USA > Virginia > Virginia and Virginians; eminent Virginians, executives of the colony of Virginia, Vol. II > Part 11
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March 10, 1785, Mr. Jefferson was unanimously chosen by Congress to succeed Dr. Franklin as minister to the court at Versailles, and, re-ap- pointed in October, 1787, he remained in France until October, 1789, in that time successfully conducting many important and intricate nego- tiations in the interest of the United States.
Immediately upon his return to America, Thomas Jefferson was appointed by President Washington Secretary of State, and he conducted this department of the new and untried government past many perils and by many momentous and statesmanlike decisions through the four years of
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Washington's first administration, resigning the office December 31, 1796.
Three years of private life ensued, and then again Mr. Jefferson found himself in the political arena, this time as the leader of one of the two political parties into which the American voters had become divided. By the party then calling themselves Republicans, Mr. Jefferson was nomin- ated for President, and the Federal party nominated John Adams of Mas- sachusetts as his opponent. The vote was counted in the presence of both houses of Congress. in February, 1797, and Mr. Adams receiving the majority was declared President, Dir. Jefferson, as was then the law, becom- ing vice-president.
March 4, 1797, he took the oath of office, and as presiding officer in the Senate, delivered before that body a speech which is yet a model of dignity, modesty and statesmanship. Much of the four succeeding years, Mr. Jefferson spent in tranquillity at his country home, Monticello. He had married New Year's Day, 1772, Martha, daughter of John Wayles, a distin- guished lawyer of Charles City county, Virginia, and their union had been blessed with two beautiful daughters. The death of the wife and mother occurred about ten years subsequent to her marriage, and toward his two children Mr. Jefferson always manifested a mother's tenderness combined with a father's care.
When the time for another presidential election approached, Mr. Jeffer- son was again the candidate of his party, his opponent being Aaron Burr of New York. The vote was a tie, and the election devolved upon the House of Representatives. After thirty-five ineffectual ballots, a member from Maryland, authorized by Mr. Burr, withdrew that gentleman's name, and on the thirty-sixth ballot Mr. Jefferson was elected president, Colonel Burr becoming vice-president.
March 4, 1801, President Jefferson delivered his inaugural address in the presence of both Houses of Congress, in which, among many wise utterances, were the following words, which embody the only safe princi- ples for the American government :
"Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political ; peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none."
In December, 1801, President Jefferson established the custom of send- ing a President's annual message to the houses of Congress. Before that time the president had in person made the communication, to which the Speaker, in behalf of Congress, had at once replied in a formal address.
Re-elected to the presidency, Jefferson served two terms, his second term of office expiring March 4, 1809. The record of his administrations is & matter of the history of the country.
At the age of sixty-six, Thomas Jefferson retired to private life at Monti- cello, nor did he again engage in public affairs. Here he passed fifteen tranquil years, surrounded by friends and admirers, and in the happy con-
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sciousness of the growing and assured prosperity of the country he loved.
His last public utterances were embodied in a letter addressed June 24, 1826, to a committee who desired bis attendance at the coming anniversary of Independence Day. The letter is marked by that statesmanship which characterized all his words to the people. Among its utterances was the following :
"All eyes are opened, or are opening to the rights of man. The gen- cral spread of the lights of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favoured few, booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, 'by the grace of God !'"
Two days after this letter was written, an indisposition under which Mr. Jefferson was laboring assumed a more serious form, and his death was anticipated. But he rallied on the 2d of July, and, on ascertaining the date, eagerly expressed a wish that he might live to see the dawn of the fiftieth anniversary of Independence. His wish was granted. He lived until one o'clock of the afternoon of July 4, 1826, passing then from this world to another with the tranquillity with which the philosopher's life is ended.
JAMES MADISON,
Fourth President of the United States, was born March 16, 1751, and died June 28, 1836, in his 85th year.
