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 5
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In the practical business of life he was, like most Scotchmen who turn their backs upon Toryism and brandy, not only suc- cessful, but highly prosperous. He invested largely in Kentucky lands, and was able to provide well for his family. Had his lands been judiciously managed after his decease, they would have conferred great wealth upon all his descendants. His hos- pitality was always on a liberal scale. The first eight years of his life in Virginia, when he was not engaged in his compaigns, were spent in Williamsburg and in its vicinity; and entering into society with a zest made more keen by the hardships and dangers of a camp, and uniting in his person the qualities (then rare) of a scholar and a soldier, who bore the prestige of noble blood, he acquired a quiet dignity of address and a polished courtesy which were conspicuous in his old age; and his intimate
38 Judge Paul Carrington, Sr., to Fleming, in the Fleming papers.
39 A copy of the petition to the Assembly may be seen in the Fleming papers.
الحداد
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VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
acquaintance with all the distinguished actors of his time was refreshed by visits from them whenever they came within reach of his house. And the traveller from the East or from the West looked forward with longing to the hospitable mansion at " Bellmont."
The last days of this estimable patriot were now at hand. Writing to a niece in England the year before his death, he says: "I have retired from all public business for several years; am now old, my constitution broken, maimed by several wounds, and am often attacked by violent pains in my limbs, brought on by colds and by many years' severe duty in a military line. I am just able to walk a little, after a month's confinement to my bed and room. When well I am employed in my family affairs, and in the support of a pretty numerous family in a part of the country where little business is carried on." He lingered to the following year, when on the 5th day of August, 1795, in his sixty-sixth year, he breathed his last. His remains were interred in the burial-ground at "Bellmont" by the side of his deceased children. At a late day the body of his wife was placed by him. A substantial stone wall protects the remains; but, in common with most of our early patriots, no stone tells the passer-by who rests beneath. 10
" Colonel Fleming had twelve or fourteen children, of whom seven survived him. Of these Leonard, the eldest son. removed to Ken- tucky before his father's death, and lived to the age of eighty-four ; Eliza, who married first the Rev. Cary Allen, and afterwards the Rev. Samuel Ramsey ; Dorothea, who married Mr. James Bratton ; Anne, who married the Rev. George A. Baxter, D. D .; Priscilla, who married Mr. Samuel Wilson, and has resided more than thirty years in Ala- bama; William, who has also lived in Alabama for many years ; and John, the youngest son, who died at the age of eighteen, while a stu- dent at Washington College. Of these Colonel William Fleming and
Mrs. Wilson are the only survivors. Mrs. Fleming long survived her husband, and maintained the wonted hospitality of his house. Con- sult Foote's Sketches of Virginia, second series, page 268. Governor Gilmer, in his " Georgians," page 56, states that Colonel Fleming was Governor of Virginia; but he is mistaken. As a member of the Council, he may have acted on some occasion as Lieutenant-Governor.
[As a member of the Council, for a time in June, 1781, during the flight, before the enemy, of Governor Jefferson from the capital, Colo- nel Fleming was the Executive of the State. His acts were legalized by a resolution of the Assembly (Hening's Statutes, x, 567) :
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WILLIAM FLEMING.
He is said to have been of medium height, his features strongly marked, his eyes blue, his nose Roman, and his hair, until it became grey, of a dark brown. His teeth were sound to the last. There is no portrait of him extant; for in those days painters never crossed the Blue Ridge, and came very rarely east of it; but there is a small profile likeness of him, which exhibits the outline of a striking head. His address was dig- nified and engaging; and having received a classical training in early life, and mingled freely in society, passing in a period of more than forty years through all the varieties of public life, and with fair powers of observation, he was always self-possessed in his demeanor, and displayed great facility in pleasing and inter- esting all who came in contact with him. He wore the dress of the Revolution to the end; and was not inattentive to his person or to the customs of polished society. Even in his Indian cam- paigns he sealed his letters to his wife with wax on which was impressed the Fleming coat-of-arms. Such was William Fleming, a patriot whose name had almost slipped from the memory of that Commonwealth whose independence he aided in achieving, and whose glory is a part of his work.
