USA > Virginia > Virginia and Virginians; eminent Virginians, executives of the colony of Virginia, Vol. I > Part 15
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He retained the Cabinet appointed by his predecessor, and proceeded to check, so far as he could consistently with the previous commitments of Harrison, the removal of the supporters of Van Buren's administra- tion. In the canvass of 1840 no decision had been made relative to a fiscal agent for the receipt and disbursement of the public moneys. The issue of a bank was repeatedly pressed as a desideratum by prominent Whigs and the newspaper organs of their party. President Tyler, in his first message, while reserving to himself in express terms the power to veto any measure which would contravene the Constitution, recom- mended the repeal of the sub-treasury law, and the substitution of a new fiscal agent. He had always denied the power in Congress of national incorporation operating per se over the Union. In private conversations with Clay and other prominent Whigs, before the meeting of Congress, he had urged a scheme which would not involve his Constitutional ob- jections. This they rejected, and Mr. Clay again proposed, essentially, instead, the re-establishment of the old United States Bank. The President vetoed the bill, as he did another, in alleged accordance with his suggestion for a fiscal agent, which was offered for his approval. The sub-treasury law in the meantime had been repealed; great excite- ment prevailed, and all of Mr. Tyler's Cabinet, with the exception of Daniel Webster, resigned, and a simultaneous assault was made upon him by the press and orators of the Whig party throughout the country. He, however, remained firm, and immediately filled his Cabinet with eminent State's rights Whigs and Conservatives.
The most important acts of the long session (two hundred and sixty-nine days) of 1841-1842 were a new tariff law with incidental protection, an act establishing a uniform bankrupt law, and an apportionment of repre- sentatives according to the census of 1840. The momentous treaty with Great Britain, settling the northeastern boundary of the United States, was ratified at Washington on the 28th of August, 1842. The pro- vision in its eighth article concerning the African squadron for the pro- tection of American commerce, and the prevention of the slave trade on the coast of Africa, was the suggestion of Mr. Tyler. In May, 1843, the President appointed Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, a commis- sioner to the Chinese government. On the 12th of April, 1844, a treaty was concluded at Washington, providing for the annexation of Texas to the United States, but on the 8th of June it was rejected by the Senate. On the 25th of January, 1845, a joint resolution for an- nexing Texas was adopted in the House of Representatives by a vote of 120 to 98; and the same was adopted in the Senate, on the 1st of March, by a vote of 27 to 25, and the same day it was approved by the President. Thus, two days before the expiration of his term of office, Mr. Tyler had the satisfaction of witnessing the consummation of an act which he had long earnestly desired and persistently striven for.
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The terms proposed were ratified on the 4th of July following by a Constitutional Convention assembled at Austin, Texas, and that State became one of our great Union. Upon the expiration of his Presi- dential term Mr. Tyler returned to private life, upon his farm in Vir- ginia.
In the Democratic Convention which assembled at Baltimore, Mary- land, on the 13th of May, 1844, to nominate candidates for President and Vice-President, Mr. Tyler was the first choice of a large following for the Presidency, and it was thought that his friends held the balance of power in several States. Mr. Van Buren, also a candidate, was so objectionable to many of the Democratic party that it was urged that, between him and the candidate of the Whig party, they would prefer Mr. Clay. The friends of Mr. Tyler, to secure the defeat of Mr. Van Buren, and the nomination of a candidate in sympathy with the policy and measures of the administration of Mr. Tyler, notably the annexation of Texas, resolved upon the two-thirds rule, and under its application, Mr. Van Buren was discarded, and Mr. Tyler withdraw- ing, James K. Polk was nominated, and subsequently elected as the successor of Mr. Tyler.
During the long period of relief from the strife and anxieties of polit- ical life, which was now enjoyed by Mr. Tyler in the blessings of a competence and of domestic bliss, there was an episode not the least creditable in his honorable career, and highly characteristic in its marked exemplification of his sense of duty as a citizen. In 1847 he was designated by the justices of Charles City County for an essential but humbly named duty, and to which, in common with other citizens, he was liable. It was at the instance, it was said, of those who wished to inflict a mortification by conferring, in derision, upon an ex-Presi- dent of the United States the humble position of an overseer of the public road. Mr. Tyler promptly accepted the appointment, and was no less decided in the execution of the trust-thie emphatic meed, without dissenting voice, accorded, being that "he was the best over- seer of the roads that Charles City ever had."