He was born at King George, King George county, Virginia, his father an opulent planter of that province. The oldest of seven chil- dren, he received the best education the times afforded. He was prepared for college under the instructions of a private tutor, Rev. Thomas Martin, and entered Princeton, from which university he was graduated in 1771, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts.
The movement toward American Independence was thus well begun when he stepped into the arena of public life. In 1775 he was a member of the committee of safety of Orange county, and in 1776 represented that county in the Virginia Convention. In 1777 the House of Delegates elected him to the executive council of Virginia, and of that body he con- tinued a leading member until the close of 1779.
In 1779 he was chosen to represent Virginia in the Continental Congress, where he took his seat March 20, 1780. He remained in Congress nearly four years, or until the first Monday of November, 1783. He was thus a member of that body during the last years of the Revolutionary war, and a part of the first year following the peace. During this time he had an opportunity to observe the inefficiency of the confederated form of govern- ment, and was active in all the remedial measures that were proposed in ongress.
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In 1784, Mr. Madison was elected to the State Legislature of Virginia, and by annuel re-elections continued a member of that body until November, 1786, when, having become re-eligible as a candidate for Congress, he was returned to the national legislature, and resumed official position there February 12, 1787.
During hismembership in the State legislature he became the champion of religious liberty. In 1784 Thomas Jefferson had introduced in the Virginia legislature a " Bill for the Establishment of Religious Freedom." At that time all colonists were taxed for the support of the Church of England and its clergy, although many were indifferent to that form of worship, and others were earnestly opposed to it on the ground of conscientious scruples. The bill failed to pass that year, and in 1785, Mr. Jefferson being absent from the State legislature, James Madison took up the bill, and urged and achieved its passage, against strong opposition.
In the same and the following year, as chairman of the judiciary com- mittee, he presided over and assisted in the revision of the statutes of Virginia.
May 9, 1787, the committee which prepared the Federal Constitution was convened at Philadelphia, and James Madison was a delegate from Virginia. Four months of anxious deliberation and steady labor enabled this committee to report, on the 17th of September, the articles which, when amended and adopted, became the Constitution of the United States.
In 1789, Madison was elected to the first House of Representatives under the new Constitution. He served until the close of Washington's administration, and then retired to private life.
In 1794, he was united in marriage with Mrs. Todd, nee Dolly Payne, widow of a distinguished lawyer of Philadelphia. The lady was & Vit- ginian by birth, a member of the Payne family, and a sister of the wife of George S. Washington. Her marriage with James Madison was consum- mated in what is now Jefferson county, West Virginia, at a substantial stone mansion which is still standing in an excellent state of preservation. This house has many historical associations, having been built in 1752 by Samuel Washington, eldest full brother of George Washington, who occasionally visited here. Here, too, Louis Phillippe was entertained during his visit to America, and in the sitting-room where Madison and Mrs. Todd were married, is a mantle presented to the family by General La Fayette.
During Jefferson's administrations, 1801-9, Madison was his most inti- mate adviser outside of his cabinet, and the friendship between the two men continued throughout Madison's administration, where the direction of the statesmanship of Jefferson could be often seen.
March 4, 1809, James Madison assumed the duties of President of the United States, to which office he had been elected by a majority of 122 out of 175 electoral votes
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Madison's administration continued through eight years, its most impor- tant event being the war of 1812. During this war the British obtained possession of Washington, August 24, 1814, and plundered and destroyed with fire a large portion of the city. Mrs. Madison, then presiding at the White House, was obliged to seek safety in flight. Her carriage stood at the door, and her friends were urging her immediate departure, when she returned to her drawing-room and cut from its frame a full-length picture of Washington. "Save it, or destroy it," she commanded the gentlemen who were in attendance upon her; "but do not let it fall into the hands of the British!" Then she entered the carriage which conveyed her, with other ladies, to a place of refuge beyond the Potomac. The treasure she took from the White House in her own hands, and held concealed in her wrappings as she was driven away, was the precious parchment upon which was engrossed the Declaration of Independence, with its fifty-two signatures.
