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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 1778 - 1858 
 
 M. C. 1817- 1840 : 
 
 ALDIE, LOUDOUN COUNTY, VIRGINIA 
 
 Son of Hon. James Mercer, 
 
 Judge of Court of Appeals of Virginia. 
 
 JAMES MERCER GARNETT, 
 
 MIVATCLY PtlMTXD BY 
 WHITTBT Ic SHEPPERION. RICHMOND. VA 
 1911 
 
“ELMWOOD,” ESSEX COUNTY, VIRGINIA. 
 
 Residence of Hon. James Mercer Garnett, and for some years of Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 OF 
 
 Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 1778- 1858 
 
 M. C. 1817-1840 
 
 ALDIE, LOUDOUN COUNTY, VIRGINIA. 
 
 Son of Hon. James Mercer, 
 
 Judge of Court of Appeals of Virginia. 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES MERCER GARNETT. 
 
 PRIVATELY PRINTED BY 
 WHITTET & SHEPPERSON, RICHMOND, VA. 
 1911 
 
 ^'2522 
 

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 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 The Mercer family of Virginia, to which th: subject of this 
 sketch belonged, was the one descended from the lawyer John 
 Mercer, of “Marlborough,” Stafford County, Va., who emi- 
 grated from Dublin, Ireland, in 1720 at the age of sixteen years, 
 and whose family migrated from Chester, England, to Dublin 
 some generations earlier. This family is thought to be descended 
 from the Mercers of Aldie Castle, Perthshire, Scotland, but this 
 writer cannot prove it. It is not thought to be the same family 
 as that of Doctor, later General, Hugh Mercer, of the Revolu- 
 tionary War,- a resident in Fredericksburg, Virginia, although 
 John Mercer and Hugh Mercer were friends, and the latter was 
 physician to the family of the former, but he did not come to 
 this country from Scotland until 1744 and settled first in Penn- 
 sylvania^ 
 
 Charles Fenton Mercer was the youngest child of Judge 
 James Mercer,^ of the Court of Appeals of Virginia, and 
 Eleanor Dick, daughter of Major Charles Dick, of Fredericks- 
 burg, Va., and was born in Fredericksburg, June 16, 1778; he 
 was a grandson of John Mercer, of “Marlborough.” 
 
 1 See Judge Groolrick’s “Life of General Hugh Mercer,” with gene- 
 alogy in the Appendix, which deserves correction in the statement that 
 Col. George Mercer, son of John Mercer of “Marlborough,” married 
 Isabel Mercer, sister of General Hugh Mercer. A full genealogy of John 
 Mercer is given in my pamphlet on Hon. James fiercer Garnett, of “Elm- 
 wood, Essex County, Virginia, a grandson of John Mercer, published in 
 1910, with Mereer-Garnett and Mercer genealogies. This Mercer geneal- 
 ogy was first published by me in the Baltimore Sun of September 17 and 
 24, 1905. 
 
 2 See my pamphlet on Hon. James Mercer reprinted from the wil- 
 liam AXD MARY COLLEGE QUARTERLY, for October, 1908, and February, 1909, 
 pp. 220-223; see also Lamb’s Biographical Dictionary. 
 
 ^ 2 53 ? 
 
4 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 A few years before his death, which occurred on May 4, 
 1858, he wrote a brief sketch of his public life, which was pre- 
 served by my father, Theodore S. Garnett, his nephew, heir and 
 executor, and I cannot do better than print it herein as a con- 
 temporary record. It has the advantage of being an authentic 
 account of the principal events of his public career. During his 
 last visit to Europe it was preserved in the Department of State. 
 
 “MATERIALS FOR LIFE OF C. F. MERCER.” 
 
 “Chancellor Wythe, under whose instruction Mr. Jefferson 
 studied law, always avoided the use of the capital letter “I” in 
 writing, and began his sentences with the smaller letter with a 
 dot over it. To exclude this letter, altogether, from the follow- 
 ing narrative, I propose to speak of the subject of it as Cesar 
 wrote his commentaries, in the third person, Si parva [licet] 
 componere magnis [Virgil, Georgies, IV., 176.] 
 
