USA > Virginia > The history of the Virginia federal convention of 1788, with some account of eminent Virginians of that era who were members of the body, Vol. I > Part 23
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The great speech of Upshur on the basis of representation in the Virginia Convention of 1829-30, was another splendid example of Gray- son's mode of debate.
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of laughter from both sides of the House. A Latin scholar, skilled in prosody, he ever showed a reluctance to let a slip in a quotation pass unreproved; and when a friend of the Constitu- tion, in using the words " spolia opima," made the penult of the last word short, Grayson whispered in a tone that reached the ear of the orator : "Opima, if you please"; and when another friend of the Constitution sought to derive the word contract from con and tracto, Grayson, with a lengthened twirl of the lips, trolled out in an undertone that was heard by the learned gentle- man in possession of the floor: "Tra-ho." And the laugh in this case, as in the preceding, passed like a wave from the spot where it was raised gradually to the remote parts of the house. He was not surprised, he is reported to have said, that men who were, in his opinion, about to vote away the freedom of a living people, should take such liberties with a dead tongue.
The physical qualities of Grayson were quite as distinctive as the intellectual. He was considered, as we have already said, the handsomest man in the Convention. He had a most comely and imposing person-his stature exceeded six feet, and though his weight exceeded two hundred and fifty pounds, such was the symmetry of his figure, the beholder was struck more with its height than its magnitude. His head was very large, but its outline was good ; his forehead unusually broad and high, and in its resemblance to that of Chalmer's indicating a predilection for the abstract sciences ; his eyes were black and deep-seated ; his nose large and curved ; his lips well formed, disclosing teeth white and regular, which retained their beauty to the last ; a fine complexion gave animation to the whole. When he was walk- ing, his head leaned slightly forward as if he were lost in thought. Lest our sketch may seem to be overdrawn, although no person who, as an adult, had known Grayson, with one exception, is now alive, we have fortunately a singular proof of the fidelity of the portrait which we have delineated. When Grayson had lain forty six years in his coffin its lid was lifted, and there his majestic form lay as if it had been recently wrapped in the shroud. The face was uncovered by the hand of a descendant, and its noble features, which had frowned in battle, which had sparkled in debate, and on which the eyes long closed of tender affection had loved to dwell, were fresh and full. The towering forehead ; the long black hair-the growth of the grave ; the black eye,
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glazed and slightly sunken, yet eloquent of its ancient fire ; the large Roman nose; the finely wrought lip; the perfect teeth, which bespoke a temperate life ended too soon ; the wide expanded chest ; the long and sinewy limbs terminating in those small and delicate hands that rested on his breast, and in those small feet that had been motionless so long ; the grand and graceful outline of the form as it was when laid away to its final rest, told touchingly with what faithfulness tradition had retained the image of the beloved original.177
The address of Grayson was winning and courteous. His manners, formed abroad at a time when the young American was apt to be taken for a young savage, and improved by a large experience with the world, were highly polished. He was
177 One of the descendants of Colonel Grayson represents him as over six feet, another quite six, and another, a lady who in her childhood knew him, as very tall. A friend, now dead, who knew Grayson, thought him over six feet.
I derive the particulars of the appearance of Colonel Grayson in his coffin from Robert Grayson Carter, Esq , of Grayson, Carter county, Kentucky, who uncovered the face of Grayson, and examined the body. He particularly alludes to the size of the head, and of the smallness of hands and feet, the hair, the features, and the teeth. I am indebted to Mr. Carter for his efforts to obtain information respecting his illustrious grandfather. The father of Colonel Grayson was named Benjamin ; was, it is believed by some of my correspondents, a Scotch- man, and married a lady whose maiden name was Monroe; and it is thought that Grayson and James Monroe were first or second cousins. Grayson himself married Eleanor, sister of General William Smallwood.
[It is a suggestive coincidence that the christian name of the father of James Monroe and of a brother of Colonel Grayson was Spence-in such use an uncommon name .- ED.]
