the productive states, will place
them in the most desirable situation whatever."

In Virginia the measure in Congress particularly detested
was the Assumption bill. Since the peace the state had made
great efforts to reduce her public debt, and could point with
just pride to the figures which gave evidence of her success.
It was, therefore, a gross injustice, in the opinion of men of
both parties in the state, Federalists and anti-Federalists
alike, that Virginia should be called upon to pay the debts of
the delinquent states, which, with the exception of South

Carolina, were all northern states. The Virginia Legislature,
taking the Assumption bill into consideration after it had
passed, forwarded to Congress a vigorous remonstrance. It
was written by Henry and came from a committee of eleven
members, seven of whom had advocated the ratification of
the Constitution in the Convention of 1788, including the
chairman, Francis Corbin. It was the first remonstrance of a
state against a Federal act.

The Assumption bill was bitterly fought in Congress and
would not have been passed except for the intervention of
Thomas Jefferson, who was affected by profoundly patriotic
reasons. He came back to the United States from France in
December, 1789, and on March 21, 1790, he went to New York
to enter upon the duties of his office of secretary of state. He
found public affairs in an alarming condition. The House
had rejected the Assumption scheme, and so bitter were the
feelings of the two parties that they could not do business
together, and Congress adjourned from day to day. In the
street he met Hamilton, who painted pathetically the temper
of the northern states, the danger of the secession of their
members and the separation of the Union. A conference was
had the next day when two members of Congress from Virginia
were also present—Alexander White and Richard Bland
Lee. They agreed to change their votes, but it was resolved
that to soften the measure Hamilton should exert his influence
to fix the capital of the Union on the Potomac, a location
ardently desired by the South. This was done in the middle
of July, 1790, and on July 23 the amendment of the pending
bill providing for the assumption of the state debts was
agreed to by a vote of 32 ayes to 29 noes. The only southerners
voting for it, except the South Carolina members,
were White and Lee of Virginia and Daniel Carroll and
George Gale of Maryland.

As a matter of fact there was no equivalent in the bargain,
and a year later Jefferson declared that he had been
duped by Hamilton and made his tool in lending his aid to the

Assumption bill, and that of all the errors of his political life
he regretted this the most.[2]

That the Union did not break up at this time was due not
alone to the action of Jefferson but to the universality of the
belief in the South that the inferiority of the section in population
was only temporary, and that empire was coming their
way. The North too shared in the belief, and this accentuated
their opposition to the Mississippi and to the application
of Kentucky for admission as a state. That part of
Virginia had on its petition been allowed to call a state convention
as early as January, 1786, but a delay in forming a
Constitution had resulted from an Indian war on the frontiers,
which broke out in that year. Sevier led an expedition
from Tennessee which punished the Indians severely, but disaster
befell a much larger expedition that went out from Kentucky
under Gen. George Rogers Clark. This expedition was
known as the Wabash Expedition, but after proceeding some
distance against the Indian towns, the men got dissatisfied,
refused to go any further, and despite the tears and entreaties
of their leader returned home, having accomplished nothing.

So many of the first characters of the District had joined
the army that the meeting of the convention which was to
decide the question of the independence of Kentucky had
to be postponed. But the Indians did not escape their just
punishment. Col. Benjamin Logan, a brave and efficient
officer, crossed the Ohio where Maysville now stands with 500
mounted riflemen, penetrated the Indian country, burned eight
towns, laid waste many hundreds of cornfields, killed twenty
braves, and with eighty prisoners hastened back to Kentucky.[3]
Later Kentucky framed its constitution and asked Congress
to be admitted as a state, but from fear of its increasing the
power of the South, admission was delayed by Congress till
1792. Not till four acts of cession had been passed by Virginia
and nine conventions held by the people of Kentucky,

did the bill pass both houses of Congress and receive the
assent of the President.

Perhaps the greatest bond of union was found in the
character of the great President, whom Virginia had given
to the Union. His countrymen of the South revered him, and
his sympathy being wholly given to the cause, he exerted a
mighty influence in determining the southerners to accept the
evils of the moment, in hopes that juster conduct on the part
of the North might prevail in the future. But it is a mistake
to suppose that Washington was not a southern man in thought
and feeling. In a letter to David Stuart, March 28, 1790, he
preached the necessity of a union of the South, and justified
it on the ground of the well-known selfishness of the New
England states.[4] But he differed from Grayson and Henry
in unwillingness to think that the variances were absolutely
contradictory, as they proved to be. And Madison, who by
his services at Philadelphia had won the title of "Father of
the Constitution," was so impressed with the hardships
imposed upon the South by Hamilton's financial policy that,
after vainly attempting to modify his plan, he declared that
"had a prophet arisen up in that body (the convention at
Philadelphia) and brought the declarations and proceedings of
this day into view, I as firmly believe Virginia would not at
this moment have been a part of the Union."[5]

Had there been two separate nations under different governments,
Hamilton's measures adopted in each would have
been acceptable. Credit could have been restored in each,
without any hardship to either. As it was credit was restored,
which became of common benefit, but it was at the price of
the sacrifice of southern interests then existing. The North
was immensely benefited, and in the eyes of northern historians
Hamilton is one of the greatest financiers that ever
lived!

After this time and until 1794, when Jefferson resigned

as secretary of state, the North was represented in the Cabinet
of Washington by Hamilton and the South by Jefferson. In
the language of the latter, "They were pitted against each
other like fighting cocks." Two great parties grew up about
them—one called the Federalist, and the other the Republican.
In mental force the two leaders were perhaps equal, but in
all other particulars Jefferson was immensely superior.
Hamilton was confessedly an immoral man, but against Jefferson
there was nothing to his discredit, except vague charges
for which no adequate proof was ever advanced. Hamilton
had little imagination, and therefore no originality. His
financial measures were copies in fact of British legislation.
But Jefferson was full of imagination, and was therefore a
genius. Had he given his life to philosophy, or to architecture,
or to invention, he would have ranked with the masters
in those lines of endeavor. As it was, he was no mean
philosopher, no mean architect and no mean inventor. He gave
most of his time to law-making and politics, and in each he
was supreme. There is no evidence derived from any source
that Jefferson went about forming a party, but the party
formed about him, because of his ideals. He gave "form
and substance" to political doctrines which are imperishable,
and the masses of the people came to look upon him as the
great apostle of the equal rights of man.

On the other hand, Hamilton was a politician of somewhat
the modern stamp, and secretly planned and organized.
He intrigued in 1793 to defeat the nomination of John Adams
as vice president, and he not only encouraged others to write
but wrote himself anonymous letters[6] to the newspapers, slandering
Jefferson, and he did all he could to poison Washington
against him. Jefferson never wrote a letter to any newspaper,
and the worst that could be said against him was that
he did not deem it his duty to denounce the men who revered
his views and said bitter things in public. He was a talkative
man, and often pursued ideas to conclusions which were

plainly illogical, and he was sometimes inconsistent both in
words and action. But the thing which made him so great
a leader of men, the thing that places him among the foremost
men of all time—was his idealism. He was a man of ideals,
which spoke their own argument and were independent of his
own actions or explanations. He was tireless in his correspondence
and full of criticisms, not always just, on the
policy and measures of the Federalists, but he left to others
the building up of the machinery of party organization. There
is nothing in Jefferson's correspondence that resembles the
trickery of Hamilton in his letter to Governor Jay, in 1800,
advising him to reconvene the Legislature of New York and
put through a law for the choice of presidential electors by
districts. Jay endorsed it as "Proposing a measure for party
purposes which I think it would not become me to adopt."[7]
Not only did Hamilton conspire against Jefferson at this
time, but against John Adams in favor of C. C. Pinckney for
President.

After the adoption of Hamilton's financial measures politics
shaped themselves on sympathy with France and Great
Britain. France had not only helped us to independence but
professed democratic principles. Naturally, therefore, Jefferson
sympathized with France and so did the Republican
party and Virginia especially. In support of Jefferson were
the small farmers, artisans and mechanics throughout the
Union, but the aristocrats, moneyed men and bondholders
everywhere supported Hamilton, and New England was their
headquarters. It is hard to understand even at this day this
northern friendship for Great Britain. It is vain to say that
it was due to the excesses of the French Revolution, for as we
have seen a British party existed in 1783, and had been
denounced in Congress. Undoubtedly this dislike of the
French was a survival of the old autocratic prejudices of New
England against popular rule for which France was coming
forward as a champion.

The conduct of France was uniformly friendly till 1793,
when she went to war with Great Britain. Up to that time
there was no cause of complaint, but in 1793 France took it
unkindly that the United States did not go to war in company
with her, and her minister Genet went so far as to violate
the neutrality of our territory by equipping ships of war in
our ports. There is much to be said in excuse of Genet.
Undoubtedly the treaties placed the United States under great
obligations to France, and it seemed pretty hard to put this
"old, tried friend" on an equal footing with a nation which
had made war upon us, had failed to carry out the Treaty
of Peace, impressed our seamen and continually violated our
rights.

Jefferson advised Washington to issue a proclamation of
neutrality, but he gave the advice with much reluctance, very
different from Hamilton who hated France and gleefully
accepted the situation, carrying his zeal so far as to interfere
with the conduct of Jefferson's own department.[8]

During his stay in the Cabinet of Washington Jefferson
prepared many able state papers, but among them his note
to Mr. Hammond, the British minister, is perhaps the most
remarkable. In this splendid production he reviewed at
length the whole course of the dispute between Great Britain
and the United States since the peace in 1783, showing by a
formidable array of legal and historical proof that the United
States had carefully fulfilled its treaty obligations and Great
Britain had not. When Washington's first term was closing,
Jefferson wanted to resign, but was induced to remain another
year at Washington's urgent instance. When he did resign
in 1794 Washington wrote him a letter stating that "the
opinion of his integrity and talents, which dictated the original
nomination, had been confirmed by the fullest experience,"
and that "both had been eminently displayed in the
discharge of his duty."

In the meantime, after the declaration of neutrality, the

French government opened their West India Islands to our
trade, but Great Britain, invoking the rule of 1756, refused
to regard our commerce with the French West Indies as
neutral. Orders in Council, in the summer and autumn of
1793, practically stopped all trade with France and the French
Indies, and hundreds of American ships were seized, their
cargoes condemned, and their seamen impressed. Some Americans
wanted the American government to sequestrate British
goods found in the United States, others advised war, and
still others advised further negotiations. The latter advice
was determined on, and John Jay was sent to England to
attempt a solution of the difficulties.

Jay brought back a treaty which was a practical surrender
of everything. It was silent on the questions of impressment,
the repeal of the Orders in Council, and granted only niggardly
concessions to our West Indian trade. The French
had, in the treaty of 1778, conceded the principle of "free
ships make free goods," but Jay's treaty had a clause in
favor of the English contention that enemy's goods found in a
neutral ship of the United States were subject to seizure. The
forts on the frontier were surrendered after a detention of
thirteen years, but the loss of the fur trade was not compensated
for, and the United States agreed to pay British creditors
debts due them from insolvent estates, to the amount
of $2,664,000.

On the South fell the burden of the hardships of the treaty.
There were no provisions protecting its tobacco from the
ruinous British tariffs or for the value of the negroes taken
off from the South during the Revolutionary war, and for
which payment was promised by the treaty of peace. All
claim to indemnification was released, though it may be noted
here that the same deportation of slaves took place in the
War of 1812, followed by the same stipulation for indemnity
in the treaty which closed the war that was contained in the
treaty that closed the war of the Revolution, and attended
by the same refusal to comply with it. It was not till 12 years

later and under the administration of John Quincy Adams,
and under the arbitration of the Emperor Alexander of Russia
that indemnity for these deported slaves of 1812 was received.

The treaty was at first hailed with hearty execrations all
over the Union, but as months went on the opposition in the
North began to diminish, and soon Fisher Ames and the other
Federalists began to find this dishonorable treaty a pretty
likeable thing after all. They painted the danger of war so
vividly to Washington that, from a determination to veto the
treaty, he finally approved it. The Senate ratified the treaty
by a bare two-thirds vote, 20 to 10, and the inevitable two
nations showed themselves in the character of the majority
and minority. The Virginia senators voted against it, being
not afraid to try another war.

No Virginian is desirous of censuring Washington's
approval of Jay's treaty, but it is difficult to understand the
"superior" wisdom of a policy which involved us in war with
our best and nearest friend for a vain attempt to avoid one
with our most inveterate and dangerous enemy. When Jefferson
came home to become secretary of state, his place in
France was filled by Gouverneur Morris, a high-strutting
aristocratic Federalist, who was strongly pro-British in his
ideas. When Washington demanded the recall of Genet, the
French government demanded in return the recall of Morris.
Morris came home, and about the time John Jay went to England,
James Monroe, of Virginia, was sent to fill the vacancy
caused by Morris' absence from France. His instructions
enjoined upon him to use his utmost endeavors to inspire
the French government with the solicitude felt by President
Washington of his preference for France to all other nations
as "the friend and ally of the United States," and to declare
in explicit terms that although neutrality was the lot we preferred,
yet in case we embarked in the war it would be on her
side and against her enemies, be they who they might. They
expressly warranted him in saying that the projected negotiations
with England were confined solely to the procuring

compensation for depredations committed on our trade and
obtaining the surrender of the western posts.[9]

The negotiation then of a treaty of commerce with Great
Britain, without any consultation with Monroe, aroused the
suspicions and resentments of France, and placed Monroe in
a trying position. When the treaty became public, Monroe
justly considered himself badly treated and France viewed
with disgust a people who, while she exempted British goods
on American vessels from seizure, agreed to permit this
enemy to seize French goods on American vessels. Monroe
had assured the French, in strict conformity with his instructions,
that no such permission was thought of by Jay, and
after some sharp words of rebuke by Secretary Pickering he
was recalled by Washington and returned to America, where
he soon published, as he had a right to do, a defence of his
conduct in a pamphlet which was largely applauded by Republicans
everywhere. Washington sent C. C. Pinckney of South
Carolina, to succeed Monroe.

Washington would not ask for a third term, and John
Adams was made President, and Jefferson, Vice President.
A few days after the inauguration came news that C. C. Pinckney
had been denied an audience by the Directory of France,
and ordered out of the country. Hamilton was strong for
war with France, but John Adams showed a superior statesmanship
and sent John Marshall, a Virginia Federalist, and
Elbridge Gerry, a Republican of Massachusetts, to join with
Pinckney in a commission to Paris. Talleyrand, the wily
minister of foreign affairs, would not receive them officially,
but instead sent certain inferior agents, called by Adams
X Y Z in his message, who told them that no negotiations
would be had till Adams had apologized and a good sum of
money paid to the Directors personally. The commissioners
made a spirited reply and the words ascribed to Pinckney

aroused much enthusiasm. "Millions for defense, but not a
cent for tribute."

Marshall and Pinckney left France in high disgust though
Gerry remained, and the war feeling rose very high in the
United States. Adams declared that "he would never send
another minister to France until he was assured that he
would be honored as the representative of a great, free, powerful
and independent nation." Congress enlarged the army,
made Washington commander-in-chief, and ordered the capture
of French vessels. For two years there were hostilities
at sea, and the Americans captured many French merchantmen
and a few warships. The Federalist party was given a
new lease of life, and the Republicans suffered a proportionate
decline.

But it was rightly asked, How about that aversion to war
with Great Britain in 1796, when the Jay treaty was ratified,
or was it that the United States was more afraid of Great
Britain than of France? The Republicans contended that
all the troubles flowed from Jay's treaty, which practically
converted this country into an ally of their old enemy Great
Britain, and naturally alienated their old friend, France, and
there was much truth in this charge.

John Adams and his Federalist Congress, borne along on
a great wave of popularity in the northern and middle states,
passed acts in June or July, 1798, born of arrogance and
hatred of democracy. The occasion was the coming to this
continent of a good many foreigners who were the victims
of tyranny in their own countries and sought greater liberty
here. They naturally allied themselves with that party which
opposed the government here, and they both opposed and
condemned it. The result was the passage of a Sedition Act
which imposed imprisonment and heavy fines on all who
should write or say anything detrimental to John Adams or
his government. There was also the Alien Act which gave
the President arbitrary authority to arrest and send out of
the country any alien whom he should judge "dangerous to

the peace and safety of the United States." To these were
added a Naturalization Act which raised the probationary
term of residence from five years to fourteen, with an intent
to keep out such dangerous republican allies. Massachusetts,
the center of Federalism, passed an act recommending an
amendment to remove from office certain aliens. During this
time Federalist newspapers and Federalist orators denounced
democracy, and eulogized autocracy in every way, and represented
Jefferson as an atheist, anarchist and plunderer. They
defended their Alien and Sedition laws by invoking the general
clauses of the Constitution and the Common Law of
England. Republican orators retorted fiercely, and exaggerated
the imminence of the danger to republican government,
but that danger existed is overwhelmingly shown by the
evidence.

The passion for class distinctions had always been conspicuous
in the North, where the servants continued to be
drawn from the white population. The leveling principles of
the Revolution failed to do away with it, and Senator Grayson
of Virginia noticed, in a letter to Patrick Henry, written June
12, 1789, from the first Congress, the favor bestowed by the
New England people especially on class and monarchical ideas.
He attributed to John Adams, the Vice President, the responsibility
for the desire of the Senate over which he presided
for a pompous title to be given to the president—"His Highness
and Protector of the Liberties of America." The following
is an extract from his letter:[10]

"Many gentlemen here are of opinion that the Federalists
aim at a limited monarchy, to take effect in a short
time. This, however, I doubt extremely, except in the Eastern
states, who, I believe, if the question was left to them, would
decide in favor of one tomorrow. They say, they have no
surety in their fisheries, or in the carrying business, or in
any particular privileges, without a strong government. Is
it not strange that monarchy should issue from the East?

"Is it not still stranger that John Adams, the son of a
tinker, and the creature of the people, should be for titles
and dignities and preeminencies, and should despise the herd
and the ill-born? It is said he was the primum mobile in the
Senate for the titles for the President, in hopes that in the
scramble he might get a slice for himself. The committee of
the lower House have reported five thousand dollars for his
salary, at which he is much offended, and I am in great hopes
the House will still offend him more by reducing it."

Hamilton did not disguise his views, and was open in his
professions of admiration for the British government. He did
not believe in a popular government, and said, in an after-dinner
discussion, striking the table with his fist: "Your
people, sir, is a great beast." He and King and Gouverneur
Morris corresponded quite frankly on the prospect of establishing
an American empire on foundations "much firmer
than yet have been devised." A few years after Hamilton's
death Morris confessed that "Hamilton disliked the Constitution,
believing all republican governments radically defective."[11]

In Virginia the Federalists were never so extreme as those
of New England. They did not want monarchy, but they
distrusted a popular rule and wanted a strong government.
There, John Marshall declared that he feared "that those who
say that man is incapable of governing himself have the truth
on their side," admitting, however, that "there is no opinion
more degrading to the dignity of man." Even George Washington
wrote: "Mankind left to themselves are unfit for their
own government."[12]

To these views the optimism of Jefferson in the capacity
of the people to rule—a principle which has entered into the
life of the world too firmly to be shaken—was in striking contrast,
and Mr. Muzzey says that "it is not the least testimony
to his labors for democracy that since the Republican triumph

which ushered in the nineteenth century every political party
that has gained or sought the direction of our government has
made its appeal to the people of America."

Virginia became the center of resistance to Hamilton's
autocratic program. Under the lead of Jefferson of that state
there was a notable consultation between John Taylor of Caroline,
the brothers George and Wilson Cary Nicholas, John
Breckenridge and James Madison, and it was determined to
obtain from the Legislature of Virginia declaratory resolutions
against the Federal party's unconstitutional doctrines
in general and against the Alien and Sedition laws in particular;
and to invite the cooperation of other states in asking
for a repeal of those laws and a declaration that they were
unconstitutional and consequently null and void. Jefferson
drew a set of resolutions, which were offered in the Kentucky
Legislature by Breckenridge and adopted by them in November,
1799, and to Madison is due the honor of having drafted
the Virginia resolutions of December 21, 1798, and that masterly
vindication of them in reply to seven states of the North,
which was adopted by the Legislature of Virginia during the
session of 1799-1800, a paper which is familiarly known as
"Madison's Report."

In these papers Virginia stepped forward as the champion
of personal freedom, liberty of conscience, liberty of the
press, and the limited authority of Congress under the Constitution,
and it was categorically denied that the common
law was a part of the law of the United States. The Virginia
resolutions declared the Constitution a compact to which the
states were parties and "that in case of a deliberate, palpable
and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the
said compact, the states who are parties thereto have the right
and are in duty bound to interpose." The Kentucky resolutions
declared that "nullification" by the state sovereigns was
the rightful remedy for Federal usurpation.

Undoubtedly in these declarations the two nations were
again revealed, but the ideals of Jefferson were so general as

to involve in their application the whole country. Democracy
was not a principle incapable like slavery of expansion, and
the object of both Madison and Jefferson was "decentralization,
not disunion." As Mr. Muzzey says, they wanted to
reform the Government, to restore it to its pristine purity and
for the accomplishment of their ends were not above using
force, if necessary. "Indeed, it was just exactly destruction
of the Federal Union through its conversion into a consolidated
despotism that Jefferson believed he was working to
prevent, and he rebuked speculations on disunion whether
they came from friends like John Taylor, of Caroline, or
enemies like Hamilton or Wolcott."[13] He deemed strict construction
necessary to keep the Government from becoming a
despotism and exerting its baleful influence over the whole
United States, and it was not till 1820 that the full significance
of the dual Union was reluctantly admitted by him.

The election that followed was hotly contested. The Republican
ticket of Jefferson and Burr was elected, but as the two
members of the ticket received the same vote, technically
under the Constitution there was a tie and the House of
Representatives, voting as states, had to decide the issue.
The Federalist members did the highly immoral thing of trying
to upset the ticket, and they voted for Burr for President.
It was a gigantic fraud attempted upon the popular will which
meets with no direct defense today. Burr did not authorize
the Federalists to use his name, but he committed the unforgivable
error of not coming out at once and letting the whole
world know that he would under no circumstances accept an
office for which he had never been intended.

But a strange thing happened. When the vote was taken
in the House there was again no election. Eight states voted
for Jefferson, six for Burr and the votes of two were divided.
The states that voted for Jefferson were Virginia, North Carolina,
Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, New York, New Jersey
and Pennsylvania, and the six states that voted for Burr were

New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island,
Delaware and South Carolina, and the two states that divided
were Vermont and Maryland. All the South voted for Jefferson,
except South Carolina, which was dominated by the
commercial interests of Charleston, and New England, with
the exception of Vermont, was solid for the Federalist program.
The balloting continued, and for a long time no decision
was reached.

Both sides had arms in contemplation. The Federalist
papers abounded in exhortations to their followers to stand
firm, and one Federal statesman, after enumerating the
Massachusetts militia supported by New Hampshire and Connecticut,
wanted to know what Pennsylvania aided by Virginia
could do under such circumstances. All sorts of wild notions
were entertained by them. One was to declare somebody by
a simple vote of the House of Representatives President and
adjourn. The Republicans were no less determined. Jefferson
wrote to James Monroe, then governor of Virginia, that
the Republicans in Congress had declared openly and firmly
one and all "to their opponents" that the day an act was
passed for putting the Government in the hands of an officer,
the middle states would arm, and that no such usurpation, even
for a single day, would be submitted to. Samuel Tyler, of
Monroe's council, who had been sent to watch the proceedings
in Washington, wrote on February 9, the day the balloting
began, that Pennsylvania had her courier there, and the report
was that she had 22,000 men ready to take up arms "in the
event of extremities." He advised that if things remained in
statu quo for a week the Legislature should be convened and
a union made with Pennsylvania and New York and all the
states south of the Potomac.[14] It was at this juncture that
the Virginia Legislature passed the defensive measures of
building the armory in Richmond and made provision for purchasing
5,000 stands of arms. But on the thirty-sixth ballot
the Federal members from Maryland, Delaware and Vermont

cast blank ballots, and the Republicans secured ten states,
thereby electing Jefferson.

There was an old story[15] that Mr. Jefferson's final victory
was attributed to a deal with Bayard of Delaware, who is said
to have obtained certain pledges in return for his desertion
of his fellow Federalists, but there are no real facts in support
of the charge and Jefferson denied it. Samuel Tyler's letter,
dated on the day the balloting commenced shows that Bayard
of Delaware, and Craik and Baer of Maryland were three
Federalists counted on by the Republicans from the first to
support Jefferson, and it must be suspected that they were
only glad of any excuse to stop voting for Burr. Maryland
had elected a Republican legislature, and many Federalists
in Delaware and Maryland disapproved of the conduct of
the party in Congress and made their views known.[16]

The Federalists, routed out of Congress and the Presidency,
determined to hold on to the judiciary. They had already
instituted the spoils system by filling all the offices with members
of their party. Washington had, during his first administration,
tried to rule with both parties, but after Jefferson's
withdrawal from the Cabinet he fell completely in the hands
of the Federalists, and his appointees thereafter were nearly
all Federalists. He now wrote that he thought it political
suicide to appoint to office men of tenets adverse to government
measures.[17] Adams prided himself on being more intolerant
in this particular than Washington.[18]

In Congress his mouthpieces, Bayard and Otis, laid down
with utmost precision the principle of the spoils. The first
(Bayard) announced[19] that "the politics of the office seeker
would be the great object of the President's attention, and
an invincible objection if different from his own," and the

latter[20] that the pecuniary claims of Henry Miller for extra
clerk's hire, occasioned by his leaving his office to electioneer
for Adams, was "a paltry consideration infinitely outweighed
by the service he was rendering his country" in so doing. This
spirit went so far that Adams' secretary of war wrote that
political principles should be the test of the volunteers to be
raised to defend the country.[21] In Virginia the district judgeship,
the most important Federal office in the state, had been
given to Cyrus Griffin, instead of to John Tyler, who as judge
of the State Court of Admiralty, which had been superseded
by the aforesaid District Court, considered his non-nomination
a removal from office. And Tyler, to whom the office
was restored by President Madison, speaking of this action
of the Federalists, made the rule in all similar cases, despite
the natural pretensions of the incumbents of the old offices
under the states to the new offices substituted for them under
the Constitution, declared[22] that "this kind of conduct began
the strong distinction between parties, producing a spirit of
retaliation on the part of the Republicans." In 1796 Senator
Henry Tazewell writing to James Monroe declared that every
important officer south of the Potomac, except two, had been
succeeded by one north of it.[23]

The Federalists in possession of the state offices kept pace
with the National Government. In New England the town
politics had long sunk in corruption and spoils, and Mr. Gerry
in the Federal convention of 1787 declared[24] that "in Massachusetts
the worst men get into the Legislature" and "that several
members of that body had been lately convicted of
infamous crimes." In Connecticut as in Massachusetts a system
of voting first on the incumbents in office confined power
to the Federalist autocrats who were continued indefinitely in
authority. In 1797 only one in twenty persons qualified to

vote exercised the right of suffrage in that state. Rhode
Island was a close oligarchy till Dorr's rebellion in 1842 produced
a change.

As the election approached for a new President, tax collectors
and judges, even those of the highest stamp turned
active electioneerers. At the beginning of August, 1800, Judge
Chase left the bench to stump the State of Maryland in behalf
of Adams' administration, and the result was that Ellsworth,
the chief justice, being then on the French Mission, the
Supreme Court was left for a whole term without a quorum.
Wharton says there was not a charge to the grand jury which
was not a party harangue.[25] This was hardly to be wondered
at when men like Jay, Ellsworth and Marshall, whose personal
purity is unquestioned, saw no impropriety in uniting the
highest judicial functions with political offices which almost
necessarily made them partisans. While acting as chief justice
all three accepted missions abroad or offices at home quite
incompatible with their judicial position, sometimes on the
same day issuing reports in their political character and
delivering judgments in their judicial. John Marshall succeeded
Timothy Pickering as secretary of state in May, 1799,
and on January 31, 1801, Adams appointed him chief justice,
but he did not resign his former office.

This was when their power was fast waning. The Federalist
Congress, realizing that the reign of Federalism was
over, busied itself at its last session with creating sixteen
Circuit Judgeships, with marshals, attorneys and clerks. The
appointees were called the "midnight judges" because
appointed by Adams when his term was so nearly closed.
Adams showed little delicacy, and kept up the work of appointment
till 9 o'clock of March 3d. A perfect army of surveyors,
collectors and judges were sent to the complaisant Senate, and
when all the important offices were filled, Adams employed his
last hours in appointing justices of the peace for the District
of Columbia. The Spoils System was rampant. Such was

the extreme desperation of some of the Federalists that the
suggestion was made to Adams that he should appoint himself
Chief Justice, with a commission to take effect as soon
as his presidential tenure terminated. In Connecticut in the
spring of 1801 the last frantic act of the Federalists was to
sweep the offices of all Republicans.[26]

Adams is said to have shed tears at his defeat,[27] and did
not remain in Washington to witness Jefferson's triumph, but
early on the morning of the 4th he drove away from the
capital, and a new era began.[28]

CHAPTER II

THE VIRGINIA DYNASTY, 1801-1825

Thomas Jefferson became President March 4, 1801, served
eight years, and was succeeded by his secretary of state,
James Madison, who also served eight years. He was succeeded
by his secretary of state, James Monroe, who also
served eight years. This period of twenty-four years may
almost be considered as one administration. It was called
the "Reign of the Virginia Dynasty." The change from the
domination of New England to the domination of Virginia
was in the nature of a revolution, for had a set of New England,
or even Northern presidents, succeeded John Adams the
two nations would have loomed up in dreadful menace, and
the Union would have been broken. As it was, it took all the
tact of Monroe in 1820 to avoid such a result on the question
of admitting Missouri into the Union.

How was it that the South, numerically inferior to the
North, was able to capture and retain the presidency for so
long a period? The answer has already been given in the
preceding pages. The Virginia Presidents were not only
men of pre-eminent talent that forced recognition, but they
represented ideals that appealed to the masses of the people
everywhere. Thus through these ideals they were able to
attach to their support such powerful northern states as New
York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and in the end even to
cripple the opposition of New England. The North—New
England especially—has been singularly deficient in any
of the great principles, outside of commerce, which have
controlled society in America.

A statement of what the Virginia Dynasty stood for,

accompanied with a brief account under each head, will perhaps
be more useful than a mere chronicle of events. Principles
only are permanently lasting.

1. First of all, the Virginia Dynasty stood for Democracy,
meaning the equality of the citizen in political and religious
rights. In opposing the alien and sedition laws, the Virginians
defended against the New Englanders freedom of speech
and the freedom of the press. They also opposed the class
ideas favored by the Federalists and the people in that section.
To the call of Southern democracy the Middle States
first fully responded, and the victory that ensued in 1800
was won with their aid. The redemption of New England
was yet to come, but it was not long delayed.

At his second election in 1804 Jefferson won the most
astounding victory ever heard of. A few words of explanation
are necessary. For years New England had echoed with
imprecations against Jefferson proceeding from hundreds of
preachers, editors of newspapers and Federalist politicians.
No words of abuse were too severe, no language too foul, to be
used in their references to him. Danton, Marat, and Robespierre
were angels compared with this man from slaveholding
Virginia. The chief justice of Massachusetts in a charge to
the grand jury denounced "the French system mongers, from
the quintumvirate at Paris to the Vice President (Jefferson)
and minority of Congress, as apostles of atheism and anarchy,
bloodshed and plunder."[29] But these anathemas all came from
the autocrats who ruled the town districts, where in the elections
only one in twenty of those qualified to vote exercised
the ballot. The silence of the masses in New England was
pitiful.[30] With them conditions had not greatly changed from
the seventeenth century, when Rev. Samuel Stone pronounced
Massachusetts "a speaking aristocracy in the face of a silent
democracy."

In preparing the way for their uplift by Jefferson, two

ministers from Virginia—one a Methodist and the other a
Baptist—were as two Johns crying in the wilderness. The
authority of the autocrats was built upon those parts of the
Calvinistic creed which deal in terror and fatalism, and it
was against this rock of prejudice and bigotry that Jesse Lee,
the Methodist evangelist from Virginia, directed his assault.
He spent eight years in New England, and visited all parts of
the country. He was often denied the use of the meeting
houses and often had to preach in the streets. Then the
Congregational pulpit opened its mouth and soundly belabored
what its ministers called "the damnable principles of Methodism."
In Provincetown, where the Pilgrim Fathers first
put foot to land, the town meeting refused to allow the small
band of Methodists to build a church, and when the Methodists
nevertheless collected materials to proceed with the work, a
company of men assembled in the night and burnt the lumber.
Mr. Lee visited the melancholy scene in the morning and said
sadly: "I feel astonished at the conduct of the people, considering
we live in a free country, and no such conduct can
be justified."[31]

Mr. Lee returned to the South in 1797. But he had accomplished
a great work. Not only had he set the Methodist
Church on a firm footing in New England, but the doctrines
which he taught of perfect freedom went to leaven society
among the masses, politically as well as religiously.

One might say that the springs of action set in motion by
Lee were kept going by another man, who though born in
Massachusetts had imbibed the free views of Virginia by
having spent his early and active manhood there. This was
John Leland, a Baptist minister, who had taken a leading part
in disestablishing the Episcopal Church in Virginia. From
a different standpoint he, like Lee, contended for religious

freedom, and found on the national stage of politics a representative
in the statesman Jefferson.

Thus the seed had been sown, and it was Jefferson's part
to develop it into flower and fruit. This he did, and by hurling
defiance to the autocrats, whom he in turn roundly abused,
and by appealing to the masses of New England, whom he
aroused by his clarion calls, he carried all the New England
States except Connecticut at the election of 1804.

After this time never again had the Congregational Church
in New England the power it once had. Laws were to be
passed disestablishing the church, and the power of the autocrats
declined. Predestination, however preached, became an
obsolete force. But for sometime longer the old spirit, though
decadent, held on. It made an understanding with England,
and sought by every method, open and secret to defeat the
embargo and non-intercourse laws, and the War of 1812. It
inspired the Hartford Convention, but it emerged from the
war to wither under the contempt and hatred of the people of
the United States. In 1816 there was no longer any Federalist
party, and the office of secretary of state under President
Monroe was held by a native of New England who was proud
to term himself a Republican. Mr. Monroe's presidency was
called the "Era of Good Feeling," so completely had the Federalists
disappeared. Jefferson had accomplished the inconceivable,
done what has never been accomplished since, which
was to destroy a great political party. Beyond any man he
deserved the name of master builder and master spirit of
the Union.