 C. Fenton Mercer was born in the town of Fredericksburg, 
 on the river Rappahannock, in the State of Virginia, on the i6th 
 of June, 1778, very near Marlborough, the birth-place of his 
 father, James Mercer, and for many years the residence of his 
 grandfather, John Mercer, who emigrated from Ireland when a 
 very young man in the beginning of the last [eighteenth] century. 
 
 John Mercer died in 176S, after amassing a large fortune by 
 the practice of the law, during which time he wrote and pub- 
 lished the first abridgment of the laws of Virginia. James, his 
 third son [by his first marriage], pursued the profession of his 
 father, with nearly equal success, having been President of the 
 General Court of that State, its highest criminal tribunal, and 
 translated thence to the bench of its supreme appellate court. 
 He was a zealous whig, and, upon the dissolution of the royal 
 government in Virginia, was chosen by the succeeding conven- 
 tions a member of that Committee of Safety, to whom the gov- 
 ernment of the colony was entrusted in the recess of the Con- 
 vention. This committee wielded the whole executive power, 
 civil and military, of the late government, until the adoption of 
 the written constitution of the State in 1776- After this, James 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 5 
 
 Mercer was elected a member of the Continental Congress, in 
 which he served in 1779. He died in 1793, while attending on his 
 public duty as a judge of the Court of Appeals, leaving a large 
 estate, so heavily incumbered with numerous debts that his ex- 
 ecutors refused to act, and the administrators of his will put in 
 the plea of insolvency in all the suits instituted against them. 
 
 For two years the subject of this narrative was without the 
 means of defraying the expense of his education. In 1795 he 
 was enabled to enter the junior class of the College of New 
 Jersey, at Princeton. 
 
 In 1797 he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and had 
 awarded to him the first honor of his class by the unanimous 
 vote of his classmates, and of the President and faculty of the col- 
 lege ; and, at the succeeding commencement, he delivered the Latin 
 salutatory address. During 1798, ’99 and 1800, he prosecuted the 
 study of law at Princeton, and, for his Master’s degree, pro- 
 nounced at the Commencement of the last year a discourse in 
 favor of establishing a permanent navy for the defence of the 
 United States. This discourse was published at Philadelphia in 
 1801 ; and again, to the North, in 1813 and entitled “The Voice 
 of Prophecy.” This publication was made without the knowl- 
 edge of the author. During the period last-mentioned, the 
 French Directory having threatened to invade the United States, 
 many of the students of the college sought admission into the 
 army about to be raised for the public defence- They engaged 
 an officer of the Revolution to instruct them in military exercises, 
 while they continued to prosecute their studies. In this corps 
 young Mercer was enrolled, and on the 4th of July, 1798, he 
 addressed a letter to Gen’l. Washington, making known his ten- 
 der of service to the President of the United States. To this 
 letter he received a kind reply, which he now retains, and a 
 promise to promote his views. The appointments to commands 
 in this army were delayed till the invasion of Egypt by France, 
 and all apprehension of hostilities from that country had ceased. 
 The commission of ist Lieut, of Cavalry, speedily followed by 
 that of Captain, was forwarded to Mercer, but he declined the 
 acceptance of either, as all probability of actual war had ceased. 
 
6 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 and it had never been his intention to make arms his profes- 
 sion for life. In an interview with Genl. Washington, he had 
 the gratification to receive his approbation of the course a sense 
 of duty alone had prompted him to pursue. Either of the com- 
 missions, which he declined accepting, exceeded any merits of 
 a student of twenty years of age. 
 
 In i8oi, he continued in Richmond the study of his profes- 
 sion, and in 1802 obtained from Judges Pendleton, Roane and 
 Carrington, a license to practice in the courts of Virginia. In 
 October of that year he went to England, to repurchase an es- 
 tate which had belonged to his uncle, Col°. George Mercer, Lieut. - 
 Governor of North Carolina. 
 
 In 1803, he visited Erance, and, in 1804, having succeeded 
 in the object which carried him abroad, he settled down in the 
 practice of his profession, having first assumed the payment of 
 all his father’s debts. He suffered severely, in after life, from 
 that act of justice to the memory of the only parent he ever 
 knew, for his mother had died in his infancy. 
 
 In 1810, believing his fortune sufficient to secure his inde- 
 pendence, he yielded to the importunity of his friends and entered 
 upon public life, without opposition, as a delegate to the General 
 Assembly of Virginia from the County of Loudoun, then one 
 of the largest, and now the largest, or most populous, county of 
 that State. 
 