There is a strong similarity in the lives of Hugh Mercer and William Fleming. Both were Scotchmen, who emigrated in early manhood to the Colony of Virginia. Both studied medi- cine in the University of Edinburgh, and exchanged the scalpel for the sword, and were engaged in the Indian wars that ended with the pacification of 1763. Both in high military command and in the midst of battle fell covered with wounds. But here
' It appearing to the General Assembly that Colonel William Flem- ing, being the only acting member of the Council for some time before the appointment of the Chief Magistrate, did give orders for the calling out the militia, and also pursued such other measures as were essential to good government, and it is just and reasonable that he should be indemnified therein-
" Resolved, therefore, That the said William Fleming, Esq., be indemnified for his conduct as before mentioned, and the Assembly do approve the same.
" 1781, June 23.
"JOHN BECKLEY, C. H. D.
"Agreed to by the Senate.
"WILL. DREW, C. S." -EDITOR.]
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the parallel ceases. Mercer died in a few days of his wounds; Fleming, though disabled from active command, and at times enduring excruciating pain from his injuries to the hour of his death, which was caused by them, lived more than twenty years, during which he rendered valuable services to his country, saw that country's independence recognized by the proudest nations of Europe, and succeeded in securing the adoption of the Fed- eral Constitution under which we now live. 11
#1 I acknowledge with much pleasure my obligations to Miss Louisa P. Baxter, a granddaughter of Colonel Fleming, for entrusting to my care some valuable papers of her ancestor, and for an admirable letter of her own. Sidney S. Baxter, Esq., formerly Attorney-General of Virginia, is a grandson of Colonel Fleming. The reader of our early journals must be careful not to confound William Fleming, of Cumber- land, who was a member of the Convention of 1776, &c., and after- wards a judge of the Court of Appeals, with Colonel William Fleming, of Botetourt:
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ISAAC VANMETER, EBENEZER ZANE.
It would be to present an unfaithful portrait of the useful and able men who represented the West in the Convention if we omitted to record the names of Isaac Vanmeter, of Hardy, and of Ebenezer Zane, of Ohio. They were the peculiar repre- sentatives of the region from which they came; but in their man- ners, in their services rendered to their adopted State, and in their eminent fitness for the perilous times in which they acted, would compare favorably with their ablest associates in the body. Vanmeter was the son of John Vanmeter, of New York, who accompanied the Delawares on a war party against the Catawbas; but the Catawbas, anticipating the attack, surprised and defeated the Delawares in a battle fought near where the present court- house of Pendleton county now stands. John Vanmeter escaped, and returned to New York; but he was so impressed with the fertility and beauty of the lands on the South Branch bottom in Hardy county, particularly those immediately above what was called the Trough, that he advised his sons to migrate and settle upon them. Isaac, the subject of the present notice, shortly set out for the happy valley, and in 1736 made a toma- hawk improvement on the lands recently, if not now, owned by his descendants of the same name, lying just above the Trough, where Fort Pleasant was afterwards erected. He then returned to New York, but in 1740 visited his improvement, on which he found a squatter, whom he immediately bought out.42
In the mean time emigrants from other quarters made their appearance, and in the names of Hite, Mercer, White, Swear- ingen, Stephen, Lucas, Vance, Rutherford, Jackson, Morgan, and others, we find the representatives of that region who opposed the measures of the British Ministry which led to the Revolution, and who on the field and in the council sustained
. 42 I derive my authority for these facts from Kercheval's History of the Valley of Virginia, page 72, and Foote's Sketches of Virginia, second series, page 15.
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with unfaltering fidelity the fortunes of the young Common- wealth through a long and perilous war. It was by the aid of these and such like gallant sons of the West that Patrick Henry maintained that majority in the House of Delegates, without which, according to Jefferson, there must have been a stand-still in the prosecution of the contest with Great Britain.
Isaac Vanmeter was frequently a member of the House of Delegates, and in 1786 approved the expediency of amending the Articles of Confederation, and gave a cordial support to the resolutions appointing the Convention at Annapolis, and subse- quently the General Federal Convention that met at Phila- delphia.