March 4, 1817, Madison's long and useful connection with national affairs terminated, and he retired to his farm of Montpelier in Virginia, where his life was peacefully ended. Nineteen years of private life pre- ceded his death, and the time was largely devoted by him to the produc- tion of the voluminous writings which he left to posterity.
From his earliest years he had been a hard student, with tenacious memory; he led a life of spotless virtue upon which the breath of calumny never rested; his bearing was both modest and dignified; his speech always clear and concise; his public career distinguished by honesty and singleness of purpose.
Some time after his death Congress purchased from his widow, for $30,000, all his MSS., and a portion of them have been published under the title, "The Madison Papers."
Mrs. Madison survived her husband some years, dying in Washington, . July 12, 1849, and they left no children.
JAMES MONROE,
Fifth President of the United States, was born April 28, 1758, and died July 4, 1831, in his 74th year.
His birth was in Westmoreland county, Virginia, and he was a lineal descendant of one of the first patentees of that province. His father was Spruce Monroe, a well-known and wealthy planter of Westmoreland county.
At the time Independence was declared, James Monroe was a student in William and Mary College. Without finishing his course there he en- tered the army as a cadet. His military carcer, though brief, was glori-
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ous. He gave his young manhood to his country's service in the hour of her adversity; he joined her standard when others were deserting it; here- paired to Washington's headquarters when the army had dwindled to the verge of dissolution, and Great Britian was pouring her native troops and foreign mercenaries by thousands upon our coasts; he was one of the heroes who followed Washington in his perilous mid-winter journey across the Delaware ; he fought at Harlem, at White Plains, and at Trenton, and was wounded in the last named engagement.
He was promoted for gallantry on the field, and returned to the army to serve as aide-de-camp to Lord Sterling, through the campaign of 1777- 78, taking part in the engagements of Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth.
After this campaign Monroe left the army, and engaged in the study of law, with Thomas Jefferson. In 1781 he served as a volunteer with the Virginia forces, when that State was invaded by the armies of Cornwallis and Arnold, and at the request of the governor of Virginia he visited the more Southern States, 1780, to collect military information.
In 1782 he was elected a member of the Virginia legislature, and by the legislature appointed a member of the executive council. June 9, 1783, he was elected to the House of Representatives, where he took his seat on the 13th of December following. He continued a member of this body until the close of the session of 1786.
In the last named year he married a daughter of Lawrence Kortright, ot New York City, and took up his residence in Frederickburg, Spottsyl- vania county, Virginia. He was elected to a seat in the Virginia legisla- ture, and served three years.
In 1790 he was chosen United States Senator, and served until 1794. He was then appointed to succeed Gouveneur Morris as minister at the French Court. The appointment was made upon the recommendation of President Washington and one of the first acts of President Adams was to recall Monroe.
During Monroe's ministry in France, his views upon the question of the neutrality of the United States in the war between England and France, then the paramount subject of consideration in America, were not in harmony with the administration, and his course of action was severely censured, and his national popularity for a time decreased.
Virginia, however, stood by the son of her soil. His own county, immediately upon his arrival home, returned him to the State legislature, and the votes of the people transferred him thence to the gubernatorial chair. As governor he served three years (1799-1802), the term limited by the State constitution.
In 1802 he visited France, appointed by Jefferson as envoy extra- ordinary to act with Mr. Livingstone at the court of Napoleon. He assisted in the negotiations for the purchase of Louisiana, and then joined
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Mr. Pinckney in Spain, to assist in the settlement of some boundary ques- tions. In 1807 he went from Spain to England, to protest against the impressment of American seamen, and with Mr. Pinckney to negotiate a treaty with Great Britain. Five years had now been given by Mr. Monroe to public duties abroad, and finding no success attending his efforts to ratify a treaty with Great Britain, he returned to America, reaching home in the closing month of 1807.
