George Tucker (politician)

Family and early life in Bermuda

George Tucker was born in Bermuda at St. George's Island on August 20, 1775. He was the second son of Daniel and Elizabeth Tucker, who were distant cousins. Daniel and his brothers established a mercantile partnership with a fleet of vessels shipping goods to America, Newfoundland, and the West Indies. Daniel was also a founder and Mayor of the port of Hamilton, Bermuda.

Tucker was educated in Bermuda primarily by a tutor engaged from Great Britain and also by Josiah Meigs. His assigned reading included Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, and Arabian Nights, among the mainstays of an education on the American continent. At age fifteen he helped form a literary club, the Calliopean Society; Meigs later became a professor and reprised the name of the club at Yale. Tucker at age 16 began to read the law under a successful and prosperous lawyer, George Bascomb. At Bascomb's death, the firm's clients urged Tucker to assume their representation, but feeling quite unqualified, he declined, deciding to begin plans for a career in the United States.

Immigration to America, education and first marriage

Shortly after his mother's death in 1795, Tucker sailed for Philadelphia, intending to continue his legal education in the United States. He briefly considered London for his studies but discarded the idea, in order to optimize his chances for "political advancement". After a free-spending time with other Bermudians in the capital city, he ran out of funds, and proceeded to Williamsburg, Virginia to seek advice and borrow money from his famous cousin St. George Tucker, a maneuver he would repeat. He was admitted at the College of William & Mary, where he studied law under St. George and graduated after two years. Tucker was pleased to find the academic work undemanding, and his social life entertaining, as he gained access to the finer homes through his cousin.

Tucker traveled to New York and Philadelphia and, with letters of introduction in hand, was able to further acquaint himself with his adopted country and meet noted leaders, including George Washington and New York governors John Jay and George Clinton. Despite his enjoyment of this high society, he returned to Williamsburg and there began a courtship with Mary Byrd Farley, who was possessed of much charm and fortune, and to whom he proposed. Though he had initially preferred to delay the wedding until he had passed the bar, he gave in to his heart's desire, borrowed the needed funds from an uncle, and they married in October 1797. To help Mary, who was chronically ill with consumption, Tucker arranged a trip to his old home in Bermuda. The stay there provided Mary no relief from her illness and confirmed his desire to be in Virginia. They returned to Williamsburg, setting up residence, with his intention to read for the bar exam. Except for trips to North Carolina to collect rents on his wife's property, Tucker avoided his work, attended horse races in Fredericksburg, and frequented fashionable watering places with friends and family; he made Thomas Jefferson's acquaintance at this time. Mary never recovered from her infirmities, and died childless in 1799.

Mary's death complicated Tucker's facile life, as her considerable estate was fraught with legal problems. It included a sugar plantation, thousands of acres of land, and a share in the Dismal Swamp Company. After a prolonged trip to the sugar plantation in Antigua, and on to Martinique and Bermuda, he returned to Williamsburg and then determined his future was in the nearby state capital of Richmond, Virginia as a practicing attorney. Tucker ultimately succeeded in salvaging only part of his late wife's fortune.

Richmond society, second marriage, slavery and politics

Tucker arrived in Richmond with a letter of introduction from St. George to Governor James Monroe. His cousin's letter is said to have accurately portrayed Tucker's character and also foretold his future there: "To the best qualities of the heart he unites an excellent understanding, which has been well cultivated, and a very comprehensive knowledge of the world; nature has blessed him with a most exuberant flow of spirits, which sometimes betray him into acts of levity..." Tucker effectively entered the desired social circles in Richmond, bolstered by a well-furnished home near the Governor's own, and soon could count among his acquaintances not only the Governor (whom Tucker called "that slow dull man"), but also George Wythe, Edmund Pendleton, George Hay and most notably Charles Carter (1765–1829), who introduced him to daughter Maria Ball Carter—the granddaughter of Betty Washington Lewis. They soon fell in love, and in February 1802 he married Maria, age seventeen and pregnant.

While Tucker began writing for publication, as an attorney he was initially deficient, being disabled by his fear of speaking in the courtroom; he later gained the requisite self-confidence. Tucker became a founding member of the Virginia Historical and Philosophical Society in Richmond, an effort led by John Marshall and John Floyd; Tucker was named to the Society's Standing Committee.

