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 6
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In common with all the Western members he cherished a devoted love of religious liberty, and in 1785 voted for the act establishing religious freedom, and thus invested his name with a glory that will only kindle the brighter for years. A friend to the Union of the States, he approved the scheme of a Conven- tion at Annapolis and of the General Federal Convention at Philadelphia. With the session of 1787 his public career ended. He had grown old, and he determined to retire from public life. He never married, but a relative bearing his name succeeded him in the public councils. We may add that he lived to hail the adoption of the Federal Constitution, which he greatly admired, and to vote for the re-election of his friend Washing- ton, with whom he had voted in the March Convention of 1775 in favor of Henry's warlike resolutions. In 1795 this venerable patriot was gathered to his fathers.
Hite, Neaville, Braxton, Griffin, Gordon, Clapham, Daniel, Duval, Muse, Moore, Fleming, Ruffin, Harrison of Prince George, Bullitt, Thornton, Carter, Fitzhugh, Richard Lee, Bledsoe, Cocke of Washing- ton, Wright, Prentis, Jett, and Harwood.
It is probable that the ayes and noes were introduced by Mr. Jeffer- son, with a view of holding up to public responsibility the men who were reluctant to put the courts in motion under the new regime. See Journal of the House of Delegates, January 3, 1778. The name of Moore in the above list is that of William Moore of Orange, and that of Fleming is Judge Fleming.
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VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
EBENEZER ZANE.
The namesake and relative of Zane who succeeded him in the public councils, and now held a seat in the present Convention, hailed not from Frederick, as Isaac Zane had hailed when he represented that immense principality in the early Conventions, but from the county of Ohio, which had been cut off ten or twelve years from the district of West Augusta.
Colonel Ebenezer Zane was now past middle life, and had long been known as one of the most intelligent, brave, and enter- prising settlers of the extreme Northwest. As early as 1760, we are told by Withers, Colonel Zane and two of his brothers, with some friends from the South Branch of the Potomac, visited the Ohio for the purpose of making improvements and of selecting positions for their future residence. They finally deter- mined upon the site of the present city of Wheeling, and, having made the requisite preparations, returned to their former homes, and brought out their families the ensuing year. It was characteristic of the Zanes that they possessed enterprise, tem- pered with prudence, and directed by sound judgment. To the bravery and good conduct of the three brothers the Wheeling settlement, according to Withers, was mainly indebted for its . security and preservation during the war of the Revolution.51 The defence of Fort Henry, which was built at the mouth of Wheeling creek, was one of the most brilliant exploits of our Indian warfare. One of the handful of men who on that occa- sion defied and defeated a host of Indians commanded by the notorious Girty, was Ebenezer Zane; and it is delightful to record that, while Zane was firing on the foe, his wife and sister, who were in the fort, were cutting patches and running bullets for those engaged in the fight. Nor should we pass over in silence the heroic courage of this sister of Zane's, who, though
51 Withers's Chronicles of Border Warfare and Chronicles of Western Virginia. Clarksburg: 1831.
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EBEBEZER ZANE.
just returned from a boarding-school' at Philadelphia, volun- teered during the heat of the action to sally from the fort and fetch from a neighboring house a keg of powder-an achieve- ment she succeeded in accomplishing amid a shower of rifle balls from the Indians who suspected the object of the mission. She escaped without a wound, and lived many years to enjoy the reputation of having performed a deed of daring unsur- passed by man or woman in ancient or modern times. 52
It is probable that Colonel Zane's intimate knowledge of the Indian character, and of the numbers which the savage war- riors could bring into the field, and his conviction of the neces- sity of the union of all the States in any effort to oppose them with ultimate success, rather than the positive provisions of the Federal Constitution, insensibly led him to sustain that instru- ment before the people, and to vote for its ratification in Conven- tion. He accordingly opposed the policy of previous amend- ments, and had he been present when the question was taken (just before adjournment) on striking out the third article of the schedule of amendments proposed by the select committee, which recommended to Congress a resort to requisitions upon the States before that body proceeded to lay direct taxes, he would have followed the example of his colleague and voted in the affirmative. 53
52 Withers states that she married twice, her last husband being a Mr. Clark, and that she was living at the time of the publication of his work. For an animated account of the battle of Fort Henry (so called after Patrick Henry), see an article which originally appeared in the American Pioneer, from the pen of George S. M. Kiernan, and is partly copied in Howe's Virginia, page 409.