 Eor seven years he was permitted to occupy this station and 
 thrice elected by the County when absent from it, once, when he 
 desired to be excused, and at another time, when hourly expected 
 to die from a disease contracted while on a very exposed mili- 
 tary service in an unhealthy climate. 
 
 In 1811, he recommended to the House of Delegates an en- 
 largement of the banking capital of Virginia, by the increase of 
 the capital of the only existing bank of Virginia, whose charter 
 was near expiring, and the creation of the Earmers’ Bank of 
 Virginia, and he advised that, besides a bonus of twenty per 
 cent, upon the new capitals, the new stock should be sold at 
 auction. In this he succeeded, and, besides the twenty per cent., 
 the auction yielded $80,000 to the Commonwealth. 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 7 
 
 i8ii. A war with Great Britain being expected, he again ten- 
 dered his services to the President, through Mr. Monroe, his 
 personal friend, and, at that time. Secretary of State. 
 
 In 1812, he acted with the Chief Justice, Mr. Marshall, and 
 others as a commissioner appointed by the Legislature to examine 
 the river Greenbrier, and New River, sources of the Great 
 Kanawha, and the head waters of James river, with a view to 
 their improvement and union, by a railroad, or continuous canal. 
 
 In that year, with a view to this object, he submitted a series 
 of resolutions to the Legislature, for the establishment of a gen- 
 eral fund for the Internal Improvement of the rivers and roads of 
 the State- The actual invasion of the State, in February, 1813, 
 arrested this measure then, but, as will be seen, only for a time. 
 
 The intelligence of the entrance of a British fleet into Hamp- 
 ton Roads, caused the Governor of Virginia to repair to Nor- 
 folk, and he invited Mercer to accompany him as his aid-de- 
 camp. He instantly left his seat in the Legislature and accepted 
 this invitation. On the return of the Governor, by the advice 
 of Council, he was appointed Lieutenant Col°. of the regiment 
 of regular troops which, in his absence, the General Assembly 
 had determined to raise for the defence of the State. The gen- 
 tleman appointed to command this Regiment, Col°. Maurice, had 
 spent ten years in military service in Europe. The author of 
 this narrative was then commissioned, with a member of the 
 Council of State, to repair to Washington, for the settlement of 
 the subsisting military claims of the State upon the General Gov- 
 ernment. While engaged, alone, in this duty, his associate hav- 
 ing left him, he wrote an elaborate defence of the claims of the 
 State upon the General Government, in which the various acts of 
 that government for organization, equipping and calling the mili- 
 tia into service, were reviewed ; and although the Secretary of 
 War maintained certain objections to the principles laid down 
 in this review, they were all confirmed at a subsequent period by 
 the Congress of the United States- This correspondence was 
 published by the Legislature, with a letter of Mr. Giles, one of the 
 Senators of Virginia, acknowledging the aid it had afforded him 
 
8 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 in ensuring the admission by Congress of the just claims of the 
 State- 
 
 While engaged in vindicating the claims of Virginia in 
 Washington, it occurred to the writer of this narrative that the 
 Act of Legislature to raise a regular force for the defence of the 
 State, tho no violation of the letter, was inconsistent with the 
 spirit, of the Federal Constitution, and that, if the example was 
 followed by all the frontier States exposed to invasion by the 
 enemy, might so far subtract from the common defence as to 
 bring the government charged with that duty into contempt. The 
 creation of so many independent armies would moreover ob- 
 struct the execution of any system of military operations for 
 the common safety that the. General Government might devise, 
 all such systems deriving their efficiency from the power of 
 speedily concentrating the national forces where, in the judg- 
 ment of some common head, they might be most needed. 
 Solemnly impressed with these views, he communicated them 
 to his personal friend the Secretary of State, and finding that 
 Mr. Monroe concurred in them, he addressed an elaborate argu- 
 ment to the Governor of Virginia which terminated with an 
 earnest recommendation that the Legislature should be con- 
 vened to repeal the act authorizing the regiment of regular 
 troops of which the writer was then Lieutenant-Colonel. The 
 legislature was convened and at an extra session the Lieutenant- 
 Colonel submitted a motion, which prevailed by an unanimous 
 vote (with the exception of one voice only), to repeal the act 
 under which he held his new commission. 
 