Politically, Tucker was a Jeffersonian Republican, delighted at the split in the Federalists between John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, and joined in the resentment toward Federalist attempts to "appoint a president" by party caucus. But in time he departed his near-Jacobin leanings and became a pro-bank Republican. He once gave a speech in support of a Federalist in a local election, and a staunch Republican, Lewis Harvey, called him a party traitor and liar. In reaction, the often hot-tempered Tucker took a swing at him but missed due the intervention of a neutral party. Assuming his challenge unsuccessful, Tucker demanded satisfaction which Harvey accepted. Tucker carefully arranged the duel, stipulating an extraordinary distance in paces, so as to diminish the superior marksmanship of his opponent. Fortunately for Tucker the duel was avoided at the last moment—though not before he had completed his will and arranged his estate for his expecting wife. Their first child, Daniel George, was born November 23, 1802.

Positions on slavery

Tucker sought out the foremost authors in Richmond to advance his interest in literature and the arts, and soon published an essay entitled Letter to a Member of the General Assembly of Virginia on the Subject of the Late Conspiracy of the Slaves with a Proposal for Their Colonization (1801), proposing a remedy to slavery. Tucker's Letter expressed his early opposition to slavery, portraying it as unproductive and uneconomical. He wrote that no country "can attain great heights in manufactures, commerce or agriculture where one half of the community labours unwillingly, and the other half does not labour at all." He recommended that revenues be secured (with a tax on slaveholders) and used to establish a colony for the slaves west of the Mississippi. He further asserted that the slave's inferiority was a result of time and circumstance, and not natural causes.

In the 1820s however, Tucker's views of slavery changed notably with personal experience, and profit, realized in his purchase and sale of slaves for his account and that of his father-in-law, Charles Carter. For years he opposed the concepts of abolition and colonization as impractical, then finally reverted to his earlier conclusion that a more beneficial, commercially oriented, society was inevitable. Though he recounted the insipid benefits of slavery, he predicted its eventual death. Indeed, he freed his own slaves in 1845, 16 years prior to his death.

Rigged lottery

Tucker's law practice could not support the expenses essential to his extravagant social exploits, which included gambling at cards and races, and he proceeded to waste the capital from Mary Tucker's estate. He was drawn to speculative investments and ultimately was embroiled in a financial scandal. In 1803, he joined other prominent citizens in organizing a lottery to raise funds for the Richmond Academy. He allegedly bought several chances for himself and, as remaining chances dwindled, resold some of them for a profit; he also was said to have positioned himself as one of four or five holders sure to be a winner. He held the winning stub when his ticket was purportedly found lodged in a joint of the drawing drum.

Tucker was asked for reimbursement, and after negotiation, paid it in part, borrowing the remainder from members of the academy board. He also acted as custodian of other funds, blended them with his own and spent it on overindulgence and land speculation. Later he was required to defend himself in these matters before the Virginia General Assembly. Though he was officially cleared of wrongdoing, the incidents tarnished his reputation and highlighted the style of his living in Richmond. Meanwhile, Maria gave birth to their eldest daughter, Eleanor Rosalie, on May 4, 1804.

Rural settings

Tucker relocated his family in 1806, including a newborn daughter Maria, to the Carters' home in Frederick County, Virginia, and attempted to put his financial house in order. Business required his frequent return to Richmond, and on one occasion he was arrested there for a delinquency owed to a loan company. The immediate problem was solved with the intervention of St. George. Tucker economized for two years, living a rural life with the Carters and other family and was able to purchase a home near the Dan River.

In May 1808 the family moved to "Woodbridge" in Pittsylvania County, where daughter Eliza was born in December. Maria was then faced with rearing four children in more rural, less favorable living conditions. For his part, Tucker was disappointed with an absence of the desired social life. While he thought all his neighbors "friendly and civil", they were also "unpolished and plain". With an increased effort in his law practice, Tucker discovered more success and acquired more clients, spread across four counties. He was also elected Commonwealth's Attorney for Pittsylvania county. Maria gave birth to daughter Lelia in October 1810 and Harriett in May 1813.

Self-proclaimed act of chivalry

In 1811, Tucker was in Richmond to attend a benefit performance, and put his life in danger during the infamous Richmond Theatre fire. The event, including a play entitled The Father, or Family Feuds and a pantomime afterwards named Raymond and Agnes, was held in December. It being Christmas time, the auditorium was packed—with 518 adults and 80 children.