During the October session of 1786 a measure of domestic policy, which has a peculiar interest at the present time, was brought before the House of Delegates, and from the introduc- tion of the ayes and noes, which, however, were still rarely called, we have the means of knowing the deliberate opinions of Eastern and Western men upon it. It appears that Joseph Mayo had in his will instructed his executors to give freedom to his slaves, and on the 4th of November, 1786, an application was made by them for permission to carry the will into effect. The subject was referred to the Committee of Propositions and Grievances, and.reported reasonable. A motion to lie on the table was made and failed. It was then moved to postpone the subject until the next session of the Assembly, which the House refused to do. A motion was now made to strike out the words "is reasonable," and insert "be rejected," which also failed. The main question was then put upon agreeing with the report of the committee, and decided in the affirmative by a vote of fifty-three to forty-eight-ascertained by ayes and noes.13 A select committee, consisting of James Madison, Theoderick Bland, Francis Corbin, John Page, Mann Page, Richard Bland Lee, French Strother, and Thomas Underwood, all Eastern men, were appointed by the Chair to draft a bill in pursuance of the vote of the House. On the 13th of the month, Mr. Madison reported a bill, which was made the order of the following day, but which was not reached until the 18th of December, when, after an animated discussion, it was passed by a vote of sixty-
" House Journal, November 4, 1786.
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ISAAC VANMETER, EBENEZER ZANE.
seven to forty-ascertained by ayes and noes.“ Vanmeter voted for sustaining the report of the committee and for the passage of the bill. This question receives additional interest from the fact that few slaves were then owned west of the Blue Ridge.
On the various questions touching the finances of the State, and particularly on those relating to the payment of taxes, he voted with the popular majority which so long ruled the coun- cils of the Commonwealth. When the act to amend an act
# As many of the members of the House of Delegates at this session were also members of the present Convention, I annex the ayes and noes, the names of the members of the present Convention being in italics :
AYES-John Cropper, Zachariah Johnston, Archibald Stuart, John Trigg, John Campbell, Thomas Rutherford, Martin McFerran, George Hancock, Adam Clement, Paul Carrington, Jr., Henry Southall, Wil- liam Christian, French Strother, Merriwether Smith, David Stuart, Elias Edmunds, Joseph Crockett, John Fowler, Jr., George Thompson, John Early, George Clendenin, Isaac Coles. Elias Poston, John Prunty, George Jackson, Isaac Vanmeter, Willis Wilson, John Mann, William Norvell, William Walker, Richard Terrill, Arthur Campbell, John Lyne, Daniel Fitzhugh, James Gordon, Cyrus Griffin, Francis Peyton, Richard Bland Lee, William White, James Dabney, Benjamin Logan, John Jouett, Francis Corbin, Owen Davis, David Scott, Robert Sayres, Andrew Hines, William McMahon, James Madison, Jr., Charles Porter, Benjamin Lankford, Constant Perkins Wade Mosby, Theodorick Bland, John Thoroughgood, Andrew Moore, William McKee, John Hopkins, Isaac Zane, Abraham Bird, Mann Page, John Dawson, James Campbell, Robert Craig, Daniel McCarty, David Lee, and Thomas Matthews.
NOES-George Nicholas, John Pride, Thomas Claiborne, Binns Jones, John Cabell, Anthony New, Thomas Scott, Matthew Cheatham, Miles King, James Upshaw, John Rentfro, Samuel Richardson, Charles Mynn Thurston, Thomas Smith, John Lucas, Edmund Wilkins. John Coleman, Parke Goodall, John Garland, George Hairston, John Scar- brook Wills, John Lawrence, William Thornton, Benjamin Temple, Christopher Robertson, James Johnson, William Curtis, Willis Riddick, Anthony Brown, Willis Wilson, Griffin Stith, Littleton Eyre. John Gordon, Cuthbert Bullitt, George Lee Turberville, Thomas Ridley, Andrew Buchanan, Lemuel Cocke, and John Allen.
Joseph Prentis was Speaker of the House ; but it appears that at this time it was not usual for that officer to vote except in the case of a tie. Those who wish to examine the geographical aspect of the vote so far as the votes of the members of the Convention of 1788 are concerned, may do so by turning to the list of the members in the Appendix.
