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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02368 3086
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http://archive.org/details/historyofvirgini10grig
COLLECTIONS
OF THE
Virginia Historical Society.
New Series.
VOL. X.
Virginia Historical Society, Richmont
1
1555769
WM. ELLIS JONES, PRINTER, RICHMOND, VA.
,
THE HISTORY
OF THE
Virginia Federal Convention OF
1 788,
WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE EMINENT VIRGINIANS OF THAT ERA WHO WERE MEMBERS OF THE BODY
BY HUGH BLAIR GRIGSBY, LL.D.
WITH A Biographical Sketch of the Author AND
ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES
EDITED BY R. A. BROCK, Corresponding Secretary and Librarian of the Society.
VOL. II.
TORIGA
ORGANIZED
29.Dec. 1831
SOCIETY
CHA
R
CONDEREET TRADERE
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA. PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY. MDCCCXCI.
4500
THE HISTORY
OF THE
Virginia Federal Convention
OF 1788.
INTRODUCTION.
Before we proceed to detail the final scene of the Convention, we should leave unperformed an office as useful and instructive as any that devolves on the historian if we failed to glance at the lives and services of some of those patriotic men who com- posed the body, and whose history is in no unimportant respect the history not only of that great event, which singles out the year 1788 as one of the most important in our annals, but, in some instances, of great epochs of an earlier as well as a later day to which the lives of some of them were extended. It will become our duty to record the names not only of those who took part in debate, but of those who, though they spoke not a word during the session, mainly by their influence and ability effected the ratification of the Constitution. In forming our opinions of the last-named class of individuals, we must be careful to look at the circumstances and the impressions of the time in which they lived. To take the measure of the mental stature and of the political influence of such men from the face of the journals, or from their silence in debate, would not only
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INTRODUCTION.
be unjust to them, but would betray no slight ignorance of the views which prevailed at that conjuncture. Not only were the rules and customs of the British Parliament closely observed in the deliberative assemblies of the Colony, and of the Common- wealth in its earlier days, but the mode of conducting a parlia- mentary campaign was strictly observed. And in conducting a parliamentary campaign no rule was more generally enforced than that which confined the debate to certain leaders on each side of the House.1
The habit of every member making a speech on every subject, which has caused so much prolixity in our public proceedings, had not become the fashion with our public men. Beside the observance of the well-known customs of Parliament, there were other considerations which tended to repress much speaking. The sessions of the House of Burgesses were short, rarely exceeding a month, and were usually held in May-a season precious in the eyes of those who derived their sustenance from agriculture. Political considerations also had their weight; for it was in the power of the Royal Governor to prorogue the House at pleasure, and it became important, as difficulties between that officer and the Assembly might at any moment arise, to transact the real business of the Colony with all prac- ticable speed.2 It should also be observed that the greatest prompter to modern loquacity did not then exist. There were no reporiers; and if there had been reporters, there were no papers in which reports could be published. A small weekly sheet afforded to the Colonists the only political nutriment which they could obtain, and that sheet would not hold an entire speech of the ordinary dimensions. Such, too, was the difficulty of public conveyance-such was the infrequency and irregularity of posts-that even that sheet reached very few of the home- steads of the people. Such was, to a certain extent, the case in the Commonwealth. Thus it happened that comparatively few
1 We know from letters cited in the course of this work that the friends of the Constitution had parcelled out their opponents, and held themselves in reserve for them.
2 Patrick Henry's resolutions against the Stamp Act were adopted at the heel of the session, and so with many other measures likely to offend the Governor.
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INTRODUCTION.
of the really able members engaged in formal debate in our public bodies; and the remark may be hazarded, that if all those who in the Convention of 1788 engaged in the discussion of the Constitution had been absent, there were able and accomplished men who, as their subsequent career would seem to prove, would have displayed talents of a high order and achieved no mean reputation for statesmanship and eloquence.
ARCHIBALD STUART.