2. The next measure for which this Virginia Dynasty
stood was Expatriation, which means the right of going out
of one's country, giving up under certain limitations the
rights of a citizen derived from its laws and constitution, and
seeking happiness wherever it may be attained on this globe.
This principle was embodied in the first article of the Declaration
of Rights of Virginia, which guaranteed the enjoyment
of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness as the gift of

nature. It received, for the first time, legislative recognition
in a Naturalization act passed in 1786 by the Legislature of
Virginia, the work, as we have seen, of Thomas Jefferson.

When the first Congress met, the disposition of the Southern
members who championed the interest of the West was to
accord naturalization on easy terms. In 1794, on Mr.
Madison's motion, the obligatory period of residence before
naturalization was fixed at five years and no one was to be
naturalized who was not of good character. A clause also
added by Mr. Madison that the applicant must renounce any
title of nobility he might have had as a foreigner elicited a
debate in which Fisher Ames and Dexter appeared as the
champions of titles and threw great ridicule on the Roman
Catholic Church, for which they were severely rebuked by
Madison. In 1797 the Federalist majority raised the term of
probation to fourteen years, and passed the Alien Law, vesting
the President with arbitrary power of arresting and sending
any alien out of the Union. Now one of the first things
that Jefferson did on his assuming the presidency was to
restore the term of probation of five years. By this measure
he encouraged immigration, and contributed greatly to the
development of the North and West; for the immigrants
coming by thousands filled the waste places in these regions.
Very few of these foreigners came South because of their
dislike of working in contact with the negro. No part of the
country profited by them more than New England, where the
old Puritan families exploited in their factories the cheap
labor thus afforded, like the Southern planters exploited their
slaves. From these immigrants and their children came
largely the armies that finally defeated the South in 1865.

It is certainly true that the coming of the immigrant to
America has not been of unalloyed benefit. In the early days
a good many convicts and other evil disposed people were sent
from England to America, but most of those who came to
Virginia fell victims to the deadly mosquito that caused the
dreadful fevers of which they died—the mortality among the

immigrants to Virginia being estimated by Edward Eggleston
and Alexander Brown at 80 per cent during the first year of
their arrival. But in a single year, 1905, more foreigners were
introduced into the country than the entire number of colonists
that came to America during the 169 years which elapsed
between the first landing at Jamestown and the Declaration
of Independence.

After 1800 thousands of paupers and criminals were introduced
into the Northern States, and very few brought to the
South, as but a very small part of the foreign immigration
came southward. To what comparative extent New England
and Virginia experienced the evils and benefits of this situation
is shown by the census of 1890. Of their population
Massachusetts had 56.24 per cent of persons having one or
both parents of foreign birth, Connecticut 50.32, Rhode Island
58.02, and Virginia 2.63. In the South in 1860 there was one
criminal to every 1,130 of the inhabitants, while in the North
there was one criminal to every 208 inhabitants. In 1860
there were in the North 156,230 paupers of foreign birth. Two
Presidents of the United States fell victims to the red hand of
this "undesirable" class of immigrants.[32] Since 1836 many
provisions have been made by law to guard against the
entrance of "improper persons," but it cannot be doubted
that, as the overwhelming majority of the immigrants have
been self-respecting people, the Northern States have greatly
benefited by the continuance of the policy of the Virginia
Dynasty.

And yet the right of expatriation was denied by Chief
Justice Ellsworth and the Federalist party generally. The
British doctrine of inalienability of citizenship was maintained,
and often applied, in the case of impressment, contrary
to the interests of the United States. At last Congress,
on July 27, 1868, in one of its sane moments, declared expatriation
"a natural and inherent right of all people and indispensable

to the enjoyment of rights of life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness."

3. Next the Virginia Dynasty held that the Common Law
was no part of the law of the United States. The opposite
contention was maintained by the Federalist party to legalize
the Alien and Sedition laws. People were haled up before
the Federal Courts and punished without any statutory
authority whatever. Had this contention been allowed, the
common law would have swallowed up the constitution, and
made the state courts superfluous; for the common law jurisdiction
embraced almost every possible subject of litigation,
both civil and criminal. This doctrine, favored by Judge
Marshall,[33] was refuted by Madison in his able report in 1799
and characterized as "novel and extravagant." It was later
denounced by the Supreme Court of the United States itself
in 1812 when it declared, in case of any crime, that Congress
must first make it so, affix a punishment to it, and define the
court that shall have jurisdiction of the offence.[34]

When, nevertheless, the old contention was revived by
Judge Story in his Commentaries, the Supreme Court
repeated its decision in 1834 in Wheaton and Donaldson vs.
Peters and Grigg, Justice McLean delivering the opinion of
the Court, that "as the powers of government were strictly
defined by the Constitution, there could be no Common Law of
the United States."

4. Then the Virginia Dynasty stood for the Protection of
the Flag to every man and everything on board ship. Their
stand was against impressment, and they declared for the doctrine
accepted today that "Free ships make free goods."
Where were the Federalists on these matters? Had Marshall
and his fellow Federal Judges been permitted to make the
law, the English view of international law both as to allegiance

and search would have prevailed—"Once a citizen,
always a citizen." The doctrine of the "indelible allegiance"
under the Common Law of Great Britain afforded the British
an excuse to search American ships for native born Englishmen,
and the doctrine that enemy's goods found on board a
neutral ship may be lawfully seized as prize of war, which
was the English view, was not only admitted in Jay's treaty
and supported by the Federalists in Congress, but by the
Federal Supreme Court. It was never admitted by the
Virginia Dynasty. It was never admitted by the State Judges
—with St. George Tucker, John Tyler, William H. Cabell, and
Spencer Roane of the number. As to impressment, when
even as great a favorite as James Monroe came back from
England in 1806 with a treaty with Great Britain omitting
the two fundamental points of impressment of our seamen
and indemnity for losses which Americans had incurred in the
seizure of goods and vessels, President Jefferson promptly
disavowed the negotiator, and declined to approve the treaty.
Later James Madison made war on this account, and at the
peace in 1814 Great Britain tacitly abandoned her claim to
impress American seamen though she made no formal
renunciation.

5. The next great principle for which the Virginia
Dynasty stood was Annexation of territory,—the development
of the territory of the Union into continental proportions.
As we have seen Virginia conquered with her unaided
arms the Northwest Territory and deeded it to the Union in
1784. Jefferson was intimately associated with both the
conquest and the cession, and was the author of the first ordinance
settling its organization and prohibiting slavery, but he
was to link his name with a much greater mass of territory
during his presidency. After the peace with Great Britain in
1783 the question of westward expansion came up in connection
with John Jay's negotiations with Spain for a treaty of
commerce, and we have seen how the influence of the Northern
States was given to yielding to Spain the free navigation of

the Mississippi for 25 years. The subject trailed along till
Jefferson was Secretary of State, when he pressed the matter
with vigor. The expansion then had in view was the development
of Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi, and he begged
Spain to make the wise choice now of a permanently friendly
neighbor, and the guarantee of the peaceful possession of all
the territory west of the Mississippi by voluntarily ceding to
the United States the territories to the east of the River (New
Orleans and Florida). The Spanish government did not
adopt this amicable proposition of Jefferson and negotiations
dragged on until he ceased to be secretary of state. It was
not until 1795 that the treaty concluded by Thomas Pinckney
secured us even a temporary right of deposit and reshipment
at New Orleans.[35]

Spain in the year 1801 retroceded to France from which
she had obtained it the province of Louisiana and, thinking
that the retrocession offered a fitting opportunity, Morales,
the Spanish Intendant, proclaimed the right of deposit of the
United States at an end. This created great excitement along
the Mississippi but Jefferson by his prudent conduct prevented
war with France, and sent James Monroe in 1803 to
France, where he already had Robert R. Livingston negotiating
for New Orleans and Florida. The result was beyond
anything expected by Jefferson or either of his envoys. The
offer came directly from Napoleon himself to cede not merely
New Orleans but the whole of Louisiana to the United States,
not on account of anything the envoys had said but because
of Napoleon's declaration of war against England. Thirteen
years before Jefferson had said that "it was not our interest
to cross the Mississippi for ages," and in his instructions to
Livingston and Monroe he did not press the acquisition of the
western land beyond the Mississippi. But the spirit of
acquisition was always actively with him, and the envoys in
accepting Napoleon's overture merely interpreted his secret
and silent feeling. When the news arrived in America,

Jefferson promptly endorsed the action of his agents, though
he was unnecessarily straitlaced on the constitutional question.
John Randolph, who had been the Republican leader in
the House of Representatives was one of those who considered
that the constitution gave the executive ample power to annex
foreign territory, and this view was generally held by the
Republicans everywhere. By this treaty acquisition the
navigation of the Mississippi became free to all American
citizens.

But here again the two nations manifested themselves.
New England bitterly opposed the annexation of Louisiana
because of its fear of increasing the Southern predominance,
and its senators voted against the ratification of the treaty,
taking in their speeches extreme states rights and sectional
grounds. This irregular conduct came with poor grace from
a part of the country which had just the other day strongly
opposed the Virginia resolutions of 1798-99 and had assumed
to possess all the love of order and obedience to law in the
Union. It had been the constant complaint of the New Englanders
against Jefferson that he was an "anarchist," and
no fear of anarchy deterred many of them from the most
revolutionary and dishonorable proceedings.

The utility of ascertaining the character of the interior of
Louisiana at this time induced Jefferson to send his private
secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark, brother of
Gen. George Rogers Clark, on an expedition to trace the
Missouri to its source, cross the mountains, and follow the
best water communication which offered itself from thence to
the Pacific. They started from St. Louis, May 14, 1804, and
returned to the same place in September, 1806. This exploration
gave some idea of the immense extent and great wealth
of Louisiana as then described. In 1811 John Jacob Astor
established a fur station at the mouth of the Columbia River
and called it Astoria.

After the annexation of Louisiana the American claimed
west Florida as far as the Perdido River as part of the

acquisition, and this claim, not admitted by Spain, formed an
important part of the negotiations for many years. There
was much trouble over this dispute, and at last Spain ceded
the whole of Florida to the United States in 1819. The negotiations
were conducted through John Quincy Adams, the
secretary of state, who largely reconciled the New Englanders
to the acquisition. But their opposition was aroused
before the final ratification by the request of Missouri for
admission as a state with slavery. The sectional issue
was again revived, till according to Mr. Adams the division
of the Union was freely discussed, and Mr. Clay predicted
that it would not last five years. The opposition of New
England was mainly directed to any strengthening of the
South, and their fears even extended to Oregon. The report
made by John Floyd of Virginia at this time to take possession
of the country was characterized by John Quincy Adams as
"a tissue of errors in facts and abortive reasoning."[36] Indeed,
had the New England influence prevailed as to annexation the
Union would have been confined to a narrow strip along the
Atlantic shore.

6. Next the Virginia Dynasty stood for Economy and
Peace. Hamilton had announced the shocking doctrine that
"a Public Debt was a Public Blessing," and in assuming the
state debts he had not waited for an accounting but according
to Albert Gallatin had assumed $10,883,628.58 more than was
necessary. To this Jefferson had opposed the doctrine that
a Public Debt was a Public Evil, and his policy was to pay off
the public debt and not to maintain it. So he made extensive
reductions, accomplished in large part by discontinuing
numerous offices instituted by the Federalists. He withheld
all commissions of judges and justices which Adams had not
had time to deliver. The inspectors of the internal revenue,
who had been brought into office by the mere authority of the
Executive he discontinued in a mass. Calling in the aid of
Congress he next had the late judiciary act and the internal

revenue laws repealed, and in doing so closed up three-fourths
of all the offices, containing an army of stipendiaries. Of the
remaining one-fourth left in office Jefferson removed under
one hundred in eight years, and promoted Republicans to the
vacancies. Under James Madison there were only five
removals during eight years and under James Monroe only
thirteen. The Spoils System of the Federalists was repudiated
and avoided.[37]

In the same spirit of peace and economy Jefferson
reduced the army and navy. For this he has been very greatly
ridiculed, but there is no evidence whatever that had every
dollar that Gallatin applied to the reduction of the public debt
been applied to the army and navy, it would have made any
difference with England. Many writers, like Theodore
Roosevelt, have assumed that building up the army and navy
would have prevented war. All the money at Jefferson's
disposal could not have built a navy equal to England's, and
England in 1807, after the attack of the Leopard on the
Chesapeake, was a more dangerous enemy than England in
1812, when war actually took place. Mr. Muzzey says that it
was a blessing for us that hostilities were delayed, for the fury
of the war with France was then near spent, and we suffered
only its declining force.[38] Really this matter illustrated, as
other things did, the dual nature of the Union. Jefferson, as
a Southern man, thought agriculture far more important than
commerce, and from the Southern standpoint no navy was
needed, as British shipping did all the carrying for the South,
and no questions of search and impressment could arise.

In place of war Jefferson and Madison resorted to non-intercourse
and embargo against the British orders in Council
and French decrees. Similar measures had been relied on
before, and, supported by the people, were found effective.
They had been employed by the colonists against British
taxation in 1774. They had been employed against the French

by the Federalists in 1794. It was really the opposition of
New England that prevented them from being effective now.
And yet, great as New England complained of these measures,
it could not be alleged that they took one dollar more of money
from that section than the South. The truth is the laws bore
heavily upon the exports of the South, and the South suffered
more than New England. How different from the assumption
of the State Debts and the protective tariffs!

When finally Madison could no longer bear the insults of
Great Britain, he went to war in behalf of New England rights,
which strange to say was not appreciated, and he was liberally
abused. Six thousand of our citizens, mostly New Englanders,
had been captured and imprisoned by the
English, and the war was correctly termed a second war
of independence.

In conducting the war Mr. Madison had all kinds of
difficulties to contend with. The great weakness in his position
was New England. That great section of the country
was honey-combed with conspiracy, and secession would have
been preferable to the part played by those states. An open
enemy is always less to be feared than a concealed one. The
attitude of New England demoralized the soldiers in the
ranks, and no general brought more disgrace on the American
name than General Hull of Connecticut. Placed inside the
fort at Detroit, where the safety of the entire Northwest
depended upon the maintenance of his post, he ran up the
cowardly white flag without firing a shot. The surrender was
a source of extreme demoralization. Writing to Wilson Cary
Nicholas, Mr. Madison said: "You are not mistaken in viewing
the conduct of the Eastern States as the source of our
greatest difficulties in carrying on the war; as it certainly is
the greatest, if not the sole inducement to the enemy to
persevere in it."

But peaceful as the policy of the Virginia Dynasty was,
it was warlike enough to accomplish what the Federalist rule
had not accomplished. What it had of a navy it made effective.

Dolly Madison

The Federalists paid servile tribute to the Barbary
pirates, but Jefferson instead of sending tribute and letters of
flattery sent ships of war. In this way "Dale, Bainbridge and
Decatur made the Mediterranean sea the training ground for
the young American Navy, exercised it in actual battle,
strengthened it on the strong wine of victory, and thus made
it ready for the War of 1812." Among the naval heroes who
gave a favorable complexion to the War of 1812 was Lewis
Warrington, of Hampton, Virginia, commanding the Peacock.
He engaged the British sloop of war Epervier, convoying a
fleet of merchantmen. In the battle which ensued the Epervier
was badly injured and her crew surrendered. On board of her
was found 118,000 dols. in specie. So it would seem that
Jefferson's policy of fighting the Barbary Powers instead of
paying them was the reason we had a navy in 1812 which
could fight and win victory.[39]

7. Then there was the Draft Bill proposed by Madison's
Administration. It was bitterly denounced as contrary to
the constitution, state sovereignty and individual rights by the
New England speakers and writers, including Webster, who
made a disunion speech against it. It is now admitted that
raising troops in this way is the most reasonable and fairest
method, and it was by a more drastic bill in these latter days
that the United States mustered its strength and decided the
issues of the World War. This measure in 1814 failed of
passage in the Senate, and representative New Englanders
declared its enforcement in New England would be met with
arms. The Hartford Convention adopted resolutions in favor
of States Rights more pronounced than the Virginia Resolutions
of 1798-99. And while New England during war was
thus tying the hands of the government, the soldiers of the
South under General Andrew Jackson gave to the army of
Sir Edward Packenham that crushing defeat at New Orleans
from which it is to be dated the time when she first began to
treat the government of the United States with respect.

8. Next the Virginia Dynasty stood for what is known as
the Monroe Doctrine. Jefferson as early as the year 1787 had
written against "entangling alliances," and in October, 1823,
he wrote to Monroe that "the fundamental maxim of this
government should be never to entangle ourselves in the broils
of Europe," and "never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with
Cis-Atlantic affairs." John Quincy Adams, as secretary of
state of a Virginia administration, gave expression to similar
sentiments in July, 1823, but it is probable that he had already
discussed the question with President Monroe.

Now during the War of 1812 the Federalists made open
alliance with England, and England was allied with the
effete monarchies of Europe against Napoleon. These
monarchies, on the downfall of Napoleon in 1814, entered into
a Holy Alliance to "repress" all reforms, and "representative
governments." When they started to extend their interference
to this continent by aiding Spain against her South American
colonies it was too much for England and she opposed the
interference and asked the co-operation of the United States.
The United States declined to act in conjunction with Great
Britain, but took its own separate action. This was embodied
in the celebrated message of James Monroe of December 2,
1823, (1) That "the American Continents, by the free and
independent condition which they have assumed and maintain,
are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future
colonization by any European powers" and (2) That any
attempt on the part of European powers to extend their
political system to this continent would be deemed "dangerous
to our peace and safety."

The discussion of the immediate authorship of these
declarations, is of little importance. Mr. Calhoun, who as a
member of Monroe's Cabinet, was in a position to know,
attributed[40] the sentiments of the message entirely to Mr.
Monroe, but whether his or not, it was his official sanction
which gave authority to the phrases by whomsoever written.

They were, as known to the world, the utterances of a Virginia
President, and by adoption, if such was the case, was
as much his own as if they had been originated and written by
him. In any other mouth, they would have had little practical
importance.

9. Lastly the Virginia Dynasty stood for the doctrine
that the Union was a Partnership of which the States were
members. This was in opposition to the doctrine preached
by John Marshall and the Federalists in general that the
Union was a consolidated autocracy. Theoretically the policy
recommended by the Dynasty was one of confining the government
as much as possible to foreign relations and avoiding interference
with the States. In support of this they recommended
a strict construction of the Constitution, seeking
thereby to avoid sectional jealousies. But they were sometimes
compelled to compromise and like Marshall gave power
to the Federal government. Thus Jefferson annexed Louisiana,
and though there was no really constitutional objection
on the subject, pronounced it unconstitutional. Monroe favored
the idea that the government was vested with the power
of unlimited appropriation, which was denounced by many
states rights men.

But power in the Federal government is something entirely
different from sovereignty, and as a matter of fact the
decisions of John Marshall had little influence on the ultimate
question of State and National sovereignty. Thus they
certainly had no effect in the South where submission to
Marshall's decision did not interfere with the ever increasing
maintenance of the doctrine of State sovereignty. There
was in fact no true antagonism between the most powerful
Federal government and the extreme assertion of States Rights
—Secession. Sovereign states may favor a constitution giving
the most ample power to a Federal government, and yet reserve
the right of withdrawal. The real explanation of events
up to 1861 must be primarily sought, not in the decisions of
Marshall, which affected only questions of power, but in the

John Marshall

diverse interests of the two nations which caused one, the
weaker, to resort to States Rights and State sovereignty as a
defensive measure, and caused the other, the stronger nation,
to resort to nationality and forced construction to excuse its
own eagerness for power. The question was fundamental.

Marshall in his decisions strove to unify the power of the
United States government, and had there been one people it is
difficult to see why Marshall's decisions should not have been
accepted at once. But every accession of power to the Federal
government was dreaded by the South as a means granted the
North of sectional tyranny. Congress, dominated by the
North, did not hesitate to pass the most sectional laws, and it
was fortunate for the existence of the Union that the spirit
of compromise born of States Rights prevailed in 1820, 1833
and 1850. Had unbending Nationalism, which meant the
rule of the North, prevailed at either of these times, the
Union would have been undoubtedly broken. As it was, in
1861, despite the increased relative power of the North, the
confession was wrung from Lincoln that, without the 200,000
negro troops enlisted by him from the South's own population,
he would have "had to abandon the war in three
weeks."

Undoubtedly, then, if peace between antagonistic sections
was desirable, the policy of Spencer Roane, in preserving the
dignity of the Supreme Court of his state, was a more efficient
one than that of Marshall, who, in strengthening the Federal
Government, gave the all powerful North the opportunity of
greater tyranny over the South and encouraged it to violence.

Marshall had an intensity of idealism which, even more
than in the case of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, blinded
him as to the future, but he felt as a Southern man, and condemned
both the alien and sedition laws and the tariff. His
career as a judge can not stand wholly unimpeached in the
eyes of those who praise him most for his decisions on the
constitution, for his views on the common law, as a part of the
law of the United States, and his interpretation of the international

law as the British construed it, stand repudiated by the
present strongly centralized government.

Such were the principles for which the Virginia Dynasty
stood, and it may be said of all but the last that they furnish
the chief and important pillars of the American Union of
today. No one can find where New England contributed a
single, important feature to the structure of the Government.

In treating the three administrations as one, it is not to be
supposed, however, that the sailing of the Ship of State was
not without serious disturbances at times. The leader in the
Senate during Jefferson's administration was William B.
Giles, of Amelia County, Virginia; and John Randolph, of
Roanoke, led the Republican forces in the House of Representatives.
They were both strong men, but too self opinionated
to maintain a steady support of any administration. John
Randolph deserted Jefferson in 1806 on the question of the
Yazoo claims, opposed the embargo and the War of 1812, and
allied himself with the New England Federalists, who pretended
to assume the garb of States Rights on these questions.
In the presidential campaign of 1808 he advocated the
nomination of James Monroe, in preference to that of Madison,
whom he deemed too nationalistic.

On the other hand, Giles, after supporting nearly all the
measures of Jefferson and Madison, finally broke with
Madison in the War of 1812, and afterwards bitterly condemned
James Monroe for his deviation from States
Rights on the question of appropriating money for internal
improvements.

As to the two presidents, Madison and Monroe, the good
feeling between them was temporarily disturbed through their
rival pretensions in 1808 to the Presidency, but it was restored
when in 1811 Monroe, who was then governor of Virginia, was
invited by President Madison to accept the office of secretary
of state. Other leaders in Congress from Virginia were John
Taylor, of Caroline, and John W. Eppes, a cousin of Mrs.
Jefferson.

Virginia did her full part in the War of 1812. Governor
Wilson Cary Nicholas, in a message to the Legislature,
December 23, 1814, said: "During the last campaign there
were in the field not fewer than 25,000 citizens of this State at
one time, and for a considerable period at least fifteen
thousand." The quota originally requested by Congress was
12,000 men. The list of officers born in Virginia was especially
brilliant and distinguished. Among these of highest rank
were William Henry Harrison, Winfield Scott and Edmund
Pendleton Gaines, of the Army and Commodore Lewis
Warrington of the Navy. Of lower rank were George Mercer
Brooke and Andrew Hunter Holmes, of the Army, and
Captain Robert Henley of the Navy, who distinguished himself
at the battle of Lake Champlain and received a gold medal
from Congress.

As a counterstroke to the American plan of invading
Canada, an order in Council, December 26, 1812, declared the
ports and harbors in Chesapeake and Delaware Bays in a state
of rigorous blockade. A powerful squadron under Admiral
Cockburn, whose flagship was The Marlborough, entered
Chesapeake Bay for the purpose of enforcing the same on
February 4, 1813. They bore a land force of eighteen hundred
men, under Sir Sidney Beckwith, and were well supplied with
surf boats for landing. Their appearance alarmed all lower
Virginia, and the militia in the regions about Norfolk were
soon in motion.

Cockburn made Lynhaven Bay his chief position, and from
thence he sent out marauding expeditions along the shores of
the Chesapeake Bay, who plundered and burned farm houses
in Maryland and Virginia. He attacked Frenchtown in Delaware
and Havre de Grace in Maryland, doing them much
injury, and went up the Sassafras River and attacked Fredericktown
and Georgetown, villages containing from forty to
fifty houses each.

On June 8, 1813, Cockburn was reinforced by a squadron
under Admiral Warren. The British force now collected

within the Capes of Virginia consisted of eight ships of the
Line, twelve frigates, and a considerable number of smaller
vessels, and it was evident that an attack was contemplated
on some point of more importance than defenceless villages.
The citizens of Baltimore, Annapolis and Norfolk were
equally menaced, but when at the middle of June three British
frigates entered Hampton Roads, and sent their boats up
York River to destroy some small American vessels there and
plunder the inhabitants, no doubt remained that Norfolk
would be the object of British attack. The various fortifications
near Norfolk were put in a state of defence—Forts
Norfolk and Nelson, one on each side of the Elizabeth River,
and Craney Island at its mouth. The old Frigate Constellation,
which under Admiral Truxton, had captured the French
Frigate L'Insurgent in 1800, was in Elizabeth River and ready
to fight.

But the Americans did not wait to be attacked. Commodore
Cassin organized an expedition for the capture of the
British frigate that lay at anchor at the nearest distance from
Norfolk. Towards midnight, on the 19th of June, 1813, a
squadron of fifteen gun boats, under Lieutenant Tarbell, descended
the Elizabeth River, and under the protection of a
heavy fog, approached within range of a British vessel without
being discovered, at about half past three o'clock in the
morning. The vessel was taken by surprise and replied only
weakly to the fire of the Americans. The capture of the vessel,
however, was snatched from Tarbell by a breeze springing
up, which enabled two of the other vessels to come up, open
fire and drive the Americans off.

This daring attack by the Americans brought matters to a
crisis. The British determined to capture Norfolk and its
fortifications, and with the very next tide fourteen of the
enemy's vessels entered Hampton Roads, ascended to the
mouth of James River, and took position between the point
called Newport News and Pig Point, at the mouth of
Nansemond River.

James Barbour was the governor of Virginia. He was
patriotic and active, and by untiring energy had assembled
several thousand militia. Brigadier General Robert Barraud
Taylor, a graduate of William and Mary College, had the
command, and his attention was especially directed to the
defence of Craney Island. This island formed the most distant
outpost of Norfolk and was the key to the harbor. It
consisted of about twenty-four acres, and was separated from
the mainland by a strait that was fordable at low tide. On
the southeastern side of it, and commanding the ship channel
were entrenchments, on which two 24, one 18 and four six
pound cannon were planted. On the evening of the 21st of
June the whole force on the island numbered seven hundred
and thirty-seven men and were commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel
Beatty. The battery was commanded by Major James
Faulkner, father of Charles James Faulkner, who was a member
of Congress and minister to France at the beginning of
the war in 1861. The British landed about 2,500 men, infantry
and marines, at a creek on Hampton Roads called Hoffleur's
Creek, and tried to take the island by attacking it in the rear.
Major Faulkner at once ordered the cannon to be transferred
to the other end of the island, nearest to the approach of the
British, and when they reached Wise's Creek opened fire upon
them with great precision and soon put them to flight.

Almost simultaneously with this advance of the British
land forces, fifty large barges, filled with fifteen hundred
sailors and marines, were seen approaching from the enemy
ships. The battery was turned upon them, and the remarkable
exactness of the fire soon threw the barges into great confusion,
till an order for retreat was given. Admiral Warren's
barge, The Centipede, and four other barges were sunk in
shoal water and the remainder returned quickly to the ships.
Lieut. B. J. Neal was directed to send some of his bold seamen
to seize the admiral's barge and all in it, and haul it on shore,
and this was gallantly performed by Lieuts. Josiah Tattnall

James Barbour

and Geissinger, and Midshipmen Bladen Dulany and Master
George F. de la Roche.

Thus ended the battle. It constituted the most utter discomfiture
which the British suffered in the war, if we except
perhaps the battle of New Orleans. Four thousand men were
repulsed by 737, chiefly Virginia militia, and commanded by a
Virginia militia general. So certain was Sir Sidney Beckwith
of success that he promised the troops the opportunity of
breakfasting on Craney Island that morning.

Exasperated by their ignominious repulse at Craney
Island, the British proceeded to attack the town of Hampton,
on the west side of Hampton Creek, two and a half miles from
Point Comfort. It was the capital of Elizabeth City county,
and was a mile from the confluence of the Creek with the
waters of Hampton Roads. It was defended at the time by
about four hundred and fifty Virginia militia, under Major
Stephen Crutchfield.

While Admiral Cockburn threatened the town in front with
a flotilla of armed barges and boats, Sir Sidney Beckwith with
a large land force, including some French prisoners who had
volunteered to fight with the British, proceeded to take the
town in the rear, by landing on the shore of Hampton Roads.
Crutchfield's camp was at Little England, southwest of
Hampton, and his heavy battery opened with effect on
Cockburn, whom he soon forced to retire behind Blackbeard
Point. Cockburn took shelter behind the Point, and Crutchfield,
convinced that this action was a feint, gave his attention
to the forces landed under Sir Sidney Beckwith. He first
sent forward Captain Servant with his company of riflemen to
ambush the British on the road leading from Ceeley's, Wilson
Nicholas Cary's plantation, to Hampton. Then he sent forward
Sergeant Parker and a few picked men, with a field
piece, to assist Servant. When the British crossed the head
of the west branch of Hampton Creek, at the Ceeley road, the
Virginians poured a deadly fire into their ranks, which, taking
them by surprise, caused much confusion. Among the killed

was the brave commander of the marines, Lieutenant-Colonel
Williams of the British Army, who was buried at Hampton.

But the British soon recovered from their confusion and
pressed forward, compelling the riflemen to fall back.
Crutchfield, hearing the firing, hurried with all his troops to
the rescue, but he could not withstand the storm of grape and
canister which the British poured upon him, and some of his
troops broke and fled in confusion across the Yorktown road
and the Pembroke estate. The remainder he drew off in good
order. In this affair in which, according to all accounts, the
British greatly outnumbered the Virginians, the British lost
about fifty men, in killed, wounded and missing, and the
Virginians about thirty.

The British now entered Hampton by the Yorktown road,
and the atrocities committed upon the few defenseless inhabitants
who remained in the town have consigned the name of
Sir George Cockburn to merited infamy. The British authorities
put the blame on the French soldiers, but this was really
no excuse as the British generals were responsible for the
conduct of any troops under their command.

The British remained in Hampton till the 27th, when they
reembarked, and a few days later left Hampton Roads to
spread their work of destruction first up the Chesapeake Bay
and then southward along the coasts of the Carolinas and
Georgia. While Cockburn was in Virginia a great many
negroes flocked to his standard but they were harshly treated
and sold into worse slavery in the West Indies.

The question of admitting Missouri as a state came before
the House of Representatives in 1818 for the first time. If
in 1861 South Carolina took the lead in resisting the Northern
majority, that position in 1820 was taken by Virginia. The
election of Lincoln, at the former time, according to constitutional
forms, did not make a case in which Virginia cared to
take action, and she did not act until coercion of South Carolina
was attempted. But the restriction prohibiting slavery
in Missouri seemed to all the statesmen of Virginia a direct

and flagrant infringement not only of the Constitution, but
of the treaty by which Louisiana, from which Missouri was
taken, was obtained.

The bill to admit Missouri was amended, on the motion of
Mr. Talmadge, of New York, by a clause prohibiting slavery,
which prevailed in the House, but was struck out in the Senate,
and so the bill was lost at this session. But at the next session
the question was agitated again, and on motion of Mr. Scott,
the territorial delegate, referred to a committee, who reported
on December 9, 1819, a bill in the usual form, authorizing Missouri
to form a State constitution, with a view to its admission.
To this bill a restriction against the continuance of slavery was
moved by Mr. Taylor of New York.

Soon after this the question was taken up in the Senate.
A bill providing for the admission of Maine, which had passed
the House on the third of January, 1820, was amended in the
Senate by a provision tacking on to it the admission of Missouri.
Jonathan Roberts, of Pennsylvania, moved to amend
the amendment by adding a restriction against slavery just as
Mr. Taylor had done in the House. On February 1st his
amendment was voted down in the Senate by a vote of 27 to 16.

This appeared a large majority against restriction, but it
was one looking only to a compromise. On the question of
linking Missouri with Maine, there was only a majority of one,
and how far that vote could be relied on in all the contingencies
that might occur was not known. It was at this juncture
that President Monroe wrote (February 3) to James Barbour,
a Senator from Virginia, advising the separation of
Maine and Missouri, and the admission of Maine without delay.
In his opinion it would promote the unqualified admission
of Missouri to let the question rest on its own merits.
"To give effect to the suggestion you ought to have immediately
a meeting of the Southern Senators." The same
day Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois, one of the Northern Senators
in sympathy with the South and voting against Mr. Roberts'
amendment, moved an amendment to the Maine Bill, having

the Missouri proposition tacked to it, which amendment allowed
Missouri's admission without restriction, but prohibited
slavery north of 36½ degrees north latitude, in all the territory
outside of Missouri ceded by France and known by the
name of Louisiana. The President and his cabinet—Adams,
Crawford, Calhoun and Wirt—thought favorably of the
measure and the President appears to have communicated his
disposition in an interview with Senator Barbour.

In the meantime the Legislature of Virginia met in Richmond
on Monday, December 6, 1819. Linn Banks was
re-elected Speaker of the House of Delegates, and a letter was
read from John W. Eppes, resigning his seat in the Senate on
account of ill health. The members were very much opposed
to any restriction on Missouri, and in January, 1820, the
House of Delegates adopted, with only one or two dissenting
voices, a preamble and resolutions denouncing in severe terms
"the alarming attempt of Congress to manacle the sovereign
will of the people in Missouri" and pledging the State of
Virginia "to interpose in their defense," but the Senate was
more politic and these resolutions did not go out as the official
utterances of the state.