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entitled an act for the establishment of Courts of Assize, which took up much of the time of the October session of 1786, came before the House with sundry amendments from the Com- mittee of the Whole, he voted to sustain the eleventh of the series, which virtually enacted a stay-law for a given period in certain cases, and it is a pregnant illustration of the public opinion of that age that the amendment was carried by a majority of one hundred and twelve against ten.45 When the engrossed bill came up, however, there was an even vote on its passage, and its passage was effected by the casting vote of the Speaker.46 Nor should we fail to add that when on the 17th day of Decem - ber, 1785, the bill "establishing religious freedom" was on its passage in the House of Delegates, Vanmeter, in common with his colleagues of the West, gave it a cordial support.47
In the present Convention he opposed the policy of previous amendments, and voted for the ratification of the Constitution. And when the motion to strike from the schedule of amend- ments the third article, which stipulated that Congress should first apply to each State for its quota of taxes before proceeding to lay any taxes at all, he seems to have been casually absent, as his name does not appear on the roll of ayes and noes, though there is no doubt of his opposition to the amendment.
The name of Zane is honorably known in the history of the West. The original emigrants who bore it passed from Penn- sylvania, it is believed, between 1735 and 1745, into what is now the county of Hardy, and encountered all the difficulties and
" See the ayes and noes in the House Journal of December 16, 1786.
# House Journal. December 18, 1786. On the stay-law clause Madi- son voted in the affirmative, and George Nicholas in the negative.
47 I annex the vote of the House of Delegates on the bill, so far as the names of the members of the present Convention are concerned :
AVES-Wilson Cary Nicholas, Samuel Jordan Cabell, Zachariah Johnston, John Trigg, Archibald Stuart, French Strother, Meriwether Smith, Charles Simms, David Stuart, Alexander White, Thomas Smith, George Clendenin, Ralph Humphries, Isaac Vanmeter, George Jack- son, Benjamin Temple, Christopher Robertson, James Madison, Cuth- bert Bullitt, Andrew Moore, and James Innes.
NOES-Miles King, Worlich Westwood, William Thornton, Francis Thorburn. Willis Riddick, Anthony Walke, and Richard Cary. (House Journal, December 17, 1785.)
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ISAAC VANMETER, EBENEZER ZANE.
dangers that beset a frontier life. As early as 1752 William Zane and several members of his family were taken prisoners by the Indians from their dwelling on the South Branch in Hardy, but regained their liberty. Isaac, one of the sons of William, who was captured in his ninth year, spent his whole life among the Indians. He was seen in the town of Chilicothe, as late as 1797 by Kercheval, the historian of the Valley, and detailed to him his early career. He had married a sister of the chief of the Wyandots, and had eight children, of whom four were sons and four were daughters. The sons adhered to the savage life, but the daughters married white men, and are said by Kerche- val "to have been remarkably fine women, considering the chances they had for improvement." The father, who had become identified with the Indian race, possessed great authority among his redskin comrades, and exercised his influence in behalf of the whites in so marked a manner that the Govern- ment of the United States granted him a patent for ten thousand acres of land.48
48 Kercheval's History of the Valley of Virginia, page 113.
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VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
ISAAC ZANE.
The first of the Zanes who appeared in the public councils was the namesake and relative of the Indian refugee, General Isaac Zane, of Frederick, as Frederick was at its creation. He was probably born in Pennsylvania, and migrated in early life to that part of Virginia then known as Frederick; was successful in the pursuit of wealth, and displayed his enterprise by estab- lishing the first iron-works in that region. As the site of his foundry he selected Cedar creek, a full and bold stream, which winds its way under high cliffs, and affords now and then a stretch of bottom land. The remains of the forge are yet visible, and attest the skill and thorough workmanship of the original structure. The source from which he obtained his ore was distant ten miles from the foundry. Surrounding his estab- lishment he possessed a fine estate of three thousand acres of land. 49
From this scene of successful enterprise he was called to the March Convention of 1775, which held its sessions in the wooden church [St. John's] on Church Hill, in the town of Richmond. This was the first step of a career which embraced ten years, more remarkable for the number and dignity of the events that transpired during their term than any other similar period in our history. When Zane took his seat in the Convention he thought that the troubles of the times would soon pass away, and that
49 " I rode over for my satisfaction and examined the site of General Zane's old iron-works. I found still standing the remains of the old stack of the furnace, which is still a huge pile of mortar, sandstone, and brick. It was formerly encased with large timbers and walls of limestone on the outer side, to resist the inward expansion of heat. The large arches for the bellows and for the escape of the melted iron are in good preservation. The works afforded employment for a num- ber of persons. It was evident that the structure had suffered more from the hand of man than from the progress of time." (Letter of Francis B. Jones, Esq., March 12, 1857.)