First among the young men west of the Blue Ridge in those qualifications which attract public attention, and which fit their possessor for acting with effect in public assemblies, was Archi- bald Stuart, of Augusta. He had not that large experience in affairs, civil and military, which was possessed by Thomas Lewis, or even by Andrew Moore, by Darke and Stephen, by William Fleming and Stuart, of Greenbrier; nor had he yet attained that standing at the bar which Gabriel Jones had long held; but he had seen the smoke of battle, was a ready and forcible speaker, was a graceful writer, and, though young, had already served with distinction during several sessions of the Assembly. He belonged to that remarkable portion of the Anglo-Saxon family which had for more than a century cherished on the Irish soil the principles and attachments of the land from which they came, and which under a domestic discipline, partly military and partly religious, were skilful in discerning their rights, and prompt in defending them. The British colonization of Ireland was essentially military. The settlers could be counted by thousands, while the aboriginal population num- bered more than a million. Another great element in this, the greatest in English estimation of all the schemes of colonization which England had there developed, was the element of religion. The Colonists were Protestants ; the subject caste, ignorant and semi-barbarous, were within the pale of the Church of Rome. Hence the Colonists became in a degree unknown in the mother country-Whigs in politics and Protestants in religion. The history of Irish colonization is intimately connected with the history of our own Colony, and of that freedom which we now enjoy. It was one of those wonderful processes in human affairs, which, though seen even by acute politicians only in their ordinary aspects, was destined in another age and in a dis- tant land to bring about a memorable revolution. To the com- mon eye there seems no connection between the butcheries
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3 1833 02368 3086
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· VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
perpetrated by Cromwell and the cruelties and confiscations wrought by the misgovernment of James the Second, and the passage of the resolutions of Virginia in 1765 against the Stamp Act; yet, it is as certain as any event in history that, if the British policy in Ireland had been other than it was, those reso- lutions might indeed have been offered, but they would have been rejected by a decisive vote. When it is remembered that those resolutions were carried by the western vote, especially by the vote of the Valley members, the connection is obvious and indisputable. And it may well happen that in the measures of our own day, designed to accomplish limited and definite objects, the historian a century hence may detect the seminal principle which is destined to effect radical changes in existing institutions, and, perhaps, to overturn the present frame of society and to substitute some new system in its stead.
The grandfather of Archibald Stuart emigrated from Ireland in 1727, and settled for a time in Pennsylvania, where in 1735 Alexander, the father of Archibald, was born. In 1739 the family removed to Augusta county in this State, where Alex- ander, whose lofty stature and uncommon strength were noted even among his neighbors in the Valley, married in due time Mary Patterson. Of this marriage Archibald was the first of many children. He was born at the homestead about nine miles southwest of Staunton, on the 19th day of March, 1757. His boyhood was spent in Augusta; but his father having removed to the neighborhood of Brownsburg, in Rockbridge, Archibald became a resident of that county, and was entered a pupil in the seminary then known as Liberty Hall, now as Washington Col- lege. [Now as Washington and Lee University .- ED.] Like his classmates, who derived their instruction from William Graham, he became a devoted advocate of civil and religious freedom, and, in imitation of his illustrious teacher, was ever ready to defend it in battle or in debate.
In the fall of 1779 he attended William and Mary College, and became an inmate of the family of the President, afterwards Bishop Madison. It happened that the institution then con- tained a large number of youths who were destined to act a conspicuous part in public affairs. Of these Allen, Hartwell Cocke, Eyre, Hardy, John Jones, and Stevens Thomson Mason were his colleagues in the present Convention. Another
,
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ARCHIBALD STUART.
associate, who, after a long career at the bar, has for more than a third of a century been resting in his honored grave in the yard of St. Paul's in Norfolk, and who was beloved and revered by his countrymen for the incorruptible integrity and unblemished purity of his life, was John Nivison. It is creditable to the standing of Stuart that among such students he was conspicu- ous. His personal appearance and his address, as well as that accurate scholarship which was characteristic of the pupils of Graham, contributed to his popularity. His erect and sinewy form (which exceeded six feet in height), his placid face and expressive black eyes, his long black hair falling about his neck, the blended austerity and gentleness of his deportment, pre- sented to his young associates one of the finest models of the Western Virginian. There had been lately instituted in William and Mary a literary association, which in its brief life communi- cated its mystic symbols and its name to a similar association at Harvard, which in its foreign home has flourished with such unexampled vigor as to include on its roll the names of many of the most eloquent and learned men of the whole country for more than two entire generations, which was destined to sudden extinction in the place of its origin, but which was then in its early prime-the Society of the Phi Beta Kappa. , Of this association Stuart was elected president. On his return to College, in 1780, he found the eastern part of the State infested by the British. The exercises of the College were suspended, and the public affairs were in an almost desperate condition. Stuart at once hastened to the scene of active war, joined the army as a private soldier in the regiment from Rockbridge, of which his father was the Major, and was promoted to an office in the commissariat department. But when the advance of Cornwallis rendered an engagement certain, he took his station in the ranks, and fought gallantly at Guilford. It was in this battle that he saw his father, who commanded the regiment on that day, fall with his wounded horse, instantly stripped of his clothing by the British Tories, and, suffering from his wounds, conveyed a prisoner within the enemy's lines.3 During the
$ Dr. Foote, in his second volume of Virginia Collections, page 147. states that Major Stuart was not wounded ; but authorities in my pos- session, which are most authentic, show that he was wounded. Dr.