 While the General Government was borrowing the principal 
 sum of a heavy national debt. Congress, by authorising the taxes 
 imposed for providing its accruing interest, authorised each 
 State to assume and pay its proportion of those taxes in advance 
 with a premium of lo per cent, if so done, and the States who 
 assumed were left to raise the sums which they assumed to pay 
 in any mode their judgment might approve. For the very 
 reason which induced the General Government to transfer the 
 odium of direct taxation to the States who might assume their 
 respective portions of the sum to be raised, those States who did 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 9 
 
 assume preferred borrowing to taxing their people, so that in 
 effect while one government borrowed the principal of the 
 growing national debt, the other governments borrowed the in- 
 terest to be paid on it. By so doing the State of Virginia soon 
 exhausted the specie in her banks, and they suspended, under the 
 authority of law, its issue to their own creditors. But this was 
 not the only evil attending this disastrous expedient for sus- 
 taining a public credit already impaired by the delay of any sys- 
 tem of direct taxes to supply the place of those sources of reve- 
 nue which the foreign commerce of the United States had sup- 
 plied anterior to the war. The loans already negotiated had ex- 
 hausted the fountains -which supplied them. Yet it was under 
 such circumstances that Mr. Philip Barbour, the chairman of 
 the committee of finance of the House of Delegates, opposed the 
 imposition of taxes and advocated a continued reliance upon 
 loans to carry on the war, as well for the defence of the States 
 as for the Union, and he made a report from his committee in 
 conformity with his views. The writer of this memoir not only 
 opposed the assumpsit of the State quota of the newly imposed 
 direct taxes, but offered, according to the practice of the Vir- 
 ginia Legislature, an entire substitute for Mr. Barbour’s whole 
 report. The substitute was sustained by the House, and al- 
 though the State quota was assumed, taxes were levied as ad- 
 vised by this writer to supply its place, and the assumpsit was not 
 repeated. 
 
 At the close of the session of the General Assembly just 
 noticed, it fell to the lot of this writer to be called into service as 
 a Major of Militia, making one of the detachment of 80,000 men 
 detailed under an act of Congress to serve whenever required. 
 The Governor, whose aid he had been, proposed his return home 
 and to supply his place, but he insisted on being immediately 
 ordered to Norfolk, and accordingly reported himself to the offi- 
 cer in command of the army of 3,000 men stationed near that 
 city for its defence. 
 
 Shortly after his arrival he was placed in command of an 
 elite corps, consisting of two companies of riflemen and two 
 selected companies of Light Infantry. On the loth of April his 
 
lo Biographical Sketch 
 
 term of service was deemed by the Government at Washington 
 to have expired. But all the troops entitled to their discharge, 
 none having yet arrived to supply their places, were earnestly in- 
 vited by the commander of the port to volunteer their services at 
 least until relieved by the arrival of the new levies, and among 
 the few who did so was the commandant of the elite corps. The 
 officer then in command at Norfolk was shortly after super- 
 seded by the veteran General Moses Porter, and by his 
 order the elite of the army was augmented by transferring 
 to it all the rifle companies of the army not then included 
 in its ranks, and adding to it a squadron of cavalry and two 
 mounted field-pieces. Its commander, with but the rank of 
 Major, was continued at the head of the corps with orders to 
 guard and frequently inspect the posts of the army along a coast 
 of thirty miles in extent, to watch the fleet of the enemy in 
 Lynnhaven Bay at the mouth of the Chesapeake ; if the enemy 
 landed in great force, to retard at any hazard their approach to 
 Norfolk; to repel and capture, if practicable, any marauding par- 
 ties from the fleet, and promptly to report every military occur- 
 rence within the range of his command. The commander was 
 to choose his own encampments, to march wherever he pleased, 
 appoint his own courts-martial for the trial of offenders, and to 
 receive no instructions but from the commanding General sta- 
 tioned in Norfolk. 
 