The sentiment against any restriction was very strong,
however, and when Senator Barbour wrote to Charles Yancey,
a prominent member of the Legislature, that the President
and his cabinet had consented to the compromise proposed by
Mr. Thomas, the indignation and resentment at Richmond was
beyond all bounds. Henry St. George Tucker wrote Mr. Barbour
on February 11, that "he was unable to describe the
sensation in Richmond at the intelligence conveyed by your
letter." "A compromise which gives up the fairest and
largest part of the western territory and leaves us a narrow
slip intersected with mountains in one direction, destroyed
by earthquakes in another and in a third with swamps and
bayous, and infested with mosquitoes and bilious diseases,
can never be grateful to us." Two days before this letter
was written a caucus of the members of the General Assembly

was held to nominate presidential electors. Mr. Yancey broke
the news of the Barbour letter regarding the President's
views to the caucus. Immediately an intense excitement prevailed,
the proposed compromise was bitterly denounced, and
so indignant were all with President Monroe that an adjournment
of the caucus took place without the appointment at
this time of any electors.[41]

Mr. Barbour shared in the general suspicion, and some
severe comments were made on what was supposed to be his
concurrence with the President.

Reassuring letters from Barbour contributed to calm
the ferment in Richmond, which settled finally into a resolve
to endorse Monroe for the presidency, but to continue opposition
to any compromise. The Senate of Virginia would not
accept the resolutions of the House of Delegates and substituted
for them a paper free from denunciation, but containing
a strong argument against any restriction whatever on
Missouri. Then on the 17th the caucus met again and nominated
the electors, 24 in all, favorable to Mr. Monroe, and on
the same day a vote was taken in the United States Senate
on Mr. Thomas' compromise amendment and it was adopted,
but among the negatives were the names of James Barbour
and James Pleasants of Virginia.

Afterwards when the vote was taken in the House of Representatives
on the same restriction, out of twenty-two representatives
from Virginia, seventeen voted against the compromise.
There were only twenty-five other negatives, and
of these five were from the North and twenty were scattered
among the other southern states.

South Carolina led the majority of the southern delegates
in voting for the compromise, and thus the issue of arms was
again postponed. Ex-President Madison joined[42] with Monroe
in approving the compromise, but thought that it would have

been equitable if the line of division had been run "so as to
make the partition correspond with the estimated proportion
in which the common property was paid for by the two descriptions
of owners."

On the other hand the venerable Jefferson saw the result
with clearer vision. He wrote to William Short on April 13,
1820: "The old schism of Federal and Republican threatened
nothing because it existed in every state and united them
together by the fraternities of party. But the coincidence
of a marked principle, moral and political, with a geographical
line, once conceived, I feared would never more be obliterated
from the mind; that it would be recurring on every occasion
and renewing irritations, until it would kindle such mutual
and mortal hatred as to render separation preferable to eternal
discord. I have been among the most sanguine in believing
that our Union would be of long duration; I now doubt it
much, and see the event (separation) at no great distance and
the direct consequence of this question." Thus it seems the
greatest of all idealists was disillusioned. Things turned out
just as he said. The Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854, repealing
the Missouri law, was made the immediate cause of an agitation
that piled up mountains of hatred, and separation was
adopted by the South as the only reasonable alternative to a
Union involving "eternal discord."

CHAPTER III

NATIONAL POLITICS IN VIRGINIA, 1825-1845

The Federalist party had contrived to identify itself with
every principle odious to the masses of the people both North
and South. Everybody deserted it, and the great Republican
party held the political field in solitary triumph during the
administration of James Monroe (1817-1825).

But the old sectional differences were by no means done
away with, and this was convincingly shown in the controversy
over the admission of Missouri in 1820, as set forth in
the previous chapter.

At the end of Monroe's administration the Republican
party became split into four factions, headed respectively by
Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and William
H. Crawford. Of these only Crawford was distinctively
a representative of the southern nation. The northern nation
had its proper representative in John Quincy Adams, and
Jackson and Clay represented the great West, whose northern
sympathies were for the time obscured by its adoption of the
great principle of democracy championed by Virginia. All
three, however, were advocates of the ideas then popular
under the name of the "American System," embracing internal
improvements and a protective tariff. Mr. Crawford, who
was a native of Virginia and resident of Georgia, alone
opposed. He was consequently the favorite of Virginia and
Mr. Jefferson, and received the support of the Virginia Legislature
for the presidency.

Unfortunately just before the election a stroke of paralysis
impaired Mr. Crawford's health and dampened the ardor
of his friends. Calhoun, of South Carolina, who had also

designs on the presidency, wisely consented to abandon his
aspirations therefor for the vice presidency, and of the four
presidential candidates, Jackson received ninety-nine votes in
the electoral college, Adams, eighty-four, Crawford forty-one
and Clay thirty-seven. There being no choice by the people,
the selection between the three standing highest on the list
devolved upon the House of Representatives. In this body
Clay's friends would have voted for Crawford except for his
reported sickness, and they finally narrowly effected Adams'
installation into the coveted office of chief magistrate. Seven
states voted for Jackson, four for Crawford and thirteen for
Adams. Had Maryland voted against Adams he could not
have been elected and the vote of Maryland was carried in his
favor by a single vote, and of a total of 212 members of the
House of Representatives only eighty-seven members of the
House supported Adams, seventy-one Jackson and fifty-four
Crawford. The six New England states recorded their votes
for Adams, the whole of them together containing a population
not much greater than that of Georgia and Virginia,
which voted for Crawford.

Because Jackson's name, however, stood first in the list,
his adherents raised a cry that Adams had bought Clay's aid
by promising him the office of secretary of state. It seized
upon the sensibilities of the people to cry bargain and corruption,
and when Randolph formulated it as "the Combination
of the Black Leg and the Puritan" the charge flew like
wildfire over the land and caused great excitement.

Clay's preference had been originally Crawford, and consequently
the Crawford party in Virginia more or less sympathized
with Clay. As between Adams and Jackson, the
Crawford party preferred the former, and Crawford and
Clay aside would have voted for Adams in preference to
Jackson. The latter's violent conduct in Florida and strong
arbitrary will, evinced in public brawls and personal encounters,
argued poorly for the observance of strict constitutional
limitations. On the other hand, Adams had been secretary

of state for James Monroe eight years, and his views on the
American system were not as yet disclosed.

But it was not for long. In his inaugural address Adams
talked about the aqueducts of Rome as the example to be
imitated by this country, and strongly advised the extension
of roads and canals throughout the whole Union. Mr. Rush,
the secretary of the treasury, gave even a more explicit interpretation
to the policy of the Government which was[43] "to
organize the whole labor of the country, to entice into its
widest ranges its mechanical and intellectual capabilities,
instead of suffering them to slumber; to call forth, wherever
hidden, latent ingenuity; giving to effort activity and to
emulation ardor; to create employment for the greatest
amount of numbers by adapting it to the diversified faculties,
propensities and situations of men, so that every particle
of ability, every shade of genius, may come into requisition."

This latitudinous avowal of the administration threw the
followers of Mr. Crawford in opposition, and the great Republican
party slowly condensed into two great opposing bodies
called Democrats and National Republicans. In 1824 the Jackson
men and "old school" advocates stood furthest apart in
feeling. It was Jackson, Adams, Clay and Crawford. Yet
by the circumstance of their both being "outs" and their common
opposition to any class system, they were compelled by
1827 into some sort of union to beat the "ins." They came
to constitute the Democratic party, and as curiously illustrative
of the spirit of its Jackson wing, all the factions of the
old Federalist party, other than the Adams men, allied themselves
with it. Among the Jackson Democrats were such old
Federalists as Timothy Pickering and James A. Hamilton, son
of Alexander Hamilton.

The friends of Adams and Clay fused more naturally into
the National Republican party, and embraced that portion of
the old Federalist party who had supported the administration
of John Adams. Neither party, however, admitted any kinship

with the defunct Federalist party, and both looked to
Jefferson as the great exponent of their principles. Hamilton
was a discredited politician, and his fame was revived only
after the War of 1861-65, which wiped out the South as an
influential factor in the Government, and made popular the
monarchical and autocratic views of the North.

The support given the American system was not long in
bringing out again the sectional character of the Union. We
have seen that, as early as the first session of the First Congress,
William Grayson denounced the raising of revenue by
impost as particularly injurious to the South. Even under
the first tariff (approved July 4, 1789) the eastern interest
was in the ascendancy, and at the start there was a manifest
disposition for the advancement of commerce and manufactures,
in preference to agriculture. The next year (1790) saw
a greater preference. While New England was benefited by
an increase of bounty on dried fish from 5 cents a quintal to
10 cents, and the tax on molasses was made only 3 cents per
gallon instead of 2½ cents, salt in which the South was much
interested in curing bacon was taxed 12 cents a bushel instead
of 6 cents.

Thus time passed on, and the tariff rates and bounties
steadily grew in figures, always to the disadvantage of the
South, until under the tariff of 1816 duties on cotton and
woolen cloth stood at 20 and 25 per cent and the average rate
of the bill was 20 per cent.

However, the primary object of this tariff, at this time,
as of all preceding it, was for revenue, and only incidentally
for protection, and it was not till 1820 that the direct issue
of a protective tariff was, for the first time, raised in Congress.
The policy was supported by the middle and western states,
aided by South Carolina, who suffered, as she had done a long
time before, under a sad misapprehension of her interests.
The rest of the South, under the lead of Virginia, was positive
against the measure. New England was divided on account
of its shipping interest which needed free trade. But the

opposition of the latter could not continue, since the rates for
revenue hitherto imposed had made predominant its manufacturing
interests.

Petitions in favor of an increase of duties, so as to afford
not revenue but protection, were offered at the session of
Congress in 1819. The Virginia Society for Promoting Agriculture
offered counter memorials. These were referred to a
committee of which Baldwin, of Pennsylvania, was chairman.
In March, 1820, he reported a bill raising the tariff rates on
woolen and cotton goods from an average of about 20 per cent
to 30 per cent. On April 22, 1820, John Tyler, of Virginia,
moved to strike out the first section of the bill, and two days
after opened the debate against the tariff in an exhaustive
reply to Mr. Baldwin. In this debate Mr. Tyler made the prediction,
scoffed at then but abundantly verified by subsequent
events, that "this was but the incipient measure of a system;
that after the lapse of a very few years we should be assailed
by as urgent petitions as those which have poured in on us at
the present session." The merchants of Richmond now followed
the example of the farmers of the state and adopted an
able memorial prepared by Thomas Rutherfoord of Richmond,
which drew a sharp criticism from Mr. Baldwin.

Despite all protests, the bill for revision in the House of
Representatives passed by a vote of 90 to 69, but the bill
failed in the Senate, and no new tariff was enacted at this
session.

But, as predicted, the manufacturers, defeated in 1820,
returned to the charge in 1824, and obtained this time an
imposition of duties averaging 33 per cent. This was an
enormous increase, but the lust of the manufacturers did not
stop at this point. Passed in a time of profound peace, these
high rates seemed only to sharpen the appetite of the tariff
men, and soon a new move was made for more rates and more
protection. So brazen indeed did the manufacturers and
northern speculators become that the slumbers of the whole
South were by this time perturbed. South Carolina, which

controlled by the city of Charleston, had, under the influence
of Lowndes and Calhoun, long acted with New England,
now wheeled into line with Virginia, and the whole South
awoke to realize that they were in the hands of a remorseless
northern majority. The milch cow which had for long years
allowed herself to be milked by the North at length began to
kick and wickedly shake her horns, under the patent device
which kept her poor and starved her young.

The tariff came up again in 1828. It was now a solid
South against a solid North. But instead of organizing armed
resistance against a system of taxation, which John Randolph
pronounced in many respects worse than any form of British
tyranny, the South adopted the poor politics of playing off
the interests of the middle states against the interests of the
eastern states. They united with Pennsylvania and Ohio to
impose duties on iron, hemp, wool and molasses, contrary to
the wishes of the New England states, hoping by thus amending
the bill to kill it in the estimation of its best friends. In
this they were disappointed. The representatives of New
England made a wry face and voted for the bill, as its advantages,
when calmly considered by them, overbalanced the
disadvantages. By this bill the rates of the protective tariff
were raised to an average of 50 per cent. As it satisfied nobody
entirely, it stands stigmatized in history as "the bill of abominations."
Yet, if the protective principle was a just one, this
tariff was the best that had ever passed into law, since by
the policy of the South its operations were more general and
uniform.

Virginia was hurled off from the Adams administration,
and in the election which followed in the fall of 1828 voted, as
a choice of evils, for Andrew Jackson. The manufacturers
had got their bill, but from the poison infused into its vitals
they had very little heart to forward the ambition of Adams
for a second term, who was left in a hopeless minority. Out
of 261 electoral votes, Adams received but eighty-three. The
Crawford men gave Virginia and Georgia to Jackson, and

there as elsewhere severely rebuked the indiscretion of
Adams.

But they had only jumped from the frying pan into the
fire. The administration of Jackson proved as one-sided as
that of Adams. Jackson, while putting a stop to the speculation
in roads and canals, approved all the river and harbor
bills submitted to him, and on the tariff, while declaring himself
for revenue, with incidental protection to the "best interests
of the country, including agriculture, commerce and manufactures,"
he made no serious attempt till the end of his
term to modify the Tariff of Abominations.

In the interim, the indignation of the South rose to great
heights. During the session of 1827-28, while the Tariff of
Abominations was before Congress, Virginia by resolutions
of her Legislature expressed her solemn objections to the constitutionality
of laws passed in the interest of protection,
and at the session of 1828-9 the Legislature passed resolutions
affirming the doctrines of 1798-9, that the Union was a compact
between sovereign states, and that as such each state had the
right to construe the compact for itself. She declared her
unalterable attachment to the Union, but insisted that the
tariff ought to be repealed. All the other southern states
adopted similar action. But no attention was paid by the
North to these complaints.

In 1830 a bill was passed by Congress making the custom
house appraisal more rigorous and effective, and the same
year George McDuffie, of South Carolina, made an ineffectual
effort to reduce all duties on woolens and cottons to about the
rates of the tariff of 1820. The patience of the South was
phenomenal, and only South Carolina took action, but unfortunately
adopted a policy which appeared to the other states
as illogical and irrational. This policy was nullification, which
the eloquent Hayne advanced in 1830 in his celebrated debate
with Webster. This, together with the approaching presidential
election, rendered the succeeding session of 1831-32 one
of much interest.

Not long before Congress came together the National
Republicans met at Baltimore and nominated Henry Clay on
a strong bank and tariff platform. At a conference of his
supporters he proposed to reduce the revenue taxes on tea,
coffee and wine and such other articles as did not enter into
competition with articles produced in this country. His object
was not to relieve the South, but to decrease the revenue so
as to prevent Jackson from paying off the national debt during
his term of office. On January 10, 1832, Clay proposed a
resolution in the Senate to this effect.

This resolution was debated and finally referred to the
Committee on Manufactures, who in a few days after, reported
a measure in accordance with its provisions. This, however,
was soon laid on the table, and a bill from the House of Representatives
prepared by Mr. John Quincy Adams, "in perfect
concert," as he said,[44] "with the administration," finally
passed both houses July 14, 1832. This bill proceeded, on the
principle of Mr. Clay's resolution, and abolished many of the
revenue taxes, thus exempting the manufacturing portion of
the community from almost all the burdens of taxation. The
duties remained at high protective rates on the protected
articles and the revision left the tariff a greater curse than it
was before.

The disgust of the southerners at the unconscionable conduct
of the majority in Congress was deep. They were told
in so many words that their property and their lives and even
the Union itself were nothing as compared with the profits of
the northern manufacturers. Things were coming to a crisis
which might have ended in the peaceable dissolution of an
impossible Union, when South Carolina shifted the issue by
taking action along the line of nullification, which revolted
the notions of the other southern states. The doctrine of
nullification set South Carolina apart to herself, and while
her sister southern states denounced the tariff they refused to
admit the logic of her political philosophy. The tariff men

gladly hid the true nature of the controversy under the seemingly
patriotic demand that the laws enacted by Congress
should be maintained.

After the passage of the tariff bill the governor of South
Carolina issued his proclamation, convening the Legislature
for the 22nd of October, 1832—a month in advance of the
regular meeting. The Legislature assembled, and on October
25, ordered a convention for the 19th of November. Pursuant
to this, the Convention met and adopted an ordinance that
the acts of Congress relating to the tariff should be null and
void within the state after the 1st of February, 1833. The
Legislature of South Carolina met directly after the adjournment
of the convention, November 27, 1832, and passed laws
providing for the prospective enforcement of the ordinance
within the state.

About this time the presidential election occurred. Virginia
and the Crawford men in the state cast their vote for
Andrew Jackson, who on some questions had favored states
rights. South Carolina voted for John Floyd, governor of
Virginia, who in a message to the Legislature took strong
ground against the coercion of South Carolina. The National
Republicans voted for Henry Clay. Jackson was elected by
an overwhelming vote.

Senator Littleton Waller Tazewell resigned and on December
10, W. C. Rives was elected as senator to fill the vacancy
caused by Mr. Tazewell's resignation.

Simultaneously with Rives' election appeared Jackson's
proclamation of December 10, 1832, denouncing both nullification
and secession and pronouncing the people of the United
States a people in the aggregate—in other words a consolidation.
The paper was written by Edward Livingston, a Jackson
Democrat of ultra Federal ideas, an advocate of the tariff
of 1828, and the defender of Jackson for his unconstitutional
act in appointing a minister to Turkey in 1831, before any
such mission was created or authorized by Congress. The
whole states rights party were on the instant hurled off from

the administration, and forced into sympathy with South
Carolina. The old duality once more appeared, and on January
21, 1833, a bill giving Jackson powers to use the army
and navy to enforce the tariff law was reported to the Senate,
and became the subject of a long and exciting debate.

The Union sympathy which had grown in Virginia since
the Missouri question was in strong evidence, however, and
it tried to settle the dispute with South Carolina by compromise.
The Legislature of Virginia sought to intervene, and
on January 26, 1833, instructed her senators, Rives and Tyler,
to support a compromise policy, and Benjamin Watkins Leigh
was appointed a commissioner to proceed to South Carolina,
with a view of persuading her to suspend her ordinance of
nullification.

This attempt at intervention was successful in both directions.
John Tyler, who on January 30, 1833, was reelected to
the Senate over James McDowell, a follower of Jackson, persuaded
Henry Clay to offer on February 12, 1833, a bill, essentially
repealing the tariff of 1832, and drafted in accordance
with Tyler's suggestions;[45] and Mr. Leigh's appointment as
commissioner to South Carolina was promptly followed by a
suspension of the nullification ordinance, whose operation was
set for the first of February, 1833. Mr. Leigh's arrival in
Columbia on February 3, had still further confirmed the
people of South Carolina in this pacific policy.

The new tariff, called "the Compromise Tariff," was
based on the principle of a gradual reduction of the rates. As
reported by Clay to the Senate, it provided for biennial reductions
of one-tenth on all duties over 20 per cent until the 31st
of December, 1841, when one-half of the residue was to be
deducted, and after the 30th of June, 1842, the duties on all
goods were to be reduced to 20 per cent, to be paid in cash at
the home valuation, and levied with a view to "an economical
administration of the government."

The Force bill and the Compromise Tariff—the sword and

the olive branch, the vulture and the dove—confronted one
another in the Senate until the 20th of February, when the
Force bill was passed by a vote of 32 to 1. The vote of Virginia
was divided—William C. Rives voting for it and John
Tyler voting against it. In the House on March 1st the Force
bill was passed by 149 to 47. It should be observed that in
the vote in the Senate all the opposition southern senators,
save John Tyler, withdrew from their seats, and, for various
reasons of policy, did not vote. There were some senators,
doubtless, who voted for the bill, because they considered its
teeth had been drawn by the Compromise Tariff bill then pending.
This feeling would have governed Mr. Clay in voting for
the bill, but he was not present.[46]

On the other hand, the Compromise Tariff, which Mr. Clay
proposed in the Senate February 12, 1833, was offered by his
friend, Mr. Letcher, in the House on February 25. It passed
that House the next day by 119 votes to 85, and was sent to the
Senate, where it passed on March 1, the same day as the
Force bill passed the House, by twenty-nine to sixteen.

When the South Carolina convention met again on March
11, the ordinance nullifying the tariff measure was repealed,
but the convention passed another act nullifying the Force
bill.

Thus the Union was saved by the intervention of Virginia,
for civil war, with very certain consequences, would have
resulted, had the tariff continued unchanged. As a matter
of fact the South was far more solid at this time than its vote
in Congress seemed to indicate. On December 19, 1832, Governor
John Floyd gave notice in a special message to the
Legislature that he would not allow any Federal troops to
pass through Virginia, and wrote in his Diary[47] as follows:
"I understand this morning that when my message was
received in the city of Washington the friends of the President
were with him almost all night consulting upon the
propriety of retracing his steps, but as yet his personal hatred

John Floyd

to Calhoun induces him to insist upon using the sword to enforce
his doctrine of treason. If so, there is no Government or
Constitution but his will, and that proclamation. If he uses
force, I will oppose him with a military force. I nor my
country will not be enslaved without a struggle." Whatever
the difference of opinion in the South, there is hardly any
doubt that the shedding of blood would have consolidated its
resistance as it did in 1861. The excitement over this incident
had scarcely subsided, when Jackson kindled another flame
by his removal of the Federal deposits from the United States
Bank. Mr. Clay in the Senate offered a resolution of censure
and the Virginia Legislature instructed its senators to vote
for it. Mr. Rives refused to obey and resigned, and was succeeded
by Benjamin Watkins Leigh. Mr. Tyler, his colleague,
worked enthusiastically with Mr. Webster and Mr. Calhoun
in the Senate for the resolution, and it was adopted.

Then commenced the movement begun by Thomas H. Benton
to instruct senators to repeal the censure. Virginia underwent
another change in opinion, and the senators from Virginia
were instructed by the new Legislature, Jacksonian in
sentiment on this issue, to vote for the expunging of the censure.
Many senators resigned rather than obey instructions,
and among them was John Tyler. Mr. Leigh did not obey
and held on a year longer, which made him unpopular.
Mr. Tyler was succeeded by William C. Rives and Mr. Leigh
by Richard E. Parker, and when the latter resigned to fill a
vacancy in the Supreme Court of the state, he was succeeded
in the Senate by William H. Roane (son of Judge Spencer
Roane), who served from September 4, 1837, to March 3, 1841.

Jackson's administration terminated March 3, 1837, when
he was succeeded as president by Martin Van Buren, of New
York. He came in just in time to face the financial storm
which attacked the business of the country, occasioned by the
reckless management of President Jackson. Grain and coal
reached high prices in the fall of 1836 and a great flour riot
occurred in City Hall Park in New York in the month of

February, 1837. Things were in a chaotic state when Van
Buren took charge.

President Van Buren's scheme for restoring a healthful
condition of the country was the independent treasury. This
plan of finance had been originated in 1834 by William F.
Gordon, a representative in Congress from Virginia, but it
had found no favor at the time. Its revival at this moment
by Van Buren drove from the Democratic party a set of politicians
who called themselves "Conservatives" and numbering
as leaders N. P. Talmadge, of New York, Hugh S. Legaré, of
South Carolina, and William C. Rives, of Virginia. They were
in favor of a government system of deposits with state banks,
under restrictions and regulations tending to the better safety
of the public funds and the repression of speculation. They
were the latest revolters from the Democratic party and gradually
came to constitute an important element in the new
Whig party which had been in process of formation since
1832.

The Whig party, in its origin, was made up of a hotchpot
of opposition to the Democratic party. It was composed of
the National Republican party which had been made up in
1828 of the followers of Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams,
and of those Democrats who had left the Democratic party
because of its nationalistic attitude under Jackson and Van
Buren. These consisted in Virginia of the states rights men,
like Abel P. Upshur and Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, who
sympathized with South Carolina in the doctrine of nullification
and left the party in 1832, then the Democrats, like Senators
Tazewell and Tyler, who did not approve of nullification
but who condemned even more the doctrine of consolidation
in President Jackson's proclamation against South Carolina,
and left the party in 1833, then the Democrats, like Henry
A. Wise, who left the party in 1834 because they disapproved
of Jackson's action in removing the Government deposits
from the Bank of United States, then the Democrats who condemned
Benton's expunging resolution in 1835, and followed

the lead of Judge Hugh Lawson White, of Tennessee, and
finally the "Conservatives," just mentioned, who shied at
Van Buren's independent treasury. The generic appellation
of "Whig" embraced all the heterogeneous elements thus
united, and their real single bond of union was opposition to
Jackson and the Jacksonian Democracy.

In the election of 1836 the union of these elements was
not complete and no common candidate could be agreed upon
by the Whigs. William Henry Harrison was the favorite candidate
of the National Republican Whigs of the North, and
Hugh L. White, of Tennessee, was the favorite of the states
rights Whigs of the South, but the Massachusetts Whigs voted
for Daniel Webster and the South Carolina Whigs voted for
Willie P. Mangum. John Tyler was placed upon the White
ticket for vice president, and in several states upon the Harrison
ticket as well, but most of the northern states supported
Francis Granger of New York for vice president. Under
these circumstances the Democrats had an easy victory, and
no one of Whig candidates for either president or vice-president
was elected.

Suggestive of the halting consolidation of the Whig party
through a number of years was the hot contest in 1838 between
John Tyler and William C. Rives in Virginia for the Senate
of the United States. The former received on the first ballot
the full strength of the Whig party in the Virginia Legislature,
but the Conservatives, who still held aloof, voted for Mr.
Rives, and prevented Tyler's election. An intrigue set on foot
by Mr. Clay, by which the bulk of the Whig vote went over to
Mr. Rives, was defeated by Mr. Tyler's personal friends, who
were indignant at what they termed his betrayal by Mr. Clay,
and the Legislature adjourned without any election at this
time.

Before it could reassemble, the great Whig national convention
met at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, December 4, 1839,
and nominated the Whig party's first successful ticket, Harrison
and Tyler, which was elected the following year. The

Legislature of Virginia convened in 1840, and Mr. Tyler being
out of the way, Mr. Rives was elected Senator, without further
difficulty. Soon after in a letter, called his "Castle Hill" letter,
he made clear his opposition to the Democrats, and his condemnation
of the old National Republican measures of bank,
tariff and internal improvements.

During the presidential campaign of 1840 the course of
the Whig orators in the North was to talk loudly of "reform"
and to say nothing of the old National Republican measures
of bank, tariff and internal improvements. In the South,
where the Whig constituencies were largely old Crawford men
and practically all for states rights, they were strong in their
professions against these measures. And Mr. Clay's position
was that all the old issues had become "obsolete" in the
presence of the federalism of the Jackson-Van Buren Democracy.
In Virginia, where the Whigs were chiefly Crawford
men, General Harrison was defended in the address of the
Whig state convention, written by James Lyons, of Richmond,
as an opponent of bank, tariff and internal improvements.
Indeed, in a speech in the United States Senate, made in September,
1841, Mr. Buchanan declared[48] that "during the whole
election campaign of 1840 he never saw one single resolution
in favor of a national bank which had been passed by any
Whig meeting in any part of the country."

William Henry Harrison was President one month, and
the Vice President John Tyler, whose succession was expected
and predicted by many, became President April 4th. He was
the last of the Virginia Presidents, and came into unfortunate
collision with his party dominated by Mr. Clay and the
National Republicans of the North. They attempted to revive
the American system, which had been abandoned in the canvass,
and naturally met the opposition of President Tyler.
Nevertheless the administration pursued the lines of policy
set out by the "Virginia Dynasty," and without a party in
either house of Congress was remarkably successful in pushing

through its measures. Like the administrations of Jefferson,
Madison and Monroe, it stood for essential principles,
which were as follows:

1. First of all, it stood for Democracy. The headquarters
of the National Republican portion of the Whig party was
New England, and that country had not yet fully dispossessed
itself of autocratic views inherited from Colonial times. In
Virginia no white man was a servant, and in all public and
legal matters all white men stood on a plane of perfect
equality, entitled to all the guaranties of freedom. The Whig
principle of Democracy found expression in many of President
Tyler's official statements. Thus he wrote in his fourth
annual message: "The guaranty of religious freedom, of the
freedom of the press, of the liberty of speech, of the trial by
jury, of the habeas corpus, and of the domestic institutions in
each of the states, leaving the private citizen in the exercise of
the high and ennobling attitudes of his nature and to each
state the privilege (which can only be judiciously exerted by
itself) of consulting the means best calculated to advance its
own happiness—these are the great and important guaranties
of the Constitution, which the lovers of liberty must
cherish and the advocates of Union must ever cultivate."

His democracy was, however, not the unlicensed rule of
the masses, as apparently defined in what was known as the
Jackson-Van Buren democracy. It was a democracy of law,
and found its application, under the Constitution, to Dorr's
Rebellion in Rhode Island, which occurred in 1842. While
sympathizing largely with the complaints against the narrow
rule of suffrage which prevailed in that state, Tyler took his
stand on the side of the constituted authorities as against the
mob followers of Thomas W. Dorr, with the result that while
the peace of the state was preserved, most of the ancient disabilities
were removed. Two years later Webster wrote to
Tyler a letter commenting upon these matters and described
his management of the Rhode Island business as "worthy of
all praise."[49]

2. Next it stood for Expatriation and for Protection of
the Flag to everything on board ship. President Tyler
encouraged emigration from Europe and immigration to the
unsettled areas of the West, which in the course of a few
years began to blossom as a rose. In the case of the Creole
there was found an application of the immunity of merchant
vessels as a part of the territory to which they belonged. The
Creole was a merchant vessel which was carried by mutinous
slaves into the port of Nassau, and their escape there was
encouraged by the English authorities. In the negotiations
with Lord Ashburton in 1842 the President insisted that the
law of England, which prohibited slavery, did not apply where
a ship was driven by "violence" into one of its ports.[50] This
was accepted by both Daniel Webster, the secretary of state,
and Lord Ashburton and recognized in their correspondence
with one another, and the slaves who escaped from the Creole
were afterwards paid for by the British government under
the convention of 1853 for the settlement of all outstanding
claims.

In the same correspondence the subject of impressment
was taken up and discussed. The president brought the subject
to the attention of the negotiators, and in Webster's
letter he put the exemption of our naturalized citizens from
such irritating duress strongly on the ground that foreign
nations justified expatriation by encouraging emigrant ships
and granting passports.[51] As a final disposition of the matter
Webster announced the stand which would be hereafter main
tained by this nation that "in every regular documented
American merchant vessel the crew who navigated it will find
their protection in the flag which is over them."

3. Next this administration, like the Virginia Dynasty,
stood for Annexation. Territorial questions absorbed the
attention of the President from the beginning. The far-reaching

diplomacy of Great Britain threatened the United States
on every side. She had entrenched herself in China, her fleet
scoured the Pacific Ocean, and while on the north she held
the whole line from Maine to Oregon in dispute, on the south
and west she was busily intriguing with Texas and Mexico
to acquire the domination of that boundless unsettled country
which stretched from the Mississippi River to the Pacific.
But the United States, under this Virginia administration,
triumphantly overreached the shrewd diplomats and
intriguers of Great Britain.

The first victory was obtained by the signing of the treaty
of Washington in August, 1842. Of this treaty, Mr. Webster,
the secretary of state, himself said that "it proceeded from
step to step and from day to day under the President's own
immediate supervision and direction" and that "the President
took upon himself the responsibility of what it contained
and what it omitted." This treaty, signed on the ninth of
August, 1842, settled definitely the question of boundary as
far as the Rocky Mountains between the United States and
Canada—a settlement which had been vainly essayed from the
beginning of the Government.

Proceeding next to check British activities in the Pacific,
President Tyler, in December, 1842, asserted the Monroe
Doctrine as to the Hawaiian Islands and sent a consul to represent
this Government there. This action was taken just in
time, for not long after the British commander in the Pacific
took possession of these Islands in the name of his government.
President Tyler, through his secretary of state, Hugh
S. Legaré, entered a formal protest, and the occupation was
disavowed by the authorities in England, and the independence
of the Islands, under the virtual protectorship of the
United States, formally guaranteed. The wisdom of his action
was admitted by all his successors, and led the way to ultimate
acquisition under President McKinley.

For the settlement of all outstanding territorial questions,
the President's next move was to propose a tripartite treaty

with Great Britain and Mexico.[52] By this measure Mexico was
to recognize the independence of Texas, with which she was
carrying on a fruitless war, Great Britain was to get the line
of the Columbia River for the boundary of Oregon, and the
United States was to get California and all the West down to
the line of 36 degrees. Lord Ashburton, representing England,
and Almonte, representing Mexico, thought favorably
of the proposition and it was in the contemplation of the
President to send Mr. Webster to England to put the treaty in
shape; but the failure of Congress to appropriate money for
the purpose led to a postponement, and political developments
speedily brought Texas to the front for direct action in the
meantime.

President Tyler ascertained in the summer of 1843 that,
unless prompt action was taken, Texas, assailed by Mexico,
would throw herself into the arms of Great Britain. Not
deeming it prudent to wait any longer, he caused a treaty to
be negotiated for the annexation, and when that treaty was
rejected, "contrary to all assurances"[53] from senators, he
appealed to the House of Representatives under the clause
of the Constitution authorizing Congress to admit new states.
To accentuate his purposes he announced himself a candidate
for reelection to the presidency, and thus forced the Democratic
party to drop Mr. Van Buren to whom the party was
committed, but who was opposed to annexation, and to take
up Mr. Polk, who until a few days before the Democratic convention
was a candidate for the vice presidency only. The
joint resolutions of Congress, thus invigorated, passed Congress,
and two days before Mr. Polk came in, Mr. Tyler had
approved them and sent a messenger to invite Texas into the
Union.