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VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
whole campaign young Stuart had in his possession the official . seal of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, of which he was the presi- dent, which, as the Society went down, he retained till his death, and which, many years after his death, was found in the secret drawer of his escritoire, where it had remained more than half a century, and which was transmitted by his son to the Society at William and Mary, which had been recently revived, where it now performs its original office.4
On the return of Stuart from Guilford he studied law with Mr. Jefferson, and ever cherished for his preceptor the highest admiration and esteem. Some of the law-books which he pro- cured from Mr. Jefferson are in the library of his son.5 What Wythe had been to Jefferson, Jefferson became to young Stuart: the adviser, the friend, and the revered associate through life. In the Stuart papers there is in the handwriting of Mr. Jefferson a form of a Constitution for Virginia, drawn in 1791. Their intimacy lasted during the life of Jefferson. When Stuart was elected judge, his district included the county of Albemarle; and, in attending the sessions of his court, he regularly spent a night with his old preceptor. As a politician he sustained his administration, and was a Republican elector until the series of Virginia Presidents who had borne a part in the Revolution was ended.
He began the practice of the law in Rockbridge, and in the spring of 1783 was brought forward as a candidate for the House of Delegates, but lost his election by thirteen votes. A
Foote describes the Major as riding on the field a beautiful mare. He was of gigantic stature. His sword [now in the cabinet of the Vir- ginia Historical Society, and not of unusual size-ED.], which men of the ordinary size could hardly wield with effect, is in possession of his grandson, the Hon. A. H. H. Stuart, to whom I am indebted for some interesting details of his father's life. I would point out to the student of history the diary of the Rev. Samuel Houston, who was in the battle of Guilford. It may be found in Dr. Foote's second series, pages 142-145.
"The original MS. proceedings of the Society are in the archives of the Virginia Historical Society .- EDITOR.
5 A portion of his correspondence with Mr. Jefferson and others is in the possession of the Virginia Historical Society, presented by his son, Hon. A. H. H. Stuart .- EDITOR.
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ARCHIBALD STUART.
few days after the election in Rockbridge he visited Botetourt on some business with Colonel Skillern, and while he was the guest of the Colonel he was invited to attend a public festival, at which most of the leading citizens of the county were present. At the gathering he was called upon for a speech, which was so well received by the company that he was requested to become a candidate for a seat in the House of Delegates at the election to be held on the following Monday.6 There was one obstacle to his success, which seemed at first sight difficult to be over- come. He did not possess a freehold in the county; but the prompt generosity of Skillern removed that defect,7 and on the following Monday he was duly returned. He was re-elected from Botetourt in 1784 and in 1785, when he removed from Rockbridge to Augusta, where he resided until his death. From Augusta he was returned in 1786 and in 1787. But there was no public question in which he seemed to take a greater interest than the ratification of the Federal Constitution. He had sustained in the House of Delegates the resolution con- voking the meeting at Annapolis, and the resolution appointing delegates to the Federal Convention that framed the Constitu- tion, and he felt in a certain sense a paternal feeling toward that instrument. In Augusta he put forth all his strength in its support, and, having accidentally learned one day before the election in Botetourt was to take place that the candidates for the Convention were unwilling to pledge themselves to vote for its ratification, he mounted his horse and rode day and night to Fincastle, a distance of seventy-five miles, that he might make an appeal to his old constituents in favor of the Constitution. He arrived at the court-house after the polls had been opened, and requested their suspension until he could address the people. He spoke with such effect that the people were induced to exact explicit pledges from the candidates to sustain the Constitution, which they finally gave, and which they faithfully redeemed.
'Until 1830 the Virginia elections were held " in all the month of April."