 How these duties were performed may be seen in the confi- 
 dential reports of the assistant inspector of the army, a regular 
 officer, or by enquiry of General, then Col°. Bankhead, the As- 
 sistant Adjutant General, or Col°. Thayer, the aid of the veteran 
 general who commanded in chief- 
 
 The autumn of 1814 was a season of sore affliction to the 
 troops at Norfolk, composed of militia called out for short terms 
 of duty, never in service long enough to become familiar with 
 their duties or inured to an unhealthy climate, although un- 
 healthy only to those who were strangers to it. Many perished 
 by disease, many more died on their way home after being dis- 
 charged, and hundreds were weekly released from further ser- 
 vice because they were utterly unable to perform any military 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 II 
 
 duty. Three thousand were buried at Norfolk who never en- 
 countered an enemy in the field, and the dead were silently in- 
 terred at night by torchlight in order to avoid depressing the 
 spirits of the survivors. 
 
 Among the very last officers of the Elite Corps, the Com- 
 mandant was taken down by the prevailing disease of this fatal 
 climate. He was borne to a vessel in the harbor of Norfolk and 
 thence transported to Richmond, where he speedily recovered 
 strength enough to accept the office of Inspector General ten- 
 dered to him by the Executive of Virginia, after declining that 
 first proposed to him of Adjutant General. For this office he 
 recommended to the Governor Col°. Maurice, an officer of great 
 military experience. 
 
 As Inspector General he was required to devise and report 
 to the Governor and a board of field officers of the army of 
 13,000 men a plan for the defence of the capital of the State and 
 the neighboring city of Petersburg, 22 miles from Richmond on 
 the south side of the river Appomattox. His report was 
 promptly prepared, and being approved in all its details, he was 
 directed to examine and report suitable posts and dispositions 
 for the various corps of the army to occupy in preparation for 
 the apprehended landing of a British army. In executing these 
 duties he directed a survey of all the roads leading from James 
 and York rivers to the cities to be defended, and to quicken the 
 performance of this survey and the delineation of a military 
 map of the country, all the practical surveyors of the army were 
 placed at the disposal of the Topographical Engineer, Maj''. John 
 Randolph of Roanoke, with orders to proceed in the performance 
 of their duty with all possible dispatch. 
 
 In the interim, the various brigades and volunteer corps con- 
 sisting of the elite of the State were located at commanding 
 positions along a line of thirty miles and on the leading avenues 
 to the objects to be defended- In advance of the principal posts 
 on this line and on those avenues which crossed it, selected corps 
 of light troops, consisting of the uniformed volunteer companies, 
 under command of the most distinguished men of the State, 
 were posted to watch the movements and retard the progress of 
 
12 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 the invading foe ; to inspect and report on the discipline, equip- 
 ments and material of all those posts was among the duties of the 
 Inspector General. Those duties during the latter part of his 
 service were performed under the eye of the General Assembly. 
 How they were performed may be inferred from the election 
 of the Inspector, shortly after those duties terminated with the 
 danger which required their performance, to command the 
 second Brigade of an army of 10,000 Regular troops, as well as 
 by the approval of his nomination of the first and second major- 
 generals chosen to command them as chiefs of Division. 
 
 The Army which had threatened vengeance after spending its 
 force on Washington and Baltimore having gone to the Gulf of 
 Mexico, the Inspector-General resumed his seat in the House of 
 Delegates, where he filled at the same time the offices of chair- 
 man of the committee on finance and of a committee on the 
 defence of the State. Such at least was the function of the lat- 
 ter, though its title is not remembered. His labors in both were 
 unusually great. In the former capacity he devised and carried a 
 system of revenue which trebled the amount levied prior to the 
 war. This system spread over every indication of wealth, or 
 object of value, so as to lessen as far as practicable the burthen 
 upon each article taxed, and [to] diffuse it over the whole popu- 
 lation in proportion to the capacity of each individual to bear it. 
 
 Such had been the waste of life, so vast the cost and so 
 little the actual efficiency of an army made up of Militia called 
 to the unhealthy climate of the seaboard from the highlands of 
 Virginia, for short terms of duty, that the demand for the sub- 
 stitution of a regular force to serve during the war could no 
 longer be resisted. The General Government had neither money 
 nor men to spare for the defence of the State. So far had its 
 credit been reduced by the delay of any system of taxation ade- 
 quate to its wants, that the military chest at Norfolk, with an 
 enemy at its door, could not supply the means of purchasing 
 coffins for the dead dailv multiplied by disease. 
 