At the next State election he was again called to the chief magistracy of the Commonwealth of Virginia, which office he filled until, in 1811, he was called to a seat as Secretary of State, in the cabinet of President Madison. This office he held until the close of President Madison's sec- ond term, with the exception of about six months, the last months of the second war with Great Britain, when he discharged the more arduous duties of Secretary of the War Department.
On the retirement of President Madison, in 1817, James Monroe was chosen fifth President of the United States, and in 1821, was re-elected without opposition. His opponent in the canvass of 1816 was Rufus King, of New York, who received only 34 electoral votes, Mr. Monroe receiving 183. Only one vote was cast against him at his second election, one of the New Hampshire electors voting for John Quincy Adams. Monroe's electoral vote was 228.
The distinguishing act of President Monroe's administration, at least that in which posterity is most interested, was the assertion of what has since become known as "The Monroe Doctrine." It was first formulated by President Monroe in his annual message to Congress in 1824.
"The occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers."
In popular language, and in the widest sense of the words, this may be interpreted as : " America for Americans," including, of course, all who choose to become American citizens.
During his administrations Monroe encouraged the army, increased the navy, protected commerce, and infused vigor and efficiency in every department of the public service. March 4, 1825, he retired to his resi- dence of Oak Hill, in Loudoun county, Virginia.
In the winter of 1829-30, he presided over a convention called to revise the constitution of Virginia, but an increasing indisposition necessitated his withdrawal from the convention before its labors were ended, and he never again participated in public affairs. In the summer of 1830 his beloved wife died, and he was unable to bear the solitude of the home her presence had so many years brightened. He removed to New York City, making his home with his son-in-law, Samuel L. Gouveneur, where the few remaining months of his life were passed.
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Mr. Monroe had been a poor financier in personal matters. though he had inherited considerable property, and his wife had brought him as much more, and although he had received $350,000 for public services, in his last days pecuniary embarassments were added to his bodily infirmities, and his old age was harassed by debt. In 1858 the remains of ex-President Monroe were removed, with great pomp, from New York to Richmond, Virginia, and on July 5th were re-interred in Hollywood cemetery.
The members of President Monroe's cabinet were: Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, 1817-1825; Secretary of the Treasury, Wm. Il. Crawford, of Georgia, 1817-1825; Secre. tary of War, Geo. Graham, ad interim; John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, December, 1817, to March, 1825. (President Monroe ten. dered this position to Isaac Shelby, governor of Kentucky, who did not qualify, and in December, 1817, declined the office on account of advanced age.) Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin W. Crowninshield, of Massachusetts, March, 1817, to November, 1818; Smith Thompson, of New York, November, 1818, to Do ember, 1823; Samuel L. South- ard, of New Jersey, December, 1823, to March, 1825. Attorney Gen- eral, Richard Rush, of Pennsylvania, March to November, 1817; William Wirt, of Virginia, November, 1817, to March, 1825. The office of Postmaster General for these eight years was filled by Return Jonathan Meigs, March:, 1817, to June, 1823, then by John McLean, of Ohio, until March, 1825.
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON,
Ninth President of the United States, was born February 9, 1773, and died April 4, 1841, in his 69th year.
On the banks of the James river, in Charles City county, Virginia, lies the beautiful estate called Berkeley, for several generations the home of the Harrisons. Here was born Benjamin Harrison, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and his third son was William Henry Harrison.
He received his scholastic education at Hampden-Sidney College, and then began the study of medicine in Philadelphia. But about that time an army was gathering to be sent against the Indians of the Northwest, and young Harrison displayed an inclination toward mili- tary life. At the age of nineteen he received from President Wash- ington an ensign's commission, and joined the army, under General St. Clair. In 1792 he was promoted to a lieutenancy, and in 1794 be fought under "Mad Anthony" Wayne, whose aid-de-camp he became.