53 Journal Virginia Federal Convention, page 37. Colonel Zane some years after the date of the Convention moved to Ohio, and settled the town of Zanesville, in that State. The substance of the article of Mr. Kiernan on the battle of Fort Henry may be found in Lossing's Pic- torial Field-Book of the Revolution, Vol. II, 292. He entered the House of Delegates in 1784.
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VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
GEORGE JACKSON.
Among those adventurous and fearless men to whom Virginia is indebted for the settlement of her northwestern territory, and whose names deserve to be held in lasting remembrance, was George Jackson, who was one of the representatives in Conven- tion of the county of Harrison, which had been created four years before, and had been called in honor of Benjamin Har- rison, of "Berkeley." He was the son of John Jackson, who, in 1768, accompanied by his sons, George and Edward,5* set out from their settlement on the South Branch of the Potomac, and under the guidance of Samuel Pringle, a British deserter, who, as early as 1761, had made a lodgment in the new territory, made an improvement at the mouth of Turkey Run, where his daughter resided as late as the year 1831.55 An active and intelligent member of the new settlement, he gained the confi- dence of his associates, and having been returned at the first election of members for the county of Harrison, he took his seat with his present colleague, John Prunty, in the House of Dele- gates in the October session of 1785.
54 It is an interesting conjecture if the distinguished Confederate chieftain, General Thomas Jonathan Jackson (born in Harrison county, and whose great-grandfather was Edward Jackson,) was of the blood of George Jackson .- EDITOR.
" The Pringles, John and Samuel, had deserted from Fort Pitt in 1761, and keeping up the course of the Valley river, observed a large right-hand fork (now Buckhannon), which they ascended some miles, and at the mouth of a small branch, now called Turkey Run, they took up their abode in a large hollow sycamore tree, the remains of which were not long since visible. Fearful of being apprehended and sent back prisoners to Fort Pitt, as was the fate of two companions who had deserted with them, they avoided the settlements for several years ; nor until their powder was reduced to two loads did Samuel Pringle venture into the society of white men; and on his return he was attended by John Jackson and his sons, and by other residents of the South Branch. See Withers's Border Warfare, quoted in Howe, 18S.
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GEORGE JACKSON.
The first important question which he was called to vote upon was one that from the beginning of the Revolution to the adop- tion of the Federal Constitution more than any other perplexed our councils and laid the foundation of our early parties. Money was wanted to defray the ordinary expenses of government, to meet our own obligations, which were pressing heavily upon the Commonwealth, and to pay the Federal requisitions; and money. could not be collected from the people. There was substantially no circulating medium ; tobacco had fallen to a nominal price ; the old channels of trade had been closed by the Revolution, and no new ones had been as yet effectually opened. Hence the various measures of relief which were brought forward and discussed from time to time. On the 14th of November, 1785, General Matthews reported from the Committee of the Whole a long amendment to the act " to postpone the collection of the tax, for 1785," which struck out the whole of the act, declared that from various considerations "it is found impracticible, without involving the people in too great and deep distress, to collect from them one-half tax levied for 1785 by an act entitled 'an act to discharge the peo- ple of this Commonwealth from the payment of one-half of the revenue tax for the year 1785,' and that there is reason to believe that by the remitting of the said tax the people will be here- after enabled to pay the revenue taxes with more ease and punctuality," and concluded with enacting the repeal of the act. On this amendment the ayes and noes were called, and Jackson and his colleague (Prunty) voted in the affirmative. It was agreed to by a vote of fifty-two to forty-two, and the bill as amended was ordered to be engrossed.56 The following day when the
56 As this was one of the test questions of the October session of 1785, I annex the votes of those who became members of the present Convention :
AYES-Benjamin Harrison (Speaker), John Trigg, Joseph Jones, Thomas Smith, George Clendenin, Ralph Humphries, Isaac Vanmeter, Parke Goodall, George Jackson, John Prunty, William White, Christo- pher Robertson, Andrew Moore, Richard Cary.