' This deed remained on record, overlooked by both parties con- cerned. Colonel Skillern, indeed, sold and conveyed it to another party. It was improved by the erection of buildings upon it. It was sold a few years ago, and, upon an examination of the title, the defect as above was discovered, and a release was given by Hon. A. H. H. Stuart, as the Editor has been informed by him.
14
VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
His course in the present Convention, in which he sustained the extreme views of those who upheld the Constitution, has been pointed out already, and may be read in the ayes and noes. In 1797, he was called once more into public life, took his seat in the Senate of Virginia from the Augusta district, and bore a part in the memorable contest which was then waging between the Federalists, who approved the policy of the elder Adams, and the Republicans, who approved the policy of which Jefferson was the representative. Here he voted for the resolutions, which though offered by John Taylor, of Caroline, were drawn by Madison; but before the report of 1799 had reached the Senate he was elected a judge of the General Court, and entered on the duties of his office on the Ist of January, 1800, which he dis- charged with acknowledged ability and faithfulness until 1831, when, having attained the age of seventy-three, he declined a re-election under the Constitution which had been adopted the preceding year. Though on the bench, he was chosen the Jef- ferson elector in 1800 and in 1804, the Madison elector in 1808 and in 1812, the Monroe elector in 1816 and in 1820, and the Crawford elector in 1824. Thus far he acted with his ancient colleagues of the Republican party; but, preferring Mr. Adams to General Jackson, he was placed by the friends of Adams on their electoral ticket in 1828, which was defeated by the ticket of the opposite party. He died at Staunton on the IIth day of July, 1832, in the seventy-fifth year of his age.
He possessed an elegant taste in letters, which his contribu- tions to the memoir of Henry, by Wirt, strikingly exhibit; and we are told that he was one of that able cohort of writers who made the Richmond Enquirer, then recently established by its late venerable editor, the bulwark of the party to which it belonged and the terror of its foes. Nor were his attainments confined to literature. He was fond of the severe sciences; and such was his reputation in mathematics that he was tendered the professorship in that department in William and Mary College, and was appointed one of the commissioners to run the dividing line between Virginia and Kentucky.8
In his latter years he presented to the young generations rising
8 See Revised Code of 1819, Vol. I, page 61. His colleagues were General Joseph Martin and Judge Creed Taylor. The Richmond Enquirer came out in May, 1804.
الدجـ
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ARCHIBALD STUART.
around him a venerable image of the fathers of the Republic. His person to the last was erect; his frame, which was six feet three inches in height, was broad and muscular; his hair, which in youth was black, was white as snow, and was dressed in a queue; but his dark hazel eyes were still bright, and the grave and almost stern aspect of his face was such as one would look for in a statesman who, nearly half a century before, in an hour of trial and apprehension, had assisted in laying the foundation of the government under which we now live, and who had, since that time, been engaged in the honorable but arduous duties of a legislator and a judge. When he visited the hall of the Con- vention of 1829-'30, and took the seat allotted by the courtesy of the House to the judges, he observed with interest the repre- sentatives of a new generation about to frame a new system of government for his beloved Commonwealth, but he could not know the tender regard with which he was beheld as one of the five survivors of that illustrious band which composed the Con- vention of 1788.9
"In 1529 the survivors of the Convention of 17SS were Mr. Madison, Judge Marshall, and Colonel Monroe (who were members of the Con- vention of 1S29), Judge Stuart, and James Johnson, of Isle of Wight. it was on this occasion I had the honor of forming an acquaintance with Judge Stuart.
I annex portions of a letter received from an intelligent correspond- ent, which describes the Judge in latter life : "Judge Stuart, in May, 1791, married Miss Eleanor Briscoe, a daughter of Colonel Gerard Briscoe, of Frederick county, Virginia, but formerly of Montgomery county, Maryland. Her two sisters married Dr. Cornelius Baldwin, the father of the late Judge Briscoe G. Baldwin, and Judge Hugh Holmes. In stature the Judge was tall and rawboned, his height was six feet three inches, and he was perfectly erect. He was broad shouldered, large-boned, and muscular. His eyes were of a dark hazel color and exceedingly expressive. His complexion was dark, but somewhat florid; in manner he was rather stately and reserved. To strangers and on the bench he sometimes appeared austere in his deportment, but amongst his friends he exhibited the kindest and most genial dis- position. In his dress he adhered very much to the fashions of the Revolutionary period. His hair was worn combed back from his face and with a long queue behind. Until a short time before his death, he would wear nothing but short breeches with fair topped boots. In the latter part of his life his hair was as white as snow, and I never knew a man of more commanding and venerable appearance. In
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VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
GABRIEL JONES.
