USA > West Virginia > Monongalia County > History of Monongalia County, West Virginia, from its first settlements to the present time; with numerous biographical and family sketches > Part 13
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Hebrew scholar and professor, and between whom there always existed the warmest ties of friendship. In June, 1831, he graduated, bearing away every honor of his class. It was indeed a triumph.
On his nineteenth birthday he began keeping a journal. His first entry is brief but striking : "Oct. 18, 1830 .- Nine- teen years old this day. Tempus Fugit." After he had passed his examination prior to graduation, he writes: "The fiery ordeal is past. The examination is over and mine are the first honors." The trustees declared that "Waitman T. Willey ... is well entitled to that honor." A month later the pride of victory had subsided from the purple flush of early dawn into the beam of constant and generous benig- nity, when he writes under date of July 30, 1831: "The old college looks desolate. . . I love these old walls. . . I could almost shed tears on departing from these old bricks. If the boys were here now, I could love them all." How con- sonant with the views and actions of a long and varied life! Madison College having consolidated with Allegheny Col- lege, the degree of A. M. was conferred by the latter in due
course. . Some years later, the honorary degree of M. A. was conferred by Augusta College. Some time after his election to the United States Senate, the authorities of Allegheny College voted him the degree of LL. D., but, with characteristic modesty, not deeming himself entitled to so distinguished an honor, he let the matter fail of con- summation sub silentio.
From his graduation until May, 1832, Mr. Willey remained at home, engaged in labor on the farm and reading at every leisure hour. At the latter period he entered the law office of the Hon. Philip Doddridge, at Wellsburg, Brooke County. Under his direction he read law until November of that year, when his preceptor died at Washington. Mr. Willey always retained for the talents of Mr. Doddridge the most profound admiration, and it was a matter of pleasure for him to prepare, and deliver before the Historical Society of West Virginia, at its annual meeting in 1875, an address which
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comprises a sketch of his life. He completed his law studies in the office of Dr. John C. Campbell, of Wellsburg. On the 24th of June, 1833, he located in Morgantown; and was admitted to the bar in September of that year, forming a partnership with the Hon. E. C. Wilson, which lasted two years, when he opened an office of his own. That he meant to be serious in the business of life is apparent from an en- try to be found in his journal of the above date, of his location in Morgantown, saying, “where I now live (M.) and where I expect to die."
The following year, on the 9th of October, he married Elizabeth E. Ray, daughter of Patrick Ray, the father also of Thomas P. Ray. From that time until the year, 1841, Mr. Willey was deeply immersed in the practice of his pro- fession, and he rapidly built up a moderately lucrative business. He soon became distinguished as an advocate of very superior abilities. He ingratiated himself into the society of the place by his genial manners, his versatile powers and his very accommodating disposition. He established a reputation for sobriety of habits and upright- ness of character, that laid the basis for the respect and esteem subsequently manifested on all occasions when he was before the people for their suffrages. His powers as an orator became a matter of State repute, and, in 1840, the Whig Convention held at Richmond, Virginia, placed him on the Harrison and Tyler electoral ticket. Into that ex- citing canvass he entered with all the enthusiasm of the impassioned orator impelled by profound convictions of duty. He made over forty speeches in North-western Virginia and Western Pennsylvania. His peculiar oratory made him a favorite with the masses. He not only pleased them with the smoothness of his speech and convinced them with the soundness of his logic, but he swayed them with the indefinable subtility and the nameless spirit of elo- quence. Out of that campaign he came with a most definitely established reputation as an orator; it was re- served for other times and issues to demonstrate his ability
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as a statesman. In the spring of 1840, he was a candidate for member of the House of Delegates for the county, but was defeated owing to a popular prejudice against his pro- fession.