Mr. Tyler was twice most happily married; first, March 29, 1813, to Letitia, the third daughter of Robert Christian, of "Cedar Grove," New Kent County, long a member of the Virginia Assembly, and a member of a family * which has for quite two hundred years been
* The late curiously erudite Dr. J. R. Christian, of Holly Springs, Miss., traced the origin of the Christian family to Scotland, where, prior to the 16th century, the name was rendered MacChristian. They were established in Wigtonshire, Scotland, until the year 1422, after which they figure in Man, only a few miles distant. The name is historic. John Christian, of Undrigg Castle, married Isa- bella, daughter of Henry Lord Percy, the famous Earl of Northumberland. William MacChristian, of Albdale and Milntown, parish of St. Frisity, was
GEORGE SANDYS,
Treasurer of the Colony of Virginia in 1621.
Contemporaneously the author of the first book written in what is now the United States of America, "Ovid's Metamorphosis," printed at Oxford in 1632.
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honorably and usefully represented in the judiciary, and in varied local trusts in Virginia. She died at Washington, September 10, 1842. Her virtues are gracefully recorded by Miss Holloway, in The Ladies of the White House. The second marriage of Mr. Tyler is invested with touching interest, and was the romantic sequel of a tragic occur- rence which profoundly moved the sympathies of the American nation, The powerful armament of the United States steamship "Princeton" claimed the attention of the Secretary of the Navy, and by the invita- tion of her builder and commander, Captain Stockton, on the 28th of February, 1844, a large party of distinguished persons, accompanied with ladies, were present on board during an excursion on the Potomac to witness the trial of her powers. The day was charmingly bright and pleasant, and the occasion one of rare social gratification, when, with the closing scene and the setting sun, a terrible accident spread disaster around. One of the largest guns, on being fired for the third time, whilst the frigate was opposite Mount Vernon, burst, and the explosion killed instantly the Secretary of the Navy, Thomas W. Gilmer; the Secretary of State, Abel P. Upshur; Commodore Beverley Kennon, chief of one of the Naval Bureaus; Virgil Maxcy, recently Charge d' Affaires to The Hague ; Hon. David Gardiner, of New York (who was accompanied by his lovely and accomplished daughter), and three domestics, besides wounding twelve of the crew. The tender and sooth- ing attentions of the President (who was present) to Miss Gardiner in her terrible bereavement sensibly touched her heart. A sympathetic bond was established, and the happy sequence was the marital union of John Tyler and Julia Gardinerf on the 26th of June following. The
Master of the House of Keys for Ireland in 1422. Evan Christian, born in 1579. was appointed Deempster or Judge of the Isle of Man at the age of twenty-six, and held the office for forty-eight years. Gilbert Christian married in 1720, and removed from Scotland to Ireland. Several of the name emigrated to America and founded families in Pennsylvania, the Valley of Virginia and Tennessee. But the family was much earlier seated in Eastern Virginia. Thomas Christian patented lands in James City County in 1667, and, October 26, 1687, was granted 1,080 acres in Charles City County.
t The father of Mrs. Tyler, Hon. David Gardiner, born May 2, 1784, a gradu- ate of Yale College, for a time New York State Senator, was a descendant in the ninth generation from Lion Gardiner, a native of England, a soldier and en- gineer by profession, who joined the camp of the Prince of Orange, in the Nether- lands, as master of works of fortifications, and who was stationed at Fort Orange, near the city of Woerden. Accompanied by his wife, Mary Williamson (born at Woerden, and died in 1665), he came as engineer with the colonists who em- barked from London, July 10, 1635, and who settling on the banks of the Con- necticut River, under the patent granted in 1631, by Charles H. to William, Vis- count, Say and Seal, Lord Brook and others, formed the germ of the colony of Connecticut. Lion Gardiner acted as Lieutenant or Deputy of the patentees, and commanded from 1635 to 1639 the fort built at Say-Brook, named in honor of Lords Say and Brook, and which was of great benefit in defending the colony from the attacks of the savages. Securing the friendship of Wyandanch, sachem
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issue of President Tyler, by his first marriage, was seven children, four daughters and three sons: i. Mary, married Henry L. Jones; ii. Robert, Signer of Patents, Prothonotary of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, President of the Repeal Association, of which William H. Seward was Vice-President, Register of the Treasury of the Confederate States, the able editor of the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, and a Centennial Commissioner in 1876; married Priscilla, daughter of the distinguished tragedian, Thomas A. Cooper. Their accomplished daughter, Mrs. Priscilla Goodwyn, inherits the histrionic genius of her maternal grand- father; iii. John, private secretary of his father, Major in the Confed- erate States Army, and a brilliant and vigorous writer; iv. Letitia, mar- ried James Semple, of the United States Navy, and Chief of Parole of the Confederate States Army; v. Elizabeth, married William Waller, and had issue, among others, John Tyler, a gallant but rash young officer, successively of the Confederate Navy and Army, who sealed his devotion to the South with his life; and William Griffin, assistant editor of the Savannah (Ga.) News, married, first, Jeannie Howell, the sister of the second wife of Jefferson Davis, and, secondly, Bessie Austin; vi. Alice, married Rev. Mr. Dennison. Their daughter Bessie is an artist of ability, which is meritoriously instanced in the portrait of her ancestor, Governor Tyler, in the State Library at Richmond; vii. Tazewell, Sur- geon Confederate States Army, lately deceased in California, married Anne Bridges, of New Kent County, Virginia.