I shall trace the career of Grayson more particularly when I come to speak of the members at large. Grayson was buried in the vault of Belle Air, then the seat of the Rev. Spence Grayson, near Dumfries.
I must also acknowledge my indebtedness to John M. Orr. Esq., another connection of Grayson's, for an interesting letter about Colonel Grayson. Mr. Orr thinks that the Graysons are English, and were residents of the Colony for several generations before the Revolution. He also says that Grayson was educated at Edinburg ; but as Mr. P. G. Washington, whose grandfather, Spence Grayson, was a brother of Colonel William, and was abroad with him at the same time, may be supposed to have heard or learned from authentic sources where his grandfather was educated, and affirms that it was at Oxford, I lean to his side of the question.
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fond of society, and whether he appeared at the fireside of the man of one hogshead,178 or in the aristocratic circles of the Col- ony, he was ever a welcome and honored guest. His conversa- tion, playful, sparkling, or profound, as the time or topic re- quired, or the mood prompted, was not only admired by his con- temporaries, but has left its impress upon our own times; and it was in conversation that he appeared with a lustre hardly inferior to that which adorned his forensic disputations. His humor was inexhaustible, and the young and the old, grave statesmen as well as young men who are ever ready to show their charity by honoring the jests of middle-aged people, were alike captivated by it. We are told by a friend who, in 1786, walked from the hall of Congress, then sitting in New York, in company with Grayson, Colonel Edward Carrington, and Judge St. George Tucker on their way to their boarding-house, that Grayson became lively, and threw out jests with such an effect that the gentlemen were so convulsed with laughter as hardly to be able to walk erect through the streets, he quite serious the while, gravitate incolumi.179 And in an humbler sphere his loving nature and pleasant talk were so relished by the family of a worthy woman at whose house, in visiting his mills on Opequon creek, he usually stopped, that, when his death was announced, all of them burst into tears. 180 Withal there was a dignity about him which the ablest and the bravest men would have been the last to trench upon.
178 In early times it was common to designate a planter according to the number of hogsheads of tobacco he made annually.
179 Carrington Memoranda.
180 I have received from Robert Grayson Carter, Esq., a reminiscence of Colonel Grayson, taken from the lips of the lady mentioned in the text, who was living last December (1857) in Lewis county, Kentucky, at the age of ninety-three. Her faculties were all nearly entire. Her memory was perfect, and she described Colonel Grayson as if she had seen him the day before. She says that in 1784 his hair was slightly gray, though originally very black ; that he was a very large man; that "he had a bright and intelligent black eye, and that he was altogether the handsomest man she ever laid her eyes upon "; that he used fre- quently to stay at her house on his way to his mills at Opequon, and that he said he was so pleased to find at her house a bed so much · better than any he could get at the mills. She thought him in 1784 between fifty and sixty ; that he was universally beloved, and that her brother, Captain William Helm, thought "that there was no such man
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We have spoken of his mode of debate; and it is fit that we should say something of his manner of speaking. It should seem improbable that a man of good address, of rare reasoning powers, and of undaunted spirit, should be destitute of the ordi- nary qualities of an orator, unless he had some impediment in his speech, or lost all self-possession the moment he stood upon his feet. Such was not the case with Grayson. It was his self- possession, acquired partly by his speeches in the English clubs and at the bar, partly by his early essays in the House of Bur- gesses, 181 but mainly by his service in the Congress of the Con- federation, which, as it was a small body, and consisted of the first men of the Union, exacted from those who addressed it a severity of manner as well as of matter, and a degree of prepara- tion and research rarely exhibited in popular assemblies, and which was one of the best schools of our early statesmen, 132 and
as Colonel Grayson for every faculty and virtue that could adorn a human being." She says that "he was remarkably temperate in his diet-took for breakfast coffee, butter and toast ; for dinner, a slice of mutton or a piece of chicken, with vegetables, and no dessert; and that he would take a cup of tea afterwards, but never ate supper." She says that "his portly form and dignified appearance filled her with such reverence that but for his agreeable and bland manners she would have felt restraint in his presence, but that she was entirely relieved by the affectionate manner in which he spoke and acted." Mr. Carter rode through a storm to secure the information of this venerable lady. I ought to add that the name of the lady is Mrs. Lucy Bragg, and that she further says, that Colonel Grayson always rode to her house in his carriage, attended by his negro man, Punch, who used to rub his mas- ter's feet, who reclined on the bed. Grayson had the gout, and ultimately died of it.