At the election of Gen. Harrison for the Presidency, he was greatly gratified, and at his untimely death he was as a patriot deeply affected. His journal bears this entry : " In- scrutable Providence! I loved him-his country loved him." By general request he delivered an address on the life and character of President Harrison in the Presbyterian Church. For some years prior to this time his health was not good. The excessive application to his studies at college and subsequently, had brought about the usual results in hepatic affection. His journal is full of weariness in the flesh. March 17, 1841, exhibits a somber page : "Spring with its birds and blossoms will soon be here. Dreary nature will soon shake off her torpor, and infuse joy into both man and beast by her reanimated appearance. Old and young look to the approaching season with feelings of delight. But to me, alas! this pleasant season of the year will have few charms; for as the warm weather ap- proaches my disease is aggravated. I feel despondent and hopeless. ... My life bids fair to be short. I wish enough of it to make provision for my dear family, and then I am ready to depart in peace. .. Not my will, but thine, be done, O Lord." Again he writes, a few days later, whilst lamenting his embarrassment in pecuniary affairs : "But I will struggle with it. The darkest night must have a morn. . . It is said that genius has been generally developed by the stern tuition of remorseless poverty; but, on the other hand, how many a noble mind, implanted in the bosom of the sensitive sons of genius, has sunk, never to recover, under the pressure of indigence and want. Such I know, such I feel, has been the history of many a' mute, inglorious Milton.' But poverty is far more desirable than ill-gotten wealth. I will live honest, if I die poor. I will live an honorable man, if I die in obscurity. I would not exchange
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the approbation of a good conscience for the hoards of Crœsus. I would not relinquish the pleasure and exalted happiness of conscious integrity for the crown of an Emperor. I even now shun certain circles, because I have no decent coat to wear; but I can go into my closet and present myself before the Majesty of Heaven in a moral garb, showing all the stains of man's natural depravity, indeed, but free from all those pollutions which even the finest merino cannot always conceal. If I starve I hope to die honestly hungry."
In November, 1841, Mr. Willey was elected Clerk of the County Court of Monongalia County, succeeding to the place made vacant by the death of his brother-in-law, Thomas P. Ray; and in the same month was, by Judge Fry, appointed Clerk of the Circuit Superior Court of Law and Chancery, both of which offices he held until the amended Constitution of 1851 went into effect, in 1852. He was a candidate for the clerkship of the county court under that Constitution, but was defeated by a small vote. During the years he held these important positions his life was a very laborious one, but amidst it all he performed much literary work and kept up his habits of study. He began the collection of a library which developed into a large and well chosen stock of the highest order of standard works. At the beginning of this period of his life he united with the church of his choice, although his journal contains many evidences of his having before been deeply moved by spiritual influences, and fully recognizing by private devotions his duties to his maker. Of this open acknowledgement of his faith his journal records: "But more important than any or all acts of my life, I recognize my union with the Methodist Episcopal Church, in the month of November last. . . May I be a faithful servant."
In the year 1843, he delivered before the literary society of his alma mater an address that indicated the line of his thought and studies, and his habitual tendency to inculcate the moral virtues. It bore the title of "The Influence of
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Virtue upon the Character, and its Effects upon the Higher Attributes of the Mind." His field of operations was not alone the higher intellectual sphere. Wherever good was to be accomplished he was ever an active worker. The Sunday-school was a favorite arena for the exercise of his genial talents and sympathetic heart; and when the great temperance reform under the auspices of the order of the Sons of Temperance began to move among the people, it found in him a most willing and efficient coadjutor. He became early one of its chief officers in the western part of the State. He traveled extensively in the year 1849 throughout his own section of the State, lecturing and establishing divisions of the order. He also visited the eastern part of the State and was well received, producing a most favorable impression of his powers as an orator and character as a man. At this time he was complimented by a newspaper of Fairmont in the following flattering terms : " In view of his talents, his numerous services to our people and the sacrifices he has made for the good of others, he should be regarded as the pride of Western Virginia."