NOES-Zachariah Johnston, Archibald Stuart, John Tyler, David Patteson, Miles King, Charles Simms, David Stuart, Alexander White, Isaac Coles, William Thornton, Francis Corbin, Wills Riddick, James
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bill came up on its passage with a rider, "authorizing the Solici- tor-General to move for and obtain judgment for the penalty of a bond given by any sheriff or collector who should fail to render when required an account of the taxes by him already collected," the vote was again taken by ayes and noes, and resulted in the defeat of the bill by a majority of two votes; Jackson and Prunty voting in the affirmative.
On the 13th of November of the same year another great question was presented to the House, which foreshadowed the amendment of the Articles of Confederation to such an extent at least as to invest Congress with a limited control over the commerce of the several States. Alexander White reported from the Committee of the Whole a resolution which it had agreed to, in substance, "that the delegates of Virginia in Congress be instructed to propose in that body a recommendation to the States in Union to authorize that assembly to regulate their trade under certain stipulations." One of these required "that no act of Congress that may be authorized as here proposed shall be entered into by less than two-thirds of the confederated States, nor be in force longer than thirteen years." A motion was made to add to these words: "unless continued by a like proportion of votes within one year immediately preceding the expiration of the said period, or be revived in like manner at the expiration thereof." On this amendment the ayes and noes were called; and it was rejected by a vote of seventy-nine noes to twenty-eight ayes; Jackson and Prunty voting in the negative. The original resolution as reported was then agreed to without a division, and White was requested to carry it to the Senate and request its concurrence therein.57 But the meditation of
Madison, William Ronald, Edmund Ruffin, Cuthbert Bullitt, Anthony Walke, John Howell Briggs, James Innes, Thomas Matthews.
This is a most significant record to those who read it rightly.
57 The votes of those who became members of the present Conven- tion were as follows :
AVES-Zachariah Johnston, Archibald Stuart, John Tyler, French Strother, Charles Simms, David Stuart, Thomas Smith, George Clen- denin, Isaac Coles, William Thornton, James Madison, and James Innes.
NOES-Benjamin Harrison, Samuel Jordan Cabell, John Trigg, Wil- liam Watkins, Joseph Jones, Miles King, Worlich Westwood, Alex-
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GEORGE JACKSON.
a single night seems to have materially changed the views of the members, for on the following morning, as soon as the House was called to order, a motion was made to rescind the order of the House transmitting the resolution to the Senate, and to resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole to recon- sider it. This motion prevailed by a majority of sixty to thirty- three-ascertained by ayes and noes; and several amendments were made in committee which were reported to the House; and the resolution and amendments were ordered to lie on the table. We believe the resolution slept during the session; at all events, the ayes and noes were not again called upon it. 58
On the 17th day of December, at the same session of the Assembly, there was brought up in the House of Delegates a not less important question, and the vote of Jackson on that occasion has connected his name honorably with one of the most liberal and most glorious enactments recorded in our statutes. On that day the engrossed bill "for establishing reli- gious freedom" came up on its final passage, and was triumph- antly carried by a vote of seventy-four to twenty-ascertained by ayes and noes. The name of George Jackson, enrolled among the friends of that measure, is the richest legacy which he could have bequeathed to his posterity.39 From this period to the close of the session Jackson was absent from his seat.
During the October session of 1786, Jackson voted to sustain the report of the select committee, of which Madison was the chairman, which recommended the manumission of the slaves of Joseph Mayo, deceased, in pursuance of the provisions of his will, with certain restrictions-a subject which attracted much attention at the time; and on the 16th of December he voted for the amendment to the bill establishing Courts of Assize and allowing a limited stay in collecting debts under certain circum-
ander White, Ralph Humphries, Isaac Vanmeter, George Jackson, John Prunty, Benjamin Temple, Christopher Robertson, Francis Cor- bin, Willis Riddick, Edmund Ruffin, Cuthbert Bullitt, Andrew Moore, Thomas Edmunds (of Sussex), John Howell Briggs, Richard Cary.
This vote represents pretty fairly the relative strength of parties on Federal questions before the advent of the Federal Constitution.
