USA > Virginia > Virginia and Virginians; eminent Virginians, executives of the colony of Virginia, Vol. I > Part 14
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"Alike to him were time and tide, December's sleets or July's pride. Alike to him were tide or time, Moonless midnight or matin prime."
The range of scientific attainment of Governor Randolph has been alluded to. His only surviving child, Mrs. Meikleham, of Washington, D. C., has kindly communicated the following in relation thereto : "The Abbe Corria, who was sent by the Portuguese government to study the flora of America, who was called in Paris ' the learned Portu- guese,' and who was ranked by De Candolle with, if not above Cuvier and Humboldt, spent the summers and autumns during his visit, at ' Monticello.' He and my father spent hours every day wandering, in company with each other, through the woods and fields, and he was thus fully able to pronounce judgment upon the proficiency of one branch at least of the scientific attainments of my father, whom he affirmed to be the best botanist with whom he had met in America."
Of the issue of Governor Randolph his son, Thomas Jefferson Ran- dolph, who married Jane, the daughter of Governor Wilson Cary Nicholas, served frequently in the Virginia Assembly, and edited the papers of his grandfather, Thomas Jefferson, published in four volumes, 8vo, in 1828. Another son, George Wythe Randolph, a lawyer of dis- tinction-a conspicuous member of the Virginia Convention of 1860-1, which passed the ordinance of secession-entered the Confederate service as Major of the Howitzer Battalion, of Richmond, and for gallantry at the battle of Bethel was made a brigadier-general. He was Secretary of War of the Confederate States from March 17 to November 17, 1862. Resuming the practice of law, he in December, 1863, went to France as the agent of the Confederate Treasury Department, and returned home in September, 1865, with shattered health. He died at Richmond,
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Virginia, April 4, 1867, in the forty-ninth year of his age. Of the daughters of Governor Randolph, Anne Cary, married Charles Bank- head; Eleanora, married Joseph Coolidge, of Boston, Mass. ; Virginia, married Nicholas P. Trist; and Septimia, married David Meikleham. Congress has recently granted Mrs. Meikleham a pension. A daughter of Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Miss Sarah Nicholas Randolph, is favor- ably known as the authoress of Home Reminiscences of Thomas Jefferson, and other works of merit. She has been associated for some years with her sisters in the conduction of an admirable female school at " Edge Hill." Among his daughters, Margaret, married William Randolph ; Martha Jefferson, married J. C. R. Taylor; Cary Anne, married Colonel Frank G. Ruffin, a vigorous writer, and favorably known in the agricult- ural and political annals of Virginia; Maria Jefferson, married Charles R. Mason; Jane H., married Major R. G. H. Kean, a prominent mem- ber of the Lynchburg bar; Ellen W., married William B. Harrison. Of his two sons, Dr. Wilson Cary Nicholas Randolph, a successful phy- sician, married Miss Holladay, and Lewis Meriwether Randolph, Major Confederate States Army, married Miss Daniel. The last died a few years since.
JAMES PLEASANTS.
The founder of the excellent Pleasants family of Virginia, John Pleasants, was a member of the pacific, prudent and upright Society of Friends, and many of his descendants have consistently held the same tenets to the present day. He was a native of Norwich, England, from whence, in 1665, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, he emigrated to the colony of Virginia, settling in Henrico County, on James River, in 1668. During the period 1679-1690 he received grants of nearly five thousand acres of land. He married Jane, widow of Samuel Tucker, and died at his seat, "Curles," May 12, 1698. He had issue : i. John, who married Dorothea Cary, was a patentee of nearly ten thousand acres of land, and February 17, 1752, was appointed one of the trustees of the town of Richmond, Virginia ; ii. Elizabeth, married James Cocke, and their numerous descendants number the names of Harrison, Poythress, and many others equally estimable; iii. Joseph, patented nearly two thousand acres of land, married Martha Cooke.
Of the issue of four sons and three daughters of Joseph and Martha (Cocke) Pleasants, the second son, John, of "Piekanockie," married Susanna, the sixth child of Tarleton* and Ursula (Fleming;) Woodson,
* His mother was Judith, daughter of Stephen Tarleton, who is said to have been of the family of Colonel Banastre Tarleton, the famous British partisan ranger of the Revolution.