181 Several of my correspondents mention his having been a member of the House of Burgesses ; but I cannot find his name in the Journals. This absence of his name on the face of the Journals is not conclusive evidence of his not having been a member, as there is no list of mem- bers prefixed to the Journals, and the ayes and noes were not taken until after the formation of the Constitution of the State. The only means of ascertaining the membership of individuals must be found in the annual almanacs, which I do not possess, and know not where to seek.
182 Mr. Jefferson expressed the opinion that if Mr. Madison had not been a member of a small body like the old Congress, his modesty would have prevented him from engaging in debate.
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not a little from his mode of argumentation, which, anticipating from the first all possible objections to the case in hand, made him eager to court them from the lips of an adversary ; it was this self-possession that appeared to the observer not the least characteristic of his manner. He had also studied' oratory as an art, at a time when Wedderburne, though in full practice at the bar, deemed it not unworthy to become a pupil of Sheridan, and in listening to the eloquence of Dunning, of Townsend, of Burke, of Mansfield, and of the elder Pitt, he had formed conceptions of the art which it was the tendency as well as the ambition of his life to develop and to practice. His person, as has been said already, was commanding. His voice was clear, powerful, and under perfect control, and had been disciplined with care, and in sarcastic declamation its tones were said to be terrible ; but it had not the universal compass of Henry's, nor those musical intonations which made the voice of Innes grateful to the most wearied ear. He spoke at times with great animation ; but his stern taste, as well as his peculiar range of argument, in some measure interdicted much action, in the mechanical sense of the word. But it was only when the hour of reflection came that such thoughts occurred to the hearer, who was borne along, while the orator was wrapped in his subject, unresistingly by the ever-abounding, ever-varying and transparent 'current of his speech. Yet it is rather in the highest rank of debaters than in the highest rank of orators we should place the name of Grayson.
In his present position on the floor, when he rose to make the only one of his great speeches that have come down to us, he had an advantage which is necessary to a speaker on a great occasion, and of which he knew how to avail himself-he well knew his opponents. Nicholas, Randolph, Lee, and Marshall were his juniors in the army, and his juniors in years. With two of them he had served in Congress, and he had encountered them all at the bar. He began his speech with an apology for the desultory way in which, froin the previous debate, he would be compelled to treat his subject, and with a declaration of his confidence in the patriotism and worth of the members of the General Convention who were members of the House. He hoped that what he designed to say might not be misapplied. He would make no allusions to any gentleman whatever.
He admitted the defects of the Confederation, but he appre-
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hended they could not be removed, because they flowed from the nature of that government and from the fact that particular interests were preferred to the interests of the whole. He con- tended that the particular disorders of Virginia ought not to be attributed to that source, as they were equally beyond the reach of the Federal Government and of the plan upon the table ; that the present condition of Virginia was a vast improvement upon the Colonial system ; that the Judiciary was certainly as rapid as under the royal government, where a case had been thirty-one years on the docket. He then detailed the state of public feeling on the subject of a change in the Federal Government before the meeting of the General Convention, and showed that in Virginia alone was there any dissatisfaction. He then reviewed, with a full knowledge of the subject, the dangers alleged to exist from the hostility of foreign powers and of the neighboring States, show- ing that they were wholly imaginary. " As for our sister States," he said, " disunion is impossible. The Eastern States hold the fisheries, which are their cornfields, by a hair. They have a dispute with the British government about their rights at this moment. Is not a general and strong government necessary for their interest? If ever nations had any inducements to peace, the Eastern States now have. New York and Pennsylvania are looking anxiously forward to the fur trade. How can they obtain it but by union? How are the little States inclined ? They are not likely to disunite. Their weakness will prevent them from quarreling. Little men are seldom fond of quarrel- ing among giants. Is there not a strong inducement to union, while the British are on one side and the Spaniards on the other ? Thank heaven, we have a Carthage of our own. But we are told that if we do not embrace the present moment to adopt a system which we believe to be fatal to our liberties, we are lost forever. Is there no difference between productive States and carrying States? If we hold out, will not the tobacco trade enable us to make terms with the carrying States? Is there nothing in a similarity of laws, religion, language and manners ? Do not these, and the intercourse and intermarriages between people of the different States invite them in the strongest man- ner to union ?