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ISAAC ZANE.
the old good humor between the mother and the daughter would soon be restored. But events, which were soon to dispel all hopes of a reconciliation, were at hand. Though Zane was compelled to travel on horseback through the snows of the mountains, he was early at his post in the Convention. What memorable events in the annals of Virginia soon passed before him! He heard the eloquence of Henry in defence of his reso- lutions putting the Colony into military array, and was one of that majority which carried those resolutions triumphantly through the house.
In the Convention of the following July he voted for the raising of the two Virginia regiments, and for placing Henry at their head. In the December Convention of the same year he, with his compeers, assumed the direction of public affairs as fully as if Virginia had been an independent State. Still, there was no open talk of an entire separation from the mother country. How impotent are the actors themselves to foretell the progress of events in the tempest of a revolution! Three short months elapse, and the Convention of May, 1776, assem- bles. Zane, living on the outskirts of our territory, was again among the earliest in his seat. The first stages of the drama of Independence now passed before his eyes. He voted to instruct the delegates of Virginia in Congress to propose independence. He voted for the appointment of a committee to draft a Declara- tion of Rights and a plan of government for a free Common- wealth; and when those papers were passed from the honest hands of Archibald Cary-who, by the way, like Zane, was a worker in iron-to the Clerk of the House, he gave them an active and cordial support. He voted for Patrick Henry as the first Governor of the new Commonwealth he had aided in estab- lishing, as he had already voted to confer upon him the chief command of the public forces. He now returned home to pro- claim his work to the sturdy pioneers who would soon be called upon to sustain it in the field. As he was returning to his mountains he might almost have heard the sound of the simple artillery of his Western compatriot, Andrew Lewis, as it played upon the vessels of Lord Dunmore and drove that weak and faithless man beyond the waters of the new State. And he had just reached his home, when he read in the Virginia Gazette, of the Ioth of July, a synopsis of that Declaration of Inde-
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pendence which had been brought forward in Congress in obedience to his own vote.
Three rapid months have flown, and he is again in the saddle on his way to Williamsburg to attend the first session of the General Assembly under the Constitution. He had already borne a prominent part in bringing about events which, even at this day, startle and thrill us as we trace their progress on the cold pages of the old journals. But these events, grand and august as they were, were but the first acts of a long and peril- ous drama which he was to behold to its close. It is known that the Convention of May, 1776, having filled the measure of its labors by the organization of the new government created by its act, adjourned over to October, and became the first House of Delegates under the Constitution which it had framed. Zane was accordingly a member of the first House of Delegates, and was one of that noble majority which, under the auspices of Mr. Jefferson, abolished primogeniture and entails and the collection of church levies; and, besides making active preparations for maintaining the war, laid the foundations of a judiciary system. The creation of the courts caused much discussion in our early Assemblies, and it is worthy of record that it was on a motion made on the 3d of March, 1778, to postpone indefinitely Mr. Jefferson's bill "for establishing a General Court and Courts of Assize," that the ayes and noes were first called in a Virginia Assembly; 50 and on that occasion the name of Isaac Zane
30 As it may interest the curious to see a list of the first ayes and noes ever called in Virginia, I annex the vote on the indefinite postpone- ment of the bill "for establishing a General Court and Courts of Assize." I may add that the motion to postpone was negatived by a majority of six votes, and that the bill passed the House by a majority of two votes. Pendleton was Speaker, but voted in course as a member for Caroline :
AYES-Munford, McDowell, Bowyer, Macklin, Tazewell, Patterson, Harrison of Charles City, Edmondson, Smith of Essex, Woodson, Underwood, Terry, Syme, Anderson, Wilkinson, Adams, Hairston, Nicholas (Robert Carter), Norvell, Wills, Fulgham, Callaway, Dabney, Meriwether, Crockett, Montgomery, Allen, Godfrey, Porter, Thorough- good, Robinson, Brown, Gee, and Judkins.
NOES-Jefferson, Talbot, Thomas Hite, Lockhart, Pendleton, Upshaw, Strother, Randolph, Carrington (Paul), Bird, George Mason, Pickett, Hugh Nelson, Zane (Isaac), Smith of Frederick, Burwell, Abraham
S
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ISAAC ZANE.
appears in the negative, and in favor of the immediate establish- ment of the judiciary under the new government. Until the end of the war he united with Henry and his associates in carrying those measures into effect which were then deemed indispensable to the public welfare.
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