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. II > Part 3
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There is one reflection drawn from the life of John Stuart not undeserving our attention. While most of the early politicians east of the mountains, though beginning life with good estates, died poor, or were able to leave but a pittance to their families, which were scattered abroad, their Western colleagues bequeathed to their descendants a princely inheritance. The fine estates on the eastern rivers, the very names of which once imparted to
22 This incident I have given in almost the identical words of Gov- ernor Gilmer. ("Georgians," page 49.)
23 I knew this venerable lady in my early youth and in her extreme old age. She was active and shrewd to the last. She was somewhat ·deaf; and her son, Lewis, my early and dear friend, now too gone, used laughingly to say that his mother could not hear ordinary conver- sation very well, but that if you talked to her about money matters her hearing was perfect.
T
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their owners the dignity of a title, have long been alienated from the blood of their original possessors. During the present century four-fifths of the land on the banks of the James, and of other rivers of the East, have been in the market. Such has not been the case west of the mountains. We should err, however, in ascribing the result to the superior thrift or to the superior skill of our Western brethren. Its explanation will probably be found in the peculiar circumstances of each great section of country. In the East, if a man with ten children dies leaving an old planta- tion worth fifty thousand dollars,2ª as from obvious considera- tions it was incapable of sustaining a division into ten equal and habitable parts, it must be sold for a division. But fifty thousand dollars' worth of landed property in the West, as the West was at the beginning of the present century, could be divided indefinitely into fine plantations abounding in wood and water. Early purchases of land may be said to be the source of Western wealth; and for such purchases the East afforded no opportunity. But Stuart would, under almost any circum- stances, have been a wealthy man. In his temperament were combined in a profuse degree the elements of worldly success. He was systematic, patient, and economical. Debt he held in abhorrence. Whatever progress he made was sure. He did much for himself; but he took care that time should do more. Thus, watching the progress of events, and rising with a rising country, he accumulated vast wealth. Of the quarter of million of dollars at which his estate was assessed at his death, the greater proportion yet remains in the hands of his descendants, and will probably remain for a century to come. 25
24 Our great Eastern statesmen were as prolific as their Western brethren. If Thomas Lewis brought up thirteen children, Patrick Henry and George Mason nearly averaged a dozen.
25 The Historical Memoir of Colonel Stuart was among the earliest publications of the Historical Society of Virginia. A portion of it may be found in Howe, in the article on Greenbrier, and in the Historical Register, Vol. V, 18r. I read it thirty years ago in the original manu- script, which was taken from the desk on which it was written and handed to me for perusal. I can recall many of the books of the Colonel's library. They were, of course, all London editions, and in calf binding. I acknowledge the kind assistance of Samuel Price, Esq., and of other members of the family of Colonel Stuart.
.
ANDREW MOORE.
From the mountains of Greenbrier we pass again into the Valley, and recall the name of a patriot who, by birth and race, was one of its peculiar representatives, whose early life was checkered by a various fortune, whose services as a soldier in three arduous campaigns in the North, during which he saw from the heights of Saratoga the surrender of the first British General with his army to the prowess of the American arms-a glorious result, achieved in no small measure by the valor and skill of the corps to which he belonged; who was a member of the Assembly in the latter years of the Revolution, and distin- guished himself by his devotion to religious freedom; who was a member of the House of Representatives during the entire term of Washington's administration; who was a leader in the Republican party from the date of the Federal Constitution to the close of the presidency of Jefferson; who was the first native of the Valley elected by Virginia to the office of a Senator of the United States, and who, having lived to behold the second contest of his country with Great Britain and to rejoice in the success of her arms, and, reposing in the midst of his descend- ants in the shadow of his own vine, went down quietly, in his sixty-eighth year, to his honored grave.
But, great as were the services rendered throughout a long life to his country, his course in the present Convention, which had a controlling influence in effecting the ratification of the Constitution, is not the least interesting incident in his career in the estimation of his posterity. He had been instructed by a majority of the voters of Rockbridge to oppose the ratification of the Constitution; but, after due deliberation, he resolved to disobey his instructions and to sustain. that instrument. To obey the instructions of his constituents is the most fearful responsibility which a delegate can assume; and it is question- able whether, in a case that is definitely settled by his vote beyond the possibility of revision, it is susceptible of justifica- tion. But the cognizance of the question lies altogether with the
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constituents whose wishes have been thwarted, and to these Andrew Moore appealed on his return from the Convention, and was sustained by an overwhelming majority of their suffrages.