In his autobiography Tucker relates that, "The play was over... and there appearing to be much delay in bringing on the afterpiece... I had fortunately quitted the [play]house while it was on fire, tho' I did not know the fact... but the cry of fire prevented my reaching my lodgings, and hurried me back to witness a spectacle of human woe which I have never seen equalled. I was instrumental in saving several females from the flames." In the process, he suffered a head injury when struck by a falling timber, and was left with a permanent scar above his eye. The tragedy took the lives of 72 people, including the sitting Governor of Virginia George William Smith. Victims also included many of the upper echelons in Richmond society.

Elective office and early writing

Tucker's maritime roots in Bermuda instilled an interest in navigation, and he began an intense campaign with the legislatures of North Carolina and Virginia to improve the waterways to Norfolk along the Roanoke, Dan, and Staunton Rivers, in order to avoid inefficient portage required to Petersburg and Richmond. This effort culminated in his own bids for election to a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates representing Pittsylvania County, which failed in 1813 and 1814 but then succeeded in 1816. Tucker and Maria then suffered the first loss of a child, Harriett, from whooping cough at age three.

Tucker continued his work in literature along with that in the law, and in 1814–1815 the Philadelphia Port Folio published a series of his essays entitled Thoughts of a Hermit. Financial success was for once his as a result of these endeavors; he also realized profits from land sales near the Dan River, and the sale of Woodbridge when the family moved again, to Lynchburg, Virginia in 1818.

The death of daughter Harriett had been painful enough, but Maria's depression became uncontrollable and chronic when daughter Rosalie died unexpectedly at age 14 in 1818. Also during this period Maria's father, Charles Carter, encountered his own financial setbacks, and prevailed upon Tucker for assistance; Tucker, with the help of Lawrence Lewis, was able to settle the Carters at "Deerwood", sharing part of the profits from Charles' management there.

With financial success came more clients and opportunities to serve his community. Tucker received many cases in debt collection, and he was appointed trustee of the Lynchburg Female Academy and vestryman at St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Tucker was also elected to serve in the United States House of Representatives from 1819 to 1825, representing the Lynchburg area in the 16th, 17th, and 18th United States Congresses. His financial largess was short-lived, as Tucker was unable to resist the allure of society and lavish living in Washington, not to mention the increased expenses of a larger immediate family.

Though Tucker and Maria were warned against her having more children in her vulnerable physical and emotional state, she again conceived, and died in pregnancy in February 1823. In the carriage to Washington after the funeral, Tucker muffled his face with a handkerchief to hide his tears and feigned a toothache in response to inquirers. Maria's death indeed weighed heavily upon him, as he reflected on his plausible neglect in the midst of her travails. He also was much concerned for his son Daniel's indolence and unbalanced behavior which years later would result in the son's hospitalization and ultimate death in 1838 in Philadelphia.

Due in part to these personal trials, he made no momentous contributions to Congress beyond his reliable positions representing Virginia's interests, with a consistent Jeffersonian Republican voting record. He did serve as chairman of the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of War. There are notable disparities between Tucker's more statist voting record and the nationalism predominant in his writings during this period and later. In his essay On Instructions to Representatives, he provides an explanation in political theory—an inevitable obligation to think one way and yet vote another, in compliance with constituent preferences.

Academics

Near the end of Tucker's third congressional term in 1824, Thomas Jefferson presented him with an offer on behalf of the fledgling University of Virginia, sanctioned by Trustees James Madison and Joseph C. Cabell, to serve as the first Professor of Moral Philosophy. The offer met the school's desire to appoint a non-Federalist to the post, and Tucker's connections with Cabell and St. George would also have facilitated his selection. Another factor was Tucker's recent 1822 Essays on Various Subjects of Taste, Morals, and National Policy, which included papers from the Port Folio. Madison had been provided a copy of these and recommended them to Jefferson, saying they were "among the best answers to the charges of our national ...backwardness." Tucker's selection may as well have been an accommodation to some of the school's opponents, including Episcopalians, Federalists, and notable western Virginians, many of whom were friends of Tucker's. Presumably, his prior monetary indiscretions were overlooked since no related formal charges were extant.