of the Montauketts, through intelligence received from him he was the instru- ment of saving the infant colony of Connecticut from threatened massacre, which had been plotted by the Pequot, the Narragansett and other tribes. Lion Gardi- ner also obtained by purchase from the chieftain Wyandanch various extensive tracts of valnable land, among others that in New York, known as Gardiner's Island, comprising 2,400 acres of arable land, besides 900 aeres of ponds and sand beaches. It was conveyed March 10, 1649, and is in possession of the de- scendants of Lion Gardiner to the present day. He died in 1663. Jolin Gardi- ner, the grandson of Lion Gardiner, received from Governor Dongan the last patent of Governor's Island, erecting it into a lordship and manor, and was proprietor when Robert Kidd, the famons pirate, buried his treasures upon it. He was killed by a fall from his horse while on a visit to Croton, Con., Jime 25, 1738, aged seventy-eight. The mother of Mrs. Tyler was Juliana ( born February 8, 1799), daughter of Michael Mc Lachlan, of the Highland clan of MeLachlan, in Scotland. His father fell in the rebellion of 1745, when the son emigrated to the Island of Jamaica, and thence to the city of New York. The Gardiner family, in its intermarriages includes, among other well-known names, those of Conkling, Howell, Coit, Gray, Green, Chandler, Lathrop, Mulford, Avery, Buel, Griswold, Thompson, Huntington, Dering, Dayton, Van Wyck, Lee, Davis, L'Hommedieu, and Bancroft. Hannah, great-granddaughter of Lion Gardiner, and the wife of John Chandler, of Worcester, Mass., being the grandmother of George Bancroft, the historian. Mrs. Tyler, with her younger children, at present resides in Rich- mond, Virginia.
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The issue of the second marriage of President Tyler was also seven children, five sons and two daughters (making a total by the two mar- riages of fourteen children) : viii. David Gardiner, a lawyer, residing at the paternal seat, "Sherwood Forest," Charles City County; ix. John Alexander, civil engineer, a gallant soldier in the Prussian Army in the Franco-Prussian War, and in the Confederate Army. For merit in the first service he was invested by the hands of Kaiser William himself with a medal and ribbon; died September 2,, 1883, at Sante Fe, New Mexico; x. Julia, married William H. Spencer, of New York, and died in 1871; xi. Lachlan, an accomplished and successful physician in Washington, D. C .; xii. Lyon Gardiner, a talented lawyer of the Rich- mond bar, late a Professor in William and Mary College, and an accom- plished writer, married Anne Baker, daughter of the gallant Colonel St. George Tucker, of the Confederate States Cavalry, poct, and author of the historical novel, Hansford: A Tale of Bacon's Rebellion, the son of Hon. Henry St. George Tucker, and grandson of Hon. St. George Tucker (jurisconsult), and his wife Frances, daughter of Richard Bland, and who was the widow of John Randolph, and the mother of the brilliant and erratic John Randolph "of Roanoke." The maternal grandfather of Mrs. Tyler was Hon. Thomas Walker Gilmer; xiii. Fitz Walter; xiv. Pearl. President Tyler, surrounded by his interest- ing family, enjoyed the peaceful quiet of private life for a long series of years, broken alone by generous and inspiring services as an orator on special occasions, and to which his powers of eloquence subjected him, until the stirring events of 1861 appealed to his patriotism, and again enlisted his willing energies in the cause of his beloved State. He was a member of and presided with great dignity over the earnest and momentous deliberations of the Peace Conference which was proposed by the Virginia Assembly at his suggestion, and which met in Willard's Hall, at Washington, D. C., February 4, 1861. He was also a member of the first Confederate States Congress, and while in attendance on that body died at Richmond, Virginia, January 17, 1862, and was buried in the adjacent beautiful and picturesque Hollywood Cemetery. Glowing eulogiums upon his worth were delivered in both houses of the Con- federate Congress by Honorables R. M. T. Hunter, William C. Rives, Louis T. Wigfall, William HI. Macfarland, A. M. Venable and others. In person President Tyler was tall and slender, with a fair complexion, blue eyes, brown hair, an aquiline nose, and impressive and engaging countenance. An excellent portrait of him is exhibited in the State Library at Richmond, Virginia. His literary efforts evince mental endowments of a high order, as well as the devotion and enthusiasm of the scholar. "To purity of taste, elegance of diction, and strength of reasoning he superadds the ornaments of a lively fancy and a copious command of impressive and striking images." His " Life" (published in Svo, New York, 1843) presents the principal events of his life and