Andrew Moore was of the Scotch-Irish race, to which Thomas Lewis and John Stuart belonged. His grandfather was one of a family of brothers who emigrated from the North of Ireland and settled in the Valley, and in some of the Southern States. His father, David, took up his abode on a farm in the lower part of Rockbridge (then Augusta), now called "Cannicello." The most remote ancestor of David whom he could remember was a lady whose maiden name was Bante, who in her old age came over to this country, and who used to relate that, when a girl, she had been driven to take refuge under the walls of Londonderry, had seen many Protestants lying dead from starvation with tufts of grass in their mouths, and had herself barely escaped alive from the havoc of that terrible scene.
In 1752, at the homestead of " Cannicello," Andrew was born, and was there brought up, availing himself of the advantages of instruction within his reach so effectually as, before manhood, to become a teacher in a school of his own. He determined to study law, and attended, about 1772, a course of lectures under Wythe, at William and Mary. Fascinated by a love of adven- ture, he embarked for the West Indies, was overtaken by a tempest, and was cast away on a desert island. To sustain life the shipwrecked party was compelled to live on reptiles, and especially on a large species of lizard, the flavor of which, even in old age, the venerable patriot could readily remember. From this inhospitable abode he was at length rescued by a passing vessel; and he went to sea no more.
The Revolution was now in progress, the Declaration of Independence was promulgated, and Virginia had erected a form of government of her own, and appealed to her citizens to maintain it in the field. Andrew Moore hearkened to the call, and accepted a lieutenantcy in the company of Captain John Hays, of Morgan's Rifle Corps. As soon as he received his commission he attended a log-rolling in his neighborhood, and enlisted in one day nineteen men-being nearly the whole num- ber present capable of bearing arms. Such was the spirit of patriotism that animated the bosoms of his countrymen. He continued in the army three years, and served most of that time
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ANDREW MOORE.
in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. He participated in all the engagements which terminated in the capture of the British army under Burgoyne, and saw that accomplished Gene- :al play a part in a drama of deeper interest than the one which ke wrote for the entertainment of a London audience. At the expiration of three years' service in the army, having attained the rank of captain, he resigned his commission, in consequence of the number of supernumerary officers, and returned to Rock- bridge.
In April, 1780, he entered on his legislative career, which he was destined to pursue for nearly the third of a century, and to dose with the highest honor which can be attained in that department of the public service. As soon as he entered the House of Delegates he was placed on the Committee of Reli- gion, and it should be remembered forever to his praise that he w .; from the first the earnest and consistent advocate of religious freedom in all its largest sense. He was a member of the body aben Tarleton made his famous effort to capture it in full session at Charlottesville. He acted with the party of which Henry was the head; nor until he took his seat in the present Convention did he depart from the policy marked out by the great tribune of the people. On the 17th day of December, 1785, true to the principles of the race from which he sprung, and, in unison with the spirit of that remarkable era in which he lived, he voted for the memorable act "establishing religious freedom." 26 And
" As several of the members of the Convention voted with Moore on that occasion, I annex, for the sake of reference, the ayes and noes on the passage of the bill in the House of Delegates :
AVES-Joshua Fry, Wilson Cary Nicholas, Joseph Eggleston, Sam'l Jordan Cabell, Zachariah Johnston, Michael Bowyer, John Trigg, Robert Clark, George Hancock, Archibald Stuart, William Anderson, Hickerson Barksdale, John Clarke (of Campbell), Samuel Hawes, Anthony New, John Daniel, Henry Southall, French Strother, Henry Fry, William Gatewood, Meriwether Smith, Charles Simms, David Stuart, William Pickett, Thomas Helm, C. Greenup, James Garrard, George Thomson, Alexander White, Charles Thurston, Thomas Smith, George Clendinen, John Lucas, Jeremiah Pate, Ralph Humphreys, Isaac Vanmeter, George Jackson, Nathaniel Wilkinson, John Mayo, Jr., john Rentfro, William Norvell, John Roberts, William Dudley, Thomas Moore, Carter Braxton, Benjamin Temple, Francis Peyton, Christopher Robertson, Samuel Garland, Benjamin Logan, David Scott, William 3
-
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VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
when, on the 16th of January following, the bill came down from the Senate with three amendments, two of which were critical and explanatory, and the third of which proposed to strike out the words, " that the religious opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction," he assented to the two first, but voted against concurring with the last in a minority of twenty-seven; thus affirming in the most positive manner that the religious opinions of men are not within the range of legislation.27 During the following session-which began in October, 1786, and ended on the 11th of January, 1787-he voted for the appointment of commissioners to meet at Annapolis, and afterwards voted to appoint delegates to the Federal Convention, which should assemble in Philadelphia for the purpose of proposing amendments to the Articles of Con- federation.