From Tucker's perspective, the offer was most opportune, as he considered his congressional seat in jeopardy, as well as his pocketbook. The professorship included a steady income, extra fees from philosophy students, tenure, and rent-free quarters on the University Lawn. Tucker accepted the offer, effective in 1825, and also was chosen chairman of the faculty. As well as his primary discipline, he also assumed charge of the subjects of Political Economics and Rhetoric for the University. He was content with family life in Charlottesville, Virginia, though he "found solitude unbearable" after Maria's death and began an earnest search for a wife, whom he found in Louisa A. Thompson, a widow from Baltimore. In their thirty years together Tucker later said he had found "the same warmth and devoted affection with which I have been previously blest".

Tucker's effectiveness in the lecture hall is not objectively certain, and he may well have encountered difficulty with public speaking as he had in the courtroom previously. His continued faculty chairmanship certainly testified to his relative popularity among colleagues, and he published numerous works—including one satire, a fiction, three books on economics and statistics, a Jefferson biography, as well as two pamphlets. Together with Robley Dunglison he founded and edited the Virginia Literary Museum (1829–1830) in which he published voluminous writings; and he frequently sent essays to newspapers and magazines.

Politics

Some of Tucker's writing reflected a growing political skepticism of the workings of democracy beginning with the 1796 election. By the late 1820s, he was persuaded that political leadership positions should be reserved primarily for prosperous people with a tangible, and taxable, interest in government. Andrew Jackson's election in 1828 was for Tucker an example of the "triumph of democratic demagoguery which could bring about class warfare." Tucker worked arduously in Virginia to oppose Jackson and was a solid supporter of Henry Clay, with his second choice being Daniel Webster.

He opposed universal suffrage, and favored limiting the franchise to half of free men, and allowing slaveholders to cast votes on behalf of three-fifths of their slaves; he also argued in favor of eliminating the secret ballot. Tucker also promoted the Second National Bank and strongly criticized Jackson for defunding it.

Works of fiction

Tucker's premier literary work was The Valley of Shenandoah (1824), the first fictional tale of life in Virginia. In relating the downfall of an aristocratic family in the Commonwealth's valley, it drew upon his personal witness of the financial ruin of his in-laws, the family of Charles Carter, and described the inability of an estate owner to manage his monetary affairs, such as he had personally experienced. Tucker further used the novel's characters, again reflecting personal experience, to emphasize that happiness in love and life resulted from the moderation of one's passions. The Valley stressed Tucker's professorial objective, that history must inform the reader with "the progress of society and the arts of civilization; with the advancement and decline of literature, laws, manners and commerce." He also conveyed through the fiction his view that gentility was independent of wealth, that the relationship between masters and slaves was imbued with mutual trust and happiness, and that the strong currents of socio-economic change were on the whole beneficent.

Using the pseudonym Joseph Atterley, in 1827 he wrote the satire A Voyage to the Moon: With Some Account of the Manners and Customs, Science and Philosophy, of the People of Morosofia, and Other Lunarians. It is one of the earliest American works of science fiction, and was relatively successful, earning Tucker $100 from the sale of 1000 copies. It received positive reviews from the American Quarterly Review and the Western Monthly Review. Tucker uses The Voyage to ridicule the social manners, religion and professions of some of his colleagues, and to criticize some erroneous scientific methods and results apparent to him at the time.

First biography of Jefferson

In 1836, Tucker completed his manuscript of a comprehensive biography, The Life of Thomas Jefferson, Third President of the United States. He sent his composition to James Madison for his approval, as the latter had assisted in its formation. Tucker included for his sanction a proposed dedication to the recipient. Madison replied with his full approbation and signature on June 26, 1836, just hours before his death the following day.

This premier study of the life of Jefferson was published in two volumes the following year, and received complimentary assessment in the Edinburgh Review from Lord Brougham, as "a very valuable addition to the stock of our political and historical knowledge. In it, Professor Tucker does not always accord with the illustrious subject of his biography. The work, indeed, manifests a laudable desire to do justice, and to decide impartially on contested topics; and hence, perhaps, it failed to give satisfaction to the ardent supporters, as well as to the bitter opponents, of Mr. Jefferson."