The messenger arrived in Texas not a day too soon, for
Mexico had, under the persuasion of the English and French

consuls, already offered to recognize the independence of
Texas, provided the latter would pledge herself never to be
annexed to any other government. Texas rejected the Mexican
proposition and accepted that of the United States, but
it is very probable that, in the absence of a counter-proposition,
the Mexican offer would have been accepted. Some historical
writers make the mistake of saying that Texas was
annexed by the Polk administration, but all that was done
under Polk was done in pursuance of the joint resolutions
passed under Mr. Tyler.

Had Texas failed of annexation, a great slave state would
have sprung into existence on our southwestern flank, which
would have probably incorporated California and the West.
And to this new center the southern states would have gravitated
in a short time.

President Tyler had much of the idealism of his Virginia
predecessors, and he never could look upon the annexation
of Texas as other than one, as he said, of "great public advantage,
embracing the whole country and all its interests"—the
monopoly of the cotton plant, the growth of the gulf and
coastwise traffic and the extension of the national domain.[54]
And yet the dual nature of the Union was undoubtedly present
in the controversy which raged over Texas. The South
favored it as a means of lending strength to its representation
in Congress, which it would have done independently of
the question of slavery. The North—New England especially
—opposed it because they did not wish to strengthen the rival
nation. Massachusetts was willing to act the part it played
on the question of annexing Louisiana. In 1844 the Massachusetts
Legislature, after declaring that "uniting an independent
foreign state with the United States was not among the powers
delegated to the Federal Government," stated its resolve to
be "to submit to undelegated powers in no body of men on
earth," and in 1845 it announced the doctrine of nullification
by declaring that "the admission of Texas would have no

binding force whatever on the people of Massachusetts." It
will be noticed that this action was taken not on account of
slavery, but on account of alleged unconstitutionality.

The question of Oregon was perhaps as free from all sectional
influences as any that could be expected. In imitation
of Jefferson, President Tyler sent John C. Frémont to explore
the passes of the Rocky Mountains, and to his sensible encouragement
of Elijah White and others in hastening over immigrants
to the West was largely due the success of the United
States in preventing Great Britain from getting possession
of Oregon and the California Coast. The treaty consummated
under Polk's administration, defining the northwestern
boundary, had its beginning with Mr. Tyler, though he did
not remain in office long enough to effect its conclusion.

4. Next the Tyler administration stood for Economy and
Peace. It is a singular fact that this term of four years presents
the solitary instance of an administration in which
expenses were reduced under any previous four years. Upon
Mr. Tyler's entering into office he found the Government
deficient in its annual income by some $12,000,000. When he
left the Government the receipts had not only been equal to
the expenditures, but an actual surplus existed of $8,000,000.
Compared with Van Buren's administration, he expended
nearly $14,000,000 less during his term of four years. So that
with the surplus of $8,000,000 there was saved and provided
the grand total of $22,000,000, being nearly an actual saving
of one year's expenditure in four, the total expenditures of
Mr. Van Buren being $105,874,282.94, and those of Mr. Tyler
$91,949,647.14[55]

This reduction in the national expense was brought about
by the vetoes of the President of lavish bills for internal
improvements and by his personal supervision over all the
disbursing agents of the Government and the office holders in
general, whereby waste and embezzlement were prevented.
Such, indeed, was the honesty of this last Virginia administration

that only $15 was lost to the Government in any of
the departments—this occurring in the Post Office Department,
whose receipts nevertheless were once more brought to
cover the cost of its administration.

This close watch maintained on the expenses relieved
Mr. Tyler of the necessity of following the course of Mr. Jefferson
in reducing the army and navy. Efficiency was maintained
in both, and even additional strength imparted. The
army was used to suppress the Florida Indians, and the fortifications
at New York and Old Point, in view of any possible
trouble with Great Britain, were immensely strengthened with
men and guns.

As to the navy, the addition was made of two new squadrons,
the Home Squadron and the African Squadron, the
former to protect our interests near our own shores, as the
name suggested, and the latter to be used on the coast of
Africa, in accordance with President Tyler's own suggestion
in the treaty of Washington, to suppress the slave trade.[56]
Nor is it to be forgotten that to this administration is owing
the National Observatory, first instituted as the Depot for
Nautical Charts, under the celebrated Virginia scientist
Matthew Fontaine Maury.

The Whigs repealed the Independent Treasury passed
under Mr. Van Buren, and President Tyler vetoed the bills
for creating a new national bank, which they forced upon him
contrary to their professions in the presidential canvass preceding.
In defeating this gigantic monopoly, Carl Schurz
has declared[57] that Tyler rendered his country "a valuable
service." In lieu thereof he recommended a system of finance
known as "the Exchequer," which Webster endorsed as only
second in value to the Constitution itself.[58] In its character
as a government measure, with a board of control under the

supervision of the Treasury Department and in its provisions
to issue government notes and receive deposits it was a prototype
of the present Federal Reserve System. This being
rejected by Congress for mere political reasons, President
Tyler kept the government money in what was practically his
own keeping, during the rest of his administration, without
any other guide than the law of 1789 establishing the Treasury
Department, and the resolution of 1816. This revenue was
deposited in carefully selected banks and secured by government
stock, and the government lost not one cent. Stimulated
by the tariff of 1842 affairs took a change for the better all
around in 1843. The currency of "shinplasters" was replaced
by one of gold and silver and treasury notes at par, and state
stocks which had been as low as thirty cents rose to a
premium. Exchanges which had been as high as 20 cents
became little more than what was required to convey specie
from place to place, and the credit of the Government never
rose to a higher point than it did towards the close of the
administration.

After the same order of simplicity and economy was the
course of the administration in reference to the offices. By
the repeal effected by Jefferson of many laws made by the
Federalists, the first of the Virginia Dynasty got rid of
numerous offices and officeholders, and similarly, by his vetoes
of the bank bills, tariff bills and bills for internal improvements,
which he deemed unconstitutional, Tyler relieved the
government of the occasion of creating quite as many unnecessary
stipendiaries. As a strict constructionist, Tyler was a
natural enemy of "the Spoils System," which, begun by
the Federalists from the moment of their ascendency and
repressed by the Virginia Dynasty, had been revived by the
Federalistic administrations of John Quincy Adams, Andrew
Jackson and Martin Van Buren. Tyler would appoint no
editors to office at any time, and his administration is singularly
free from the charge of nepotism. He resorted to

removals only in case of violent partisans, who neglected their
duties.[59]

In strict pursuance of the Jeffersonian doctrine that a
national debt was a national evil, Tyler threw himself in the
breach when, in constructing the tariff bills, the Whigs in Congress
in 1842 proceeded to give away to the states the proceeds
of the sales of the public lands, when the government
itself was in need of all the money it could lay its hands upon.
Mr. Webster paid him the tribute of saying[60] that "in all
things respecting the expenditures of the public moneys,
Tyler was remarkably cautious, exact and particular."

5. Tyler's administration stood for the Monroe Doctrine
—a real Virginia doctrine. We have seen his action on this
question in the case of the Hawaiian Islands. His language
in his special message of December 30, 1842, after reciting
the importance of these islands in a commercial aspect and
their proximity to this continent, was as follows: "Considering,
therefore, that the United States possess so large a
share of the intercourse with those islands, it is deemed not
unfit to make the declaration that their government seeks,
nevertheless, no peculiar advantages, no exclusive control
over the Hawaiian government, but is content with its independent
existence and anxiously wishes for its security and
prosperity. Its forbearance in this respect under the circumstances
of the very large intercourse of their citizens with the
islands would justify this Government, should circumstances
hereafter arrive to require it, in making a decided remonstrance
against the adoption of an opposite policy by any other
power." His action as to Texas was even in a higher degree
an assertion of the Monroe Doctrine against the intrigues and
ambitions of France and England.

6. Finally, this administration stood, like the Virginia
Dynasty, for the doctrine of a Union considered as a Partner-

ship of free, independent and sovereign states. But like the
other Virginia Presidents, while clearly recognizing the difference
between the sections, Tyler never could reconcile himself
to the idea, till after the Peace Convention in 1861, that
the peaceable continuance of this Union was impracticable.
In the observance of states rights by which the local affairs
were to be left alone by the National Government, he loved,
like other states rights men, to think that he had found a
solution. Under this favorite delusion he failed to realize
that a majority which has the power is not apt to restrain
itself in the gratification of its ambitions.

It is in the profound recognition of this creed of Tyler
that the key to his political history is to be found. His attitude
was never a change of position, but a natural alignment
with parties as they successively developed during his life.
So in the matter of the bank vetoes the question with him
was one not merely of bank or no bank, but of the old one of
concentralization of power in Congress and of states rights,
of a consolidated nation like the present and a confederated
republic, where the government had strictly limited powers.[61]

And yet within the strict lines of the Constitution, none
of the Presidents was more determined in exerting the just
prerogatives of the government over which he presided. He
set a fortunate precedent which has been followed to this day
in taking the stand that as Vice President he succeeded on
the death of the incumbent to both the duties and office of
President, and this not by "chance" or "accident," as his
enemies later claimed, but by virtue of the Constitution and
election. And in another matter he was not less determined,
namely in the right of the admission of states like Texas by
Congress. The constitutionality of this, though denied at the
time, for a purpose, by northern statesmen, was fully accepted
by President McKinley and the Senate in 1898, when the
Hawaiian Islands were annexed under the same provision of
the Constitution. Nor was he less positive, when in 1842 the

House of Representatives required the President to communicate
to that body the names of such of the members of
Congress as had been applicants for public office, with the
papers relating thereto. He refused to comply, taking the
ground that such applications were under the executive control
and the papers necessarily confidential. In after days a
similar position was taken by President Cleveland in respect
to a resolution of Congress.

So much for the purposes and objects of this Virginia
administration.

War with Mexico followed the annexation of Texas, but
the one had no direct connection with the other. While
Mexico withdrew her ambassador from Washington, she did
not proceed to hostilities till a year after the measure of annexation,
and then war ensued by what appears to have been a
singular lack of tact on the part of Mr. Polk rather than any
intention on his part to involve the country in war, despite
the opinion to the contrary of the great mass of northern
writers, who picture a conspirator in every slave owner.
Mention has been made of the Tripartite Treaty, which,
though never actually formulated, occupied a good deal of the
attention of President Tyler in 1842.

It received the support of Daniel Webster, the Secretary
of State, and was not displeasing to either the British minister,
Lord Ashburton, or the Mexican minister, Gen. N.
Almonte. Mexico, Great Britain and the United States were
to enter into a treaty by which the Rio Grande was to be
recognized as the boundary of Texas and the line of the
Columbia River was to be accorded Great Britain as the
boundary of Oregon and the United States was to have California
and New Mexico as far south as the 36th degree.[62]

Had this treaty been actually negotiated the United States
would have lost the State of Washington, but in return would
have gained California and New Mexico and avoided war and
the slavery convulsions. But it was not consummated, and

the government under Tyler looked steadily to the settlement
of the Oregon boundary by the 49th parallel, which was finally
accomplished by President Polk, but not till his unwise
diplomacy had gotten him into the jaws of war with Great
Britain, from which he was glad enough to be released by the
intervention of the Senate.

CHAPTER IV

NATIONAL POLITICS IN VIRGINIA, 1845-1860

The hope, however, of acquiring California and New
Mexico was increased rather than diminished by the action
taken after 1842 for the immediate annexation of Texas. So
no opportunity was missed by Tyler, and when the Annexation
Treaty was signed in 1844 the boundary line with Mexico
was "purposely" left open, and Mexico informed of the readiness
of this country to adjust this and any other questions
that might grow out of the treaty on most liberal terms.
This treaty was rejected by the Senate, but the more successful
joint resolutions afterwards adopted in 1845 had an
express reservation for the adjustment of the Mexican
boundary by this government.

Now before Polk came in, Santa Anna was at the head of
the party in Mexico inimical to the United States, and Herrera
and Arista were leaders patriotically desirous of cultivating
friendly relations and of relieving themselves of California
and New Mexico, occupied chiefly by wild Indians who raided
the Mexican settlements. Mr. Polk was inaugurated, and
almost simultaneously Santa Anna was deposed and banished.
Herrera became president of Mexico, with General Arista and
other peace men in his cabinet. As soon as installed Herrera
sent J. D. Marks, for a long time United States consul at
Matamoras, an intimate friend and compadre of Arista, to
Washington to make known to the Polk administration their
desire to settle all questions, including that of boundaries,
peaceably by treaty, as had been suggested by the Tyler
administration, and their willingness to cede New Mexico and
California.[63]

Polk was given to understand that, while the Herrera
Administration would receive an extraordinary commission of
"two or more persons" for the discussion and settlement of
outstanding difficulties, they could not venture to receive any
minister committing them prematurely to a recognition of the
old friendly relations.

For some reason the request for an extraordinary commission
was refused, and it was decided to send John Slidell as
minister plenipotentiary to Mexico, and instead of taking all
means to avoid a clash with Mexican troops, the army under
Taylor, which was posted on the Nueces, was ordered about
the same time to take up their post on the Rio Grande, where
the clash deprecated speedily occurred. The right to the
north shore of the Rio Grande which Texas maintained with
obvious certainty was altogether a different question from
the expediency of Polk's measures. Herrera was not able to
maintain himself in the presidency and Paredes assumed the
office, followed by Santa Anna, and hostilities thus inaugurated
grew into a war which lasted two years, during
which the United States acquired by force what by tactful
handling they might have acquired by consent the extension
of our territory by the Rio Grande and along a line therefrom
to the Pacific Ocean, including California and New Mexico.

But the worst blunder of all made by Polk was in not
incorporating a provision in the Treaty of Guadeloupe
Hidalgo extending the Missouri line through the new territory
acquired as the result of the war. His failure to do so
lay at the bottom of the agitation on slavery, which was the
occasion of secession in 1861. Indeed it was the opinion of
the venerable Albert Gallatin, who was not at all friendly to
annexation that "had the government at this time remained
in the hands with which the plan originated, war might
probably have been avoided."

In the war, which if censurable from the standpoint of
expediency, had justice on its side,[64] the South furnished

45,630 volunteers and the great North only 23,054.[65] Virginia
called out three regiments, but only one was taken by the Federal
Government. One was furnished by Massachusetts, but
none went from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut
or Rhode Island. It is an interesting fact that at one
time the two regiments from Virginia and Massachusetts
were united under the command of Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts,
a friend and strong supporter of Tyler's Virginia
administration. It was Caleb Cushing who raised the Massachusetts
regiment, and when the Legislature of that State
denounced the war, and refused to vote money to defray the
expenses of the soldiers, he contributed the funds out of
his own means. Both of the two great heroes of the war,
Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott were born in Virginia,
and came of families long resident in that state, and the roll
of inferior officers in the armies were bright with Virginia
names—Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, Dabney H.
Maury, William B. Taliaferro, etc.

Conspicuous among the men of Virginia, who residing at
home wielded a great influence upon national politics were
John Hampden Pleasants, editor of the Richmond Whig, and
Thomas Ritchie, editor of the Richmond Enquirer. The latter
especially was prominent in helping on the cause of
annexation. Like other Democrats in Virginia, he was committed
to Van Buren as the presidential candidate in 1843 of
the Democratic party, but when Tyler precipitated upon the
country the question of Texas, Ritchie, with that great facility
for turning his coat which made him a master politician, procured
the release of the Virginia delegates to the Democratic
Convention in 1844 from their instructions to vote for Van
Buren, who would not declare himself for Texas. Polk, who
was nominated in place of Van Buren, recognized the favor by
having Ritchie appointed editor of the Washington Union, the
new national organ of the Democratic party, established at
Washington in the place of the Globe, whose editor, Frank P.
Blair, had supported Polk in a very lukewarm manner.

Slavery agitation began with a motion proposed in 1846
in the House of Representatives by David Wilmot, which had
for its object the exclusion of slavery from all the territory to
be acquired from Mexico. This motion passed the House, and
only the equal vote possessed by the South in the Senate prevented
its adoption in that body. The motion was renewed at
the next session in 1847, and it met the same fate. It
received the approval of the House, and was rejected by the
Senate. After the treaty of peace with Mexico, in February,
1848, Northern speakers took the ground that all the country
acquired from Mexico was free territory by the local law of
Mexico, seeming to forget that in 1820 they had belittled the
objection then argued that Missouri was slave territory by
the local law of Louisiana. Hopeless as the contradictions
appear to us now, the majority of the Southerners could not
reconcile themselves to radical action, though radical action
was contemplated as a possible result in the future.

Other questions relating to slavery entered into the discussion,
all tending to show the lack of any harmony in the Union.
One was the question of slavery in the District of Columbia,
and another the extradition of runaway slaves. On these
questions, as on others, the old resort was had of compromise,
involving only a postponement of the fatal hour.

During this period the South being the inferior power considered
itself attacked, and met aggression with aggression,
as was natural. The Virginia Legislature voted for determined
resistance in case of the passage of the Wilmot Proviso,
and a Southern convention met at Nashville to discuss the
question of separation, but there was nothing final about
either.

The discovery of gold in 1849 brought California to the
front, seeking admission as a state. Thousands of emigrants
poured in from the East, and, without waiting for an act of
Congress creating a territorial government or for authority
to call a convention for the purpose, the settlers formed a
state constitution inhibiting slavery, and applied for admission
of California to the Union. As part of the proposed

state lay below the line of the Missouri Compromise, its application
was resisted by Southern congressmen, who argued
that the old Missouri line had only been accepted by the South
as an adjustment of the whole territorial question and was
not confined to the territory obtained from France, but a
motion of Senator Douglas to extend the line through the
newly acquired territory was voted down.

Things seemed to be coming to a crisis, when extremities
were once more avoided by another of those compromises for
which Mr. Clay became famous. By a measure known as
"the Compromise of 1850," the slave trade was abolished in
the District of Columbia, a new and more stringent act for
the rendition of fugitive slaves was enacted, California was
admitted as a state, and the principle of non-intervention was
adopted as to Utah and New Mexico. As a matter of fact, the
North gained everything by this so called compromise, Utah
and New Mexico were wholly unfit for slave labor, and Personal
Liberty Acts nullified the fugitive slave provision.
The only thing that enured to the advantage of the South was
saving the point of honor, viz. the avoidance of a surrender
of the principle of the South's right to a share in the public
territory.

The Compromise of 1850 brought quiet for a short time, but
the agitation was revived in a most unexpected way four years
later. In 1854 certain portions of the old Louisiana domain
lying north of 36° 30′, known as Kansas and Nebraska, petitioned
for organization as territories, and in response Mr.
Douglas, of Illinois, reported a bill, which he tried to make in
complete accord with the language as to Utah and New Mexico
in the Compromise of 1850. Had there been no agitation
against it, both territories would have shortly entered the
Union as free states, but it became the signal of violent convulsions,
and 3,000 ministers signed a protest against what
they chose to pronounce a violation of the Missouri Compromise.
Thus the consequence was a dreadful contest
between the Free soil power and the Southern states for the

possession of the southernmost of the territories, Kansas. A
territory which would have peacefully entered the Union as a
free state became the field of slave immigration precisely
because of Free soil aggression.

In the meantime another element of disorder was added
to the general confusion. As a result of Mr. Douglas' action,
both the Whig and Democratic parties were rent in twain, and
a secret oath-bound party, called the American party, was
formed in the North on the principle of dislike of Catholics
and distrust of foreigners. Catholic churches were burned
in the North, and, as natural, Massachusetts, who had always
hated the Catholics, became the headquarters of this strange
and unprincipled organization. The Know-Nothings secured
the control of the State Legislature of Massachusetts, and
the organization extended throughout the North and even into
the Southern states, where liberal ideas on religion and emigration
had long prevailed. The Know-Nothings swallowed
up the Whig party in Virginia, and in March, 1855 nominated
Thomas S. Flournoy for governor.

It was reserved to Virginia to break the backbone of this
movement and on this issue the Democratic party, which three
months before had put up Henry A. Wise as its candidate for
governor, represented the real spirit of the commonwealth.
Mr. Wise made a great tour of the State, and by his ability
and eloquence showed to such advantage that he attracted the
attention of the whole Union. The state had never seen such
a flood of denunciation and satire poured out upon the purposes
of a party. Mr. Wise gloriously upheld the traditions
of Virginia, and maintained the doctrines of expatriation
and naturalization for which Virginia had battled in 1800, and
after a three months canvass the vote of the majority of the
people of Virginia was given to the Democratic standard
bearer. The total vote of the state was 156,668, of which Wise
received 83,424 and Flournoy 73,244, being a majority of
10,180 for the former.

Throughout the Northern states the result in Virginia had

Henry A. Wise

been watched with intense interest, the Know-Nothings having
elected the governors and legislatures of New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, California
and Kentucky; and all eyes were turned towards the
Old Dominion as the natural gateway, or "entering wedge,"
to the Southern states. The result of the election spread far
and wide, and Wise was called upon in the City of Washington
at Brown's Hotel by an immense throng of his admirers,
and amid the frequent interruptions of the Know-Nothings,
he declared in eloquent terms: "I have met the Black Knight
with his visor down, and his shield and lance are broken."

The triumphant march of the secret order in America was
thenceforward halted, for in addition to Virginia, Georgia,
Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi gave their verdict against
the new movement, and Know-Nothingism, instead of successfully
invading the South, received an overwhelming defeat.
The tide was rolled back upon Massachusetts, and although
the Know-Nothings had the boldness to put forward Millard
Fillmore for the presidency in 1856, the force of the movement
was spent.

The Freesoilers voted for John C. Frémont in the election,
and the Virginia Democrats wanted Henry A. Wise for president,
but it being soon found that Pennsylvania, who, from
very early days, had voted with Virginia, would only do so
now on a candidate of her own choice, James Buchanan,
largely through the self-abnegation of Governor Wise, and
his influence in the Democratic convention, was made the
Democratic nominee.

The exciting canvass of 1856 followed the nominations, and
it was fought while the battlements of the government were
shaking like a reed in the wind over the troubles in Kansas.
The clamor in the North roused the spirit of defiance in the
South, and the planters in Missouri poured their population
into Kansas, upon the first agitation. It happened, therefore,
that the pro-slavery party prevailed in March, 1855, in
electing a majority of the members of the Legislature as provided

for in the bill organizing the Legislature. On the pretext
that frauds and violences had been committed sufficient
to defeat the will of the people, those who constituted the
Freesoil party in the territory established at Topeka an
independent government (October, 1855).

The charge of fraud had probably some foundation, but
there is nothing in the nature of the controversy to suppose
that the Freesoilers would have acquiesced, had no fraud
existed. The war fever was on, and a kind of mania possessed
the North which, while it did not always openly declare itself,
winked at every obstruction thrown in the way of the fugitive
slave law and the secret methods of combinations of individuals
engaged in running off negroes from the plantations.

On February 19, 1856, the Territorial Legislature of Kansas
passed a law taking the sense of the people of Kansas
upon the expediency of electing delegates to meet on the first
Monday in September for the purpose of forming a state constitution.
This law was in the main fair enough, and it gave
the Freesoilers an opportunity to show whether or not they
were in the majority, but bent on anarchy, they would take
no part in the election and allowed it to go by default. Consequently
the convention that met at Lecompton for the purpose
of framing a state constitution was composed of a
majority of slave owners.

Soon after this the people of the United States proceeded
to choose their last President of the old regime. In the South
it was universally felt that the election of Frémont, the candidate
of the Freesoil party, would be followed by the secession
of all the Southern states. On this question there seems
to have been more unity than in 1861. But Buchanan was
elected over both Frémont and Fillmore, and the danger
passed away.

On the 4th of March, 1857, Buchanan began his administration,
and he was immediately confronted with the Kansas
question. The Legislature at Lecompton, after meeting the
first Monday in September, 1856, remained in session till

November 7, when they adopted a constitution permitting
slavery until the people could pass upon the question. The
voter was given the choice of voting for the constitution with
slavery, or without slavery. Perhaps a submission of the
entire constitution would have been desirable, but no one could
say but that the only point in dispute was the slavery clause,
and that being submitted seemed to do away with all reasonable
objections. All the early precedents were against submitting
the constitution framed by the Territorial Legislature,
but here again the Freesoilers were given the opportunity to
vote, and they would not exercise the power. On the contrary,
they refused to recognize the validity of the Territorial Legislature,
though the National Government had repeatedly done
so, and thereby placed themselves in the attitude of rebels to
the United States. In this light President Buchanan
regarded them, and on the assembling of their illegal Legislature
at Topeka, on June 9, 1857, for the purpose of the enactment
of an entire code of laws, he sent some United States
troops, and promptly dispersed them. We hear a good deal
of the word "rebel" applied to Southerners who resisted the
Government in 1861, but none of the Northern writers use this
term as descriptive of the Topeka anti-slavery men. And yet
there can be no fact more certain than this, that whatever the
Southerners in 1861 were, as citizens of states held to be
sovereign by many, the Topekaites as citizens of the territory
under control of the government were rebels without any
chance of contradiction.

Mr. Douglas, having created trouble by his Kansas-Nebraska
bill, now created more trouble by giving an interpretation
to the doctrine of "non-intervention" as applied to
Kansas which neither North nor South would accept. Now
he took ground against the Lecompton Convention, and,
instead of confining the power of forbidding slavery to the
time of the acceptance by Congress of a state constitution, he
proceeded, in one of his speeches, to lodge the power in the
people of a territory while still under territorial government.

This was ridiculed as "squatter sovereignty," and was a desperate
attempt made by Douglas to straddle the fence so as
to please his Northern constituency. "Squatter sovereignty"
was irreconcilable with the claim of the Southern people that
the planter might go into the territory with his slaves and
hold that property there until the territory was prepared for
admission as a state. It was also repugnant to the Republican
doctrine that Congress might legislate slavery out of any territory,
and it was even repugnant to common sense itself. In
his debate with Douglas later on, Lincoln had the immense
advantage of advocating an intelligible doctrine.

To end the story of Kansas, which has a direct connection
with Virginia, as will soon be seen, Congress refused to admit
the territory as a slave state under the Lecompton constitution,
and a new convention was authorized to form another
constitution preparatory to admission into the Union, but not
till its population should amount to 93,420. In January, 1861,
Kansas came into the Union as a free state. In the meantime,
the Freesoilers consented to recognize the territorial
government by taking part in an election held the first Monday
in January, 1860. The majority of the people then voted
for a governor and other state offices, for a member of Congress
and members of the State Legislature. The antislavery
party was thus placed in the ascendant, and the political
power of the state fell into their hands, as would have been
the case long before had they not preferred to act the part of
rebels and anarchists. Indeed, had Congress admitted Kansas
into the Union under the Lecompton constitution, as the
slave holders wished and President Buchanan advised, the
dominance of slavery in Kansas would have been only
temporary at most.

In all this controversy on the slavery question, the Northern
speakers acted as if the powerful North was in momentary
danger of being swallowed up by the much weaker South. In
one breath they talked of "the arbitrary, aggressive and
oppressive power" of the South, and in the next they produced

figures to show the declining power of the South under
the harmful influence of slavery. With its "indefensible"
institution, the South's attitude was necessarily defensive,
and even Calhoun never at furthest asked any more than a
balance of power to protect its social and economic fabric.
It is nonsense to say that the permanent exclusion of slavery
from all the National territory, which was what the North
wanted at this time, was not a more aggressive principle than
the temporary existence of slavery during the formative
period of a new state. What the South really resented more
than anything else was the dictatorial attitude of the North,
which assumed to give law for a territory acquired chiefly by
Southern arms. Most of the Southerners saw clearly enough
that there was no chance of making any new slave states, and
their fight was after all for a mere abstraction. Placed on the
defensive, many of the Southerners, especially in the cotton
states, defended slavery as "a good politically, socially and
economically" and some extremists advocated the reopening
of the slave trade, but this was in the nature of defensive
action against the charge favored by the abolitionists in the
North that all slaveholders were worse than murderers or
pirates, and that the constitution which protected the states in
the Union was "a covenant with death and a league with hell."

A few salient facts show from what part of the Union the
aggressiveness proceeded. The first which may be mentioned
was the violent clamor raised in the North against the decision
of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott Case, which tore away
the plank on which the Freesoilers stood in their unlawful
attack on the Kansas-Nebraska act. This court decided in
1857 that the Missouri Compromise never had any legal basis
and was null and void. But the Republicans, who were becoming
dominant in the North, refused to yield to the decision
and would no longer abide by the doctrine formerly held in the
North that the Supreme Court was the constitutional arbiter
between the States and of supreme national character. The
second was the formation in New England of "Emigrant Aid

Societies," who were active in sending colonists southward,
armed with Sharpe's rifles, not only to save Kansas from
slavery but Virginia also by encouraging settlements there of
Anti-Slavery people. And, third, there was the John Brown
raid, which proved beyond dispute the lawless and desperate
nature of Freesoilism, amounting almost to madness with
many people in the North.

John Brown was born in Connecticut and had all the recklessness
of an anarchist and the unscrupulousness of a pirate.
He belonged to the extreme wing of northern abolitionists led
by Garrison, and he actually revelled in works of murder,
arson and robbery. Skulking about in Kansas under various
guises and pretenses, he compelled his Free Soil friends to
suffer for his numerous crimes and outrages, till it is said
they made him leave the territory. At Pottawatomie this
conscienceless person, with the aid of his sons and others as
wicked as himself, dragged from their beds at midnight three
men and two boys and hacked them to death with two-edged
cleavers. After this Brown slew an unarmed, inoffensive
farmer in Missouri. To the above should be added the robbery
of stores in Kansas, the stealing of horses, the invasion
of Missouri and the theft of about $4,000 worth of oxen, mules,
wagons, harness and all such other valuable goods as he could
find on one of his raids. This lawless conduct brought many
instalments of Missouri vengeance, and the last fell upon
Lawrence, the capital of Freesoilism in the Territory, in the
Quantrell raid, when many in the place suffered for the
crimes of John Brown.[66]

In 1859 Brown transferred his operations to Virginia, and
under guise of aiding the Anti-Slavery emigration to Kansas
received assistance from Eli Thayer and the Emigrant Aid
Society in New England. Eli Thayer declared that Brown
had said: "I have not come to make Kansas free but to get a
shot at the South." Thayer's own plans were, however, only
one degree short of Brown's, for despite his professions of

peaceful intent, his arming his settlers with rifles gave them a
good opportunity to shoot Southern men, and there is no telling
how many did so merely because of the opportunity.
Thayer further adds that Brown constantly received money
from many persons in New England who "little knew what
use he was making of it, for he deceived everybody."

However that may be, there is no longer any doubt that
Brown's designs were backed by armed bands in the North,
who were deterred from coming to his aid by the entire failure
of his plan and the active steps taken by Governor Wise to
protect the State by assembling a large body of militia. It
became a matter of common notoriety that Brown's plans had
long been known and approved by men like F. B. Sanborn,
Gerritt Smith, Theodore Parker, Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
Henry Thoreau, and Wendell Philips. Sanborn in his
"Recollections of Seventy Years," affords interesting details
of the Brown conspiracy.

Suffice it here to give the prominent facts connected with
this astonishing incident in history, which, as it was significant
of the state of mind to which the whole North was
rapidly tending, makes one even today wonder that it did not
at once drive Virginia into secession. Brown had a meeting
of his friends at Chatham in Canada, where the plan of action
was carefully discussed. They proposed to overturn the government
of Virginia, set the negroes free and arm them
against their masters, and then after exciting negro insurrection
in Virginia, occupy other assailable points in the other
slave states, for which a map was prepared.

Having thus matured their purposes, John Brown and his
men came to Maryland, rented the Kennedy farm on the Maryland
side of the Potomac eight miles from Harper's Ferry,
and spent several months preceding their attack in collecting
ammunition and stores of all sorts and familiarizing themselves
with the inhabitants and general character of the
country about them.

On the night of Sunday, October 16, 1859, Brown set out

with a party of twenty-two men, all armed, for Harper's
Ferry, located on the Virginia side of the Potomac at the
confluence of the Shenandoah and the Potomac. Approaching
the village stealthily, they took possession of the United
States armory and its fifty thousand muskets, and seized the
person of William Williams, a watchman on the railroad
bridge. A party headed by Cook, one of the band, then went
and captured Col. Lewis Washington and Mr. Allstadt, two
large farmers residing near the town, together with all their
slaves and some wagons and horses. All these movements
were attended with little noise, and as the workmen came in
Monday morning they were seized and made prisoners, so that
in a short time these dangerous rebels against both the United
States and Virginia held nearly sixty prisoners captive.

Confused rumors of these events began to spread through
the village, and at first no man could say what number of
murderers had poured upon the town. After the troubles in
Kansas anything might be expected. But courage came soon
to the rescue, and the town and country people ran for their
shot guns, and surrounded the armory and engine house in
which the assassins were assembled. The news was despatched
to Charlestown, and some believe that the coming of
a volunteer company from that place, which at an early hour
on Monday morning crossed the Potomac above Harper's
Ferry and proceeded down the tow path to the mouth of the
bridge across the river, alone prevented assistance reaching
them from the North.

Two significant facts characterized this surprising attack.
The first blood shed was that of an innocent, unoffending
negro, named Heyward Sheppard, who was employed by the
railroad and whose curiosity had induced him to cross the
bridge to ascertain what the commotion was all about. He
fell into the hands of Brown's men, who told him of their plans
and urged him to join them. He steadily refused, and when
he attempted to escape they fired upon him and killed him in
cold blood. The second fact was, that no slave joined the conspirators

in their attempted insurrection, except one or two
whom Brown captured and who accompanied him under compulsion.
The cruelly oppressed slave, thirsting for vengeance
impressed upon the northern mind by Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle
Tom's Cabin," did not materialize.

As the morning advanced a guerrilla warfare was kept up
between the conspirators and the hastily armed people of the
town and country. Of the latter, Joseph Boerley, a grocer,
and George Turner, formerly a captain in the United States
army, were killed. About noon the Charlestown troop of
horse already mentioned, appeared, and volunteer soldiers
from Shepherdstown soon joined them. About this time
Fontaine Beckham, the mayor of Harper's Ferry, received a
shot from Brown's men and died instantly.

When he fell, the fury of the people found a victim in
Thompson, one of the conspirators, who had been captured
and was now shot down. Soon afterwards an assault was
made upon the armory by the citizens and soldiers led by Captain
Alburtis; the armory was carried, several of the conspirators
were slain and many of the prisoners released. In
attempting, however, to carry the engine house to which the
conspirators retreated, seven of the attacking party were
wounded, and the assailants repulsed.