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literary and political efforts to that period. His quite numerous ad- dresses thereafter, exist chiefly in the columns of the contemporary press and in fugitive publications. The most important have been collected by his grandson, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, in the Letters and Times of the Tylers, now in press. The great secret of the popularity of Mr. Tyler was doubtless in the earnestness of purpose, the innate gene- rosity and simplicity of nature, the winning sympathy, and the in- spiring cordiality which was manifest in his entire presence. His ready adaptation to circumstances, and assimilation with the tastes of every circle or auditory, united in a persuasive sway which we are wont to term personal magnetism.
WILLIAM BRANCH GILES.
The ancestors of William Branch Giles were early seated in the colony of Virginia. Christopher Branch, "ancient planter," appears as a patentee of lands in 1624, and George Giles in 1630, both located in Henrico County. William Giles conveyed lands in the same county to Colonel William Byrd in 1681. Another of the name is mentioned, in an humorous connection, by Colonel William Fontaine, an eye-witness of the memorable surrender of York, October 19, 1781, who, in a letter of graphic detail, dated October 26, 1781, and which is preserved in the autographic collection of the Virginia Historical Society, narrates the incidental embarrassing personal experience of the erst truculent and redoubtable British trooper, Colonel Banastre Tarleton : "The hero was prancing through the streets of York on a very fine, elegant horse, and was met by a spirited young fellow of the country, who stopped him, challenged the horse, and ordered him instantly to dismount. Tarleton halted and paused awhile through confusion; then told the lad if it was his horse, he supposed he must be given up, but insisted to ride him some distance out of town to dine with a French officer. This was more, however, than Mr. Giles was disposed to indulge him in; having been forced, when he and his horse were taken, to travel a good part of a night on foot at the point of a bayonet, he therefore refused to trust him out of sight, and made him dismount in the midst of the street crowded with spectators."
William Branch Giles was born in Amelia County, Virginia, August 12, 1762. After a preliminary course of instruction at the venerable William and Mary College, he matriculated at Princeton College, New Jersey, from whence he graduated with distinction in 1781. Adopting the profession of the law, he was admitted to the bar, and in the courts of Petersburg, Virginia, soon attained a lucrative practice. In August, 1790, he entered the arena of politics, first as a Federalist, and was elected a delegate from Virginia to the United States House of Repre-
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sentatives. In December of the same year, however, he separated hini- self from the Federalists upon the question of establishing a United States Bank, and entered the ranks of the Republican, or Democratic. party, and was thereafter a bitter antagonist of his former party asso- ciates. January 23, 1793, he charged Alexander Hamilton, the Secre- tary of the Treasury, with corruption and peculation in office. In 1796 he opposed the creation of a National Navy, and the ratification of Jay's treaty, and the proposed war with France in 1798. In that year he declined a seat in Congress that he might aid James Madison in the Virginia Assembly (to which body he was elected from Amelia County) in passing the celebrated resolutions of 1798. In 1800 he was again elected to Congress, and was one of the most zealous supporters of President Jefferson, who is said to have conferred with him almost nightly during the sessions of Congress, to assure himself that no un- toward conviviality of Mr. Giles might deprive him of efficient support on the following day. In 1803 Mr. Giles declined a re-election to Con- gress, and was succeeded in that body by John W. Eppes, the son-in- law of Mr. Jefferson. In August, 1804, Mr. Giles was elected by the Executive Council of Virginia to the United States Senate, to fill the vacancy occasioned by the resignation of Wilson Cary Nicholas, for whose unexpired term he was first elected by the State Assembly early in December following, and on the 4th of the month by the same body. for the ensuing Senatorial term, commencing March 4, 1805, and end- ing March 4, 1811. Mr. Giles