58 House Journal, November 30 and December 1, 1785.
59 House Journal, December 17, 1785. See ayes and noes, ante.
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stances-another test question of the times. He also voted on its final passage for the bill emancipating the slaves of Mayo, with certain restrictions, and in favor of the passage of the bill establishing Courts of Assize. He sustained the bill to amend and reduce into one act the several acts concerning naval col- lectors-a bill which involved in its discussion the litigated question of taxation by imposts, and which caused so much heat at the time that the House of Delegates ordered it to be pub- lished for three weeks in the Virginia Gazette, with a list of the ayes and noes appended to it! We will only say further that Jackson approved the resolutions convoking the meeting at Annapolis and the General Convention at Philadelphia, both of which passed the House without a division.
Allusion has been made more than once to the great revolu- tion which was effected in the State of parties respecting Federal affairs by the appearance of the new Constitution, and by the able and prolonged discussions which it produced. This change was most sensibly apparent among the public men west of the Blue Ridge, who usually maintained the decided majority of the Assembly for eight or ten years previously on Federal as well as purely domestic questions. This change was to a certain extent, and to a certain extent only, perceptible in Jackson. He opposed, indeed, the policy of previous amendments, and voted for the ratification of the Federal Constitution; but he mani- fested his adherence to the leading principle of the old Con- federation by sustaining the third article of the schedule of amendments, which aimed at the restoration of the ancient systems of requisitions instead of an immediate resort to direct taxation as prescribed by the new scheme; and he was one of the celebrated majority of twenty who retained that distinctive article among the amendments proposed by Virginia.
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ALEXANDER WHITE.
Perhaps no member of the able and patriotic delegation which the West contributed to our early councils exerted a greater influence in moulding public opinion, especially during the period embraced by the treaty of peace with Great Britain and by the adoption of the Federal Constitution, than Alexander White, of Frederick. He was the son of Robert White, a sur- geon in the British navy, who, having visited, about the year 1730, his relative, William Hoge, then residing in Delaware, fell in love with his daughter, whom he married, and with whom, accompanied by her father, he emigrated to Virginia, and made his home near the North Mountain, on a creek which still bears the name of White. Robert White died in the year 1752, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and was buried in the eastern corner of the old Opecquon church-yard, in the county of Frederick, distant three miles from Winchester, where a tree marks his grave. He left three sons, of whom the youngest was the statesman whose services it is our duty to record. 60
In June, 1783, he took his seat for the first time in the House of Delegates, when the body had been in session more than a month; and we find him immediately placed on a select com- mittee, consisting of Joseph Carrington and Cabell (of "Union Hill"), appointed to bring in a bill " to confirm certain proceed- ings of the court of Cumberland county." At that day great vigilance was manifested by the House of Delegates in scruti-
60 I am indebted for these particulars respecting the Whites to Foote's Sketches of Virginia, second series, page 23. The father of Robert Carter Nicholas and the father of William Cabell of ("Union Hill") were also surgeons in the British navy. The late eminent Judge Robert White was the nephew of Alexander. [From the following extract there is reason to believe that Alexander White had the advantages of education in England and of legal training : "Alexander White, son of Robert White of Virginia, Esq., matriculated January 22, 1763 ; admitted to the Inner Temple January 15, 1762." (Gray's Inn Admis- sion Register, 1521-1889, by Joseph Foster, page 383.)-EDITOR. ]
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VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1788.
nizing the claims of a member to his seat-a vigilance the more remarkable from the fact that the qualifications were prescribed by law in addition to those required by the Constitution. As White had been an assistant to the county attorney in certain prosecutions, probably about the time of his election, a member moved that his case be referred to the Committee of Privileges and Elections, which made a favorable report. On the 7th of June, 1783, a bill came up for engrossment concerning one Peter Heron, a subject of His Most Christian Majesty, and master of the brigantine Lark, who, being ignorant of the language and misled by his interpreter, had, contrary to law, broken bulk before he had entered his vessel. This would seem to be a plain question at this time; but from peculiar circumstances it elicited warm debates, and the ayes and noes, which up to this date were rarely called during the session, were demanded by Mann Page and seconded by George Nicholas. The proposed amendment was adopted and the bill ordered to be engrossed by a vote of sixty to twenty-five, George Nicholas, William Cabell, Adam Stephen, French Strother, Thomas Smith, Patrick Henry, Joseph Jones, Stevens Thomson Mason, and James Gordon voting in the affirmative; and John Tyler (Speaker), Archibald Stuart, Alexander White, William Ronald, Andrew Moore, and Gabriel Jones in the negative.61 The bill alternately passed both houses and became a law.