The daughter of Charles Fleming, of New Kent County, Virginia, who was said to be descended from Sir Tarleton Fleming, second son of the Earl of Wigton, who married in England, Miss Tarleton; emigrated to Virginia in 1616, landing at Jamestown, but settling afterwards in New Kent County, where he died. Ile
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of the fourth generation in descent from John Woodson, of Dorsetshire, England, who accompanied Sir John Harvey to the colony of Virginia in 1624, according to tradition, "in the capacity of surgeon to a con- pany of soldiers." Of the issue of six sons and two daughters of John and Susanna (Woodson) Pleasants, the third son, James, of "Conten- tion," married Anne, widow of John P. Pleasants and Isham Randolph, of "Dungenness," Goochland County, who was the son of the emigrant William Randolph, of "Turkey Island," James River, Virginia. Of the issue of two sons and four daughters of James and Anne (Pleasants- Randolph) Pleasants, James, the subject of this sketch, was the first child. He was born in 1769, and after a well grounded common school education, studied law with the distinguished Judge William Fleming, and entered on the practice with considerable success. In 1796 he was elected to represent Goochland County in the House of Delegates of Virginia, and in 1803 was chosen the clerk of the body, which latter position he filled most acceptably until some time during the year 1810, when he was elected a member of the United States House of Repre- sentatives, in which body he faithfully and efficiently served from 1811 to 1819. December 1, 1822, by election of the General Assembly of Virginia, he succeeded Thomas Mann Randolph as Governor of Vir- ginia, and thus served by annual re-election, with great acceptability, until December 1, 1825, when, being by the constitution no longer eligible, he was succeeded by John Tyler. Mr. Pleasants subsequently served as a member of the distinguished and important State Constitu- tional Convention of 1829-1830. This was his last public service, for though twice appointed to judicial position, such was his rare modesty that. he declined acceptance from a distrust of his qualifications. He died November 9, 1836, in Goochland County, universally esteemed for his public and private virtues. Governor Pleasants married Susanna Law- son, second daughter of Colonel Hugh Rose,* of "Geddes," and his
had issue three sons: Tarleton, John and Charles (as above), and several dangh- ters. Tarleton Fleming married Miss Bates, of Williamsburg ( Edward Bates, of Missouri, was of the same family), and had three sons, of whom Tarleton married Mary, sister of Thomas Mann Randolph, Sr., of "Tuckahoe," Virginia. Of this Fleming family was Colonel John Fleming, of the Revolution, and the distinguished jurist, William Fleming, of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia.
* He was the second son of Rev. Robert Rose, and his wife Anne, daughter of Henry Fitzhugh, of Stafford County, Virginia. Rev. Robert Rose was the son of John and Margaret (Grant) Rose, of Wester Alves, Scotland, deduced in the twelfth generation from Hugh Rose, of Esther Geddes, 1302. He migrated to Virginia early in the eighteenth century, and was a man of varied usefulness, sometime rector of St. Anne's parish, Albemarle County, Virginia. He had no mean knowledge of surveying, medicine and surgery, conducted milling, was an extensive planter, not unskilled in mechanics, and was a merchant withal. He
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wife, who was Caroline Matilda Jordan, of "Seven Islands," Bucking- ham County, Virginia.
The issue of Governor James and Susanna (Rose) Pleasants was: i. Marianna, married Granville Smith; ii. Caroline, married Thomas Curd, M. D .; iii. John Hampden, a journalist of conspicuous talents, who founded the Richmond Whig, and was its chief editor for twenty- two years. He was a poignant thorn in the side of the Democracy, and a fearless antagonist of the Richmond Enquirer, its organ, which was founded and conducted by the famous Thomas Ritchie, "the father of the Democratic party." His trenchant pen led to a duel between him- self and Thomas Ritchie, Jr., in which he was fatally wounded, dying February 25, 1846, in the prime of manhood, in the midst of useful- ness and the full assurance of the most brilliant career. His death was profoundly deplored, and his friends have never ceased to depre- cate the agencies instrumental to it. It was regarded, as was the death of Alexander Hamilton at the hands of Aaron Burr, as an immolation upon the altar of partisan spirit ; iv. Marella, married Marcellus Smith ; v. Susanna Lawson, married John Morris, M. D., of "Green Springs," Louisa County, Virginia; vi. Hugh Rose, a distinguished journalist. long connected with the press of Richmond, died April 27, 1870; vii. Charles James; and viii. Anne Matilda, married Dr. Ealam, of Chester- field County, Virginia. John Hampden Pleasants was twice married; first to Ann Irving, and secondly to Mary Massie. He had issue : James Pleasants, a prominent lawyer of Richmond, and Ann Eliza, who married Douglas H. Gordon. The descendants of John Pleasants, the founder of the family in Virginia, are so numerous and so widely con- nected with the prominent families of the State and Union as to render any enumeration of names injudicious here.
