John Taylor of Caroline | |
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| United States Senator fromVirginia | |
| In office December 18, 1822 – August 21, 1824 | |
| Preceded by | James Pleasants |
| Succeeded by | Littleton W. Tazewell |
| In office June 4, 1803 – December 7, 1803 | |
| Appointed by | John Page |
| Preceded by | Stevens T. Mason |
| Succeeded by | Abraham B. Venable |
| In office October 18, 1792 – May 11, 1794 | |
| Preceded by | Richard H. Lee |
| Succeeded by | Henry Tazewell |
| Member of theVirginia House of Delegates fromCaroline County | |
| In office 1796–1800 | |
| In office 1783–1785 | |
| In office 1779–1782 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1753-12-19)December 19, 1753 |
| Died | August 21, 1824(1824-08-21) (aged 70) Caroline County,Virginia |
| Political party | Democratic-Republican |
| Alma mater | College of William & Mary |
| Profession | Lawyer, planter |
John Taylor (December 19, 1753 – August 21, 1824), usually calledJohn Taylor of Caroline (a reference to his home county), was an American politician and writer. He served in theVirginia House of Delegates (1779–1781, 1783–1785, 1796–1800) and in theUnited States Senate (1792–1794, 1803, 1822–1824). He wrote several books on politics and agriculture. He was aJeffersonian Republican and his works provided inspiration to the laterstates' rights andlibertarian movements. Sheldon and Hill (2008) locate Taylor at the intersection ofrepublicanism andclassical liberalism. They see his position as a "combination of a concern withLockeannatural rights, freedom, and limited government along with a classical interest in strong citizen participation in rule to prevent concentrated power and wealth, political corruption, and financial manipulation."[1]
According to some sources, John Taylor was born in Orange County, Virginia, in 1753, though others state that this is in error and that he was in fact born in Caroline County in 1754.[2] He was the son of James Taylor and Ann Pollard. She was a sister of Sarah Pollard, wife ofEdmund Pendleton, a Founding Father of the State of Virginia who served as president of theFifth Virginia Convention held between May and July 1776, that declared in favor of independence. Taylor was of the same line as GeneralZachary Taylor, who became the President of the United States. He graduated from theCollege of William & Mary in 1770, studied law, and began to practice inCaroline County in 1774. At the onset of theRevolutionary War he joined the Continental army, becoming a colonel of cavalry.
Taylor served in theVirginia House of Delegates from 1779 to 1787, being one of the leading members. About this time he gave up the practice of law and devoted his ample time to politics and agriculture. In 1792 he was appointed to fill the unexpired term ofRichard Henry Lee in theUnited States Senate, and was elected to the term that began March 4, 1793, but resigned, May 11, 1794. He served as a presidential elector in 1797. Taylor was a close friend ofThomas Jefferson, and, as member of the House of Delegates, was one of the men who offered theVirginia Resolves to that body. In 1801, Taylor ran for Congress inVirginia's 11th congressional district, but lost to incumbentAnthony New.[3]
Taylor served in the U.S. Senate on two additional occasions. He was appointed to the Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Stevens Thomson Mason, and served from June 4, 1803, until December 7, 1803, when he resigned. In 1822, he was elected to fill the vacancy occasioned by the resignation ofJames Pleasants, and was elected later to serve the regular term for six years beginning December 18, 1822, but died at his estate in Caroline County, August 20, 1824.
Taylor was a prolific political writer, and was the author of "An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States," 1814; "Construction Construed and the Constitution Vindicated." 1820; "Tyranny Unmasked. 1822; "New Views of the Constitution of the United States." 1823. He was also a scientific agriculturist, and in 1811 was first president of the Virginia Agricultural Societies. His little books, "Arator" ("Ploughman", in Latin), being a series of agricultural essays, practical and political, 1818, was one of the first American books on agriculture.Taylor County, West Virginia, was named in his honor.[4]
English legal historianMaurice Vile views Taylor as "in some ways the most impressive political theorist that America has produced."[5] The historianClyde N. Wilson describes Taylor as "the systematic philosopher ofJeffersonian democracy"[6] and as "representing 'both aconservative allegiance to local community and inherited ways and a radical-populist suspicion ofcapitalism, 'progress,' government and routinelogrolling politics.'"[7] According to historian Adam L. Tate, Taylor was "anagrarian who 'viewed happiness as possession of family, farm, and leisure,' had no great love fororganized religion, social hierarchy, and other such traditional institutions."[8] Joseph R. Stromberg wrote, "Taylor took solid liberal ground in holding that men were a mixture of good and evil. Self-interest was the only real constant in human action.... Indeed, while other thinkers, fromThomas Jefferson toFederalistJohn Adams, agonized over the need for a virtuous citizenry, Taylor took the view that 'the principles of a society may be virtuous, though the individuals composing it are vicious.'"[9] Taylor's solution to the effects of factionalism was to "remove the base from under the stock jobbers, the banks, the paper money party, the tariff-supported manufacturers, and so on; destroy the system of patronage by which the executive has corrupted the legislature; bring down the usurped authority of theSupreme Court."[10] "The more a nation depends for its liberty on the qualities of individuals, the less likely it is to retain it. By expecting publick good from private virtue, we expose ourselves to publick evils from private vices."[11]
Taylor wrote in defense of slavery but admitted that it was wrong.[12] "Let it not be supposed that I approve of slavery because I do not aggravate its evils, or prefer a policy which must terminate in a war of extermination."[13] Rather, he defended the institution because he "thought blacks incapable of liberty."[8] Taylor feared that widespread emancipation would ultimately and invariably lead to the horrific bloodshed witnessed in the French colony ofSaint-Domingue in 1791, the site of the greatest of all successful slave insurrections, theHaitian Revolution.[14] "Taylor is one with most American thinkers from Washington to Jefferson to Lincoln in doubting that the free Negro could ever be anything but a problem for American politics."[15] Thus, he advocated the deportation offree blacks.