Mr. Willey's ability as a temperance orator at this period was of no meager character. He was deeply in love with his theme. To him it was as broad as humanity and as vi- tal as eternity. His pictures of the desolation and ruin wrought by intemperance were as somber as the grave, and the magnetism of his glowing fervor pierced the shield of the stoutest opposer. Some of the greatest triumphs of his life were made during this eventful temperance campaign. 2
The central pivot upon which all revolutions in the forms of governments in the world, whether violent or peaceful, has been the question of supremacy in the few or the many. The people of Virginia were no exception to this rule. Ever since the adoption of the original constitution, after her allegiance as a colony had been severed, there had been two questions which agitated her people. The convention which assembled in her capital in 1829, had been the scene of a very vigorous if not acrimonious debate, on the question of
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representation in the legislative branch of the State govern- ment. The western members, led by the intrepid and gigan- tic Doddridge, had sought to engraft in the organic law the just principle of all true Republican government, that each and every citizen should have equal privileges in the affairs pertaining to the common weal. They had not been suc- cessful, but an arbitrary basis had been assumed whereby property was to counterbalance, in some measure, the man- tle of citizenship in the legislature of the State. This was a source of much irritation in the trans-Alleghany counties, and the aspiring young men of that section readily took up the theme promulgated by the leading public men of the day, and it was a fertile field to till in the heat of a political contest.
Another of the grave questions that agitated the people of Virginia was the extension of the elective franchise. From the first organization of the State the exercise of suf- frage had been confined by a property qualification to the ownership of a freehold. The advancing tide of intelligence and the spirit of the people were beginning to chafe under the restraint thus imposed. The agitation which followed the action of the Convention of 1829-30 became more active until it manifested itself in the election of a legislature which submitted a vote upon the question of calling a con- vention to remodel the constitution of the State. The peo- ple, by a large majority, decided in favor of the convention, and an election for delegates was held in May, 1850. For one of these delegates the people of the district, composed, under the call, of the counties of Monongalia, Preston, Marion and Taylor, instinctively turned to Mr. Willey, al- though his political party was in a great minority in it. They knew of his talents and they relied upon his fidelity. He was a genuine son of the people, and his sympathies were in harmony with their interests and sentiments. As a member of the Convention which followed he took a con- spicuous part in its deliberations, and was one of the cham- pions of western views. His eloquence and his scholarly
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acquirements won the respect of his foes and the admiration of his friends. It was his first appearance in a deliberative body, and the press of the day in speaking of his extreme modesty and unassuming character, records that after he obtained the floor the weight of responsibility caused him to fairly stagger under his load. The old question of the basis of representation soon became prominent in the body. Mr. Willey made a characteristic speech upon the subject, well fitting his life, and associations; it breathed of the spirit of his native hills and of the freemen whose delegate he was. He denied that wealth is properly the source of political power; he asserted that wisdom, virtue and in- telligence are the true elements of political influence, and that wealth is often, from its corrupting tendency, a dis- qualification ; that there would be a preponderating majority of whites in Western Virginia, and that they could not be controlled by an eastern aristocracy; that the materials of armies had much to do with the question; that he would not permit, however, majorities to oppress minorities, and would prescribe constitutional checks thereto; that the rights of persons were above those of property even, and must first be provided for; and that Virginia, the first to vindicate inalienable rights from Enghish encroachment, ought not to refuse to acknowledge their potency in the regulation of her own domestic affairs.
The effort was being made by the delegates from the eastern portion of the State to provide a system of repre- sentation in the Legislature, based upon the wealth of the State. This was largely in the ascendant in that section by reason of the property held in slaves. It eventuated in that convention in a provision that, after the year 1865, to which period arbitrary representation in the various coun- ties and districts was provided for, two modes known as "suffrage basis" and "mixed basis" should be submitted to the people of the State. Speaking of the suffrage basis which Western members were seeking to engraft on the Constitution, Mr. Willey said :
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"What are these principles which gentlemen would deny and exclude from all practical effect in the establishment of our Constitution ? They are no novelty ; they are as old as society itself ; they are as old as man, for when God made man he endowed him with these principles, and has stamped upon the seal that they are natural and inalienable and indefeasible. And our forefathers have laid them at the foundation of our government ; they have laid them at its very threshold, and we must trample them under our feet and disregard them before we can found & government upon the principles of mixed basis. But although they have ever been the natural birth-right of mankind, it was reserved for the earlier history of the country-for those who par- ticipated largely in the earlier events of our history-to give them a definition and reduce them to practical form. I will not consent to go behind the revolution which established this great political truth, and exhume the discarded principles of English aristocracy, and fill our halls of legislation with representatives of wealth. I will never consent to revive odious distinctions and privileged classes, founding claims to superior political power upon the possession of property ; but I will stop where I find the princi- ple declared that 'all men are by nature equally free and independ- ent.' ... I will adhere to the rule that 'no men or set of men are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public service.' And I will call upon gentlemen distinctly to say whether they will subscribe to these doctrines of our fathers, whose wisdom and virtues we are so often and so vehemently admonished to revere and to cherish, or whether they will repudiate and reject them.