" But what would I do on the present occasion to remedy the defects of the present Confederation? There are two opinions
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prevailing in the world ; the one that mankind can only be gov- erned by force ; the other that they are capable of freedom and a good government. Under the supposition that mankind can govern themselves, I would recommend that the present Con- federation be amended. Give Congress the regulation of com- merce. Infuse new spirit and strength into the State govern- ments ; for when the component parts are strong, it will give energy to the government, although it be otherwise weak. This may be proved by the union at Utrecht. Apportion the public debts in such a manner as to throw the unpopular ones on the back lands. Call only for requisitions for the foreign interest, and aid them by loans. Keep on so until the American charac- ter be marked with some certain features. We are yet too young to know what we are fit for. The continual migration of people from Europe, and the settlement of new countries on our western frontiers, are strong arguments against making new ex- periments now in government. When these things are removed, we can with greater prospect of success devise changes. We ought to consider, as Montesquieu says, whether the construction of a government be suitable to the genius and disposition of the people, as well as a variety of other circumstances.
"But, if this position be not true, and men can only be gov- erned by force, then be as gentle as possible. What then would I do? I would not take the British monarchy for my model. We have not materials for such a government in our country, although I will be bold to say, that it is one of the governments in the world by which liberty and property are best secured. But I would adopt the following government. I would have a president for life, choosing his successor at the same time; a Senate for life, with the powers of the House of Lords, and a triennial House of Representatives. If, sir, if we are to be con- solidated AT ALL, we ought to be fully represented, and governed with sufficient energy, according to numbers in both Houses.
" Will this new plan accomplish our purposes ? Will the liberty and property of the country be secure under it? It is a government founded on the principles of monarchy with three estates. Is it like the model of Tacitus or Montesquieu ? Are there checks on it like the British monarchy ? There is an ex- ecutive fettered in some parts, and as unlimited in others as a Roman Dictator. Look at the executive. Contrary to the
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opinion of all the best writers, it is blended with the legislative. We have asked for water, and they have given us a stone. I am willing to give the government the regulation of trade. It will be serviceable in regulating the trade between the States. But I believe it will not be attended with the advantages generally expected."