In the present Convention, as before observed, he sustained the Constitution proposed by the General Convention, and opposed the adoption of the third amendment of the series which was reported by the select committee, and which reserved
Pettijohn, Robert Sayres, Daniel Trigg, William H. Macon, Griffin Stith, David Bradford, James Madison, Charles Porter, William Harri- son, Benjamin Lankford, John Clarke (of Prince Edward), Richard Bibb, Cuthbert Bullitt, Daniel Carroll Brent, Williamson Ball, Andrew Moore, John Hopkins, Gawin Hamilton, Isaac Zane, John Tayloe, John W. Willis, Andrew Kincannon, and James Innes-74.
NOES-Thomas Claiborne, Miles King, Worlich Westwood, John Page, Garland Anderson, Elias Wills, William Thornton, Francis Corbin, Willis Riddick, Daniel Sandford, John Gordon, Edward Bland, Anthony Walke, George L. Turberville, William Garrard, John F. Mer- cer, Carter B. Harrison, Richard Cary, Jr., Wilson Cary, and Richard Lee-20./
The italics point out the members of the present Convention who voted on the bill.
17 As Madison, Harrison, and other prominent men of the popular party voted in the majority of fifty-three, I am inclined to believe that they did so lest, by sending the bill back again to the Senate when the session had only two days to run, they might jeopard its passage. In the negative were the names of Zachariah Johnston, John Tyler, French Strother, Willis Riddick, Andrew Moore, Isaac Zane, and Thomas. Mathews, members of the present Convention, all of whom (except Riddick) sustained the original bill. See Journal of the House of Delegates, January 16, 1786.
1555769
ANDREW MOORE.
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to the State the privilege of collecting the Federal quotas through her own officers. He was elected to the first Congress under the Constitution ; and it soon appeared that, eager as he was to procure the ratification of that instrument by Virginia, he was resolved to watch its workings with unceasing vigilance, and to insist upon the strictest construction of its powers. On Wednesday, the 18th of March, 1790, he took his seat in the House of Representatives, then sitting in New York, and took an active part in its proceedings. In the arrangement of the new tariff he guarded the interests of the farmer, and contended that, as hemp could be grown in the Southern States, it should receive the same encouragement that was extended to the manu- facturers by a tax on cordage. He opposed the heavy duty on salt as being hard upon those who raised cattle, and argued with spirit against the discrimination of pay in favor of the Senators over the members of the House of Representatives as deroga- tory and unjust. It was on the questions growing out of the treaty negotiated by Mr. Jay with Great Britain that he spoke more at length than he had yet done, and ably defended the rule of the House of Representatives asserting its constitutional rights in relation to treaties; and exposed the unequal and unjust stipulations of the treaty itself. When in 1793 the propo- sition was brought forward to reduce the army, he went into a minute history of Indian affairs, and proved what was after- wards established by a severe sacrifice of human life, that regu- lars, and not militia, were the proper troops for Indian wars.28 In 1797 he withdrew with Madison and Giles from the House of Representatives, and determined by a vigorous course of mea- sures in the Virginia Assembly to change the current of Federal politics. He supported the resolutions passed by that body in 1798, and the celebrated report presented by Madison at the succeeding session. In 1803 he returned to the House of Repre- sentatives, and in the following year was elected for a full term to the Senate of the United States. While he remained in the Senate he upheld the policy of the Republican party, and gave to the administration of Jefferson a cordial and most effective support. On the conclusion of his senatorial term he declined a re-election, and withdrew from public life. He was appointed