In 1795, Harrison was commissioned captain and placed in command at Fort Washington, now the site of Cincinnati. Hore he was joined in marriage with a daughter of John Cloves Symmes, a pioncor in that
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locality, who first laid out the tract of country on which Cincinnati now stands. Harrison's wife survived him more than twenty years, dying at their home in North Bend, Ohio, February 26, 1864.
In 1797, Harrison was appointed secretary of the Northwestern Terri- tory, and resigned his military commission. Two years later, he was elected the first delegate to Congress from the territory. General St. Clair was then governor of the territory, which included the present States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan.
In 1801 the Northwestern Territory was divided, Indiana was erected into a separate territorial government, embracing what is now the States of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, and William Henry Harrison was appointed first governor of the new territory.
By consecutive re-appointments Harrison was continued chief magistrate of Indiana until 1813. During this time he also held the official position of commissioner of Indian affairs, and concluded thirteen important treat- ies with the different Northwestern tribes. His knowledge of the Indian character and the respect with which he was regarded by them on account of his fighting qualities, enabled him to conduct these treaties greatly to the advantage of the government.
Before the expiration of his last two years' service as governor, Harrison had again distinguished himself by his military skill, and was again embarked upon a military career. Among his other achievements was the successful resistance of his troop of 800 men against a night attack of the followers of Tecumseh, led on and incited by his brother, the Prophet. This was the engagement on the night of the 6th and morning of the 7th of November, 1811, made famous in subsequent history and song as the " Battle of Tippecanoe."
As early as the spring of 1810 the hostile preparations of the Indians of the Northwest, under direction of Tecunisch and his brother, induced Governor Harrison to call them to account. In August they met the gov- ernor in council at Vincennes, where the appearance of 700 disciplined troop of militia somewhat abated the ardor of the brothers for an imme- diate conflict. In the following year, however, Tecumseh succeeded in forming a league of the Choctaws, Chickasaws and Creeks against the whites, and Harrison, using the discretionary power vested in him, gath- ered a force from his own territory and from Kentucky, at Vincennes, and late in September, 1811, marched up the Wabash valley toward the town of the Prophet, near the junction of Tippecanoe creek and the Wabash river. On the way he built a fort near the site of the present city of Terre Haute, which was called Fort Harrison.
In the beginning of November, the governor and his troops encamped on what became the battle-field of Tippecanoe. Tecumseh had gone south to arouse the Indians of Florida, and the Prophet rashly undertook to give battle to Harrison, believing the camp could be surprised and an easy and
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bloody victory given his deluded followers. The result made Harrison the popular hero of Tippecanoe.
Early in 1812, Harrison was brevetted major-general in the Kentucky militia, and later in the same year, in September, was appointed brigadier general of the regular United States army, with command of the North- western division. In 1813. he received commission as major-general of the regular army.
His services in the war with Great Britain were continued until 1814, during which time the battle of the Thames, and other victories in the lake country, were added to his laurels. In consequence of a misunderstand- ing with Armstrong, secretary of war in 1814, General Harrison resigned his commission, and retired to his farm at North Bend.
He, however, served the government as Indian commissioner in nego- tiating the treaties of peace, and in 1816, resumed public life as member of Congress, from the Cincinnati district. After serving in the House three years, he was chosen, in 1819, to the State Senate of Ohio, and served in that position five years.
In 1824 he became a member of the United States Senate from Ohio, and was given the chairmanship of the military commission. In 1828 John Quincy Adams appointed him minister to Colombia, South America, but Jackson recalled him during the first year of his administration.
For the twelve succeeding years General Harrison lived in private life, his only public functions in that time being the discharge of the duties of clerk of the court of Hamilton county, Ohio. In 1836 the Whig party made him their candidate for the chief magistracy, and he received 73 electoral votes. Van Buren, the Democratic candidate, and the protege of the retiring president, Jackson, was elected; but the finan- cial depression which accompanied his administration rendered it unpopu- lar, and gave the Whigs an opportunity to gain the next election.
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