Another member of the bar, whom the Valley deputed to the Convention, and who holds an important place in its early his- tory, was Gabriel Jones. To this day some racy anecdotes, everywhere current in the Valley, but too prurient for the public eye, serve to show the peculiarities of this really able but most singular man. He is said to have opened the first law office west of the Blue Ridge. He was born in 1724, near Williams- burg, of English parents, who had come over ten years before and had settled in the vicinity of the metropolis.10 About 1734 the family returned to England, and in the city of London young
the general aspect of his features he bore a strong resemblance to Gen- eral Jackson, but was on a much larger scale. The most remarkable characteristic of his mind was his sound judgment. . I have often heard Judge Baldwin say that he thought his judgment but little, if at all, inferior to Judge Marshall's, and that, if he had been placed in a position to require the constant exercise of all his faculties, he would have been one of the most eminent judges in his time. He was a generous patron of young men struggling against difficulties, and among those who shared his kindness was the well-known John Allen, the rival of Henry Clay, who was killed at the river Raisin. Another peculiarity of the Judge was his almost intuitive perception of the character of men. The only portrait of him in existence was painted in 1824 by George Cooke, and is in the possession of his son, the Hon. A. H. H. Stuart."
10 Governor Gilmer, of Georgia, describes Gabriel Jones as " a Welsh- man well educated, a friend, kinsman, and executor of Lord Fairfax." I have followed the authority of the grandson of Mr. Jones, Francis B. Jones, Esq., as that most likely to be authentic. See Governor Gil- mer's "Georgians," page 61. [Gabriel Jones, it is believed, possessed a select, if not a large, library, for his period, in the Colony. Volumes with his book-plate frequently occur in libraries sold at auction. The arms used by him would indicate that he was of English descent, as they are those given by Burk (General Armory), as "Jones, Chilton and Shrewsbury. county, Salop; granted 16th June, 1607. Arms: A lion rampant vert, vulned in the breast, gu. Crest : A sun in splendour, or." Gabriel Jones's plate bore also the motto, " Pax ruris hospita," and "Gabriel Jones, Attorney at Law."-EDITOR. ]
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GABRIEL JONES.
Jones received his early training. While yet a lad Gabriel returned to Virginia, studied law, turned in due time his course westward, and took up his abode in the Valley, attending the courts of Winchester, Staunton, and Romney. In 1748 he married Miss Margaret Strother, a daughter of William Strother, who lived on the Rappahannock, and whose two other daughters married Thomas Lewis and John Madison, the father of the Bishop. After his marriage, Jones continued to reside in Fred- erick, but subsequently purchasing a beautiful estate on the Shenandoah in the present county of Rockingham, he removed thither, and there he resided during the remainder of his life. His estate lay directly opposite the estate of his brother-in-law and colleague in the Convention, Thomas Lewis. He died in 1806, in the. eighty-third year of his age. He was of small stature and of a nervous temperament, and, having lost his right eye in early life, he always wore a shade to conceal the defect from public observation. He is represented in a portrait at "Vaucluse," the seat of his late grandson, as dressed in the full toilet of a gentleman of the old regime, the shade over his eye, and as having a face shrewd and attenuated, and indicative of a high temper. Indeed, with all the discipline of a long life, with all his respect for those restraints which his position at the head of the bar, as the head of a family in an orderly, moral and even religious society, and as a gentleman punctilious in dress and demeanor, he could never turn the cup of provocation from his lips, nor restrain the outbursts of a temper terrible to the last degree. Even in the presence of the court his passions flamed wildly and fiercely. He was the first, and for a long time the only, attorney who practiced in Augusta county, and was generally known as The Lawyer. The road by which he travelled to Staunton was called the Lawyer's Road. An inci- dent which occurred in Augusta court will serve to show the peculiar temper of Jones, and, at the same time, the temper of the court toward him. He was engaged in a case in which the late Judge Holmes was the, opposing counsel. Holmes was mischievous and witty, and contrived to get Jones into a furious passion, when he became very profane. After hearing Jones for some time the court consulted together in order to determine what steps should be taken to preserve its dignity. To think of punishing Lawyer Jones was out of the question; so the pre-
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