28 Benton's Debates, Vol. I, 36, 39, 124, 411, 727.
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by Mr. Madison marshal of the district of Virginia, and when subsequently the district was divided he remained the marshal of the Eastern district, performing its duties until his death, on the 14th of April, 1821. Some years before his death he was elected by the Assembly a general of brigade, and afterwards major- general. He was of the middle height, stoutly built, and even in old age was capable of enduring fatigue and exposure. In his visits to Norfolk, which he made in the discharge of the duties of his office, he always rode on horseback. He died at Lexington, and was buried there.29
29 It was on one of his visits to Norfolk that I saw General Moore for the first and only time. He was then about sixty-six, but in his step and conversation he appeared to my young eyes as a man about the middle age. It was his elder brother William, and not Andrew, as stated by Howe and Foote, who was at the battle of Point Pleasant. When Colonel John Steele was shot during the fight by an Indian, who was about to scalp him, William Moore shot the Indian, and knocking another Indian down with his rifle shouldered Steele, who was a large man, and taking his own rifle and Steele's in the other hand, carried him a hundred yards back, and then returned to the fight. Steele, who recovered from his wound, used to say that William Moore was the only man in the army who could have carried him off if he would, or that would have carried him off if he could. William was a lieu- tenant in the militia at the siege of York. He was very strong, and told a nephew that he never drank a pint of spirits in the whole course of his life. He lived to the age of ninety-three. There is a miniature of General Moore in the possession of his widow.
WILLIAM McKEE, MARTIN McFERRAN.
The colleague of Moore from Rockbridge was Colonel William McKee, who was descended from the same Scotch-Irish race, and evinced in a long career in the House of Delegates a firm determination to overturn those institutions, which, however well adapted to embellish and adorn an aristocratic state of society, are out of place in a republic. Hence, he gave a hearty support to the bills reported by the Committee of Revisers, and though he was not one of that illustrious band which, amid the rebukes of the selfish and the prejudices of even wise and hon- orable men, recorded the act establishing religious freedom on the statute-book of the Commonwealth, he warmly approved the measure. He had been engaged in several encounters with the Indians, had fought gallantly at Point Pleasant, and had acquired a high reputation for integrity, energy, and ability. He was a member of the House of Delegates at the winter session of 1786, and voted to send commissioners to Annapolis, and subsequently to the General Convention, which was summoned to revise the Articles of Confederation. Like his colleague, Moore, he took the responsibility of disobeying the instructions of his constitu- ents, enjoining upon him to oppose the ratification of the Federal Constitution, and received an honorable acquittal at their hands. On the adjournment of the Convention he removed to Ken- tucky, where he spent the remainder of his days. 30
1
The representatives of Botetourt were two men who exerted a great influence on public opinion in the West, and were among the most patriotic and steadfast of their generation. Both Mar- tin McFerran and William Fleming were of Scotch descent. McFerran, who belonged to the great Scotch-Irish family that passed from Pennsylvania into the Valley, and who derived his Christian name from a clergyman, who as early as 1759 went fortli as a missionary among the Indians, and was, it is believed,
30 For the religious aspects of his character, see Foote's Sketches of Virginia, first series, page 447.
..