JOHN TYLER.
John Tyler (whose descent has been deduced in a preceding sketch), the second son of Governor John and Mary ( Armistead) Tyler, was born at "Greenway," his father's seat in Charles City County, Virginia. March 29, 1790. As a mere child he was of an unusually studious habit, and early exhibited a passion for books, particularly for works of history. Entering William and Mary College as a student at the age of twelve years, he soon attracted the notice of Bishop James Madison, the venerable president of that institution; and during his entire collegiate course young John Tyler was, in an especial degree,
was the executor of Governor Spotswood, and died June 30, 1751, and rests be- neath a massive marble tomb in the grounds of the venerable St. John's Church, at Richmond, Virginia. He left a landed estate of nearly 30,000 acres, and his descendants include the names of Turpin, Garland, Cabell, Claiborne, Walker, Scott, Lewis, Carter, Price, Taliaferro, Roane, Coleman, Irving, Whitehead, Berry, Brooke, Redd, Dox, Eubank, and of many others of the highest esteem, scattered throughout the United States.
ONE DE
YORKTOWN
YORKTOWN MONUMENT.
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the favorite of that distinguished man. Generous in his disposition, with pleasing and conciliating manners, and an open, frank and hearty spirit -- these characteristics, by which he was distinguished through life, and which were so largely conducive to his public success, then en- deared him to his fellow-students, and he was not less their favorite than that of his teacher. Having completed the courses, he graduated at the age of seventeen, and delivered on the occasion, an address on the subject of "Female Education," which was pronounced by the college faculty as singularly creditable. He now devoted himself to the study of the law, which he had already commenced during his collegi- ate course, and passed the next two years in reading, first with his father, and latterly with Edmund Randolph, a former Governor of Vir- ginia and one of the most eminent lawyers in the State. Aided by the counsels of two such preceptors, his progress in this, as in his previous studies, was most rapid. At the age of nineteen he appeared at the bar of his native county as a practicing lawyer, a certificate having been given him without inquiry as to his having attained the prerequisite years of manhood. Such was his speedy success, that it is said that ere three months had elapsed there was scarcely a disputable case on the docket of the court in which he was not retained. At the age of twenty he was offered a nomination as the delegate front Charles City County in the State Assembly, but he declined the proffered honor until the following year, when, having attained his majority a short time before the election was held, he was chosen almost unanimously a member of the House of Delegates. He took his seat in that body in December, 1811. The breaking out of the war with Great Britain, with its inci- dental exciting measures, and the public solicitude involved, afforded a fine scope for the improvement of his powers of oratory. Like the brilliant Charles James Fox, he spoke often with the view of increasing them, and was encouraged by the attention which his speeches com- manded. About this period, Messrs. Giles and Brent, then Senators from Virginia, disobeying an instruction from the State Assembly to vote against the chartering of a United States Bank, Mr. Tyler intro- duced a resolution of censure in the House of Delegates, animadverting severely upon the course of the Senators, and laying it down as a prin- ciple to be adhered to undeviatingly thereafter, that any person accept- ing the office of United States Senator from Virginia tacitly bound him- self to obey, during the period of his service, the instructions he might receive from its Legislature. Later in his public life he consistently exhibited his adherence to a principle thus early inculcated, in resigning his seat in the United States Senate rather than record a vote alike re- pugnant to his judgment and his sense of conscientious duty. Mr. Tyler continued a member of the Legislature by re-election for five years successively. His popularity in his native county is instaneed in the fact that on one occasion, during this period, when seven candidates
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offered themselves, Mr. Tyler received all the votes polled in the county but five. Some years later, when a candidate for Congress, of the two hundred votes given in the same county, he received, with a strong and distinguished competitor, all but one. He zealously supported the administration during the war, and raised a volunteer company when Richmond was threatened, but they were not brought into action. During the session of 1815-1816, whilst still a member of the House of Delegates, Mr. Tyler was elected a member of the Executive Council, and acted in this capacity until November, 1816, when he was elected to fill a vacancy in the representation in Congress, from the Richmond district, occasioned by the death of Hon. John Clopton, and took his seat in the month following. In the debate in this body on the rate of compensation to be allowed its members, and in which Calhoun, John Randolph, Grosvenor, Henry Clay, Southard and other prominent statesmen participated, Mr. Tyler eloquently replied to Mr. Calhoun, advocating a return to the former per diem rate of six dollars, and con- sistently maintaining his early enunciated principles of the rights of con- stituents and the duty of their representatives. Said he: "You have no