was re-elected for another term by the Assembly, January 2, 1811, but resigned his seat November 23, 1815. before the completion of his term, which did not expire until March 4, 1817. He zealously and with conspicuous ability supported the admin- istration during the war with Great Britain, 1812-1815. He re-entered public life in 1816 as the delegate from Amelia County, in the Virginia Assembly, but ill-health demanded his retirement to his farm in Amelia County. Some political essays from Mr. Giles which were published in the Richmond Enquirer in 1824, attracting the attention of Henry Clay. he sent to Mr. Giles, in the month of April of that year, a speech on the Tariff which he had recently delivered in Congress, accompanying the speech with an ironical epistle, in which after adroitly complimenting Mr. Giles on his ability and statesmanship, of the exercise of which the government had been so long and unfortunately deprived because of his ill-health, he amusingly congratulates Mr. Giles upon his finding time to withdraw himself from the disputes with his miller and overseer, in which he had been contentedly engaged. and to again give the public the benefit of his fine talents in such brilliant contributions to the press. Mr. Giles, singularly enough, failed to discern the biting humor of this effusion, and made a cordial response to Mr. Clay, who made merry with his friends over the matter. This being reported to Mr. Giles, he, in an irate mood, addressed, February 19, 1826, a communication
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to Mr. Clay which was tantamount to a challenge to a deadly encounter. The son of Mr. Giles, Thomas T. Giles, was the bearer of the com- munication, which he tendered Mr. Clay in the presence of Hon. William S. Archer. Mr. Clay declined to receive it upon the ground that he could not "recognize Mr. Thomas T. Giles as an organ free from objection." The whole correspondence was subsequently pub- lished by Mr. Giles. In 1826 Mr. Giles again entered the Virginia Assembly as a delegate from Amelia County, and in the spring of the following year presented in that body certain resolutions calling for an inquiry into the relative rights of the general and State governments. In the same year he was elected by the Assembly Governor of Vir- ginia, which office he held by annual re-election until 1830. He was a member also of that brilliant constellation of genius, the State Constitu- tional Convention of 1829-30, and engaged prominently in the impor- tant debates in that body. He died December 4, 1830, at his seat, "The Wigwam," in Amelia County, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. In an obituary, which appeared in the Richmond Enquirer, he is recorded as having been: "In his public life he was distinguished as a zealous patriot, an honest politician and an able statesman, adoring liberty and hating despotism-devoted to his country, but unprejudiced in his de- votions-loving the Constitution and jealous of its violation-attached to the Federal Government, but despising its usurpations-he executed to the last the best energies of his mind in endeavoring to maintain the rights of the State and the liberties of the people. * *
* The most spotless integrity and liberality was conspicuous in all his inter- course with his fellow-man, an unreserved candor in his communications which disdained everything like concealment. A charm of conversa- tion and a courtesy of manner which passes all description, won for him the love and admiration of all who could feel and estimate such quali- ties. Having spent a life of usefulness and distinction, after sixteen years of disease he gradually sunk into the arms of death with the serenity and calmness of philosophy and the peace and quiet of an easy conscience."
The success in public life of Mr. Giles, it is generally conceded, was due scarce less to his proficiency in parliamentary tactics than to his ability in debate. It is true that he was a man of chivalric impulse, and his championship, in 1815, of the unfortunate cousin of John Ran- dolph of Roanoke (Miss Ann Cary Randolph, then Mrs. Gouverneur Morris), in the inhuman assault of Randolph upon her, made John Ran- dolph his bitter enemy. Mr. Giles published a " Speech on the Embargo," in 1808; " A Political Letter to the People of Virginia," in 1813; a series of letters, signed "A Constituent," in the Richmond Enquirer, in January. 1818, against the plan for a general education ; letters of invective against James Monroe and Henry Clay, arraigning them for their " hobbies," the South American cause, the Greck cause, internal improvements and the
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