He then spoke of the inexpediency of giving up the power of taxation. "As to direct taxation," he said, "give up this, and you give up everything, as it is the highest act of sovereignty. Surrender this inestimable jewel and you throw a pearl away richer than all your tribe." When he had proved that the ex- ercise of this power would result in a conflict between the Gen- eral and the State Government, in opposition to the opinion expressed by Pendleton, and established his position by examples, and had critically surveyed the construction of the new House of Representatives, which he contended was defective, he concluded: "But my greatest objection is, that in its operation it will be found unequally grievous and oppressive. If it have any efficacy at all, it must be by a faction-a faction of one part of the Union against the other. I think that it has a great natural imbecility within itself-too weak for a consolidated, and too strong for a confederate government. But if it be called into action by a combination of seven States, it will be terrible indeed. We need to be at no loss to determine how this combination will be formed. There is a great difference of circumstances between the States. The interest of the carrying States is strikingly different from that of the productive States. I mean not to give offence to any part of America, but mankind are governed by interest. The carrying States will assuredly unite, and our situation then will be wretched indeed .. Our commodities will be transported on their own terms, and every measure will have for its object their particular interest. Let ill-fated Ireland be ever present to our view. We ought to be wise enough to guard against the abuse of such a government. Republics, in fact, oppress more than monarchies. If we advert to the page of history, we will find this disposition too often manifested in republican govern- ments. The Romans in ancient, and the Dutch in modern times, oppressed their provinces in a remarkable degree. I hope that my fears are groundless ; but I believe it as I do my creed, that this Government will operate as a faction of seven States to
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oppress the rest of the Union. But it may be said that we are represented, and cannot, therefore, be injured-a poor represen- tation it will be. The British would have been glad to take America into the union, like the Scotch, by giving us a small representation. The Irish may be indulged with the same favor by asking for it. Will that lessen our misfortunes ? A small representation gives a pretense to injure and destroy. But, sir, the Scotch union is introduced by an honorable gentle- man, as an argument in favor of adoption. Would he wish his country to be on the same foundation as Scotland? She has but forty-five members in the House of Commons, and sixteen in the House of Lords. They go up regularly in order to be bribed. The smallness of their number puts it out of their power to carry . any measure. And this unhappy nation exhibits, perhaps, the .only instance in the world where corruption becomes a virtue. I devoutly pray that this description of Scotland may not be picturesque of the Southern States in three years from this time. The committee being tired, as well as myself, I will take another time.to give my opinion more fully on this great and important subject.''183
183 Grayson was born in Prince William county, and died at Dumfries, Va., March 12. 1790. He married Eleanor Smallwood, sister of General and Governor Wm. Smallwood, of Maryland. He left issue : i George W., of Fauquier county, died before 1832 (leaving issue : I. Frances mar- ried Richard H. Foote ; 2. George W .; 3, William); ii. Robert H. married - (and left issue : 1. Wm. P .; 2. Hebe C. married William P. Smith ; 3. Ellen S); iii. Hebe Smallwood ; iv. Alfred W. died before 1829; mar- ried (and left issue : John Breckinridge, Brigadier-General Confederate States Army, from Kentucky) ; v. William J., statesman, born at Beau- fort, S. C., Nov., 1788, died in Newberne, N. C., October 4, 1863. was grad - uated at the College of South Carolina in 1809, and bred to the legal profession. Entering on the practice of law at Beaufort he became a Commissioner of Equity of South Carolina, a member of the State Legislature in 1813, and Senator in 1831. He opposed the Tariff Act of 1831, but was not disposed to push the collision to the extreme of civil war. He served in Congress from December 3, 1833, to March 3, 1837, and in 1841 was appointed Collector of Customs at Charleston, S. C. In 1843 he retired to his plantation. During the secession agita- tion of 1850 he published a letter to Governor Seabrook deprecating disunion, and pointing out the evils that would follow. He was a fre- quent contributor to the Southern Review, and also published " The Hireling and Slave," a poem (Charleston, S. C. 1854); "Chicora, and
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Monroe, seconded by Henry, moved that the committee should rise, that Grayson should have an opportunity of continuing his argument next day ; and the House adjourned. Its session had been protracted. The heat had been intense, but it was a day which posterity will recall with pride ; for in its course Madison, Mason, Lee, and Grayson made such speeches as have been rarely heard in a single day in any deliberative assembly.
On Thursday, the twelfth of June, as soon as the House went into committee, Wythe in the chair, and the first and sec- ond sections of the Constitution still nominally the order of the day, Grayson resumed his speech. His first few sentences told that he felt a greater freedom than even the most adroit debaters are apt to feel in addressing an august assembly for the first time, which had been listening to a succession of able men, and which was destined to unmake as well as make reputations.184
" I asserted yesterday," he said, " that there were two opinions in the world-the one that mankind were capable of governing themselves, the other that it required actual force to govern them. On the principle that the first position was true, and which is consonant to the rights of humanity, the House will recollect that it was my opinion to amend the present Confed- eration, and to infuse a new portion of health and strength into the State Governments, to apportion the public debts in such a
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