Night came on, and a train of cars arrived from Washington
bringing a hundred United States marines, with two
pieces of artillery, under Col. Robert E. Lee. The sequel is
well known. Colonel Lee requested Brown to surrender, and
on his refusal except on terms of a conqueror, Lee ordered an
assault. Twenty marines battered in the door of the engine
house with a heavy ladder, it fell, and the soldiers rushed
through the breach, a sharp firing ensued and Private Rupert
of the marines was killed, but his comrades pressed on and
after a brief struggle the rebels were overcome. Brown,
desperately fighting, was wounded severely, one of his sons
was killed and another mortally hurt. All resistance ceased,

and the captive citizens, who had been in immediate danger,
were released.

Of the twenty-two bad men engaged in this attack fourteen
fell in the combats of Monday and the final assault on Tuesday;
two, Cook and Hazlett escaped to Pennsylvania, but were
captured and sent back to Virginia; and six, Brown, Shields,
Stevens, Coppie, Copeland and Green were taken by the
soldiers. All were regularly tried by the jury at Charlestown
according to due course of law in Virginia, except Stevens,
who was turned over to the United States authorities. Brown
recognized the utmost fairness of his trial, and an abolition
lawyer, George H. Hoyt, came from Boston to defend him.
He was received, and every privilege of an attorney allowed
him. Able counsel represented the other prisoners. The
trial of Cook brought out a spendid effort of oratory from
the Hon. Mr. Voorhees, of Illinois. Notwithstanding the fact
that, if ever lynching was excusable, the case of Brown and
his co-conspirators was of that character, no irregularity, no
summary process was resorted to, the law took its course and
the result was that the prisoners were all duly convicted of
murder and treason.

The governor, Henry A. Wise, arrived on the scene of
action immediately after the rebels had been all killed or captured
and took prompt measures to restore order and carry
out the requirements of the law. Such an astonishing attack
upon a peaceful state that had been well known for her
attachment to the Union might be indicative of any contemplated
outrage. From the arrest to the execution, the governor
received more than five hundred letters from people in
every part of the country. Some of them informed him of a
determined purpose to rescue Brown and urged him to guard
against it. This he did most effectually by assembling in
Charlestown, where the prisoners were confined, a large
body of citizen soldiers, who established a regular camp.

The letters received by the governor from the Free States,
instead of showing a decent horror at such a base and cowardly

attack, breathed a spirit of unmistakable sympathy with
Brown. Many of them were full of brutal menaces threatening
certain death to the governor and members of his family,
if he did not pardon Brown or commute his punishment.
Others informed him that larger organized bands existed,
whose purpose it was to set fire to the principal cities and
towns of Virginia, if Brown was hung. Others were from
persons of national fame, well known in the country and considered
to be among the most conservative of northern men;
they blamed Brown but urged his pardon on grounds of public
policy. Meanwhile the newspapers of the North of all classes
and complexions were joining in the same cry and urging the
pardon of these men.

It was a deeply significant fact that no spontaneous burst
of indignation and censure occurred at the North at any place
on account of this outrage in Virginia, no overwhelming
public meetings to denounce Brown's murderous raid and
urge his punishment. It was not till weeks and months had
passed, and after many people in the South had, in primary
meetings, declared their purpose to buy no more shoes and
cotton fabrics from New England that on Thursday, the 8th of
December, 1859, a meeting was held in Boston, at which
Edward Everett made a speech and formal resolutions were
passed condemning Brown's conduct. Similar meetings were
afterwards held in other places, and prominent New York
merchants engaged in the southern trade, gave out censures of
John Brown.

But that these meetings were only for policy was shown
by the evidences of sympathy which Brown received on the
day of his execution. Throughout the North public meetings
were held, bells tolled and orations delivered proclaiming him
a hero and a martyr, and Virginia another Algiers. The real
martyr, Heyward Sheppard, Brown's colored victim, met with
no mention whatever, no sympathy, but in Boston Tremont
Temple was crowded to excess on the evening of Brown's
execution, and one J. R. A. Griffin, a member of the Massachusetts

House of Representatives, made a speech in which
he said that "the heinous offence of Pontius Pilate in crucifying
our Savior whitened into virtue, when compared with that
of Governor Wise in his conduct towards John Brown." This
sentence was far from displeasing to his auditors, and it, with
similar declarations, was approved by many newspapers.

The abolitionists united in praise of Brown, and Wendell
Phillips declared that he was not at all surprised at his action.
He boasted that it was "the natural result of the anti-slavery
teaching," and said: "For one I accept it, I expected it. On
the banks of the Potomac,—history will visit that river more
kindly because John Brown has gilded it with the eternal
brightness of his deed than because the dust of Washington
rests on one side of it." If it be said that the abolitionists
constituted a small factor of the northern people who regarded
them as crazy, the answer is that while uttering sentiments
inciting to further murders they were approved by many and
interfered with by none. None of them were arrested or put
in hospitals for the insane. We are bound to believe that the
condemnation of Brown by Lincoln and other politicians was
sincere in no degree, that in fact they secretly honored and
believed in him; and this was shown by their after talk when
there was no need for policy. When hostilities at last began,
the most popular song of the Federal soldiers was "John
Brown's Body," and for many years after the war his name
held first place in the affections of the northern writers.
Gradually with a dying out of the old hatreds, the people there
began to see more clearly, and his many crimes proved too
much for them. Then the propagandists sought and found
another hero in Abraham Lincoln.

The crisis came hastening on. South Carolina sent a commissioner,
C. G. Memminger, to Virginia to urge upon the
Legislature the assembling of a southern convention composed
of delegates from all the southern states, who should
confer as to the guarantees to be demanded of the North. Had
the southern convention assembled, it would at least have had

the effect of uniting the South at once and in solid phalanx.
It is now very clear that if Virginia had to fight, the true
policy was to fight as soon as possible, but her statesmen,
blinded with love of the Union, to whose founding Virginia
had contributed more than any other state, hoped against hope
that time would bring its own remedy to the ills from which
they suffered. The Legislature refused the invitation, and the
union of the South was not complete.

The result of the agitations growing out of the troubles
in Kansas had imparted new strength to the Freesoil party,
which soon under the name of the Republican party, rapidly
absorbed all the elements of opposition to the Buchanan
administration. The John Brown raid had a momentary staggering
effect, but the doctrine of no more slave states was
steadily maintained and found a place in the Republican platform
of 1860. On the southern states the John Brown raid
produced a profound impression, which was much increased
by Edmund Ruffin, the famous Virginia agriculturist, who
made a present of one of the pikes which John Brown had
brought with him to arm the negroes to the executive of each
of the southern states, as a suggestion of what they might
expect from further association with the North.

In the Democratic party itself the most inveterate disorders
existed. We have noticed that Mr. Douglas, who by
his Kansas-Nebraska bill had brought the storm on the South,
soon after deserted it by opposing the Lecompton Constitution
and interpreting "the non-intervention" of the Compromise
of 1850 as "Squatter Sovereignty." On this issue
the contest raged hot and fiercely, though as Kansas was practically
given up by the southern men, there was now no further
occasion to put the question to a practical test, and southern
expansion was forever at an end. As a matter of fact, only
the eager ambitions of the North and pride of the South kept
up the contest.

At Charleston, in 1860, the Democratic party split on the
platform, and when the northern wing, led by Douglas, refused

to surrender their interpretation of "non-intervention," the
delegates from the South withdrew from the convention, and
the Democracy ultimately went into the election with two sets
of nominees—Breckenridge and Lane pledged to the southern
construction and Douglas and Johnston pledged to "Squatter
Sovereignty." What remained of the old Whig party in the
guise of the "Union Party" united on John Bell and Edward
Everett. The Republicans rallied on Lincoln of Illinois and
Hamlin of Maine.

Mr. Lincoln was elected by a plurality vote. His was a
purely sectional election and proved the straw that broke the
back of the unhappy milch cow of the South, which looked
aghast upon all the departments of the government controlled
by the North. The equilibrium in the Senate had gone with
the admission of two new free states, California and Oregon,
and Kansas was soon to follow.

CHAPTER V

NATIONAL POLITICS IN VIRGINIA, 1860-1861

As a result of Lincoln's election the action so long delayed
took place as the logical result of the economic, social and
political situation. The estrangement between the North and
South was complete. The enmities of French and Germans
paled before the enmities existing in the United States. South
Carolina seceded and was soon joined by all the other cotton
states, who formed a new union among themselves and called
it "The Confederate States of America."

In support of their action the Southern States had two
strong arguments. There was, first, the constitutional justification
of secession from a voluntary partnership. The tenth
amendment explicitly declared that all powers not granted
were reserved to the states respectively or the people thereof,
and the right of secession having never been granted, modified,
limited or surrendered in any way, must have been a reserved
power. But apart from the constitutional argument, there
was the overwhelming argument of nature expressed in the
doctrine of self-government and self-determination. The cotton
states occupied a country more extensive than France,
Germany and Italy combined, and they had established an
organized government over a people practically united in its
favor. It was argued that under a separate government the
South would have laws suited to her own conditions alone,
and fear of the Republic to the North would keep the South
united.

Neither did an independent South mean the perpetuation
of slavery. Brought in direct relations with the world at
large, slavery would have felt the general condemnation more

acutely, and in McCormick's reaper was an agency already
at work promising to displace slavery. This invention proved
a stimulus for the development of all kinds of agricultural
implements, diminishing greatly the need of hand labor. Yet
the Southern States' right to a government of their own was
not recognized by Mr. Buchanan or Congress, and conditions
were not such as to promise peace very long.

On the 8th of December, 1860, four of the congressmen of
South Carolina had an interview with President Buchanan,
and submitted him a paper by which they pledged South Carolina
not to disturb the status quo at Charleston previous to
the action of the South Carolina Convention called to meet
December 17, or until an accredited agent for adjusting all
matters between the Federal Government and South Carolina
could arrive. Buchanan, avowing pacific purposes, would not
make any pledges in return but one—and that was that before
ordering any reinforcements to the fort he would return the
paper to the congressmen or one of them.

John B. Floyd,[67] the Secretary of War, pursuant to
Buchanan's intention, issued "instructions" to Major Anderson,
in which he said: "You are carefully to avoid every act
which would needlessly tend to provoke aggression, and for
that reason, you are not without necessity to take up any
position which could be construed into the assumption of an
hostile act, but you are to hold possession of the forts in this
harbor, and if you are attacked you are to defend yourself to
the last extremity."

On the 17th of December, the convention of South Carolina
met and on the 20th it passed an ordinance of secession. On
the 22nd they appointed a commission of three with power and
authority to proceed to Washington and negotiate with the
United States Government for the peaceful return of the forts

to the state and a full and fair money settlement of the difference
between the value of the property received by South
Carolina from the Union and of the interest in that retained
by the Federal Government. These gentlemen hastened to
fulfill their grave mission, but hardly had they arrived in
Washington and made known their purposes, when an event
occurred which came near bringing on war then and there.

The South Carolina authorities, relying perhaps too much
on Mr. Buchanan's pacific intentions, were scrupulous in preventing
any act tending on their part to a breach of the peace.
No efforts were made to stop the collection of the customs or
to take possession of any property belonging to the Federal
Government. Major Anderson was treated in a friendly
manner, and on Christmas day dined with the authorities of
Charleston when the utmost good humor prevailed. But on
the night of the next day, Major Anderson evacuated Fort
Moultrie and took possession of Fort Sumter, a much stronger
situation.

On delicate questions of honor there is a possibility for
much difference. The weight, however, on this matter of constructive
guilt seems to be against Buchanan. Undoubtedly
the status quo had been disturbed by the change from one fort
to the other with the attendant circumstances of spiking guns,
burning the carriages, and dismounting the mortars. John
B. Floyd thought that the President should order back the
troops, and when Buchanan refused, making Anderson's act
his own, Floyd resigned his office as secretary of war.
Major Anderson maintained that his action was justified by
the too extensive erection of batteries which were taking
place around him, but no proof of this was ever advanced by
him.

Instead of returning the troops, Mr. Buchanan notified
the South Carolina commissioners that he would not do so,
and they thereupon returned home. Further, he sent the
Star-of-the-West with provisions and troops to Charleston,
where she was fired on and compelled to return. This was

unquestionably a departure from the pacific course of policy
which Mr. Buchanan had hitherto pursued and was doubtless
decided on by him in consequence of the gust of enthusiasm
occasioned in the North by what was termed Major Anderson's
"chivalric" performance.

The firing on the Star-of-the-West roused Major Anderson
in Fort Sumter, who threatened to fire on every ship
within range if the act was not disclaimed, but Governor
Pickens of South Carolina would disclaim nothing, and in
return made a demand on Major Anderson for the surrender
of Fort Sumter. Finally a truce was patched up by which
the whole subject was referred to the government at Washington.
Lieutenant J. Norman Hall was dispatched to represent
Major Anderson, while Governor Pickens sent
Col. I. W. Hayne to look after the interests of South
Carolina.

The immediate consequence of all this was to excite the
people both North and South. The northern press was full of
condemnation of the South and New York and Ohio passed
resolutions offering men and arms to the Federal Government.
On the other hand the Southerners made haste to
occupy Fort Moultrie, the arsenal in Charleston and all the
other possessions of the Federal Government. Mississippi,
Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Texas proceeded to pass ordinances
of secession and to range themselves by the side of
South Carolina.

What part Virginia and the other Border States were to
perform in this rapidly developing tragedy was a matter of
anxious consideration to the people of those states. Assuming
that separation was inevitable and that they were integral
parts of the great Southern Nation, there can be little doubt
that they made a great mistake in not joining as quickly as
possible the cotton states. A distinguished northern scholar
and soldier, Charles Francis Adams, stated it as his opinion[68]
that had Virginia promptly thrown her voice and influence

on the Southern side there could have been no war and no
doubt of Southern Independence. In this event Maryland and
all the other southern border states would have followed her
example and the states of the Union would have confronted
each other at Lincoln's inauguration with two governments,
de facto and de jure. Delay prevented Maryland from getting
into line, and delay enabled the imperialists of the North to
manufacture sentiment sufficient to encourage Lincoln, after
much hesitancy, in moving his armed forces against the South.
As it was, Virginia refused to think the problem of union a
hopeless one, and her statesmen, as in 1833, looked around for
a remedy that might bridge over the present trouble.

This remedy Virginia found in certain peace measures now
to be detailed.

Governor John Letcher, who had succeeded Henry A.
Wise in the executive department of the State had, soon after
the secession of South Carolina, summoned together the
General Assembly. It met in Richmond on January 7, 1861,
and immediately proceeded to its labors by the appointment
of a joint committee on Federal Relations. This committee
did its work quickly by proposing a convention of all the
States, whether slaveholding or non-slaveholding, to agree, if
practicable, upon some suitable adjustment of the question at
issue, effecting a full restoration of the Union.

In approving this report the convention acted upon the
wellknown views of John Tyler, who, however, advocated a
convention of the Border States, six on a side, believing, as it
turned out, that a convention dominated by the Northern
States would result in nothing likely to produce the end in
view.[69] The place of meeting was Washington and the day
of the meeting was February 4, 1861, and John Tyler, James
A. Seddon, Judge John Robertson, William C. Rives, and
George W. Summers were appointed delegates from Virginia.

But this was not all that was done by the Legislature in the
interests of peace and Union.

In imitation of the action of the State in 1833, Mr. Tyler
was also appointed a commissioner to proceed at once to
President Buchanan, and Judge John Robertson a like commissioner,
to the State of South Carolina, and the other
states that had seceded or might secede, with instructions
respectively to request each of the parties, pending the proceedings
contemplated by the proposed Peace Convention to
refrain from any and all acts calculated to produce a collision
between the Confederacy and the government of the United
States.

The resolutions authorizing this action passed the State
Senate on January 19, and quick to act under them Mr. Tyler
arrived in Washington on January 23. He had an interview
with Mr. Buchanan, who declined to give any assurances
either for peace or war, but agreed to send to Congress, with
whom in his opinion, rested the whole responsibility, a
message recommending to them to abstain from all action of
a hostile character until Virginia could have a fair opportunity
to exert all her efforts to restore harmony to the Union. The
promised message was sent, together with the resolutions of
Virginia setting forth the pacific objects of Mr. Tyler's
mission. But neither House of Congress took any notice of
the message from Virginia and, with brutal indifference, the
Republican majority in Congress permitted them to lie upon
the table unrecognized. The President would give no pledges,
but it could be seen that, out of a real desire for reconciliation,
nothing would be done by him to disturb the existing state of
things, and the silence of Congress indicated that it was also
averse to precipitate action at this time. Mr. Hayne was
dissuaded from presenting the ultimatum of South Carolina
for the withdrawal of the troops, and Mr. Robertson had so
far succeeded in his mission as to obtain from South Carolina
and other Southern States assurances that no further steps
provocative of ill feeling would be taken.

When the Peace Convention met at Washington, February
4, John Tyler was elected its President. In this body the

Virginia delegation planted themselves upon the resolutions
proposed by John Jay Crittenden in the United States Senate
December 18, 1860.
The first and most important of these
proposed to recognize the existence of slavery in all the
territory "now held or hereafter acquired lying south of the
old Missouri Compromise line of 36° 30′." The provision
gained nothing for the South beyond the express recognition
of the relation of master and slave in the Constitution, since
the territory beneath this line of 36° 30′ was unfit for the
development of slavery, and nature precluded its establishment.
But it was soon found that most of the northern states
were present with no feeling of compromise, and this was especially
true of the fierce and turbulent state of Massachusetts,
who seemed to think that her day of revenge had arrived.
After two weeks, the committee to whom the Crittenden resolutions
were referred reported them back so changed that
they appeared but a mockery of their former selves. They
were at first rejected by a majority of the states represented
in the convention, but upon a reconsideration the next day,
they were adopted by a majority of nine to eight states, the
majority which passed them being a minority of the states
represented. Mr. Tyler, who opposed them in the convention,
gave them his official approval as President, and on February
27th transmitted them to Congress.

Here they were opposed in the Senate as wholly unsatisfactory
by James M. Mason and R. M. T. Hunter, the two
senators from Virginia, but accepted by Mr. Crittenden. On
March 2nd they were brought to a vote in the Senate and
rejected by twenty-eight to seven. The vote then occurring on
Mr. Crittenden's resolutions they received the vote of the
southern senators, and were only rejected by a narrow
majority of one—the vote standing twenty to nineteen. In
the House of Representatives, where the Republicans had
largely the majority, the propositions of the Peace Convention
were not even given a hearing. The speaker himself was
refused leave to present them. Congress adjourned on the

4th of March, 1861, having deliberately refused all compromise
and resolutely refusing at the same time any strengthening
of the arm of the executive, as had been done for General
Jackson in 1833.

In the meantime, a convention of the people of Virginia
had been in session in Richmond since February 13. A large
return by the electorate had been made of men opposed to
secession except in the event of an attempted coercion of
South Carolina on the part of the Federal Government. On
this point the General Assembly itself had taken a determined
stand in January before the meeting of the state convention.

In the convention the small corps of secessionists were
led by Henry A. Wise, Lewis E. Harvie and James P. Holcombe.
On March 1 they were strengthened by the accession
of John Tyler fresh from the abortive Peace Convention. He
was a strong Union man but his experience there had been
sufficient to disillusion him of all hopes of compromise, and
he had come now to see clearly the danger of further delay.
He tried to make the convention understand this in his speech
on the Peace Convention propositions March 12, but the old
traditionary love of Union blinded them to the peril, and,
when on April 4th Mr. Harvie moved that the Committee on
Federal Relations should be instructed to report an ordinance
of secession, the vote stood against it ninety to forty-five.

In the State at large, however, the people saw and felt
the danger far more acutely than the majority of the members
whom they had elected a few weeks before. While the
convention continued to ponder and hesitate, the people were
everywhere in action, organizing into military companies,
drilling and petitioning the convention for an early ordinance
of secession.

But the end was drawing nigh. Telegrams received in
Richmond on the morning of April 6th announced that the
Lincoln Government was preparing a formidable armament
of naval and land forces for the purpose of reinforcing Fort

Sumter. The convention took action immediately but was
still pacific. On Monday, April 8th, the convention appointed
a commission consisting of William Ballard Preston, George
W. Randolph and Alexander H. H. Stuart to go to Washington
and ask of President Lincoln what policy he intended to
pursue regarding the seceding states. They left Richmond
the next day, April 9th.

Now this brings us to the point where a review should
be made of what was going on in Washington since the arrival
there of Mr. Lincoln on February 23rd. His policy turned
largely on Virginia, and it is no extravagance to say that never
did the State, not even in Revolutionary days, loom up before
the country in a character of greater potentiality. Virginia
was the star that fixed the attention of the country, both North
and South, as it was recognized that her determination one
way or another would influence the action of all the other
border slave states, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, North
Carolina, Arkansas and Tennessee.

The Congress of the Confederate states assembled at
Montgomery on the 4th of February, 1861, and on February
15th Congress passed a resolution authorizing President Davis
to appoint a commission of three persons to be sent to Washington
for the purpose of negotiating friendly relations and
settling all questions of disagreement with the United States,
and after appointment the commission consisted of John Forsyth,
of Alabama, Martin J. Crawford, of Georgia, and A. B.
Roman, of Louisiana. On March 12th they addressed a communication
to William H. Seward, the newly appointed secretary
of state, upon the subject of their mission.

Seward prepared an answer, dated March 15th, which was
filed in the Department of State the same day. It stated
that he had no authority to recognize them as diplomatic
agents and that he saw in "the events which have recently
occurred not a rightful and accomplished revolution and an
independent nation, with an established government, but
rather a perversion of a temporary and partisan excitement

to the inconsiderate purposes of an unjustifiable aggression
upon the rights and authority vested in the Federal Government."
If this letter had been delivered at once, there could
be no question as to the uncompromising attitude of the Federal
Government, but it was not so delivered. On March 15th,
the date the note was prepared, Justice John A. Campbell of
the Supreme Court was informed by his associate Judge Nelson
of Mr. Seward's strong disposition for peace and of his
anxiety to avoid making a reply at that time, if possible. On
this intimation Judge Campbell on the evening of the same
day had a personal interview with Mr. Seward, as a result of
which he sought out the Confederate commissioners and gave
them the following statement:

"I feel entire confidence that Fort Sumter will be evacuated
in the next five days. And this measure is felt as imposing
great responsibility on the administration. I feel entire confidence
that no measure changing the existing status, prejudicially
to the southern states, is at present contemplated.
I feel an entire confidence that an immediate demand for an
answer to the communication of the commissioners will be
productive of evil and not of good. I do not believe that it
ought, at this time, to be pressed."

Mr. Seward was immediately informed by Judge Campbell
of what he had communicated to the commissioners. On this
assurance the commissioners relied, and ceased to urge a
formal reply to their communication.[70] At the end of the five
days, Judge Campbell, in company with Judge Nelson, had
another interview with Seward. They found him much occupied,
and he could only reply to the question why Fort Sumter
had not been evacuated that "everything was all right." The
next day (March 21st) they had another and much freer conversation
with Seward, who said that "the failure to evacuate
Fort Sumter was not the result of bad faith, but was attributable
to causes consistent with the intention to fulfill the
engagement and that as regarded Fort Pickens in Florida,

notice would be given of any design to alter the existing status
there."[71]

This renewed assurance was communicated to the commissioners,
and by them communicated to President Davis and
by him to General Beauregard, who had been put in command
at Charleston.

On April 1st Judge Campbell saw Seward again, and when
he asked what he should report on the subject of the evacuation
of Fort Sumter, Seward obtained an interview with the
President, and returning wrote the following: "I am satisfied
the Government will not undertake to supply Fort Sumter
without giving notice to Governor Pickens." There was a
departure here from the pledges of the previous interviews,
but the verbal explanation that Seward gave that "he did
not believe that any such attempt would be made and there was
no design to reinforce Fort Sumter" quieted Campbell's
apprehensions.

By the 7th of April there were so many indications in the
papers that hostile measures were on foot that Campbell
addressed a letter to Seward and asked if the assurances
Campbell had given the Confederate commissioners "were
well or ill founded," and in respect to Sumter he received in
reply, "faith as to Fort Sumter fully kept—wait and see."
In the morning's paper Campbell read: "An authorized messenger
from President Lincoln informed Pickens and General
Beauregard that provisions will be sent to Fort Sumter
—peaceably or otherwise by force." This was the 8th of
April and on the evening of that day the first part of the relief
squadron left New York. This was not a notice in any honorable
sense.

There can be no doubt as to the truth of Campbell's statements,
and two of Lincoln's cabinet, Welles and Blair, fully
support him in their account. They go further and allege
that the determination to relieve Fort Sumter was opposed

by Seward and that after the relief squadron was decided on,
so resolved was Seward to render it abortive that on April
4th he telegraphed Governor Pickens through Mr. Harvey,
afterwards made by Mr. Seward minister to Portugal, that
an attempt was to be made to reinforce Sumter, and he got
the President to dispatch the Powhatan on a special relief mission
to Fort Pickens disestablishing its captain, Samuel Mercer,
and placing Lieut. D. D. Porter in command. As this
ship was the flag ship of the squadron to Fort Sumter, the
entire squadron, when it arrived off Charleston, was "destitute
of a naval commander, flag ship and instructions."
Welles thinks in this way Seward sought to redeem the words
sent to Judge Campbell: "Faith as to Fort Sumter fully
kept; wait and see."[72]

Seward, however, said nothing on April 7th when catechised
by Campbell, regarding Fort Pickens, and though the
case against the Federal Government in this connection was
even stronger than in the matter of Fort Sumter there was
not a pretence of notice given to anybody, though notice had
been promised to Campbell by Seward in their interview of
March 21st. Here as early as January 29, 1861, a written
agreement had been entered into binding the Government not
to reinforce the fort, unless it was attacked or reinforced by
the Confederates. Nevertheless, an order went from General
Scott, with the approval of Gideon Welles, secretary of the
navy, directing as early as March 12th Captain Vogdes to land
his company, then on the Brooklyn at Pensacola, and reinforce
the fort. Captain Adams, commanding the naval forces there,
refused to place his boats and other means for landing at the
disposal of Vogdes, and in his report to Welles, April 1, 1861,
Adams, who appears to have been an honorable man, called
attention to the terms of the armistice, which he declared both
sides "had faithfully observed," and said that the landing of
troops would be considered not only a declaration of war but
an act of war and would be resisted to the utmost. Upon the
receipt of this information Welles, regardless of the existing

armistice, ordered him on April 6th to comply with the request
of Captain Vogdes, "it being the intention of the Navy
Department to cooperate with the War Department in that
object."[73] Obedient to order, on April 11th at 9 A. M. the
Brooklyn got under way, and during the night landed troops
and marines at the fort. This was the night before Fort Sumter
was fired on, and no notice of any kind was given.

In fairness to Seward, he cannot be held responsible for
the action of Welles, though Lincoln knew all about it, and it
is possible that Seward knew nothing of General Scott's order
when he made the answer to Judge Campbell on March 21st
of giving notice, if conditions at Fort Pickens were changed.

But this cannot be said of another expedition ordered
April 1st by Lincoln. This was the detachment, already
referred to, from the squadron to reenforce Fort Sumter, of
the Steamer Powhatan. By this order, made on Seward's
recommendation, Lieut. D. D. Porter was placed in command
of the ship, displacing Capt. Samuel Mercer, and the Commandant
of the Navy Yard at New York was expressly warned
that no communication of the matter should be made to the
Navy Department![74] The Powhatan was to go to Pensacola,
and "at any cost or risk" prevent an expedition (of Confeder
ates) from the mainland reaching Fort Pickens.

The strange part of all this is that Welles, the secretary
of the navy, being purposely kept ignorant of the secret order
to the Powhatan, added that vessel as the flagship to the
Fort Sumter expedition. When Porter refused to obey,
alleging the authority of the President, Welles flew to the
President and complained. Lincoln was submissive enough
and excused himself on the ground that, while he had approved
the expedition, he did not know that the Powhatan was the
flagship of the Sumter expedition, and he then ordered Seward
to recall Porter and the vessel. Seward pretended to comply,
but as the recall was signed by "Seward," Porter claimed to

be under Presidential orders and went on to Fort Pickens, but
owing to storms and defective machinery he did not show up at
the fort till after the capture of Fort Sumter.[75] Here was a
plain case of Lincoln and Seward combining to snub and
deceive their own colleague in the cabinet—Gideon Welles.

Seward was a cunning diplomat, and he guarded against
contingencies. When on April 9th the Confederate commissioners,
considering themselves deceived, as they had a right
to think, demanded a reply to their letter of March 12th,
Seward caused to be handed to them his memorandum of
March 15th, which had been on file in the State Department
ever since its date. This letter seemed to offer no compromise,
and of course breathed not a word of his efforts during
twenty-three days to effectuate the evacuation of Fort Sumter.
On the contrary, an endorsement made on it put the
blame on the Confederate commissioners for the non-delivery
of the memorandum earlier.

The charge against Seward of a breach of faith appears,
therefore, fully sustained, but Seward was a subordinate officer
and the real responsibility rested with Abraham Lincoln.
Welles, who hated Seward, says that Lincoln knew nothing
of Seward's assurances, but this can hardly be. Mr. James
Schouler is an example of an extreme partisan, having little
sympathy with the South, but even he is bothered with a conscience,
and in his "History of the United States" he has the
manhood to say that in his opinion Lincoln was privy to all
the assurances of Seward. Were it otherwise, why should
the President on April 1st, he pertinently asks, have instructed
Seward to inform Campbell that he would not provision Sumter
without notice? That Lincoln allowed this to be communicated
to Campbell is not only directly proved by the account
which Campbell gives of his interview with Seward, but is
attested by Lincoln's private secretary, J. G. Nicolay, in a
personal memorandum.[76] Then besides the improbability of

Seward undertaking to assume such high responsibility with
out the consent of the President, Welles' own "Diary"
asserts and proves that Lincoln during this time was under
the domination of Seward.

Not only is this shown by the affair of the Powhatan but
by Lincoln's actually signing an order, without reading it, for
the reorganization of Welles' department instigated by Seward.
When taken to task by Welles, Lincoln apologized and
said: "If I can't trust the secretary of state, I know not
whom I can trust." Welles says: "The secretary of state
spent much of each day at the Executive Mansion and was
vigilant to possess himself of every act, move and intention
of the President, and of each of his associates."

So the attitude of Lincoln's mind towards Fort Sumter,
being similar to that of Seward, renders it additionally probable
that he endorsed and sanctioned Seward's assurances
to Judge Campbell. But this is to be always kept in mind,
Lincoln advocated the peace program not for the sake of peace
but for the sake of policy.

During the closing hours of Buchanan's administration,
Seward, who was looked upon as the coming premier of the
new administration, had told Gov. C. S. Morehead, in the
presence of Mr. Taylor of Washington and Messrs. Rives and
Summers of Virginia, that "if this whole matter is not satisfactorily
settled within sixty days after I am seated in the
saddle and hold the reins firmly in my hand, I will give you
my head for a football."[77] Similarly Lincoln, in his speeches
on his journey to the capital, made light of the troubles in
the country, and we are told that his remarks had a most
depressing effect upon Major Anderson and his men at Fort
Sumter. After his arrival in Washington, February 23rd, his
mind was so turned towards peace for policy sake that he
sought to make a bargain with the Virginia Convention for
the withdrawal of the troops from Sumter, if the Convention
would adjourn and go home. By this measure Lincoln doubtless

hoped to isolate the cotton states and prevent the secession
of the border slave states.

Governor C. S. Morehead, of Kentucky, says[78] that on
Mr. Lincoln's arrival in Washington he waited upon him, in
company with Mr. Rives, of Virginia, Mr. Doniphan, of Missouri,
and Mr. Guthrie, of Kentucky, members of the Peace
Convention, and that in answer to the earnest solicitations
of these gentlemen he promised to withdraw the troops from
Fort Sumter, "if Virginia would stay in the Union." This
is undoubtedly the interview to which Lincoln alluded[79] as
reported by John Hay in his "Diary" under date of October
22, 1861, as taking place between himself and "certain
southern pseudo-Unionists before the inauguration, at which
time, as he said, he promised to evacuate Fort Sumter if they
would break up their Convention without any row or nonsense.
They demurred." When in London a year or two
later, Morehead reiterated his statement, which was published
in the London Times. Schleiden, the German minister
at Washington, reported[80] that Lincoln had said to the peace
commissioners of Virginia: "If you will guarantee me the
State of Virginia, I will remove the troops. A state for a fort
is not a bad business." Schleiden, doubtless, referred to the
interview mentioned by Morehead, as there is no positive
record of any other with the peace commissioners.

After the inauguration there is a certainty that Lincoln
had concluded to withdraw the troops without any condition.
According to Montgomery Blair, "the cabinet generally had
been convinced that Fort Sumter was untenable and acquiesced
in its surrender, submitting to the inevitable."[81] On March
15th, only one man in the cabinet, and that was Blair himself,
was absolutely in favor of reinforcing Fort Sumter. That

day, it will be remembered, Seward gave Campbell the assurance
of the limit of five days within which the withdrawal
would take place. When six days passed and the withdrawal
did not take place, Seward declared[82] that "the resolution
had been passed and its execution committed to the President."
In strong corroboration is a paper published by Governor
Francis Pickens, in August, 1861. Pickens says that he
had the intelligence from "one very near the most intimate
counsels of the President" that this paper was designed as a
proof sheet for some prominent newspaper, was submitted to
the President and cabinet, approved, and a proclamation in
conformity with its general views was to be issued. The proof
sheet was in the nature of a defense of Mr. Lincoln for signing
an order of evacuation, and put the blame on the treasonable
conduct of Mr. Buchanan, which rendered the surrender necessary.[83] No other person conformed so closely to Pickens'
description as "one very near the most intimate counsels of the
President" as Seward, the Secretary of State.