"I am weary of this cry of selfishness-this inferential impeach- ment of western integrity. It has been ringing in our ears for the last quarter of a century-the stereotyped decree against every petition we have preferred for political equality. When we ask for our natural liberties, we are told that we are clamoring for abstractions ; when we sue for an equal and just participation in the administration of the government, we are answered that men are selfish. The distinguished gentleman from Fauquier [Mr. Scott] cries out, 'How long shall our patience be abused by this eternal clamoring of the west to get their hands on our purse strings.' The fears of eastern gentlemen are idle. What is there to justify them in the history of the past? Upon what facts do gentlemen predicate their apprehensions of our integrity ? There are no facts to justify them. These apprehensions are the mere bug-bears of an excited imagination-mere speculative assumptions having their origin in their theories of human selfishness.
"I appeal to the record. The gentleman from Halifax [Mr. Purkins] has made it necessary. I do so with reluctance. Self-
GEORGE W. JOHN. See Page 477
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commendation is hardly ever in good taste. But the gentleman's remarks in reply to the remarks of the venerable gentleman from Greenbrier [Mr. William Smith] require some notice. Besides, I feel myself in some sense compelled to refer to those events of which the gentlemen have spoken, to offset the constant reference of eastern members to this moderation and justice with which they have exercised the power in their hands and to repel the imputations against western fidelity and patriotism. I confess I feel some pride, withal, in making this reference. I appeal then to the record. How was it some forty years ago, when the invader was enticing away your negroes, burning your villages, pillaging your property, and driving your families into the interior? How was it then, when the enemy in your midst, who, when you sought to repel the invader from before you, might recall you by the midnight glare of your own dwellings in flames ? You called for help, and the echo of your call had hardly returned from our mountains till the roll of the western drum was heard on your capitol square. Where were your ideas of selfishness then? Where was your distrust when you were arming us for defense ? We came at your call. The district which I in part have the honor to represent, sent down her men, her Haymonds, her Morgans, her Tennants, her Hurrys, her Staffords and others equally worthy. But they did not all come back. No. Many a desolated western fireside-many a bereaved family-attested the fidelity of the western heart that day. And now the gentleman from Halifax [Mr. Purkins] tells us that we received our wages-we were duly paid off-'we had our reward and ought to be content.' Yes, the bones of some of those brave men now lie bleaching on your pine hills and pine barrens, along your sea coast, to reproach you for your ungenerous distrust ; and the gentleman from Halifax cries . out from the midst of these affecting mementoes of western fidelity -'I am tired of hearing these things-you have had your reward- be content.'
" I must pause here to pay a tribute to the memory of a great, good man. Under whose banner did those true-hearted western soldiers rally ? It was that of a man as true-hearted as they, or any man that ever lived-the noble General Robert B. Taylor. There and then it was he learned our character, our fidelity, our devotion to the State, without regard to section or locality. It was fitting that afterwards, in the hour of our extremity, he should be the first to unfurl the flag of this suffrage basis in the convention of 1829-30. But the same unmitigated, unrelaxing spirit of this money-power which is here now, was here then, and drove him from the councils of the Convention. His voice ceased to be heard in our defense. His name ceased to be recorded with the friends of republican liberty. But his name lives for all that. It 12
A
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has found a more enduring record in the hearts of western freemen ; and it shall continue to live and to be cherished whilst a freeman remains in our mountains. I acknowledge the weakness of the moment. The unbidden tear has revealed [wiping a tear from his cheek] the homage of a grateful heart, and in that tear, here in the presence of this Convention, I baptize the memory of that great man."