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VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
slaughtered by them, was for several years before the meeting of the Convention an active member of the House of Delegates, and maintained a prominent place on the committees of that body at a time when a few leading names only were found upon them. He, in common with his more distinguished colleague, was, in the first instance, opposed to the ratification of the Fed- eral Constitution, and it is probable that but for the fervid elo- quence of Archibald Stuart on the day of the election of the members of the Convention, which persuaded the voters to elicit pledges from the candidates, would, as in earlier days, have ranged under the banner of Patrick Henry. But he regarded the expressed will of his constituents as a rule of action, and not only voted in favor of the adoption of the Con- stitution, but opposed the scheme of previous amendments. And when the celebrated memorial to Congress adopted by the House of Delegates of which he was a member, on the 14th day of November following the adjournment of the Convention, which insisted "in the most earnest and solemn manner that a Convention of deputies from the several States be immediately called, with full power to take into their consideration the defects of the Federal Constitution that have been suggested by the State Conventions, and report such amendments thereto as they shall find best suited to promote our common interests, and secure to ourselves and the latest posterity the great and unalienable rights of mankind,"31 he voted for the milder propo-
31 For the two memorials which strikingly exhibit the temper of the times, see the Journal of the House of Delegates of November 14, 1788. The first memorial was probably from the pen of Henry, and the substitute from the pen of Edmund Randolph. The substitute . was lost-ayes 50, noes 72-and then the original memorial was carried without a division. As it is interesting to trace the action of the mem- bers of the Convention, some fifty odd of whom were members of the House of Delegates when the memorials were offered, I annex their votes for and against the substitute :
AYES-Mr. Speaker (General Mathews), Wilson C. Nicholas, Zacha- riah Johnston, Martin McFerran, David Stuart, John Shearman Wood- cock, Alexander White, Thomas Smith, George Clendenin, Daniel Fisher, Robert Breckenridge (Kentucky), Levin Powell. William Over- ton Callis, Francis Corbin, Ralph Wormeley, William Ronald, Walker Tomlin, John Allen.
NOES-William Cabell, John Trigg, Henry Lee (Kentucky), Notlay
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WILLIAM M'KEE, MARTIN M'FERRAN.
sition offered by the immediate friends of the Constitution, which left it discretionary with Congress to act on the amendments proposed by the States in the form prescribed by the Constitu- tion itself, or to submit them to a Convention of the States. Nor should it be omitted in this brief sketch of McFerran that he voted against the schedule of amendments reported by the select committee of the Convention, and adopted by that body.
Conn (Kentucky), Binns Jones, Benjamin Harrison, French Strother, Joel Early, Miles King, John Early, John Guerrant, Thomas Cooper, John Roane, Green Clay (Kentucky), Alexander Robertson, Richard Kennon, Willis Riddick, Burwell Bassett, Patrick Henry, Theo. Bland, Cuthbert Bullitt, William McKee, Thomas Carter, James Monroe, Thomas Edmunds, Samuel Edmiston.
,
..
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VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
WILLIAM FLEMING.
Colonel William Fleming was not a member of the General Assembly which held its sessions in 1788; but on the first vote by ayes and noes in the Convention he separated from his col- leagues and sustained the schedule of amendments proposed by the select committee. The life of this remarkable man richly merits a deliberate record. For forty years he was engaged in the military and civil trusts of the Colony and of the Common- wealth; and signalized himself by his valor, his incorruptible integrity, and his ardent patriotism, all of which qualities were combined with and exalted by a pure moral character, by great domestic virtues, and by a deep sense of religion. He was born on the 18th day of February, 1729, in the town of Jedburgh, Scotland, a little village made familiar to the world by the genius of Scott. He was the son of Leonard and Dorothea Fleming, and was nearly allied to the Earl of Wigton and Lord Fleming. When the title of the earldom of Wigton was in abeyance on the death of the last earl without issue, which happened after the Revolution, Fleming was urged to visit Scotland and claim the succession; but, true to the principles of the memorable event which he had helped to achieve, he preferred to remain in Vir- ginia and bring up his large family in a new country, alleging that he had no wish to make his eldest son, who was already well provided for by his maternal grandfather, a rich man, and his other children poor. When we recall what Scotland was at that time, we are inclined to approve, on grounds disconnected from politics, the wisdom of his choice. That he had no unkind feelings toward his Scotch relations, and that he cherished the memories of his distinguished lineage, is evident from the fact that he called his beautiful estate in Botetourt (now in Roanoke) by the name of " Bellmont," a seat of the Flemings, which he had visited in his early days. That lineage had long been illustrious, and was intimately connected with the unfortunate but beautiful Queen of Scotland, whose character is one of the puzzles of modern history. It will be remembered that, when Mary was
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