Sojourn in Great Britain

Tucker considered a trip abroad would enhance his insight and resume generally, and specifically prepare him for a possible, though not likely, diplomatic appointment. He expected there was much to be learned for his country's benefit in the British factories, great estates and crowded cities. With his finances in order and a three-month leave from the university, in 1839 he made a trip to Great Britain and after some time in Shakespeare country, Stratford-Upon-Avon, he settled in Liverpool. He did not succeed in making all the expected social connections, with the exception of the 1st Earl of Leicester and his wife, with whom he frequently discussed politics and agriculture. Though admiring the succinct debates in Parliament, he found Queen Victoria's procession "more fit to amuse a child than one of my age". On the whole he found conversation did not come easy with the British, and concluded "there were more churls in England than in all of Europe besides." This journey, along with his interest in the doctrines of Thomas Robert Malthus on populace, inspired Tucker to expound upon the mixed blessings of a prospective urbanized world. Some of his hypotheses were included in The Progress of the United States in Population and Wealth (Boston, 1843). This work gained him one of his proudest honors, a membership in the Statistical Society of Paris.

His enthusiasm for teaching at the university ebbed in his final years there. He was also perturbed by an increase in religious enthusiasm on campus and a temperance movement, which he mildly protested. Tucker zealously defended higher salaries for more tenured professors, and he was enraged when the University reduced his annual salary from $1500 to $1000. Having produced documentation proving that Jefferson had intended his salary be guaranteed for life, he convinced the university to reinstate his original salary.

Resignation from faculty and relocation

With the death of his last contemporary on the faculty in 1845, Tucker resigned his professorship and moved to Philadelphia, where he enjoyed the availability of more libraries, meetings at the American Philosophical Society and a reunion with his friend Robley Dunglison. Nevertheless, there were drawbacks – for one, the lack of accommodation that slaveholding had brought him—he had emancipated all five of his slaves upon his departure from Charlottesville. He later expressed doubt about the wisdom of the latter decision when he learned that three of them had, by law, been exiled from Virginia, and shortly thereafter died. As well, the two freed slaves who accompanied him to Philadelphia immediately deserted their posts upon arrival there.

Social life in the urban setting did not initially live up to his expectations, but after a time his writing and lecturing upon a variety of subjects filled the void. He also joined The American Institute for the Advancement of Science and successfully urged its members to establish a section on Political Economics and Statistics. He as well engaged in a debate, as antagonist of Malthusian population theory with proponent Alexander Everett.

History of the United States

In 1856, Tucker completed his four-volume History of the United States, From Their Colonization to the End of the 26th Congress, in 1841. Robley Dunglison commented as follows on the work: "To aid him in the execution of his work, as [Tucker] himself remarks, it had been his good fortune to have a personal knowledge of many, who bore a conspicuous part in the Revolution, and of nearly all those who were the principal actors in the political dramas which succeeded. The history extends to the elevation of General William Henry Harrison to the Presidency in 1841, which is as far as Tucker thought he could prudently go." The work includes a brief review of slavery, in which Tucker took issue with Jefferson's decades-old view in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1781), that slavery still had a degenerative effect upon slaveholders.

Final years

Though Tucker may have displayed in his old age "a spirit of pugnacity becoming earlier years", as one critic claimed, such a nature was not in evidence with his family. He corresponded positively and frequently with his children and vacationed with them in the summers in Virginia and New York. He appears to have been consistent in his devotion to his family, which was returned by them in kind. And his exchanges with them were replete with a concern for their financial well being. Musing his own past errors, he told them that "except for the loss of friends, a want of prudence in money matters has contributed nine tenths of the pain and vexation of [my] life".

Even after the death of his wife Louisa in 1858, Tucker's vitality persisted and, not long before the American Civil War began, in January 1861 he journeyed south through Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia to Alabama to visit a friend in Mobile. In reaction to Georgia's secession from the union, speaking from his lingering southern loyalty, he commented, "it seems a poor remedy for an unpopular President". He thought the overriding need for "a wise provident government" would bring the southern states back under a modified constitution. But after some time spent in the south, he was compelled to say the people "seemed to be crazed in the fancies of imaginary evils and their strange remedies." Indeed, Tucker's youthful loyalties to the agrarian south had in his own maturation given way to a belief in the necessity and value of a commercial-industrial society. Nationalism had become the foundation of his politics over statism, and he could not understand why a compromise in lieu of war would not be embraced.

Tucker sustained head injuries at Mobile Bay when, awaiting his ship's departure for return to the north, he was struck by a large bale of cotton being loaded on board. He was moved to the home of daughter Eleanor and husband George Rives in Albemarle County, Virginia, where he died on April 10, 1861, two days prior to the Battle of Fort Sumter and the beginning of the American Civil War. He was buried at the University of Virginia Cemetery.

Works (by year)