robes of office here to bestow, no stars or garter to confer, but the proudest title which we can boast, and the only one worthy of being boasted of, is that which is to be read in the applause of our contem- poraries and the gratitude of posterity. * * * If a member of this body is not a representative of the people, what is he? and if he is, how can he be regarded as representing the people when he speaks, not their language, but his own ? He ceases to be their representative when he does so, and represents himself alone. Is the creature to set himself in opposition to his creator? Is the servant to disobey the wishes of his master ? From the very meaning of the word representative, the obliga- tion to obey instructions results. The Federal Constitution was sub- mitted to conventions of the different States for adoption. Suppose the people had instructed their representatives in convention to have rejected the Constitution, and their instructions had been disobeyed, would this be called a government of the people adopted by their choice ? * : * * The gentleman from South Carolina mentioned the name of Edmund Burke. I venerate the talents of that distinguished orator as highly as any man; and I hold in high respect the memory and virtues of the illustrious Chatham; but, highly as I esteem the memories of those great statesmen, they will suffer no disparagement by a comparison with the immortal Sidney. I prefer to draw my principles from the father of the Church, from the man who fell a martyr in the cause of freedom, who consecrated his principles by his blood, from the fountain from which . has flowed the principles of the very Constitution under which we act." Mr. Tyler also in the same session ably opposed the resolution, intro- duced by Mr. Pickens, of South Carolina, proposing an amendment to
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the Constitution, which provided for the establishment of a uniform mode of electing representatives in Congress and electors of President and Vice- President throughout the United States, by the division of the several States into districts for those purposes. After much discussion, the proposition was laid on the table near the close of the session, not again to be revived. In the fifteenth Congress Mr. Tyler voted against the provision offered by Mr. Clay for a minister to the provinces of the Rio la Plata, holding that it would be a virtual acknowledgment by the United States of their independence. He also opposed all internal im- provements by the General Government, and the recharter of the United States Bank, which he held to be unconstitutional. In the lengthy debate on the resolutions censuring General Jackson for his arbitrary course in the Seminole War, in the execution of the prisoners Arbuthnot and Ambrister, Mr. Tyler warmly participated, urging the adop- tion of the resolutions, but they were finally negatived. In the sixteenth Congress he opposed the prominent measures of a revision of the tariff for protection, and the Missouri Compromise, the latter upon the ground that it restricted the diffusion of slaves, which he held to be the surest means towards their ultimate emancipation. Mr. Tyler, by re-election, continued to serve in Congress until near the close of the term of 1821, when ill-health necessitated his resignation, and he retired to his farm, "Sherwood Forest," in Charles City County, possessing the respect of each of the great political parties. He did not long remain in private life. In 1823 he was again elected a member of the Virginia Legislat- ure, and took the lead in all matters of public utility which occupied that body ; many of the most beneficial of the internal improvements of the State being the result of his zealous and untiring labors. In 1825 he was elected by the Assembly Governor of Virginia, succeeding James Pleasants, December 1st. He was re-elected the following year by a unanimous vote, but being elected January 18, 1827, to succeed John Randolph in the United States Senate, he resigned the office of Governor on the 4th of March, and was succeeded by William Branch Giles. The claims of the soldiers of the Revolution had ever been warmly maintained by Mr. Tyler, and during his service in Congress he had strenuously resisted every effort to reduce the pittances which had been provided for them by the nation. In a communication to the General Assembly, whilst Governor, he insisted that the claims of the Revolutionary patriots of the Virginia State Line, which had with flagrant injustice, been discriminated against, should be pressed upon the attention of the General Government. He urges that: "The claims of our soldiers have ever been listened to with an attentive ear by the con- stituted authorities of this State, and would long since have been ful- filled to the very letter of promise but for the magnificent donation made by Virginia to the Federal Government of all her northern lands. It may be confidently asserted that in making that cession this Common-