There is any amount of additional evidence that Lincoln
and his advisers in the month of March contemplated the surrender
of Fort Sumter.[84]

Lincoln, however, delayed in executing the order, and in
course of two weeks changed his policy altogether. Welles
ascribes[85] the change to Montgomery Blair. He observes that
"the President, with the acquiescence of the cabinet, was about
adopting the Seward and Scott policy, and Blair wrote his
resignation determined not to continue in the cabinet if no
attempt was made to relieve Fort Sumter. Before handing in
his resignation a delay was made at the request of his father.
The elder Blair sought an interview with the President, to
whom he entered his protest against non-action, which he

denounced as the offspring of intrigue. His earnestness and
indignation aroused and electrified the President." Blair, on
the other hand, seems to ascribe[86] the change to the advice of
Seward and General Scott that Fort Pickens as well as Fort
Sumter be abandoned. In this he says, "they overshot the
mark with Lincoln. Fort Pickens was well supplied and was
actually impregnable, while the Federal Government commanded
the sea." But a more intelligible explanation is to be
had in another direction.

The change from a chaotic condition in which peace was
a large figure to a settled determination on the part of Lincoln
to employ arms began about March 29, when certain
radical influences got to work and made themselves felt. On
March 15th only one man (Blair) in the cabinet was absolutely
in favor of reinforcing Fort Sumter, and on March 29th the
cabinet was nearly evenly divided. The determining influence
appears to have been the tariff.

On March 16th, Stanton, who had been a member of
Buchanan's cabinet, and had not yet taken sides with the
Republicans, wrote to the ex-President that "the Republicans
are beginning to think that a monstrous blunder was made in
the tariff bill" (the Morill tariff passed after the senators
from the cotton states had left their seats—with rates from
50 to 80 per cent), that "it will cut off the trade of New York,
build up New Orleans and the southern ports, and leave the
Government no revenue." There was a Confederate tariff
from 10 to 20 per cent, and fears of its favorable operation
to the South were excited in the bosoms of Lincoln and his
cabinet. It appeared as if the southern milch cow might
escape the northern milking altogether.

Now, this was not to be thought of, and the governors of
many of the northern states, which were especially under the
control of the tariff interests, came to Washington and were
there before March 29, and several days after it, when Lincoln

began to amend his stand. They offered him men and
arms.[87]

The proof of their agency is as follows. While Lincoln
was busy on April 1st giving secret orders for at least three
expeditions to go to Fort Pickens and was getting ready the
expedition to relieve Fort Sumter,[88] he was prevailed upon by
Seward to try the old alternative of bargaining the withdrawal
of the troops from Fort Sumter in return for an adjournment
of the Virginia Convention. He set on foot new negotiations,
which are referred to in the latter part of the paragraph in
Hay's "Diary," reporting Mr. Lincoln at Seward's house
on October 22, 1861: "Subsequently (i. e., subsequent to
the interview with Morehead and others of the Peace Convention
before the inauguration) he renewed the proposition
to Summers but without any result. The President was most
anxious to prevent bloodshed."

The true story seems to be that Lincoln intended to make
the proposal and took steps accordingly, but changed his
mind and never actually made it. He sent Allan B. Magruder,
a Virginia lawyer, residing in Washington, to invite
George W. Summers, a leading Unionist in the Virginia Convention,
to come to see him. Magruder reached Richmond
April 2d, and as Mr. Summers could not leave Virginia,
John B. Baldwin, another prominent "Union man," went in
his stead. He arrived in Washington on April 4th, and immediately
went to see Mr. Seward, who took him to Lincoln at
the White House. But Lincoln told him he had "come too
late," and when Baldwin earnestly pleaded with him in favor

of letting the South alone, Lincoln vehemently asked, "What
would become of his revenue?"[89]

Considering the enormous interest centering around the
tariff, and the fact that in 1833 the tariff question had actually
pushed the country to the verge of war, the pertinency of Lincoln's
question is obvious and it is not surprising that the
final determination turned upon it. Strong corroboration of
the tariff influence is afforded by A. H. H. Stuart, in his
account[90] of the interview held with Lincoln by the Virginia
delegation on April 12th, and in the account[91] of Lincoln's
interview with Dr. Fuller and the deputations from each of
the five Christian Associations of Baltimore, held on April
22nd. In each interview, when begged to leave the South
alone, Lincoln asked: "And what is to become of my
revenue?"

The very day (April 4th) Baldwin arrived in Washington,
General Winfield Scott issued an order for furnishing
troops for an expedition under Captain Fox, "whose object
is to reinforce Fort Sumter." And on April 6th Lincoln
drafted the instructions for the Fox expedition. As a further
commentary on the tortuous course at Washington, this man
Fox had been, with Lincoln's encouragement, for weeks preparing
the plan of reinforcements. The latter part of March
he had been sent to Charleston by Lincoln with a view to concoct
a scheme, and had obtained access to the fort by representing
to Governor Pickens that he came on "a peaceable
mission." This plan had been adopted by the Government
and was now in process of execution under his supervision.[92]

It is interesting to note in considering these remarkable
proceedings that while John B. Baldwin declared before the
Reconstruction Committee in 1866 that Lincoln made him no
proposal about withdrawing the troops, Lincoln, in the extract

General Winfield Scott

above from John Hay's "Diary" is reported as saying that
such a proposal was made, but "without any result." As
reported by John Minor Botts, detailing several years later
an interview with Lincoln on April 7, the same proposal is
attributed to Lincoln of withdrawing the troops and that
Baldwin scouted the idea of adjourning the convention.[93] But
Botts, proverbially inaccurate, because of his overconfidence,
weakened his declaration by reciting minor details which
could never have occurred as he gives them, and Hay's entry
in the "Diary" is not contemporary with the act and confuses
Baldwin with Summers, who did not go to Washington.

Baldwin could very rightly claim that as specially charged
with the mission to Lincoln, his testimony is of a higher character
than any, and Summers and other friends in the convention
declared that the statement made by Baldwin before
the Reconstruction committee in 1866 was substantially what
he told them on his return from his mission to Washington.
He bore no overtures from Lincoln whatever.[94]

Be that as it may, either story shows Lincoln as far from
the character ascribed to him by most of his admirers, who
love to represent him as pursuing from start to finish one
undeviating course of action. They never tire of abusing
Mr. Buchanan for not at once putting down the Rebellion, but
Mr. Buchanan, despite the perplexities of his situation, never
at any time presented such a picture of contradiction and
weakness as Lincoln. Here Lincoln was almost in the same
moment contriving means to reinforce Fort Sumter and proposing
to take the soldiers away.

The severest criticism of Lincoln comes from Schouler,
one of his greatest admirers: "So reticent, indeed, of his
plans had been the President, while sifting opinions through
the month, that it seemed as though he had no policy, but was
waiting for his cabinet to frame one for him." This is certainly
not the kind of appearance that one would expect in a

President, who is supposed by virtue of his office to be a
leader of men.

In this critical moment, involving the peace of the country,
there never was a time when the presence of Congress was
more necessary or advisable. But Lincoln, having brought
his mind through the mazes of uncertainty to a fixed resolve,
assumed the whole responsibility and deliberately refrained
from calling to his side the great council of the nation. He
could have called it in ten days, but did not do so until July
4th, when the northern heart had been "fired" sufficiently.
Congress, called at an earlier date, might not have approved
his course.

To return to our narrative, Baldwin went back to Richmond,
and it was then that the delegation appointed by the
Convention and consisting of William Ballard Preston, A. H.
H. Stuart and George W. Randolph, set out on their trip to
Washington to ascertain the final intentions of the administration.
Mr. Lincoln appointed Saturday, the 13th day of April,
as the day of receiving them. When that day arrived, the
fleet had sailed, and the bombardment of Fort Sumter had
taken place. The first gun had been fired by a former Virginian,
Edmund Ruffin, who in his zeal for an independent
South had exercised the right of expatriation and removed
from Virginia to become a citizen of South Carolina.

Mr. Lincoln read to the Virginia delegates a carefully prepared
paper, in which he expressed his intention of following
the course outlined in his inaugural address, which was to
hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to
the government and to collect the duties and imposts. But,
says Mr. Stuart in his account of the interview, "his declarations
were distinctly pacific and he expressly disclaimed all
purpose of war." Now Seward, the secretary of state, and
Mr. Bates, attorney general, gave similar assurances, and yet
the same train which took the commissioners home brought
Mr. Lincoln's proclamation calling for 75,000 men. Neither
Lincoln, nor Seward, nor Bates had ever given a hint to the

delegates that such a paper was in existence. So surprised
was Mr. Stuart when he saw it in the Richmond papers at
breakfast Monday morning, April 15th, that he thought at
first it must be a mischievous hoax.[95]

The same day the delegates made a report of their interview
to the convention. It is hard to believe that Lincoln and
his advisers in the cabinet resorted to all these deceptive
doings in fulfillment of a carefully considered plan of action.
It is more likely they did not know what course it was best
to pursue and, being at their wits' ends, seized on the suggestions
of the moment. In a recent letter to the author, a well-known
writer, and a great admirer of Lincoln, explains his
conduct as "a maneuvre" to make the South appear as the
aggressor. George Lunt of Boston, in his book on the war,
explains the Fort Sumter expedition as "a maneuvre," which
military persons, and sometimes politicians, metaphorically
denominate "stealing a march." No kind of stealing at any
time appears very honest, and the maneuvre, even if it succeeded
in stirring up the North, did not rid Lincoln of the
charge that he was the aggressor in the war. Mr. Hallam in
his Constitutional History of England states that "the
aggressor in a war is not the first who uses force, but the first
who renders force necessary."

If Lincoln's design was to stir the North up, he was not
disappointed. Despite the fact that the attempt to reinforce
Fort Sumter compelled the Confederates to fire on it, the
North responded madly when the flag was thus "insulted."
This had not been the case when the Star-of-the-West was
fired on, and it showed that Buchanan's policy of delay was
the right course if war was intended. The northern newspapers
burst out now in a fury of anathema against the South, and
the northern people responded in a mighty shout of vengeance.

On the other hand, the proclamation of Lincoln calling for
75,000 men to subdue South Carolina aroused the South to an
even greater demonstration of enthusiasm. The border states

had never regarded Lincoln's election under constitutional
forms as a sufficient cause of secession but they were all
unanimous against coercion, and here they were up against
it. It left them no alternative but secession. Then came at
last the rush of the Southern Nation to arms. Nevertheless,
the Virginia convention acted with a coolness not to be
expected at such a time.

On motion of James P. Holcombe, April 16, 1861, the Convention
went into secret session, and on Mr. Tyler's motion
the members were required to take an oath of secrecy. In
secret session Mr. Preston, one of the recent commissioners
to Mr. Lincoln and a gentleman of distinguished abilities, submitted
an ordinance repealing the ratification of the Constitution
of the United States by the State of Virginia, and revoking
all rights and powers granted under said ratification. On
this ordinance the convention voted next day, and it was carried
by a vote of eighty-eight to fifty-five. Immediately after
the question, nine members changed their vote from the negative
to the affirmative, and six who had not previously voted
obtained leave to record their names in favor of the ordinance.
Thus the final vote stood 103 to 46. Most of the
negative votes were from West Virginia, which was largely
settled by people from Pennsylvania, and had little in common
with the old settled parts of the State.

The ordinance was to be submitted to the vote of the people
on May 23, 1861, and in the meantime ordinances were rapidly
passed for calling out volunteers, and organizing an army and
navy. Robert E. Lee, who had resigned from the United
States army, was made commander in chief of the state forces.
The Navy Yard at Norfolk and the arsenal at Harper's Ferry
were seized, but there had been so much delay that the Federals
were enabled to remove or destroy most of the treasures
which they contained in the shape of provisions of war of all
kinds.

On the 24th of April a committee, of which John Tyler was
chairman, reported a treaty made with the Confederate states

for an alliance, offensive and defensive, the same not to have
any legal operation or effect if the people of the Commonwealth
decided on May 23d not to approve the ordinance of
secession. And on the 29th of April the Convention elected
R. M. T. Hunter, William C. Rives, Waller R. Staples, John
W. Brockenbrough and Gideon D. Camden to represent the
state in the Confederate Congress at Montgomery. On the
removal of the capital of the Confederacy to Richmond, John
Tyler was added to the number.

This action was justified under the Constitution of the
United States, which in Article I, Section 10, declares that
"no state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty
of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in times of peace, enter
into any agreement with another state or with a foreign power
or engage in war, unless actually invaded or in such imminent
danger as will not admit of delay." The danger to Virginia
in 1861 came from the Federal government itself, which had
called out troops and threatened hostile action against any
state which might adopt secession. This section itself was a
direct recognition of the sovereign power of self protection
through the action of the constituted government in any state,
and the vote of the people which required time could not be
waited for when destruction was imminent.

On the 23d of May the people of Virginia voted upon the
ordinance of secession, referred to them by their convention.
The result was that the ordinance was ratified by a majority
of 92,149 at the polls and 10,515 in the camps, making a total
of nearly 103,000 votes. Even the thirty-seven counties constituting
the present state of West Virginia, settled largely by
non-slaveholders and afterwards railroaded out of Virginia by
a combination of the Federal government and John S. Carlile
and Waitman T. Willey, threw a majority of more than 400
votes in favor of ratifying the ordinance of secession.[96]

The day next after this election the Federal troops crossed
the Potomac and took possession of Alexandria, thus beginning
the invasion of the State.

CHAPTER VI

DOMESTIC HISTORY, 1789-1861
ADMINISTRATIONS OF THE GOVERNORS, 1788-1834

Beverley Randolph, Governor,

December 1, 1788 November 30, 1791.

He was the son of Col. Peter Randolph, of "Chatsworth"
Henrico County, Surveyor General of the Customs for the
Middle district of America. He was educated at William and
Mary College, where he graduated in 1771, and during the
American Revolution he was a member of the House of Dele
gates from 1777 to 1781. In 1787 he was president of the
Governor's Council, and in 1788 he became Governor, serving
by annual election three years. He died in February, 1797,
at his residence, "Green Creek," in Cumberland County,
Virginia.

Among the many acts of the Legislature with which his
administration was concerned, the following may be
mentioned:

An act to cede to the United States two acres at Cape
Henry in Princess Anne County for the erection of a light
house. The act provided that after seven years, if the light
house was not erected, or was suffered to fall into decay or be
rendered useless, the property or the soil and jurisdiction
over the same should revert to the Commonwealth. This work
had been long in contemplation, and in February, 1727, the
General Assembly of Virginia had passed a law on the subject.
Another had been passed in 1752, but little or nothing was
done under either law. In 1772 the General Assembly passed
another act for the erection of the lighthouse, in conjunction

with the State of Maryland, and under the act in 1774 some
rock was brought to Cape Henry from Mr. Brooke's quarry
on the Rappahannock river. But the American Revolution
caused another delay.

Now under the auspices of the Federal Government a new
and successful start was made.

An act to erect the district of Kentucky, into an independent
State. Passed November 25, 1789.

An act for the cession of ten miles square, or any lesser
quantity of territory within this State to the United States for
the permanent seat of the General Government. Passed June
28, 1790.

In 1846 this portion of the District of Columbia was
returned to Virginia on the petition of the inhabitants.[97]

An act appropriating a further sum of money for building
the Capitol. Passed December 19, 1789. After the removal of
the seat of government from Williamsburg to Richmond in
1779, an act was passed for locating the Capitol, Governor's
house and other public buildings on Shockoe hill. The Revolution
prevented any actual construction, but in 1785 Mr. Jefferson,
then minister of the United States at Paris, was
requested by the directors of the public buildings, Messrs.
Buchanan and Hay, to procure for them a plan for the Capitol.
Mr. Jefferson responded and, in June, 1786, sent them a model
of the Maison Quarrée at Nismes, which he pronounced "one
of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful and precious
morsel of architecture left us by antiquity." It was a Roman
temple built by Caius and Lucius Cæsar and repaired by
Louis XIV. The model thus sent was accepted by the
directors, and the Capitol erected accordingly.

An act for cutting a navigable canal from the waters of
Elizabeth River in Virginia to the waters of Pasquotank
River in the State of North Carolina (known as the Dismal
Swamp Canal). Passed November 25, 1790.

An act directing a seal for the High Court of Chancery.

Passed December 27, 1790. The High Court of Chancery was
formed in October, 1777, and consisted at first of three judges,
Edmund Pendleton, president, George Wythe and John Blair,
but in October, 1788, it was reduced to one judge, George
Wythe, who under this act was to have executed a seal for his
court.

An act concerning Peter Francisco. Passed December 20,
1790. Francisco was noted for his great strength and served
gallantly in the Revolution. (See William and Mary College
Quarterly, XIII, 213-219.) The act allowed him a sum of
money for his valor and the loss of a horse.

An act concerning the southern boundary of this State.
Passed December 7, 1790. By this act the line commonly
called Walker's Line was declared the southern boundary of
the Commonwealth. In 1728 Col. William Byrd of Westover,
in Charles City County, acting for Virginia, had run the
boundary line from the Atlantic Ocean, through the Dismal
Swamp to Peter's Creek. In 1749 Col. Peter Jefferson, father
of Thomas Jefferson, and Joshua Fry, professor of mathematics
in William and Mary College, continued the line ninety
miles further to Steep Rock Creek, supposed to be on the
parallel of 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude. In 1778 another
survey was attempted, but the commissioners from the
two states differed so widely on principles, that two lines
were run instead of one, known as Walker's and Henderson's
lines, after the two leading commissioners from each State,
Dr. Thomas Walker and Richard Henderson. After thirteen
years North Carolina accepted Walker's line and this act confirmed
and established it.

But North Carolina having ceded the territory, known as
Tennessee, to the United States before this act was passed,
it became necessary to run the boundary line with that State.
Commissioners appointed in 1799 ran a line midway between
Walker's and Henderson's lines, which was ratified by the
Virginia Assembly in 1802-03.

Previously, in 1785, commissioners appointed in 1779 on

the part of Virginia, James Madison and Robert Andrews,
and on the part of Pennsylvania, George Bryan, John Ewing,
and David Rittenhouse, had agreed upon a line between Virginia
and Pennsylvania, which was duly accepted by the two
States. It continued Mason and Dixon's line five degrees
westward, thence northward on a meridian line to the Ohio.
By this agreement Pittsburg, site of old Fort Duquesne, fell
in Pennsylvania, and not in Virginia, as had been long claimed.

There were also many acts passed relative to the establishment
of academies, for opening and improving the navigation
of different rivers, and for establishing towns.

Henry Lee, Governor,

Dec. 1, 1791-Nov. 30, 1794.

He was the son of Henry Lee, and Lucy Grymes, his
wife, of "Leesylvania," Prince William County, Virginia, and
was born January 29, 1756. He graduated at the College of
New Jersey, A.B. 1773, and A.M. 1776. He served as lieutenant
colonel with great distinction in the Revolution. He served in
Congress from Virginia 1785-1788, and was a member of the
Convention of 1788 called to consider the Constitution, and
both spoke and voted for its ratification. In 1789-91 he was
a representative in the General Assembly, and was Governor
1791-1794. President Washington commissioned him Major
General in command of troops sent to Western Pennsylvania
to suppress the whiskey rebellion, which he soon effected. In
1798-99 he was in the Legislature and defended the alien and
sedition acts, and in 1799-1801 he was a representative in the
Sixth Congress, and at the close retired to private life. While
a member of Congress in 1799, when the death of Washington
was announced, he drew up a series of resolutions, formally
announcing the event, which were presented in his absence
by his colleague John Marshall. In these resolutions occur
those ever memorable words, "First in war, first in peace,
and first in the hearts of his fellow citizens." On the invitation

of Congress he was the author of "Funeral Oration" upon
President Washington, delivered December 26, 1799.

After his retirement to private life he wrote his excellent
work, "War in the Southern States" (2 vols., 1812). He died
while on a visit to General Greene's residence on Cumberland
Island, Georgia, March 25, 1818. He was buried there, but
recently his remains were removed to Lexington, Virginia,
and interred by the side of his illustrious son, General
Robert E. Lee. The County of Lee in southwest Virginia was
named for him.

One important matter of his administration was the relief
of the French emigrants who came under Du Tubeuf to Russell
County. Lee recommended that money be loaned them and
their bonds taken in payment. He pronounced their coming as
"the first effort at European emigration since the war." The
legislature acted on his advice and lent them 600 pounds.
Another matter of interest was the war with the Indians, who
had defeated the United States army under General St. Clair.
To protect the frontiers Virginia had to raise troops and
pay them, a duty which belonged to the United States. The
expense was so great that Lee states that "it had left the
treasury bare."

Another subject of interest was the new code, which Lee
announced to the Assembly, in a message dated October 1,
1792, as completed.

Probably the most important affair of his administration
was the suit brought in a Federal Court by the Indiana Company
in 1793 against the Commonwealth. His letters to the
speaker of the House of Delegates, October 21, 1793, and
November 13, 1793, take strong ground against the constitutionality
of the proceedings. He argues that the Union was
in "the nature of a Confederacy" and that "a sovereign
State was not sueable except with its consent." He advised
that an amendment be added to the Constitution expressly
forbidding such suits in the future. The Legislature backed
him by a resolution agreed to December 20, 1792, that the

claims of the Indiana Company had already been passed upon
and decided and that "the State cannot be made a defendant
in the said court, at the suit of any individual, or individuals."[98] Out of this grew the Eleventh Amendment, which
went into effect January 8, 1798.

Robert Brooke, Governor,

Dec. 1, 1794-Nov. 30, 1796.

He was born in Virginia in 1761, son of Richard Brooke,
and grandson of Robert Brooke, a skilled surveyor, who went
with Spotswood on the Transmontane expedition in 1714. He
was educated at Edinburgh University and in attempting to
return home at the beginning of the Revolution was captured
by Howe, the British admiral, and sent back to England, from
whence he went to Scotland, thence to France, and reached
Virginia in a French vessel carrying arms for the Continentals.
He joined Capt. Larkin Smith's company of cavalry,
was captured near Richmond, was exchanged and rejoined the
army. After the Revolution he was a member of the House
of Delegates for Spotsylvania County from 1791 to 1794,
and during the latter year became Governor. He served two
years, and in 1798 became Attorney General of the State,
defeating Bushrod Washington, General Washington's
nephew. He was grand master of Masons in Virginia in
1795-97. He died in 1799, while still Attorney General, aged
only thirty-eight. The County of Brooke in West Virginia
was named for him.

Among the important acts passed during his administration
was one granting Hampden-Sidney College the land
whereof a certain Robert Routledge died seized. Passed
December 11, 1794. This gentleman, who was a Scotch Presbyterian,
had been killed in a drinking bout by Col. John
Chiswell in the year 1766.

Another act was one establishing the first insurance company

in Virginia, the Mutual Assurance Society, passed
November 2, 1794; another, for appointing two persons to
perform marriages in Lee and Randolph counties, there being
then few ministers in these wild counties, who could act;
another, to establish the Petersburg Academy. Most interesting
perhaps was an act of the legislature granting the United
States Bank authority to establish a branch in the State, this
act seeming to claim that without the State's assent no branch
of the Bank could be set up in Virginia, which was the position
taken by John Tyler in 1841 as ground of his vetoes of
two bank bills.

James Wood, Governor,

Dec. 1, 1796-Nov. 30, 1799.

He was a son of James Wood, founder of Winchester, and
was born about the year 1750 in Frederick County, which he
represented in the Virginia Convention of 1776. From that
body he received a commission November 15, 1776, as colonel
in the Virginia line. In 1778 he was appointed to the command
of Burgoyne's imprisoned army and held command
at Charlottesville and at Winchester, when the prisoners were
removed to that place. In 1782 he was made president of the
Board of Arrangements of the Virginia line, created by a
resolution of Congress. In 1784 he was a member of the House
from Frederick County and afterwards served in the Executive
Council, and in December, 1794, he was elected Governor
of the State. After his term of three years had expired he
was commissioned Brigadier-General of State troops. He
was also for a time president of the Virginia branch of the
order of the Cincinnati. He died in Richmond, Virginia,
June 6, 1813. Wood County in West Virginia is named for
him.

During this administration there were rumors of negro
insurrections, and the Legislature in 1797 ordered the erection
of two arsenals and an armory sufficient to hold 10,000

muskets. The Alien and Sedition Laws, passed by the Federalists
in Congress, June 27, 1798, and July 14, 1798, had a
part in pushing them to completion. On December 2, 1798, the
Virginia Legislature adopted a protest drawn by James Madison,
which asserted the doctrine that the Union was a compact
to which the States were parties. The leaders in debate
in favor of the Resolutions were John Taylor of Caroline,
William B. Giles, Charles Fenton Mercer, Edmund Ruffin and
Peter Johnston (father of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston) and the
leaders against the Resolutions were George Keith Taylor,
Gen. Henry Lee and Archibald Magill.

James Monroe, Governor,

Dec. 1, 1799-Nov. 30, 1802.

He was a son of Col. Spence Monroe, of Westmoreland
County, Virginia, and was born April 28, 1758. He studied
at William and Mary College and rendered gallant service
in the Revolution, receiving a severe wound while leading
the advance at Harlem. In 1782 he was elected to the Legislature,
and from 1783 to 1786 was a member of the Continental
Congress. He served in the State Convention of 1788,
when he opposed the ratification of the Federal Constitution
without some amendments. In 1790 he became a United States
Senator, to fill the unexpired term of William Grayson,
deceased, serving until 1795, when Washington appointed him
minister to France. Here he offended the administration by
proving too pro-Galican, and he was recalled. The people
of Virginia sought to vindicate him by appointing him Governor.
On the election of Jefferson, Monroe was again sent
to France, and, with Robert R. Livingston, as co-plenipotentiary,
secured the cession from France of the vast Louisiana
Territory. Afterwards he was minister to England, Secretary
of State and Secretary of War, and President of the United
States for two terms (1817-1825). He died July 4, 1831. Monroe
County in West Virginia was named for him.

Just before his election as Governor, Patrick Henry died,
June 6, 1799, and two weeks after taking office George Washington
died, December 14, 1799.

This was followed by an insurrection of the negroes, known
as "Gabriel's Insurrection" after the ringleader, a negro
named Gabriel. At midday on the 30th of August, 1800,
information was given to Monroe by Mosby Shepherd that
the slaves in his neighborhood contemplated an extensive
insurrection. This information rested on the evidence of two
negroes, subsequently set free. Governor Monroe called out
at once several regiments of State Militia into service,
and, with the providential aid of a storm, which flooded the
streams and rendered their crossing impossible, nipped the
insurrection in the bud. The ringleaders, including Gabriel,
were caught, and some thirty of them executed. The plot was
fully explained by Monroe in his message December 5, 1800,
and it seems to have engaged the negroes in all the counties
surrounding Richmond. Their idea was to set fire to the
section of Richmond called Rocketts, in the east end, and
while the attention of the white inhabitants was engaged in
that quarter to seize the public arms and ammunition, stored
at the penitentiary.

Out of this insurrection grew the resolution of the Legislature
requesting the National Government, from motives of
humanity, to purchase a tract of land to which negroes like
those executed might be transported without compelling a
resort to extreme remedies involving death. Monroe, in communicating
the act to Thomas Jefferson, President of the
United States, gave it his endorsement, and suggested that
the terms of the resolution might be made the basis of another
interpretation for ridding the State altogether of slavery."
"We perceive," he said, "an existing evil, which commenced
under the Colonial system, and with which we are not properly
chargeable, or, if at all, not in the present degree, and we
acknowledge the extreme difficulty of remedying it." Jefferson

3 Monroe's Letter Book, State Archives.

in reply suggested Sierra Leone as a colonization point, and
this was first used as such; next in 1820 Sherbro Island was
used; and finally, December 15, 1821, Cape Mesurado, where,
shortly after, Monrovia, the future capital of Liberia, began
its existence, named after President Monroe.[99]

Another incident of the year 1800 was the trial in Richmond
of James T. Callender for alleged libel against John
Adams. Samuel Chase, who presided, was a Federalist of an
impudent type and utterly unfit to be a judge.

In 1802 the coming to Norfolk of negroes from San
Domingo gave rise to some apprehensions and there were
rumors of slave risings in Nottoway and Norfolk on May 10
of that year.

In his message December 7, 1800, Monroe urged internal
improvements, good roads and highways, and a well planned
system of schools.

Monroe was deeply interested in Jefferson's election in
1801 and wrote the Virginia Senators that "he trusted that
none of the Republican States will give ground." "The two
great States of Virginia and Pennsylvania, with their Republican
Governors, Monroe and McKean," says Muzzey, "were
ready to appeal to arms rather than see Jefferson cheated out
of the Presidency."

In a message dated December 6, 1802, Monroe informed
the General Assembly that the armory was nearly completed,
and in the same papers he said that the deaths of Major General
Daniel Morgan and of Brigadier-General Everard
Meade, and the removal of Major General George Rogers
Clark to Kentucky created vacancies in the militia which it
was incumbent upon the Legislature to fill.

John Page, Governor,

Dec. 1, 1802-Nov. 30, 1805.

John Page was born at "Rosewell" in Gloucester County
April 17, 1744, son of Mann Page and Alice Grymes, his

wife. He graduated from William and Mary College in 1763,
and served as a member of Lord Dunmore's Council and in
the House of Burgesses. When the Revolution began, he was
a delegate to the Convention of 1776, and became a member
of the Revolutionary Committee of Safety in August, 1775.
He was a colonel of militia from Gloucester in 1781, member of
Congress from 1789 to 1797. In the army to subdue the
Whiskey Insurgents in Western Pennsylvania, he was lieutenant
colonel. December 1, 1802, he became Governor, and after
serving three years, was in 1806 made by Jefferson United
States Commissioner of Loans, which position he held till his
death in 1808. The County of Page, in the Valley of Virginia,
formed in 1831 from Rockingham and Shenandoah, was named
after him.

Governor Page renewed the correspondence begun by
Monroe with Jefferson about colonization of the negroes in a
letter dated February 2, 1805. In a message dated December
5, 1803, he assumed the ground which prevailed more or
less with all the early governors that recommendations by the
governor was an interference with the legislative functions,
but two years later in making many suggestions in a message
he candidly admitted himself embarrassed by the recollections
of his former stand and recalled his opinions on the subject.

William H. Cabell, Governor,

Dec. 1, 1805-Nov. 30, 1808.

He was born December 6, 1772, in Cumberland County,
Virginia, and was the eldest son of Col. Nicholas and Hannah
Carrington Cabell. In February, 1785, he went to Hampden-Sidney
College, where he continued till September, 1789. In
February, 1790, he went to William and Mary College, where
he remained till July, 1793, graduating there as Bachelor of
Law. He practiced law, and in 1796 was elected a delegate
to the General Assembly. He was also in the Assembly of
1798 and voted for Madison's Resolutions against the Alien

and Sedition laws. In 1800 and again in 1804 he was presidential
elector on the Republican ticket. In April, 1805, he was
again elected to the Assembly, but within a few days after the
commencement of the session he was made Governor, December
1, 1805, and remained Governor three years. After this he
was a judge of the General Court, and later judge of the Supreme
Court of Appeals, becoming president thereof in 1842.
He served till 1851, when he retired from the bench. He died
at Richmond January 12, 1853. Cabell County in West Virginia
was named for him.

In his message to the Legislature December 1, 1806, Cabell
proved himself a strong friend of schools and urged their
importance. In the same paper he announced the death of the
great George Wythe, and the appointment of Creed Taylor
as chancellor to fill the vacancy.

Two other events distinguish the period of his incumbency.
One was the attack on the U. S. Frigate "Chesapeake," commanded
by Commodore Barron, by the British sloop of war
"Leopard." This outrage stirred the country generally and
exasperated beyond measure Virginia, within whose waters
the affair occurred. The Legislature passed flaming resolutions,
pledging both money and men to stand by the National
Government in defense of the rights of the Union.

The other event was the trial of Aaron Burr in Richmond
for alleged treason against the United States. The arch-conspirator
was defended by John Wickham, Edmund Randolph
and Benjamin Botts, eminent lawyers residing in Richmond,
and by John Baker of Shepherdstown and Luther Martin of
Maryland. Alexander McRae and George Hay of Richmond,
and the brilliant William Wirt were associated with the attorney
general of the United States, Caesar Rodney, in the prosecution.
John Marshall presided, and John Randolph was
foreman of the grand jury, and Col. Edward Carrington, foreman
of the jury that tried Burr. The last three were all bitter
enemies of Jefferson, on whom the duty devolved, as chief
executive, to see that the interest of the government was protected.

The trial degenerated into a party contest in which
the Federalists rallied about Burr and made him a hero and a
martyr to presidential persecution. The result as is well
known was the acquittal of Burr, because of the inability to
prove an overt act of treason, but the suspicion of which he
was prevailingly the subject seemed to attend him through
the remainder of his life. With the revival of Federalism in
recent days this unprincipled agitator is coming again into a
measure of praise.

John Tyler, Governor,

Dec. 1, 1808-Jan. 11, 1811.

John Tyler was son of John Tyler, who was long marshal to
the old Vice-Admiralty Court of the Colony of Virginia, and
died in 1773. The son was born in James City County, February
28, 1747, and was educated at William and Mary College.
He was an ardent patriot of the Revolution and was a
member of the House of Delegates from 1778 to 1786, during
a part of which time, 1781-1785, he was speaker. During his
last year (1786) he was instrumental in securing the passage of
the resolution for convening the Assembly of the states at Annapolis.
After this he was judge of the State Admiralty Court
and as such, a judge of the first Supreme Court of Appeals
till 1788, when, with the adoption of the Federal Constitution,
the Admiralty Court went out of existence, and Judge
Tyler became judge of the General Court. He was vice president
of the state convention which sat at Richmond in 1788,
and after a service of twenty years on the bench of the General
Court he became Governor December 1, 1808.

While judge he performed a memorable service in 1793 in
Kamper vs. Hawkins in maintaining the authority of the
court to set aside an act of the Legislature deemed unconstitutional.

He held office as Governor till January 11, 1811, when he
resigned to accept the office of District Judge of the United

States for Virginia, which he held till his death, February 6,
1813. In recommending him to Madison, Jefferson paid him
the compliment of having sufficient firmness to preserve his
independence on the same bench with Judge Marshall, a
difficult thing to do.