In conclusion he said :
"For the honor of the ' Old Dominion,' I pray that this mixed basis shall never darken her annals. Liberty, if not born on her soil, at least escaped from her bondage here, and first stood forth in all tlie graceful attitude of her mature proportions. Shall she be stabbed on the very arena of her original triumph ? Shall she be wounded in the house of her friends ? Why, what an unen- viable position gentlemen are striving to place this proud old State in ! Clinging to the relics of an exploded aristocracy, under the blazing splendor of American liberty. Star after star has been added to the glorious galaxy of American States to increase the lustre of the great doctrine of popular sovereignty, undimmed by the faintest shadow of the dark dogma of property representation. One after another of the 'Old Thirteen' have thrown off the livery of colonial vassalage, from which there was not an entire escape in the revolutionary struggle, till there is hardly a vestige of mixed basis remaining in the Union. All over North America, where our banner is unfurled, it floats, with exceptions hardly worthy of being named, over a people not only by 'nature equally free and independent,' but so in fact. Nor is this all. The moral influences of this great American doctrine of political equality, and its practical development in the civil, social, moral, political and religious condition of the American citizen, have crossed the seas. They have reached Asia. They are recognized in Africa. They are felt and feared in Europe. Ancient dynasties and hoary thrones are crumbling away to naught, under the spreading and potent influence of the doctrine of popular sovereignty. The pampered minions of moneyed aristocracy-the proscriptive chil- dren of a haughty oligarchy, are trenibling for the tenure of their privileges and their powers, under the influence of the doctrine of popular sovereignty. The great mighty popular heart of the world has received an impulse. The masses are moving. The divine right of kings has been exploded, and the millions groping in the dark labyrinth of despotism are being quickened and en- lightened by the great doctrine of popular sovereignty.
"And yet in the midst of all this, in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, beneath the noontide effulgence of this great principle of popular supremacy, a voice is heard in old Virginia, rising from
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almost the spot where the clarion voice of Henry awoke a nation to freedom when he exclaimed, 'Give me liberty or give me death !' -even here, where we should take off our shoes, for the earth on which we walk is holy, bearing in its consecrated bosom the re- mains of George Mason and Thomas Jefferson, the one the author of the Declaration of Independence, the other of the Virginia Bill of Rights-even here, a demand is made by honorable gentlemen to: give superior political power to the property-holder, and virtually invest goods and chattels with the prerogative of legislating upor the rights and liberties of a vast majority of the people of this Commonwealth ! I trust this can never take place."
So long an extract from this memorable speech is neces- sary to depict the issues of the times, and exhibit the sentiments held by the people of Western Virginia, and voiced by their courageous and undaunted delegate. In the light of this language it is not difficult to discern the ati- tude of this people in the great events that followed in a few brief years, and the vindication of the line of remark was full and complete in their conduct in the then near future. This speech attracted much attention throughout the State. In the west, it was universally applauded as a true exposition of public sentiment; in the east, it extorted much reluctant compliment. The correspondent of a Petersburg paper wrote of it : " I think I do no one injus- tice when I give the opinion that his is the best speech which has as yet been delivered in favor of the white basis." The Richmond Whig gave a long synopsis of it, and char- acterized it as "an animated and able speech." The Republican Advocate regarded it as "powerful, argumenta- tive and eloquent." During the same convention Mr. Willey made two other notable speeches. One upon the subject of an elective judiciary, and the other upon the abolition of the county court as then constituted. Upon the former subject he took the broad and philosophic ground, that the people being the source of all political power would always select the judicary from those who were in harmony with themselves in the moral as well as the legal sense ; and that it was as well to trust the people with this duty as it was to delegate it to the appointment
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