"Negro slavery is a misfortune to agriculture, incapable of removal, and only within the reach of palliation."[16] Taylor criticized Jefferson's ambivalence towards slavery inNotes on the State of Virginia. Taylor agreed with Jefferson that the institution was evil but took issue with Jefferson's repeated references to the specific cruelties of slavery. Taylor argued that "[s]laves are docile, useful and happy, if they are well managed," that "[t]he individual is restrained by his property in the slave, and susceptible of humanity, and that "[r]eligion assails him [the slaveholder] both with her blandishments and terrors. It indissolubly binds his, and his slaves' happiness or misery together."[17]
That slavery might paradoxically have fostered a sense of equality among whites has been reconsidered recently byEdmund S. Morgan.[18] Taylor's approach, defending the preservation of slavery under the circumstances and apprehensions of his day, would be used to support more emphatic defenses of slavery by writers, such asJohn C. Calhoun,Edmund Ruffin, andGeorge Fitzhugh, who extended the argument by claiming the institution to be a "positive good."
Stromberg says that Taylor's role in calling for Virginia's secession in 1798 and his role in theKentucky and Virginia Resolutions "show how seriously he took the reserved rights [interposition (nullification) and secession] of these primary political communities [the States]."[19] Taylor was responsible for guiding the Virginia Resolution, written byJames Madison, through the Virginia legislature.[20] He wrote: "enormous political power invariably accumulates enormous wealth and enormous wealth invariably accumulates enormous political power."[21] "Like his radical bourgeois counterparts in England, Taylor would not concede that great extremes of wealth and poverty were natural outcomes of differences in talent; on the contrary they were invariably the result of extra-economic coercion and deceit."[22] "Along withJohn Randolph of Roanoke and a few others, Taylor opposed Madison's War of 1812—his own party's war—precisely because it was a war for empire."[23]
Tate (2011) undertakes a literary criticism of Taylor's bookNew Views of the Constitution of the United States, arguing it is structured as a forensic historiography modeled on the techniques of 18th-century whig lawyers. Taylor believed that evidence from American history gave proof of state sovereignty within the union, against the arguments of nationalists such as Chief Justice John Marshall.[24]
Taylor's primary plantation estate,Hazelwood, was located three miles fromPort Royal, Virginia and is on theNational Register of Historic Places.[25]
Taylor County, West Virginia was formed in 1844 and named in Senator Taylor's honor.
The last three books listed "are to be valued chiefly for their insight into federal-state relations and the true nature of the Union." M. E. Bradford, ed.,Arator 35 (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund 1977).
The above publication notations are credited to F. Thornton Miller, ed.,Tyranny Unmasked, Foreword ix-xxii (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund 1992).
FromReprints of Legal Classics(1)
Little-known today, Taylor's work is of great significance in the political and intellectual history of the South and is essential for understanding the constitutional theories that Southerners asserted to justifysecession in 1861. Taylor fought in the Continental army during the American Revolution and served briefly in theVirginia House of Delegates and as a U.S. Senator. It was as a writer on constitutional, political, and agricultural questions, however, that Taylor gained prominence. He joined withThomas Jefferson and otheragrarian advocates ofstates' rights and a strict construction of theConstitution in the political battles of the 1790s. His first published writings argued againstSecretary of the TreasuryAlexander Hamilton's financial program.Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated was Taylor's response to a series of post-War of 1812 developments includingJohn Marshall's Supreme Court decision inMcCulloch v. Maryland, the widespread issuance ofpaper money by banks, proposals for aprotective tariff, and the attempt to bar slavery from Missouri. Along with many other Southerners, Taylor feared that these and other measures following in the train of Hamilton's financial system, were undermining the foundations of Americanrepublicanism. He saw them as the attempt of an "artificial capitalist sect" to corrupt the virtue of the American people and upset the proper constitutional balance between state and federal authority in favor of a centralized national government. Taylor wrote, "If the means to which the government of the union may resort for executing the power confided to it, are unlimited, it may easily select such as will impair or destroy the powers confided to the state governments." Jefferson, who noted that "Col. Taylor and myself have rarely, if ever, differed in any political principle of importance," consideredConstruction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated "the most logical retraction of our governments to the original and true principles of the Constitution creating them, which has appeared since the adoption of the instrument." Later Southern thinkers, notablyJohn C. Calhoun, were clearly indebted to Taylor. Sabin,A Dictionary of Books Relating to America 94486. Cohen,Bibliography of Early American Law 6333. (21527)
| U.S. Senate | ||
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| Preceded by | U.S. senator (Class 2) from Virginia October 18, 1792 – May 11, 1794 Served alongside:James Monroe | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | U.S. senator (Class 1) from Virginia June 4, 1803 – December 7, 1803 Served alongside:Wilson C. Nicholas | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | U.S. senator (Class 2) from Virginia December 18, 1822 – August 21, 1824 Served alongside:James Barbour | Succeeded by |
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