He was a warm Republican and supporter of Thomas
Jefferson. Tyler County in West Virginia is named for him.

One of the first acts of Mr. Tyler, as Governor, was to
enclose to Thomas Jefferson, who had now nearly concluded the
term of his second administration, an address of thanks from
the General Assembly, drawn by William Wirt, remarkable
for its elegance and beauty. The following October, 1809, his
term as President being concluded, Jefferson visited Richmond
and was enthusiastically received.

Governor Tyler, in his message December 4, 1809, enlarged
on the outrages committed by Great Britain and France,
and used this language: "We have talked long enough of our
rights and our national honor. Let us now prepare to defend
them."

In this message he was particularly urgent on the necessity
of promoting schools, and the invigoration of William and
Mary College by adding new professorships and giving the
legislature the power of appointing the board of managers.

So much of the governor's message as related to education
was referred to a committee, who, on January 19, 1810,
reported a bill providing that all escheats, confiscations, fines,
penalties and forfeitures and all rights in personal property
found derelict, should be appropriated to the encouragement
of learning, and the auditor was directed to open an account
to be designated the Literary Fund. It is said that the bill itself
was devised and drawn by Hon. James Barbour, then the
speaker of the House of Delegates. In his second message,
December 3, 1810, Governor Tyler urged an increase of the
number of judges of the Supreme Court from three to five,
which was acted on by the Legislature, and the number of five
still remains the constitution of the court. His strictures on
the old county courts have received present endorsement in the

fact of their abolition, and the appointment of judges learned
in the law to preside, while his attack upon the affectations of
the bar of his day—its habit of quoting English authorities and
making long and vapid speeches—has borne fruit in the growth
of a true American spirit. In Virginia today, Tucker, Lomax
and Minor take the place of Blackstone as text books, and
Call, Munford, Randolph, Leigh and Grattan take the place of
Durnford and East as reporters.

After a third election as Governor, Tyler resigned his
office on January 15, 1811, to accept, as stated, that of judge of
the United States District Court made vacant by the death of
Judge Cyrus Griffin.

James Monroe, Governor,

Jan. 16, 1811-April 3, 1811.

This was the second administration of Mr. Monroe, but as
he remained in office less than three months, no distinguishing
act of this interval is handed down to us. Monroe accepted the
office of Secretary of State tendered to him by Mr. Madison,
and on April 3 he resigned his office of Governor and was succeeded
by George William Smith, the Lieutenant Governor.

George William Smith, Lieutenant and Acting Governor,

April 3, 1811-Dec. 5, 1811; Governor,
Dec. 5, 1811-Dec. 26, 1811.

G. W. Smith, as Lieutenant Governor, became acting Governor
on April 3, 1811. He was elected Governor on December
5, 1811, but in a few days lost his life in the burning of the
Richmond Theater, December 26, 1811. He was a son of Col.
Meriwether Smith, a distinguished patriot of the Revolution
and was born in 1762. He was a lawyer, member of the House
of Delegates for Essex, 1790-1793, and for Richmond City,
1801-02, and 1807-08; of the Governor's Council, 1809; Lieutenant
Governor, 1810-1811.

On the lamentable occasion of his death, the theatre was
crowded with six hundred people. A new drama, "Father or

Family Feuds," was presented for the benefit of Henry
Placide, a favorite actor, and it was followed by the pantomime
of "The Bleeding Nun." The curtain had risen on the second
act when a wild cry of fire was heard. There was a rush for
safety, and in the frantic effort to escape many were trodden
under foot and killed. Others were burned to death. Seventy
persons were known to have perished. The fate of Lieutenant
James Gibbon of the United States Navy, son of the hero who
led "the forlorn hope" at Stony Point, and his betrothed
bride, the lovely Miss Conyers, was most touching. They died
locked in a mutual embrace. Benjamin Botts, one of Aaron
Burr's lawyers and father of John Minor Botts, lost his life
in endeavoring to save that of his wife. The same fate befell
Governor Smith, who had reached a place of safety outside of
the burning building, but returned to rescue his little son,
John Adams Smith. The Senate and House of Representatives
of the United States adopted a resolution to wear crape
on the left arm for a month.

The Monumental Church (Episcopal) was erected in 1812
upon the site of the ill-fated theatre; and a marble monument,
inscribed with the names of those who lost their lives, is still
to be seen in the portico of the church under which the unfortunate
victims were interred.

Peyton Randolph, Lieutenant and Acting Governor,

Dec. 26, 1811-Jan. 3, 1812.

Upon the death of Governor Smith, Peyton Randolph, as
President of the Council of State, or Lieutenant Governor,
acted as Governor for a few days, when James Barbour of
Orange County was elected Governor by the Legislature. He
was the son of Edmund Randolph and graduated at William
and Mary College in 1798. Inheriting the genius of his progenitors
for several generations he became early distinguished
in the practice of his profession of the law. In 1821
he became the reporter of the Supreme Court of Virginia, but

died December 26, 1828, and was succeeded as reporter by the
eminent Benjamin Watkins Leigh.

James Barbour, Governor,

Jan. 4, 1812-Dec. 11, 1814.

James Barbour was the son of Thomas Barbour, a member
of the House of Burgesses in 1769 and in 1775, and was born in
Orange County June 10, 1775. He was a member of the House
of Delegates from 1798 to 1811 and in 1831; Governor from
1812 to 1814; United States Senator from 1815 to 1825; Secretary
of War from 1825 to May 26, 1828, when he was sent by
President J. Q. Adams as envoy extraordinary and minister
plenipotentiary to Great Britain. He was a man of commanding
physique and noble mien, and President Adams greatly
admired him. In his diary, he declared that he did not think
the North could show his equal in ability. He was recalled by
President Jackson in September, 1829, and he only again
emerged from the retirement of private life to preside over the
Whig convention at Harrisburg in 1839, when Harrison and
Tyler were nominated. He died at his seat, Barbourville,
June 7, 1842. To him is ascribed the authorship of the bill to
establish the Literary Fund of Virginia and the anti-duelling
law—one of the most stringent and effective legislative acts
ever passed. Barbour County, now in West Virginia, was
named for him.

Governor Barbour's term of office as Governor pretty
nearly covered the period of the War of 1812. He rendered
great assistance to the Government of the United States in
the prosecution of the war. The people were enthusiastically
loyal, and they viewed the course of Massachusetts as treasonable.
This is the way an article in the Richmond Enquirer
began: "Rebellion Foiled and Union Stronger. March 9,
1814. The Legislature of Massachusetts has struck their tents
and gone home. Massachusetts threatened to secede and thus
destroy the Union because the war with England was not

brought to an end. How unlike Virginia, which flew to the aid
of Massachusetts when in 1776 the British made their attack
upon Boston."

But Virginia did not regard the Union as other than voluntary
and would have shed no blood if Massachusetts had
indeed withdrawn.

Wilson Cary Nicholas, Governor,

Dec. 11, 1814-Dec. 11, 1816.

He was a son of the celebrated patriot and Treasurer of
Virginia, Robert Carter Nicholas, and was born in the city of
Williamsburg January 31, 1761. He was a student at William
and Mary College, which he left in 1779, at the age of eighteen
to enter the army. His gallantry met with deserved promotion
and he was made commander of Washington's Life Guards
until its disbandment in 1783. After the Revolution he was a
member of the House of Delegates in 1784-5 and 1785 6, supporting
all measures of reform. In 1788 he was a member of
the State Convention and defended the proposed Federal
Constitution. After that he was a member of the House of
Delegates from 1784 to 1789 and from 1794 to 1800, and in
his two last sessions was a strong champion of the resolutions
written by Mr. Madison advocating state sovereignty. In 1801
upon the accession of Mr. Jefferson as President, Mr. Nicholas
was one of the leaders in the Senate of the United States in
support of Jefferson's measures. In 1804 he resigned his seat,
but in 1807 he was a candidate for the House of Representatives
and was elected without opposition. In 1809 he was
elected for a second term, but in the autumn of the same year he
resigned because of a severe attack of rheumatism. In December,
1814, he was made Governor, and after a second election
declined further service in that office. Succeeding this he
served for a few months as president of the branch of the
Bank of the United States, situated at Richmond. On the 10th

of October, 1820, he suddenly expired while in the act of
dressing.

Mr. Nicholas' term of office began towards the end of the
war of 1812 and the speedy announcement of peace in the
spring of 1815 gave him but little opportunity to show his
talents as a war Governor. The State had been left to its
own resources during the war, and the adjustment with the
Federal Government of the expenses thus incurred was zealously
pushed by Nicholas. Foreseeing that as a result of
repayment, the State would have command of a considerable
fund, he urged in one of his messages that the proceeds to be
derived from the Federal Government be applied to the purposes
of education. The result was a recommendation from
the Finance Committee of the House of Delegates, of which
Charles Fenton Mercer was chairman, that the sum paid over
by the Federal Government should go to the Literary Fund,
established February 2, 1810, during the administration of
John Tyler, Sr. An act was accordingly passed, and by December,
1817, most of the debt of the United States having been
paid back, the Literary Fund had grown to nearly one million
dollars.

Internal improvements also received his attention. He
urged their promotion, and in response to his message the Legislature,
on February 5, 1816, created "The President and
Directors of Public Works," which was given the management
of a fund to be created for internal improvements. This fund
was to consist of "all the shares owned by the Commonwealth
in The Little River Turnpike Co., the Dismal Swamp Canal
Company, the Appomattox, Potomac and James River Canal
Companies, in the Bank of Virginia and Farmers' Bank of
Virginia, together with such dividends as may from time to
time accrue on such shares, and such bonus and premiums as
may hereafter be received for the incorporation of new banks
or for the augmentation of the capitals or the extensions of the
charters of existing banks." This Board, from the time of its
creation, continued an important factor in the public economy

of the State till 1902, when its powers were vested in the
present very useful "Corporation Commission."

The year 1816 witnessed among other things the beginning
of steamboat navigation in Virginia. The Powhata arrived
from New York and began to make regular trips between Norfolk
and Richmond.

James Patton Preston, Governor,

Dec. 11, 1816-Dec. 11, 1819.

James Patton Preston was a son of Col. William Preston,
an active, enterprising citizen of the Southwest, and was born
at "Smithfield," Montgomery County, June 21, 1774. He
studied at William and Mary College about 1795, and in 1812
was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the Twelfth Infantry,
United States Army, and for gallantry was promoted August
15, 1813, to the rank of Colonel, and assigned to the command
of the Twenty-third Regiment. He participated in the Battle
of Chrystler's Field and was so severely wounded in the thigh
that he was crippled for life. In recognition of his patriotic
services he was elected by the General Assembly Governor of
Virginia to succeed Wilson Cary Nicholas, December 11, 1816,
and served in that capacity by annual re-elections until December
11, 1819. Subsequent to his gubernatorial service
Mr. Preston was Postmaster of Richmond for several years.
He finally retired to his home in Montgomery County, where
he died May 4, 1843.

In his message in December, 1818, he states that the Federal
Government had paid for advances during the War of 1812 the
sum of $1,693,014.62, and it is noteworthy that in the last year
of his incumbency, on January 25, 1819, the law was passed
establishing the University of Virginia in Albemarle County
—upon a site near Charlottesville, which had previously
belonged to Central College. This great institution has been
termed "The Lengthening Shadow" of Thomas Jefferson,

who devoted the leisure of his retirement to its successful
upbuilding.

Thomas Mann Randolph, Governor,

Dec. 11, 1819-Dec. 11, 1822.

He was son of Thomas Mann Randolph, who had served in
the Committee of Safety during the American Revolution and
frequently in the Legislature. His mother was Anne Cary,
daughter of Col. Archibald Cary of "Ampthill," Chesterfield
County. He was born at "Tuckahoe," the family seat, in 1768,
studied at William and Mary College and the University of
Edinburgh and visited Paris in 1788, where Thomas Jefferson
was then residing as Minister from the United States, having
with him his daughter, Martha, whom Randolph married in
1790. He served in the House of Representatives from 1803
to 1807, and in the House of Delegates, 1819, 1823-24, 1824-25,
and was Governor from December 11, 1819, to December 11,
1822. In the War of 1812 he served first as Lieutenant Colonel
of the Light Corps on the Seaboard and afterwards on the
Canada line, where he figured as Colonel commanding the
Twentieth United States Infantry. He was very fond of botanical
studies, being probably the best informed man in Virginia
on these subjects during the time in which he lived. He died at
Monticello June 20, 1828, aged sixty years.

Mr. Randolph's administration was marked by the excitement
produced by John Marshall and the Supreme Court
of the United States in reexamining the decisions of the State
Supreme Court of Appeals through a writ of error. Mr. Randolph,
in his messages, and the Legislature, through its resolutions,
denounced the action of the Supreme Court of the United
States as in violation of the Eleventh Amendment, the very
object of which was to inhibit the dragging of a sovereign state
before any tribunal without its consent. Both the Governor
and the Legislature felt that such assumptions of power on the
part of the United States would promote sectionalism rather

than unionism. In these cases, McCulloch vs. the State of
Maryland and Cohen vs. Virginia, decided at this time, the
principles asserted by Marshall were the very principles urged
by Abraham Lincoln, a sectional President, in overturning the
self-determination of the South and bestowing upon the North
the government of the whole country.[100]

In his message December 23, 1821, Mr. Randolph gave the
aggregate of the militia of the Commonwealth—infantry, cavalry
and artillery—as 91,928 men. He also dwelt upon the
narrow spirit manifested in some parts of the Union in opposition
to religious freedom and said: "It is the glorious distinction
of Virginia to have first fully removed the main cause
of that frightful disorder of the public imagination, which has
appeared in all ages, in other countries and even in some of
these States during the short period of our history, which
confounds piety with cruelty and makes religion give sanction
to the most atrocious outrages against humanity."

By an act of the General Assembly, March 1, 1821, the State
ceded to the United States the lands and shoal at Old Point
Comfort and the Ripraps for fortifications. Old Point Comfort
had been the site of a fort since 1608—the earliest English
fort in the United States.

The close of his administration was marked by the death of
Spencer Roane, September 4, 1822, of the Supreme Court of
Appeals, the brave advocate of States Rights, and the rival of
John Marshall in the power of his intellect. Under the nomme
de plume of "Algernon Sidney" he had written a series of
very able letters against the decisions of the Supreme Court
of the United States, in which he showed the obvious tendency
was to give the North a monopoly of power and hasten the
conflict of sections, whose fundamental differences no decisions
of a court could remove. In this he showed a very
clear insight.

James Pleasants, Governor,

Dec. 11, 1822-Dec. 11, 1825.

Mr. Pleasants was son of James Pleasants and Anne Randolph,
his wife, daughter of Isham Randolph of "Dungenness,"
Goochland County. He was born in Goochland County,
October 24, 1769, attended private schools, and after studying
law with Judge Fleming, began the practice of the profession
with considerable success. In 1796 he was elected a delegate
from Goochland, and served five sessions till 1802. As a Republican
he supported the resolutions of 1798-1799. In 1803 he was
chosen clerk of the House of Delegates and served until 1811,
when he was elected to the House of Representatives. In
Congress he supported Madison's policy on the War of 1812,
and continued in the House till 1819, when he was appointed to
the Senate of the United States, where he continued till 1822,
when he was elected Governor. Mr. Pleasants subsequently
served as a member of the Constitutional Convention of 182930,
which was his last public position, for, though twice elected
afterwards to judicial positions, such was his rare modesty
that he declined acceptance from a distrust of his qualifications.
His son, John Hampden Pleasants, was the famous
editor of the Richmond Whig.

Mr. Pleasants' message of December 1, 1823, is very full on
the conditions of the State. Returns from seventy-five counties
showed that 6,105 indigent children had been sent to school
in 1822 on the credit of the Literary Fund. The estimated
revenue of the State for the year beginning October 1, 1822,
was $462,363.83, and there was a balance on the previous year
of $19,993.92. The sum to the credit of the Literary Fund was
$1,228,568.33. In January, 1825, an act was passed for the
erection of another hospital for the insane to be created in the
western part of the State, and Mr. Pleasants, in his message,
mentioned Staunton as the place selected.

Taking its beginning from Monroe's recommendation in
1800 as a result of Gabriel's insurrection, the National Colonization

Society was organized in December, 1816, at Washington
to provide a home on the coast of Africa for the free
negroes. Bushrod Washington of Virginia, nephew of General
Washington, was the first president of the society. During
Governor Pleasants' administration an auxiliary society
was formed in Richmond November, 1823, of which Chief
Justice John Marshall was elected president and Governor
Pleasants vice president. Later on, January 23, 1824, the citizens
of Richmond got together in a great meeting to express
sympathy with the Greeks in their struggle with the Turks.
There were also in 1824 the deaths of two prominent citizens
of the State, Judge Fleming of the Supreme Court of Appeals,
and Dr. William Foushee, who was one of Richmond's most
public spirited citizens.

But the greatest event which happened in 1824 was the visit
to the State of General La Fayette. He landed at Yorktown
October 19, and during his stay in the Commonwealth, which,
because of his associations, was the most beloved of all the
States, he visited Williamsburg, Richmond, Petersburg and
many other places, and everywhere the people turned out to
receive him en masse. At Williamsburg, William and Mary
College bestowed on him the degree of Doctor of Laws. He was
given a great demonstration in Richmond and at a banquet at
which Judge William Leigh presided La Fayette responded to
the toast, "The State of Virginia; the City of Richmond," and
Governor Pleasants to the toast, "The State of Virginia."

John Tyler, Governor,

Dec. 11, 1825-March 4, 1827.

He was son of John Tyler and Mary Marot Armistead, his
wife, and was born March 29, 1790. He attended William and
Mary College in 1802 and graduated Bachelor of Arts, July 4,
1807. He studied law under Edmund Randolph and was sent
to the House of Delegates in 1811. This was the beginning of a

5 Christian, Richmond: Her Past and Present, 102.

long career of public service in which Mr. Tyler filled successively
the offices of member of the House of Delegates, member
of the Governor's Council, member of the House of Representatives,
Governor, United States Senator, member of the Convention
of 1829-1830, President (pro tem) of the Senate, Vice
President of the United States, President, Commissioner to
President Buchanan in 1861, member and President of the
Peace Convention, and member of the State Convention of that
year, member of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate
States, and member-elect of the Confederate House of Representatives.
His death occurred January 18, 1862.

During his administration of the affairs of Virginia Mr.
Tyler earnestly devoted himself to the task of healing the
sectional disputes which had long convulsed the State. He was
zealous in supporting the Board of Public Works, in pushing
canals and roads through the mountains, so as to bring the
East and West closer together. Two ceremonies of dignity
and importance graced the course of his first year. At the
invitation of the Legislature he presented a sword to Commodore
Lewis Warrington for his gallant service during the War
of 1812, making a notable speech on that occasion. This was
followed by the death of Thomas Jefferson on July 4, 1826,
which stirred the profoundest feelings of grief in the State and
Union. Thomas W. Gilmer communicated the sad tidings in
a note which ran: "Charlottesville, July 4, 3 o'clock p. m. To
the Editors of The Enquirer: Thomas Jefferson died today 10
minutes before one o'clock. Yours in great haste."

Immediately on hearing the news, which reached Richmond
on July 6, Governor Tyler convened the council and submitted
a set of resolutions[101] prepared by him which were unanimously
adopted. These resolutions provided for placing the hall of
the House of Delegates, the Senate Chamber and the Executive
Chamber in mourning, for tolling the bell in the guardhouse,
for the firing of minute guns and for badges of mourning to be
worn by the council for one month. After a meeting of the

citizens of Richmond in the hall of the House of Delegates
at which Andrew Stevenson addressed the meeting on the
life and labors of Jefferson, Tuesday, July 11, was set apart
as a day of public mourning. When the day arrived there was
a funeral procession from the Henrico County Court House up
E Street (Main Street) to Fifth, thence to H Street (Broad)
thence down H Street to the Capitol. Here Bishop Moore
opened the exercises with prayer, and Governor Tyler delivered
an oration, which received many plaudits in the newspapers
not only of the State but outside of the State.[102]

Everybody—Republican and Federalist alike—seemed to
grieve over Jefferson's departure. It was a testimonial of
interesting import that, just a month before, Chief Justice
John Marshall, his great political antagonist, had consented
to serve as chairman of a committee to receive subscriptions
in pecuniary aid of Jefferson. This committee was appointed
at a meeting of the citizens of Richmond on June 5, 1826, when
Governor Tyler presided and Thomas Ritchie acted as secretary.
July 4 was appointed as the day for making the subscriptions
and it was a day especially suited to call to mind
Jefferson's great work. The next newspaper that came out
was July 7, but instead of announcing the results of the effort
to raise money, it came with marks of deep mourning and
announced the death of Thomas Jefferson.[103]

In his second annual message in December, 1826, Governor
Tyler commented upon the defects of the educational system,
which was entirely eleemosynary and devoted to the education
of the poor. He professed himself in favor of a universal common
school system and made suggestions to that end. The
singular immunity from crime enjoyed by Virginia at this time
was noticed by him. Out of 700,000 free white inhabitants only
136 were within the walls of a prison.

On another subject Governor Tyler showed his interest.
Virginia, during the American Revolution, had held out inducements
in land bounties for military service. For the redemption
thereof she had appropriated lands in Kentucky, West
Virginia, and by the act ceding the Northwest, the land
between the Sciota and the Little Miami rivers. But the
erection of Kentucky into an independent State had cut short
this provision and rendered it inadequate. So Governor Tyler
in a message to the Legislature January 19, 1826, urged the
claims as a duty imposed upon Congress. The Legislature
did not act at once but when Mr. Tyler became Senator he
moved for an inquiry into the matter on March 5, 1830, and
soon after a bill was passed by Congress appropriating 260,000
acres in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio in satisfaction of the claims
of the Virginia State line.[104]

Mr. Tyler did not remain Governor long enough to fill out
his second term, being elected Senator in the place of John
Randolph. On March 3, 1827, he sent a letter to the Legislature
accepting the new honor conferred upon him, and resigned
his position as Governor.

William B. Giles, Governor,

March 4, 1827-March 4, 1830.

William B. Giles, son of William Giles and Anne Branch, his
wife, was born in Amelia County, Virginia, August 12, 1762.
He studied at Hampden-Sidney and Princeton Colleges, and
from Princeton he went to William and Mary College to study
law under the great law professor, George Wythe. From 1791
to 1803 he served in the House of Representatives, with the
exception of one term, 1798-1800, when he served in the House
of Delegates and supported Madison's famous resolutions and
report. In Congress he opposed John Jay's treaty in 1794
and the war with France. In 1804 he succeeded Wilson Cary

Nicholas in the United States Senate and being reelected
served till March 3, 1815. His failure to obey instructions in
1811 in voting for the United States Bank made him temporarily
unpopular in Virginia, which was increased by his opposition
to the Madison Administration. Mr. Giles was in private
life from 1815 to 1825, when he was a candidate for the United
States Senatorship, but was defeated by John Randolph. The
next year he was elected to the Legislature and on March 4,
1827, succeeded John Tyler as Governor. He was a member
of the State Convention of 1829-30, which convened on October
5, 1829, in the last year of his term. But he did not survive
long the close of this memorable gathering which occurred on
January 15, 1830. On December 4, 1830, he died at his residence,
"The Wigwam," in Amelia County.

In his messages, while advocating an extensive system of
internal improvements for the State, he denounced as contrary
to the Constitution the intermeddling of Congress with the
subject, and he was strong against the tariff. In a letter to the
Virginia Senators, Tazewell and Tyler, he advocated earnestly
the policy of laying an excise on goods imported from
any other State equal to the duty levied by Congress. He made
the telling point that "In distinct violation of the principle on
which American independence was founded, this tariff imposed
a tax, not by the representatives of the people bearing the
burden but by representatives of a distinct section of the
country, who did not participate in the burden of the tax."

The most important event of Giles' administration was the
meeting of the State Convention. The Constitution adopted in
1776 had existed till this time without change. It presented
a marked advance in the progress of democratic government,
but was still in many ways a copy of the old Colonial order of
government. Mr. Jefferson had not ceased to criticise it, and
it was especially objectionable to the large counties of the western
part of the State which had no greater representation than
the small counties of the East. The transmontane demanded a
white basis for representation, but the East, though unable to

defend equal county representation, insisted on a "mixed
basis" of white population and property. Eastern Virginia
demanded protection for its slaves, just as the Southern States
had demanded and received representation for three-fifths of
their slaves in the Constitution of the United States. Then
most of the taxes came from the East. Little Warwick County,
with its six hundred and eighty white persons, paid nearly
one-third of the tax paid by the 14,000 persons inhabiting the
large County of Monongahela.

After all theorizing about the fundamental principles of
law and government, the question confronting the members
was the union in one State of two dissonant factors, as existed
in the Union itself. The argument of the West was a good
one, if it meant separation, but it was subject to question, if the
East was to remain united with a section which had a totally
different set of interests to look after.

The Convention numbered in its membership of ninety-six
men two ex-Presidents, Madison and Monroe; the Chief Justice,
John Marshall; a future President, John Tyler, and many
others distinguished on the bench and at the bar and included
others who were yet to become Senators, Governors, members
of Presidential Cabinets, ministers abroad and members of
the Supreme Court of the United States. The East was led
by A. P. Upshur, Benjamin Watkins Leigh, William B. Giles,
Littleton Waller Tazewell and John Randolph of Roanoke,
and the West by Philip Doddridge, John R. Cooke, C. J.
Faulkner, Alexander Campbell and Lewis Summers. There
were, however, several from east of the Blue Ridge, like
William F. Gordon of Albemarle County, and Charles Fenton
Mercer of Loudoun County, that believed, like the Western
members, in an exclusive white basis.

A committee appointed to report on the subject was evenly
divided, and many propositions were offered but none adopted.
Till at last, when feeling had grown intense, a plan proposed
by William F. Gordon, in the nature of a compromise, received
the endorsement of the convention. The plan ignored the

JOHN RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE

basis question entirely and simply attempted an equitable distribution
of the representation. This adoption was accomplished
by a union of the valley counties with the East
and was not satisfactory to the West, which threatened
secession.[105]

The net result of the work of the convention was to do
away with county representation altogether, to reduce the
council from eight members to three, to extend the suffrage
to leaseholders and householders, but the government of the
counties was allowed to remain in the hands of the justices
as of old, under the controlling power of the Legislature.
When submitted to the people the Constitution was ratified
by 26,055 votes for acceptance to 15,566 for rejection.

John Floyd, Governor,

March 4, 1830-March 31, 1834.

John Floyd was born in Jefferson County, Virginia, April
24, 1783, son of Col. John Floyd, a prominent citizen of the
Southwest. He attended Dickinson College, Pennsylvania,
studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and settled
in Montgomery County. He was appointed a justice of
the peace in 1807, major of the militia in 1808, surgeon of the
Virginia line in 1812, and the same year was elected to the
House of Delegates. Later he was made brigadier-general
of militia in the State. In 1817 he was elected to Congress, and
was one of the leaders of the Republican party in the House.
He opposed the administration of John Quincy Adams (18251829)
and aided largely in the election of Jackson (1828). He
was a strong expansionist and introduced the first bill for the
occupation and settlement of Oregon. He became Governor of
Virginia March 4, 1830, and when his year was out he was
reelected by the Legislature for a term of three years under
the new constitution framed by the convention sitting at the

time of his inauguration, being the first Governor to serve
under that instrument, an honor of which he was proud. He
was in poor health for some time previous to the expiration
of his term, and he died from paralysis, at the Sweet Springs,
Montgomery County, August 15, 1837.

Three notable incidents distinguish his administration the
nullification controversy, Nat Turner's Insurrection, and the
running of the first rail cars employing steam power. The
history of the former has been given in another chapter, and
the sympathetic stand taken by Floyd in his messages procured
for him the vote of South Carolina as President of
the United States. Nat Turner's Insurrection took place in
Southampton County, south of the James River, in the summer
of 1831. It was a result of abolition propaganda, which was now
becoming quite active in the North. Nat Turner, the swarthy
leader, attacked his master's house, killed him, his wife and
children with an axe, and with his band of enthusiasts put
to sudden and violent death sixty-one persons, almost all
of whom were women and children. Governor Floyd took
prompt steps to suppress the insurrection, called out the
militia, and captured Turner, who, together with others prominent
in the affair, was tried for murder and executed on the
gallows. Some of the sentences to death, however, were commuted
by Floyd to imprisonment or deportation, and some
of the negroes he pardoned. The third event was the opening
in the summer of 1833 of the railroad from Petersburg to
Roanoke Falls in North Carolina, chartered in 1829-30.

As a result of Turner's uprising, many petitions and
memorials were sent to the Legislature of 1831-32, and were
referred to a select committee composed of twenty one members,
of whom sixteen were from counties east of the Blue
Ridge. Some days later William O. Goode, of Mecklenburg,
the leader of the slave interests, moved that the committee be
discharged from the consideration of the petitions, and "that
it is not expedient to legislate on the subject." Then Thomas
Jefferson Randolph, son of Governor Thomas Mann Randolph,

and grandson of Thomas Jefferson, moved as a substitute Jefferson's
postnatal scheme of 1779 for the gradual abolition
of slavery. After three days' discussion the committee made a
report to the effect that "it is inexpedient for the present
to make any legislative enactment for the abolition of
slavery." William Ballard Preston proposed a resolution as
a substitute for the report, declaring the expediency of a
legislative enactment on the subject. This was defeated by
a vote of ayes 58, noes 73. Then Archibald Bryce, of Goochland
County, proposed to amend the report of the committee
by prefixing the following preamble:

"Profoundly sensible of the great evils arising from the
colored population of the Commonwealth, induced by humanity
as well as policy, to an immediate effort for the removal
in the first place of as well as those now free or of such as
may hereafter become free, believing that this effort, while
it is in just accordance with the sentiments of the community
on the subject, will absorb all our present means; and that a
further action for the removal of the slaves should await a
more definite development of public opinion. Resolved, etc."

This preamble was adopted by a vote of 67 to 60, and, thus
amended, the report of the Select Committee was passed.

This incident in Virginia history is interesting historically
as showing that there was a strong sentiment abroad in the
State even at this late period for the abolition of slavery,
which might have grown to greater proportions but for the conscienceless
warfare waged by the abolitionists of the North,
inciting to murder and incendiarism. The violent crusade
undertaken by them against slavery closed the avenues of
public expression in Virginia, and it finally became almost
impossible for anyone in the State to talk openly, as so many
speakers did in this Legislature. It forced even men in West
Virginia, like George W. Summers and John S. Carlisle, the
last prominent in promoting the disruption of the State in
1861, into a position[106] that slavery was "a social, political and
religious blessing."

In the eyes of William Lloyd Garrison, a leader in abolitionism,
even Daniel Webster was a "monster" because of his
respect for the Constitution, and in the eyes of Wendell
Phillips Abraham Lincoln was a "slave hound" for a somewhat
similar reason.[107] But such epithets applied to Northern
men were mild when compared with those applied to Southerners
by the abolitionists. Governor Floyd was in thorough
sympathy with the movement in the Legislature for the abolition
of slavery, and used his influence in its favor, till the
heat of debate suggested a more politic stand.

On another subject, that of internal improvements, Floyd
had advanced ideas. Besides recommending help to the Jame-River
and Kanawha Canal, he recommended a railroad extending
to the salt, lead, iron and gypsum mines of the Southwest.
The proposed highway through Fredricksburg, Richmond and
Petersburg, connecting the North with the South, and the
Valley turnpike also received his endorsement.

13 Ambler, Life and Diary of John Floyd, p. 91.

CHAPTER VII

DOMESTIC HISTORY, 1789-1861 (Continued)
ADMINISTRATIONS OF THE GOVERNORS, 1834-1861

Littleton Waller Tazewell, Governor,

March 31, 1834-April 30, 1836.

Mr. Tazewell was the son of Hon. Henry Tazewell, who was
one of the Revolutionary patriots and constantly in the public
service as a member of the House of Delegates from Brunswick
County 1776-1778, and from Williamsburg 1779-1786, a member
of the Convention of 1776, as Judge of the General Court
1785-93, and of the Supreme Court of Appeals 1793, and as
a member of the Senate of the United States 1794-99. He was
born in Williamsburg December 17, 1774, and graduated from
William and Mary College in 1792, studied law under John
Wickham, of Richmond, and in 1796 was admitted to the bar.
In 1798 he was elected to the House of Delegates from James
City County and remained a member till 1801. He supported
Madison's resolutions of 1798 and report of 1800. When John
Marshall resigned from Congress, on being appointed by John
Adams Secretary of State, Tazewell was elected by the people
of the Richmond District to fill out his unexpired term. While
in Congress Mr. Tazewell supported Jefferson in the presidential
election, and opposed the attempt to place Burr in the
presidency. He moved to Norfolk in 1802, where he gained
much fame as a lawyer. In 1804-05 and 1805-06 he represented
Norfolk in the Legislature. That city was Federalistic
in its politics on account of its commercial interests, and this
doubtless influenced Mr. Tazewell to oppose the embargo and
the War of 1812.

After the war started, however, he loyally and patritically
yielded his support to Madison's administration. In 1816 he
was once more in the House of Delegates as the representative
of Norfolk City, but served only a single term. Under Monr
he was one of the United States commissioners instrumental
in the purchase of Florida from Spain. In 1824 Tazewell was
elected to the Senate of the United States and in that year
supported Crawford for the Presidency. Four years later, in
1828, he gave his support to Andrew Jackson as a choice of
evils, being disgusted with the latitudinarian views of Mr.
John Quincy Adams as represented in his messages. Jackson
in 1829 offered him the mission to England, which he declined.
In November, 1832, he retired from the Senate, induced
by the calls of private business and sickness in hi
family. In the meantime, he had served in the Convention of
1829-30, in which he was one of the influential members. He
joined the new Whig party formed in 1834 of all the opponents
of Jackson, denouncing the proclamation against the
South Carolina movement, though he did not approve the
doctrine of nullification. In January, 1834, he was elected
Governor and entered upon his duties March 31 following.
When the Legislature framed and adopted resolutions for
removing the deposits from the United States Bank he
resigned April 30, 1836, and retired to his elegant seat in
Norfolk, never afterwards to appear in public service. He was
revered in Virginia for his great ability; and his appearance
was majestic and commanding. Both John Tyler and John
Floyd regarded him as an abler man than either Webster or
Calhoun. He died in Norfolk May 6, 1860.