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wealth never intended that the claims of any part of her hardy veterans should in any manner have remained unprovided for. The fact of the omis- sion of all mention of her troops on State establishment in the compacts entered into by her with the Government of the United States must have been an omission resulting purely from accident. ** The fact is, that the Virginia troops on State establishment are as much entitled to the liberality of Congress as those who served on Continental establish- ment. Those of the State Line who were entitled to land bounty, en- listed for a period not less than three years, and were found fighting by the side of the Continental troops, from one extremity of the Confed- cracy to the other. Their services in the achievement of our independ- ence equally entitle them to the nation's gratitude. Why, then, should not Congress interfere in their behalf? While we present to the National Government an occasion for the exercise of its liberality, we present also a claim sanctioned by every. principle of justice; and we might reasonably indulge the anticipation that our application would be listened to with attention and crowned with success." Mr. Tyler also strenuously recommended to the Assembly the organization of a system for the general instruction of the masses of the people. The year 1826 was marked by an event which threw the whole American nation into mourning-the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. That two of three only survivors of the signers of the Declaration of Inde- pendence should breathe their last upon the same day, and that day the anniversary of the promulgation of that grand instrument, was a coin- cidence the most remarkable. Mr. Jefferson died at " Monticello," just fifty years after the Declaration, at the very recurrent hour of the day, it is said, at which the immortal work of his hands was read in the Congress of the United States. On the receipt of the intelligence at Richmond, Governor Tyler was requested to deliver a commemorative - address, and accordingly on the-11th instant, after scarce three days of preparation, pronounced at the Capitol square, in Richmond, a fimeral oration, profoundly touching in its beauty and impressive eloquence. Mr. Tyler took his seat in the United States Senate in December, 1827. In that body he voted against the tariff bill of 1828, and was a firm supporter of General Jackson on his accession to the Presidency, but ever maintained an independence of action. He was frank in the avowal of his opinions, which were sometimes at variance with those of the President. Whilst thus efficiently representing Virginia in the Supreme Council of the nation, Mr. Tyler also rendered service in her important and ilhistrionsly composed Constitutional Convention of 1829-30. During the session of 1831-1832 he opposed the re- charter of the United States Bank, maintaining, as on a previous occasion, that it was an unconstitutional measure. He also voted against the tariff bill of 1832; but in the course of a speech in the
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Senate, he enunciated the principles of concession upon which, and at his instance, Mr. Clay, in 1833, predicated his famous compromise act. Mr. Tyler in a speech of much eloquence avowed his sympathy with the nullification movement in South Carolina, in 1832, and in conse- quence of the proclamation of President Jackson, withdrew his support from him. When the movement was made in the Virginia Assembly, in 1832, for the emancipation of slaves, William H. Brodnax, John Randolph "of Roanoke," John Marshall, Philip A. Bolling, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, James McDowell, and William H. Roane, being among its prominent supporters, Mr. Tyler, then a member of the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia, drew with his own hands, and inserted in the code prepared for the District, but which was not acted on, a bill providing for the abolition of slavery in the District, thus anticipating by eighteen years a similar provision inserted in the Compromise of 1850. In 1833 he was re-elected to the Senate for six years, and opposed the removal of the Government deposits from the United States Bank. His independent course separated him from the President's friends in Virginia, who subsequently supported Mr. Van Buren.
In 1836 the Legislature of Virginia instructed its Senators, Mr. Tyler and Benjamin Watkins Leigh, to vote for expunging from the journals of the Senate the resolution of Mr. Clay censuring the President for his assumption of unjustifiable authority in removing the bank deposits. As Mr. Tyler approved of the resolution, and believed the proposition to expunge to be in violation of the Constitution, he could not con- scientiously obey instructions, and, true to his avowed principles, he resigned his seat February 10th, and was succeeded by William Cabell Rives. His colleague, Mr. Leigh, however, refused to obey the will of the Legislature, and held his seat; and though locally lauded and com- plimented, with Mr. Tyler, by the Whigs of Richmond ( his residence), with a public dinner, yet his course, in the sequel, was proved to be an injudicious one, as weighed in the scale of his public interests, for, not- withstanding his pure character and great intellect, his error was irre- deemable. He was henceforth barred from political preferment. In the spring of 1838 Mr. Tyler was elected by the Whigs of James City County to the Virginia Assembly, and in 1839 he was elected a member of the Whig Convention that met at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to nominate a candidate for President of the United States. He was chosen Vice-President of the Convention, and warmly supported Mr. Clay for the nomination. The choice of the Convention, however, was General William II. Harrison for President, with Mr. Tyler for Vice- President, and in 1840 they were both elected, and were inaugurated on the 4th of March, 1841; but the former dying April 4th, after an administration of only one month, Mr. Tyler, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, became President of the United States.
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