On the 9th of June a select committee was appointed to bring in a bill to amend an act entitled an act declaring tenants of lands, or slaves in tail, to hold the same in fee simple; and White was placed at its head, with Thomson Mason as his associate. At this day we can hardly form an adequate opinion of the intense excitement raised in the early stages of the Republic by every measure relating to sheriffs. There was no coin in the country, the circulating medium had only a nominal value, and nothing could be more arbitrary than the prices affixed in the interior to
61 These gentlemen were all members of the present Convention, and in reporting their votes on the test questions of the session I give the most authentic account of their public conduct. I must caution those who consult our early journals against the remarkable errors in the names of the members. Adam Stephen is always confounded with Edward Stevens, who was also a general, and a gallant fellow. Stevens Thomson Mason's name is never printed correctly, nor Willis Riddick's.
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ALEXANDER WHITE.
tobacco, hemp, flour, deerskins, and other commodities receiva- ble in kind in the payment of taxes. An astute and unscrupu- lous sheriff or deputy sheriff, aided by an unprincipled petti- fogger, and availing himself of the authority of law, could render the rich uncomfortable and reduce men of moderate means to beggary. Hence the enormous fortunes made by the sheriffs, some of which have descended to our times; and hence the ter- rible malediction upon the sheriffs which was uttered by Patrick Henry in the present Convention, and which was the fiercest that ever fell from his lips. The orator had doubtless felt the sting of the viper on his own person; and he had seen hundreds of poor and virtuous citizens driven from their homes by the rapacity of the legal bloodsuckers, to take refuge in the haunts of the savage. The present bill was evidently designed to modify the existing laws in relation to the collection of taxes, and was sustained by White, Henry, George Nicholas, William Cabell, Zachariah Johnston, Archibald Stuart, Thomas Smith, Isaac Coles, Joseph Jones, Andrew Moore, and Gabriel Jones; Adam Stephen, French Strother, and James Gordon voting in the negative. The measure was carried by a vote of seventy- seven to seventeen. 62
On the 10th of June an engrossed bill for the relief of the sheriffs was read the third time, and the ayes and noes were called upon its passage.
It was often difficult to procure money for the wages of the members of the General Assembly. At one time, such was the depreciation of the currency, a member would have been com- pelled to pay fifty dollars for a night's lodging and feeding for himself and horse, and probably feed and dress himself and his horse with his own hands. The difficulty of paying the wages of the members had become less since the termination of the war, but it was still annoying, and had to be encountered at the present session of the body. On the 11th of June a motion was made to appropriate eighteen hundred pounds out of the fund heretofore appropriated for the defence of the Chesapeake, and twelve hundred pounds out of the fund arising from recruiting duties, for the payment of the wages of the members. This proposition involved the important considerations affecting
62 I do not cite the paging of the Journals of Assembly, because the dates are the surest means of reference.
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the payment of the debt of the Commonwealth, to which these funds were pledged, and the public defence. These funds were composed of duties collected mainly in the East, which were mainly paid by Eastern men. The debate was long and warm. The motion was carried by a vote of forty-three to forty; White, Stephen, Smith, Coles, Henry, Joseph Jones, Stevens Thomson Mason, Robert Lawson, and Andrew Moore voting in the affirmative, and George Nicholas, Cabell (of "Union Hill" ), Strother, and William Ronald, in the negative.
On the 17th of June leave was given to bring in a bill to amend the act concerning the appointment of sheriffs, and White was placed at its head; and on the 22d he was appointed chairman of a select committee, which was instructed to bring in a bill to suspend the operation of so much of any act or acts of Assembly as prohibits intercourse with British subjects, and to legalize such intercourse in certain cases.
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