In his message of December 1, 1834, Mr. Tazewell discussed
the question of the relation of the States to the Union and
opposed the National or rather Sectional interpretation. An
act of the Virginia Legislature of April 8, 1831, appointed
Thomas W. Gilmer of Albemarle as commissioner to investigate
the claim of Virginia on the United States for and o
account of the promise contained in an act of the General

Assembly May, 1779, to give the officers of the Virginia line
in the Revolution half pay for life. John Floyd, while Governor,
had pressed the responsibility of these claims upon
Congress, and Congress by an act July 5, 1832, agreed to pay
over to Virginia the sum of $380,888.66 already paid by the
State, and to satisfy the unpaid judgments. In this message
Governor Tazewell stated that the money had been received
and that it had been used to pay what remained of the State
Debt and to increase the Literary Fund.

In his second annual message December 7, 1835, Governor
Tazewell took notice of the slavery agitation, severely condemning
it as unfriendly to the existence of the Union. A pile
of incendiary pamphlets was publicly burned in front of the
postoffice in Richmond.

Some notable deaths threw sadness over his administration.
June 24, 1834, the papers in Richmond appeared in
mourning for the death of the good and great LaFayette. He
died in Paris May 20, 1834, in the seventy-sixth year of his
age. On July 30, 1835, died Major James Gibbon, who led
"the forlorn hope" at Stony Point during the American
Revolution. But the most notable death was that of John
Marshall, who despite his Federalistic views, which the majority
of Virginians never approved, was admired by all
because of his remarkable powers of mind, the purity of his
private life, and the amiability of his temper. He died at
Philadelphia July 6, 1835, and his remains arrived in Richmond
July 9 on the Steamer Kentucky. A great procession
of citizens, civil and military, escorted his remains to their
burial place in Shockoe Cemetery.

Wyndham Robertson, Lieutenant and Acting Governor,

March 30, 1836-March 31, 1837.

On March 30, 1836, Mr. Robertson became senior member
of the Council and as such Lieutenant Governor, and on the
same day by the resignation of Governor Tazewell succeeded

him for the remaining year of his term as acting Governor of
Virginia. He was a son of William Robertson and Elizabeth
Gay Bolling, his wife, and was born January 26, 1803. He
was a graduate of William and Mary College in 1821, and
entering upon the study of the law was admitted to the
bar in 1824. He travelled in Europe, and in 1833 was made a
member of the Council of State. March 30, 1836, he became
Acting Governor, and after serving his year out retired to
private life. Soon after he moved to the country and engaged
in agriculture. In 1858 he returned to Richmond and in 1860
acquiesced in the wishes of his constituents to serve them
in the Legislature. In this body he was a strong Union man,
but, as the organ of a committee reported on January 7, 1861,
the resolution known as "the Anti-Coercion resolution,"
declaring the purpose of Virginia, if a war of coercion was
undertaken by the Federal Government to fight with the
South. The resolution was adopted. After the secession of
Virginia Mr. Robertson gave all the assistance he could to
the State government and the Confederacy. He was an ardent
student of history and two of his contributions, "The Marriage
of Pocahontas" and "The Descendants of Pocahontas,"
of which he was one, have permanent value.

In his first message to the Legislature Governor Robertson
called further attention to the abolition movement, designating
it as "a mad fanaticism," the march of which, if
unchecked, "could well be over violated faith, the rights of
the slave-holding states, chartered liberty and the cause of
humanity itself." The Legislature adopted resolutions in
January, 1836, warning the North for the peace of the country
to regard the rights of the States.

There was a meeting of the Colonization Society in Richmond
at which John Tyler was elected president and James
Madison one of the vice presidents.

A notable death occurred. The solemn announcement was
made in the papers of July 5, 1836, that the "Father of the
Constitution," James Madison, was no more. A great procession

was had in Richmond, and the people in Virginia
turned out everywhere to honor the great President.

During this year the first railroad to Richmond was projected,
the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad. Books were
opened at the Eagle Hotel in Richmond for the subscription
of stock. W. H. McFarland was made president and Moncure
Robinson was made engineer. The enterprise was scarcely
organized before the books were opened for the Richmond
and Louisa R. R.

David Campbell, Governor,

March 31, 1837-March 31, 1840.

Mr. Campbell was born at "Royal Oaks," Botetourt
County, August 2, 1779, son of John and Elizabeth (McDonald)
Campbell. He had only such education as the frontier afforded
in private schools. In his fifteenth year he was made ensign
of militia, and he was afterwards engaged in the clerk's office
at Abingdon. In 1799 he organized a light infantry company,
of which he was captain. He then studied law, but never practiced.
He was deputy clerk of Washington Country from 1802
to 1812. July 6, 1812, he was made major of the Twelfth
United States Infantry, promoted to lieutenant colonel,
Twentieth Regiment; participated in the St. Lawrence River
campaign, and incurred such rheumatic ailments that he
resigned June 28, 1814. Returning home he was aide de camp
to Governor James Barbour, soon afterwards commissioned
brigadier-general, and appointed colonel of the Third Virginia
Cavalry January 25, 1815. He served as County Clerk till
1820, when he was elected a State senator and served in that
capacity till 1824. In that year he was made Clerk of Washington
County, holding until March 31, 1837, when he became
Governor. He had supported Jackson for the Presidency,
but after the Democratic party brought forward the sub-treasury
and standing army measures, he became an active
member of the new Whig party, formed of many elements.

In his message to the Legislature January 1, 1838, Governor
Campbell reviewed the history of the banks and public
improvements, and one of his suggestions was a better engineering
corps. He noted that the interest on the Literary Fund
available for tutoring the poor was $84,177.85, and he recommended
that the increasing surplus be applied to the endowment
of common schools throughout the State. The expenses
of the Commonwealth was announced by him as $437,181.92.

In his message of January 7, 1839, he expressed his dissatisfaction
with the eleemosynary nature of the existing system
of education, and recommended a system of popular
instruction to be paid for by the interest derived from the
Literary Fund and an appropriation of $200,000 by the State
Legislature.

Governor Campbell's administration covered a period of
hard times in the United States. A great deal of money
had been spent in internal improvements and the speculation
spirit had been rampant. The banks in New York, Philadelphia
and other places suspended specie payments, and
the banks in Richmond had to follow suit. Governor Campbell
called an extra session of the Legislature, which met June 12,
1837, and passed acts for the relief of the banks and to stay
executions.

Notwithstanding the hard times the work on railroads and
canals was carried forward. The Richmond and Petersburg
Railroad was completed May 11, 1838, as far as Manchester.
The passengers had to walk over Mayo's bridge.[108] The Richmond
and Louisa Road was opened December 21, 1837, to
Frederick Hall.

Thomas Walker Gilmer, Governor,

March 31, 1840-March 20, 1841.

Mr. Gilmer was born at Gilmerton, Albemarle County,
1802, son of George Gilmer and grandson of George Gilmer

of "Pen Park," Albemarle County. He was educated by private
tutors and studied law under his uncle, Peachey R.
Gilmer, at Liberty, Bedford County. He was a delegate in
1825 to the Staunton Convention called to agitate for a constitutional
convention; editor of the "Virginia Advocate"
in 1828, during the Jackson presidential campaign, and member
of the House of Delegates from 1829 to 1840, serving as
speaker in 1838 and 1839, and later was appointed by Gov.
John Floyd to prosecute the Revolutionary claims of the State.
In this he was successful. He supported Jackson for the Presidency
in 1828 and 1832, but when Jackson issued his proclamation
against South Carolina Mr. Gilmer aided in the formation
of the Whig party, with hundreds of other Democrates. He
became Governor March 31, 1840, but resigned in less than
a year on March 20, 1841.

He was immediately elected to Congress and gave his support
to President Tyler, when Mr. Clay ruptured the Whig
party by insisting on a bank and protective tariff repudiated
by him in the late canvass. He was a strong advocate of the
annexation of Texas and was called to the Navy Department
by President Tyler, but came to his death by an explosion on
board the Steamship Princeton in less than two weeks after
his appointment. He married Anne E. Baker, daughter of
John Baker of Shepherdstown, West Virginia, a lawyer employed
in the defence of Aaron Burr in 1802. Gilmer County
in West Virginia was named for Mr. Gilmer.

Upon his election as Governor Mr. Gilmer made a tour
of the State to examine all public works, and defrayed all
his expenses out of private funds. His message December 1,
1840, reviewed the manufactures of the State, enumerating
among them manufactures of cotton cloth, ink, paper and
glass. He stated there were in the State 3,119 common schools,
and 26,732 poor children received instruction. Mr. Gilmer
did not serve as Governor very long, because of a complication
in the Legislature. He got into a dispute with

Governor Seward, of New York, over certain slave stealers.
He made a demand for their surrender, and when Seward
declined to give them up, Gilmer refused to honor a requisition
made upon him for certain criminal refugees from New York.
When the Legislature refused to support him in this position,
Gilmer sent to the Legislature an able message in vindication,
and resigned the chair of State March 20, 1841.

His term was filled out by the Senior Councillors. John
Mercer Patton was Acting Governor for 11 days, John Ruther
foord for one year, John Munford Gregory from March 31,
1842, to January 5, 1843.

John Mercer Patton, Lieutenant and Acting Governor,

March 20, 1841-March 31, 1841.

He was a son of Robert Patton, a native of Scotland and
merchant of Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Anne Gordon
Mercer, daughter of Gen. Hugh Mercer, who fell at Princeton
in 1777. He was born August 10, 1797. He was liberally
educated and practiced law in Fredericksburg. In 1830 he was
elected to Congress, and served till 1838, when he returned
to Richmond and was elected to the Council of State and as
Lieutenant Governor succeeded to the duties of chief executive
on the resignation of Governor Thomas Walker Gilmer. In
1849 he was associated with Conway Robinson in a revision
of the Code of Virginia. He died in Richmond October 28,
1858, and was buried in Shockoe Hill Cemetery.

His occupancy of the executive chair—only eleven days—
was not distinguished by any notable event.

John Rutherfoord, Lieutenant and Acting Governor,

March 31, 1841-March 31, 1842.

John Rutherfoord, born in Richmond December 8, 1792, was
a son of Thomas Rutherfoord, a distinguished merchant of

Richmond and able political writer. He was educated at
Princeton College, studied law, but practiced it for only a
short time. He was many years president of the Mutual
Assurance Society, the first insurance company in the State;
also first captain of the Richmond Fayette Artillery and rose
to the rank of colonel. He was a States rights man, supported
William H. Crawford in 1824, and Andrew Jackson in 1828
and 1832 as a choice of evils. When Jackson issued his
proclamation against South Carolina, Rutherfoord, like John
Tyler, Littleton Waller Tazewell and William F. Gordon,
joined the ranks of the Whigs, then forming of many elements
of opposition. In 1837 he, like Gordon and Calhoun, returned
to the ranks of the Democrats on the issue of the Independent
Treasury, which the Democrats now put forward to take the
place of the National Bank. From 1826 to 1839 he was a member
of the House of Delegates, and in the latter year became
a member of the Council of State. On March 31, 1841, as
Senior Councillor, he succeeded John M. Patton as Acting
Governor. After a year of service he retired to private life,
dying at Richmond August 3, 1866.

During his administration Governor Rutherfoord continued
with much ability the correspondence with Governor
Seward of New York regarding slave stealers, begun by Governor
Gilber. This correspondence was only another exposure
of the discordant nature of the Union.

The coming of Charles Dickens to the State was perhaps
the most notable event of his year of office. He stopped first
in Washington where he called upon President Tyler, whose
"whole carriage and demeanor" received from the critical
Englishman the favorable comment of "becoming his station
singularly well." He afterwards came to Richmond. Mr.
Ritchie, editor of the Richmond Enquirer, presided at a banquet
given to him in Richmond on the night of March 18, 1842.
Mr. Ritchie sat on his right hand and Governor Rutherfoord
sat on his left. There was great enthusiasm.

John M. Gregory, Lieutenant and Acting Governor,

March 31, 1842-January 5, 1843.

He was the son of John M. Gregory, Sr., and Letitia
Graves, his wife, and was born in Charles City County July 8,
1804. He was a descendant of early settlers in Virginia, and
his grandfather John Gregory was killed in action during the
Revolution.

His elementary education was acquired at "the Old Field
School." He taught school in James City County, and in
1830 he graduated as Bachelor of Laws at William and
Mary College. He was a member of the House of Delegates
from James City County from 1831 to 1841, when he was
elected by the Legislature a member of the Council of
State. As Senior Councillor, he succeeded John Rutherfoord
as Acting Governor till January 5, 1843, when he was succeeded
in the executive office by James McDowell. This was
in accordance with an act of the Legislature, passed December
14, 1842, which provided that the term for which the Governor
was to be elected hereafter should run for three years.

In 1853 Mr. Gregory was appointed United States District
Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, in which office
he served till the year 1860, when he was elected judge of the
Sixth Judicial Circuit of Virginia, serving in this capacity till
1866. At this date he was removed from office by the Federal
military officer, and, resuming his practice as a lawyer, was
soon elected Commonwealth's Attorney of Charles City
County. This post he held till 1880, when he resigned on
account of his age and retired to Williamsburg, where he died
in 1888. He married Amanda Wallace of Petersburg, Virginia,
and left a large family.

James McDowell, Governor,

Jan. 5, 1843-Jan. 1, 1846.

He was the son of Col. James and Sarah (Preston) McDowell,
and was born at "Cherry Grove," Rockbridge County,

October 11, 1795. He went to college at Yale and Princeton, and
studied law under Chapman Johnson, but never practiced. He
entered the House of Delegates in 1830, and remained in that
body till 1838. He became a leader, and after Nat Turner's
Insurrection he advocated the gradual abolition of slavery.
He was a Democrat, and supported Andrew Jackson on the
Force Bill and made a brilliant speech against nullification
in 1833. This made him a rival of John Tyler for the Senatorship,
but he was defeated, and John Tyler's opposition to
the Force Bill was endorsed by the General Assembly. On
January 1, 1843, he was elected Governor, and after serving
three years was elected to the House of Representatives,
succeeding his brother-in-law, William Taylor, who died January
17, 1846, serving until 1851, with conspicuous ability. His
most memorable effort in Congress was his speech favoring
the admission of California to the Union. He died at Lexington,
Virginia, August 24, 1851. He married his cousin Susan,
daughter of Gen. Francis Preston and Sarah B. Campbell, his
wife, daughter of Gen. William Campbell, the hero of King's
Mountain.

In his message of December 4, 1843, he noticed the public
debt, which amounted to $7,350,000, of which the State held
$1,386,000 and the citizens $2,977,000. The rest was owned by
foreigners and citizens of other States. His disquisition on
internal improvements was very modern in its character
and has a familiar ring to all who read about good roads
in this day:

"Such, indeed, are the improvements almost everywhere
accompanying these roads, the new settlements, the better
agriculture, the accumulating comforts of all kinds, the
enhanced values of houses and lands, that the opinion is confidently
expressed that not only in these respects but in the
actual additional revenue which is brought by these means into
the treasury, the State has a fair dividend, the perpetuity of
it considered, upon her portion of the money expended upon
them." He described the roads improved in the State as of
great aggregate extent and cost.

The sentiments upon the abolition agitation of a man who
had approved Jackson's Force Bill is worthy of notice.
"If, however, nothing should at last be done, Virginia cannot
but deplore such an event more than ever, because more than
ever portending a period when she and every other Southern
State may be compelled to appeal to their own rights of
reserved and ultimate sovereignty—for that perfect safety
which they had fondly hoped it was competent for their Federal
compact to afford."

In his message of December 2, 1844, McDowell went largely
into the subject of the common schools, condemning the existing
system as insufficient and he returned to the subject again
in his message of December 1, 1845. He had this saving paragraph,
"that the number of pupils at the University, colleges,
academies and classical and grammar schools of the state,
though something less than 2 per cent of the whole population,
was greater, nevertheless, than is to be found in any
of the States, except New England, and is less than it is there
only by an inconsiderable fraction."

It was largely under the influence of the Governor that
the Legislature passed an act at the session of 1845-46 establishing
the free school system in such of the counties where
two-thirds of the voters were in favor of them. A number of
the counties availed themselves of this authority, such as
Norfolk County, King George, Elizabeth City, Loudoun, Fairfax,
Clarke, Kanawha, Culpeper, Marshall and Ohio.

William Smith, Governor,

Jan. 1, 1846-Jan. 1, 1849.

He was born in King George County, Virginia, September
26, 1797, son of Caleb Smith and Mary Waugh, his wife. He
was educated at private schools and qualified to practice law
in Culpeper County in 1819. In 1827 he obtained a contract
for carrying the mails twice a week from Fairfax C. H. to
Warrenton, and thence to Culpeper C. H. He renewed the

contract in 1831, and with this small beginning built up a
large business as mail contractor in the Southern States. In a
fierce attack made by the Whigs on the Postoffice Department
as conducted by W. T. Barry, Senator Benjamin Watkins
Leigh referred to Mr. Smith because of the numerous extra
charges made by him as "Extra Billy." The sobriquet became
fixed upon him, but in good sense, as his claims were just,
and well characterized the extraordinary abilities possessed
by him. He was a Democrat in politics, and in 1841-43 he
served in the Congress of the United States. In January, 1846,
he became Governor, and after a service of three years he
removed to California, where he was president of its Constitutional
Convention. He returned to Virginia in 1852,
and in May, 1853, was reelected to Congress, in which he
served until March 4, 1861.

War breaking out soon after, Mr. Smith though sixty-four
years of age offered his services and was appointed by Governor
Letcher Colonel of the Forty-ninth Virginia Infantry.
He bore himself gallantly in numerous engagements and was
promoted to Brigadier and Major General. After a brief service
in the Confederate Congress he was again elected Governor
January 1, 1864, and when Richmond was evacuated in April,
1865, he removed the seat of government to Lynchburg and
afterwards to Danville, surrendering the executive office May
9, 1865. After the war he engaged in farming at Warrenton.
In 1877 though eighty-one years of age he was reelected to
the State Senate and the next year came within a few votes
of election to the United States Senate, and soon after retired
to private life. He was a warm temperance man, abstained
from both tobacco and ardent spirits, and was a model of
politeness and chivalry. He died at Warrenton, Virginia,
May 18, 1887, aged ninety years.

As Governor his administration partook largely of his
characteristic vigor and enthusiasm. The Mexican war was
then in progress, and on all matters connected with it he was
prompt, energetic and progressive. The same spirit animated

him on purely domestic questions. He recommend in the
strongest terms the extension of the old Richmond and Louisa
Railroad, now the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, to the
town of Charlottesville and across the Blue Ridge on to
Covington to connect Richmond with the Southern and Western
States, so as to ensure the trade and travel to that city.
His views were not acted upon at once, but it was not many
years later that they were. He projected and executed valuable
changes and reforms in the capitol square and public grounds,
the utility and beauty of which may be seen to this day.[109]

The treaty of peace was ratified by Mexico May 19, 1848,
and Richmond citizens gave a dinner to the Virginia Regiment
on the return home August 5 of the same year.

John B. Floyd, Governor,

Jan. 1, 1849-Jan. 1, 1852.

John Buchanan Floyd was born at "Smithfield," Montgomery
County, June 1, 1806, eldest son of Governor John
Floyd and Letitia Preston, his wife. He was graduated from
the College of South Carolina in 1826, and began the practice
of law in 1828. He resided in Arkansas from 1836 to 1839, then
came back to Virginia and settled in Washington County,
where he pursued his law practice. He served in the House of
Delegates at the sessions of 1847-48, 1848-49 and 1855-56. He
became Governor of the State January 1, 1849, and served
three years. In 1857 he was made Secretary of War by President
Buchanan, and performed his duties with great success
and efficiency. He disapproved of South Carolina in 1860, and
directed Major Anderson to hold Fort Moultrie "at any
cost." But he was hopeful of peace and when Major Anderson
without orders moved his garrison to Fort Sumter,
Floyd considered that the status quo, which the administration
promised the South Carolina authorities to observe, had
been violated, and on the refusal of the President to retire

the troops he resigned his office. He returned to Virginia,
and on May 23, 1861, was made brigadier-general in the Confederate
army, and held command with General Wise in West
Virginia. He was transferred to Tennessee, and in February,
1862, extricated his command by a movement at night from
Fort Donnelson. He fell under the displeasure of President
Davis for thus leaving Generals Pillow and Buckner whose
troops were captured at the fort, and was relieved of his
command. The Legislature of Virginia did not approve of
this treatment, and made him major general in the State
service, and directed him to recruit and organize a division
of troops from among the classes not embraced in the conscription
of the Confederacy. He raised 2,000 men and operated
on the Big Sandy River with success. Shortly afterwards,
however, he was attacked with cancer of the stomach and
forced to return home. He died near Abingdon, Washington
County, Virginia, August 26, 1863. General Floyd married
early in life his cousin Sarah Buchanan, but left no children.

For many years Floyd was a favorite subject of attack by
Northern writers. He was unjustly charged with scattering
the army in order to promote secession, but Floyd was opposed
to secession and Adjutant General Townsend shows that the
changes in the station of troops during Floyd's incumbency of
the war office were unimportant. He was also charged with
sending arms to the South, but an investigation showed that
the South received far less than its quota under the law of
Congress. After his resignation he was indicted for alleged
complicity in the abstraction of certain bonds of the Indian
Trust Funds in the Department of the Interior. He was also
indicted for alleged malversation in office. On hearing of it he
returned to Washington, gave bail and demanded a trial.
The court records show that on March 7 a nolle prosequi in
the first indictment was entered, and that on March 20, 1861,
the malversation charge was quashed.[110]

Floyd's administration as Governor was able and efficient.
His messages are eloquent on the two great subjects of
internal improvements and schools. His administration was
marked by two great happenings—the dedication of the great
Crawford monument in the Capitol Square at Richmond and
the meeting of the Constitutional Convention of 1850-51.

During the preceding administration a committee
appointed by the Virginia Historical Society appeared before
the Legislature and, calling attention to the fact that there
was then in the treasury $41,733 donated by private individuals
for a monument to Washington, asked that the work be
taken up and carried to completion. A bill to do this was
passed February 22, 1849. The plan of Thomas Crawford, of
Philadelphia, was accepted, and his model was placed in the
Capitol. One year later the corner stone was laid, and it was
a memorable day in the history of the State. There was a
great celebration, and the largest crowd that Richmond ever
saw gathered in the city. Among the guests were Gen. Zachary
Taylor, President of the United States; Millard Fillmore, Vice
President; John Tyler, ex-President; J. M. Clayton, Secretary
of State; W. M. Meredith, Secretary of the Treasury; W. B.
Preston, Secretary of the Navy; George W. Crawford, Secretary
of War; Thomas Ewing, Secretary of the Interior; Jacob
Collamer, Postmaster General; W. H. Devins, President of
the State Senate, and H. L. Hopkins, Speaker of the House
of Delegates, and the members of the General Assembly. This
monument—a splendid grouping of figures, with an equestrian
statue of Washington surmounting all—cost when completed
$259,913.26. Mr. Crawford, the sculptor, died of a cancer, in
London, October 10th at the age of forty-seven, and the work
was completed by Randolph Rogers.

It was a short time after this that the people of Richmond
honored the deaths of John C. Calhoun and President Zachary
Taylor by suitable exercises and ceremonies.

The other important event—the meeting of the Constitutional
Convention—occurred in Richmond October 14, 1850.

John Y. Mason was elected president and Stephen D. Whittle,
secretary. It adjourned after a few days to await the census
of that year. It reassembled January 6, 1851, and remained in
continuous session till August 1. The West had largely
increased in population and property, and more attention was
paid to its complaints. The net result of deliberations was
that figures were adopted for representation in the House
based on white population, which gave the West the majority,
and in the Senate the mixed basis of population and property
was adopted which gave the East the majority, but the suffrage
was extended to every male white citizen of the Commonwealth,
and the voters were to elect the members of the Board
of Public Works, the Governor, judges and county officials.
The Governor's term was extended to four years. The constitution
was ratified by the overwhelming majority of 75,784
to 11,063.

Joseph Johnson, Governor,

Jan. 1, 1852-Jan. 1, 1856.

Joseph Johnson, the second son of Joseph and Abigail
Johnson, was born in Orange County, New York, December 10,
1785. When he was but a lad, his parents removed to Harrison
County, Virginia, which was his home for over seventy years.
He was captain in the War of 1812. He was elected to the
House of Delegates in 1815 and remained a member by successive
elections till 1822. He defeated the eloquent and able
Philip Doddridge for Congress in 1823 and was reelected in
1825. After his term was out, he retired to private life but
on the death of Philip Doddridge November 19, 1832, he was
elected to fill the vacancy caused by it. After another interval,
Mr. Johnson was elected to Congress in 1835 and served as a
Democrat continuously till 1841, when he declined reelection
and supported Samuel L. Hays, who, however, was defeated
by the Whig candidate, George W. Summers. In 1845 Mr.
Johnson was again elected to Congress, this time over Col.

George D. Camden. This was the seventh time he had been
elected to Congress. After his term was out he declined
reelection but his constituents then elected him to the House
of Delegates, in which he served in the session of 1847-48.
He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1850-51,
and was chairman of the Committee on Suffrage. In the
autumn after the convention he was elected Governor over
the Whig candidate, George W. Summers, under the provisions
of the new constitution, he being the first Governor to be
elected by the popular vote, and the first and only Governor
from the section now comprised in West Virginia. After his
term was out, he retired to his farm in Harrison County, and
held no other offices. When the war broke out he advised his
people to side with the South. During the war he took refuge
with the Confederates, but after it, returned to his home, where
he died February 27, 1877.

In his messages Governor Johnson dwelt at much length
on the improvements in which the West was especially interested.
From 1850 to 1854 more turnpikes and railroad companies
were incorporated with the privilege of constructing
works of internal improvement in the West than in all the
years preceding. Very liberal appropriations were made to
the Western Turnpike Company, and this caused an acquiessence
by the Westerners in the appropriations made to the
various railroad companies operating east of the mountains.
Governor Johnson was able to say in his message in 1855 that
"the northwestern portion of the State wanted little and
asked less."[111] As a result of the adoption of the constitution
sectional controversy almost passed away. There was a considerable
increase of the public debt, which on January 1,
1852, amounted to $11,971,838. In 1861 the debt had reached
the figure of $31,187,999.32.

An occasion of great interest, from a literary point of view,
was the visit to the State of the distinguished writer, William
Makepeace Thackeray. He delivered three lectures in Richmond

which made a great impression. After a short time he
returned and delivered three more.

Henry Alexander Wise, Governor,

Jan. 1, 1856-Jan. 1, 1860.

He was born at Drummondtown, Accomac County, December
3, 1806, son of Major John and Sarah C. (Cropper) Wise.
His father had served in the House of Delegates from 1791
to 1801, during which time he had been Speaker of the House
in 1794 and 1795. He was a Federalist in politics and opposed
the Madison Resolutions of 1798. Henry A. Wise was
orphaned at the age of six years, and his early training was
by an aunt and Major John Custis, an uncle by marriage.
He was a student at Washington College, Pennsylvania,
studied law under Judge Henry St. George Tucker at Winchester,
Virginia; removed to Nashville, Tennessee, but soon
returned to Virginia. He was elected to Congress in 1833 over
Richard Coke, of Gloucester County, who was suspected of
nullification tendencies. A duel ensued because of words
spoken in the canvas, and Mr. Coke was slightly wounded
in the arm. He remained in Congress for six consecutive
terms, and became distinguished as one of its ablest and most
brilliant leaders and speakers. At first he was an adherent
of Andrew Jackson, but in 1834 when Jackson removed the
money belonging to the United States from the United States
Bank he and sixteen other members of Congress, called the
"Awkward Squad," went over to the Whig party, then forming
out of many elements. Later he adhered to President Tyler
in his controversy with Congress over the Bank question, and
received from him a nomination to France, but the nomination
was rejected by the Senate. Later in 1844 he became minister
to Brazil, where he remained till 1847. In 1850 he was
elected a member of the Convention of 1850-51, and in 1855
was nominated for Governor by the Democrats, defeating the
American or Know Nothing candidate when that party seemed

irresistible. He was Governor from January 1, 1856, to January
1, 1860, in which latter year he was a presidential candidate.
In 1861, he was a member of the secession convention
and advocated fighting in the Union, but soon lined up on
the side of the immediate secessionists. When war ensued,
he was made brigadier-general, and saw service in West Virginia,
North Carolina and South Carolina. In May, 1864, he
reached Petersburg with his command, and resisted succesfully
the first attack on the city, and his was the last command
engaged at Appomattox. After the war he resumed law
practice in Richmond, and beyond a brief service as commissioner
to fix the Virginia-Maryland boundary, he took no part
in politics or public affairs. He was the author of "Seven
Decades of the Union," which book gives an account of
national politics from 1790 to 1860, with the "Life of John
Tyler," as the thread. He died in Richmond September
12, 1878.

Mr. Wise was a vigorous Governor, and gave all his influence
to the promotion of internal improvements. His first
regular message, addressed to the legislature upon its assembling
in December, 1857, was full of the subject. When we consider
the difficulties ensuing from a scattered population and
the mountains to be traversed, the development of the Commonwealth
between 1845 and 1860 was truly astonishing. The
Assembly of 1857-58 made liberal appropriations for completing
the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad and incorporated numerous
companies to build branch lines thereto. There had at
times been considerable differences of view between the East
and the West, but the completion of the old James River and
Kanawha Canal, which was strongly endorsed by Wise, might
have prevented a division of the State in 1861. Millions of
dollars were sunk in the enterprise but the war came on, and
after it the Chesapeake and Ohio railway was substituted for
the unfinished project.

Among other subjects to which the attention of the Legislature
was early directed was the need of a reorganization

of the State Militia System, which at that time was weak
and inefficient. Wise's decided opinion was that a preparation
of the State in full panoply of arms and prompt action would
have prevented the war. But the peace policy prevailed in
Virginia, and the Legislature did not, even after John
Brown's raid, wake up to a realization of the true nature of
the situation. The history of this atrocious attack upon a
peaceful State has been given in another connection.

Amid the gathering storm Governor Wise presided over
two patriotic occasions, memorable in the history of Richmond
and Virginia. During the month of July, 1858, the
remains of James Monroe were brought from their resting
place in New York, accompanied by the gallant Seventh Regiment,
under the command of Colonel Duryee, and interred in
Hollywood Cemetery, at Richmond, in the presence of a vast
concourse of people.

On the 22nd of February, 1858, preceding this event,
occurred an outpouring of the people to witness the unveiling
in Richmond of the superb equestrian statue of Washington,
surmounting the Washington monument, whose corner stone
had been laid in 1850; and despite the bleak, wintry day, the
enthusiasm of the audience knew no bounds.[112]

John Letcher, Governor,

Jan. 1, 1860-Jan. 1, 1864.

John Letcher, son of William Letcher, was born at Lexington,
Rockbridge County, Virginia, March 28, 1813. He took
a course at Washington College, and graduated in 1833 from
Randolph-Macon College, where he also studied law. He
entered upon the practice in Lexington, and for some time was
the editor of the Valley Star. In 1850 he was a member of
the Constitutional Convention, and as a Democrat he served
in Congress from 1852 to 1859, and was active on the Ways and
Means Committee. He was Governor from January 1, 1860, to

January 1, 1864, thus holding the office at the time of secession,
which policy he had previously opposed but earnestly supported
when the Federal Government resorted to force. At
the close of the war he resumed practice at Richmond, and
served two terms in the House of Delegates, 1875-76 and
1876-77. In 1876 while attending upon the House, he was
stricken with paralysis. He lingered eight years and finally
expired at his home in Lexington, January 26, 1884.

Mr. Letcher's administration covered much of the period
of the war waged against the South by the Federal Government,
to destroy its right of self-determination. After the
secession of South Carolina he called an extra session of the
Legislature to meet January 7, 1861. At this Legislature he
sent in a long message on the position of Virginia in the impending
crisis. The Legislature passed an act to provide for
a convention of the people in Richmond February 13 to amend
the Constitution and to take such steps as should be necessary.
They also passed acts to send Judge John Robertson to South
Carolina and John Tyler to President Buchanan to beg them
to refrain from any act likely to involve the Union in war till
the Peace Convention called by Virginia could meet in Washington
February 3. As we have seen, the Northern delegates
to the Peace Convention opposed any real compromise and
rejected the Crittenden propositions, which were satisfactory
to the South. These propositions, while saving the honor of the
South, gave slavery no real practical advantage and were
approved by a majority of the people of the North. Lincoln,
after a month of vacillation, decided to appeal to force, and
without calling Congress together and getting its consent, sent
an expedition to Charleston to supply Fort Sumter with provisions
"peaceably if permitted, otherwise by force." South
Carolina, left to the alternative of subjecting its capital city
to the mercy of a sectional President, or of reducing Fort
Sumter, chose the latter. And then Lincoln issued his call
upon the States for 75,000 men, to which Governor Letcher
replied that "the militia of Virginia would not be furnished to

the powers at Washington for any such purpose as they have
in view. * * * You have chosen to inaugurate civil war;
and having done so, we will meet you in a spirit as determined
as the Administration has exhibited towards the South." The
Convention of Virginia, seconding the Governor, passed the
ordinance of secession April 17, 1861.

Among the public events that marked the short interval of
peace between Letcher's inauguration and the passage of
this fateful measure were the unveiling of the Clay statue in
the Capitol Square at Richmond, April 12, 1860, and the coming
on October 6, 1860, of the Prince of Wales, afterwards
King Edward VII, who was travelling on the Continent as
Baron Renfrew. In spite of the war clouds, both events were
occasions of great pleasure and festivity.