 The task was, therefore, imposed on the chairman of the 
 committee last-named of providing an army of 10,000 regular 
 troops for the defence of the State. A bill was accordingly pre- 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 13 
 
 pared, and reported by the chairman, which, after various amend- 
 ments by the Senate, passed both Houses- The general officers, 
 six in number, to command this army were chosen by the two 
 Houses on joint ballot, as has been already stated, with the con- 
 dition that their service should commence on the organization 
 of the corps composing this force, and that it should be tendered 
 to the acceptance of the General Government when prepared to 
 take the field. 
 
 The pacification of Ghent dispensed with the necessity of 
 raising this force, and the officers late in service who were to 
 command it returned to the pursuits of civil life, not a few of 
 them to become victims of diseases contracted in the painful ser- 
 vice they had left. Such was very near being the fate of the 
 author of this narrative, whose death was rumored among his 
 constituents the very day on which they elected him the sixth 
 time, and without his consent, their delegate to the General As- 
 sembly. Several years elapsed before his health was re-estab- 
 lished. Nevertheless, his most laborious duties as a member of 
 the House of Delegates occurred at the ensuing session of the 
 Legislature. He was, at its commencement, re-appointed chair- 
 man of the Committee on Finance. The war having ended, and 
 the revenue of the State having been extended from $300,000, 
 its amount prior thereto, to $900,000, the reduction of that reve- 
 nue was one of the first duties of the committee. But the ex- 
 tent of that reduction admitted of much difference of opinion. 
 The State claims upon the United States for the sums spent in its 
 defence largely exceeded a million, and the profits derived from 
 the banking operations of 1812, added to the stock acquired by 
 the first act of incorporation of the Bank of Virginia, made a sum 
 far exceeding the former. Hence resulted an opportunity which 
 the chairman promptly and zealously embraced of laying a 
 foundation for the improvement of the State by a system of edu- 
 cation and of internal improvement co-extensive with its wants 
 and its capacity. 
 
 He accordingly revised the resolutions he had submitted in 
 the winter of 1812-13 to create a Fund for Internal Improvement 
 to consist of all the stocks of the State derived from banking 
 
14 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 operations, and all future acquisitions from the same source. 
 The capital of the fund was to remain untouched, its revenue 
 to be applied to such works of Internal Improvement as the Legis- 
 lature might approve in such manner as to elicit from private 
 subscribers to all such works three-fifths of all sums required 
 for their construction, while the State furnished the remaining 
 two-fifths from that interest on condition that no dividend should 
 accrue to the sale of her two-fifths till the private stockholders 
 should have realized six per cent, on their subscription, and with 
 another condition that for the first fifty years from their in- 
 corporation these dividends should in no case exceed ten per 
 cent., nor for the next fifty years six per cent. To collect in- 
 formation, to guard the fund from alienation or misapplication, 
 a Board of Public Works was superadded, to be composed of 
 members chosen annually by the Legislature from prescribed 
 divisions or districts of the State. The board was empowered to 
 engage and employ the services of a Civil Engineer of established 
 reputation to aid their inquiries, to meet once a year prior to the 
 annual meeting of the Legislature and to recommend such 
 measures of improvement as they might deem expedient. In 
 the ensuing election of members to compose the first Board, along 
 with Mr. Jefiferson, Mr. Madison and others, the mover of the 
 system delineated above was also chosen by a unanimous vote 
 of both Houses, there being but two dissentient ballots. The 
 Governor was made ex ofUcio president of the Board. 
 
 In the annual report of the Committee on Finance the chairman 
 recommended by a joint resolution, to be submitted to the Sen- 
 ate if approved by the House, the appropriation of the entire 
 claim of the State upon the General Government to public educa- 
 tion ; and this resolution being approved by both Houses, he 
 moved another resolution which proposed, in express terms, the 
 establishment of an University, to be styled the University of 
 Virginia, and such additional colleges, academies and primarv 
 schools as should diffuse the benefit of education among all the 
 people of the Commonwealth. 
 
 This resolution also received the approbation of both Houses. 
 He also moved and succeeded in having passed by both Houses 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 15 
 
 a bill authorising a careful survey of the natural and artificial 
 features of the State with a view to the execution of a correct 
 map of her whole territory and of a chart of each county. And 
 he, further, carried another bill, written as the former by him- 
 self but reported by another member who was absent at its pas- 
 sage, to appropriate the proceeds of sale of certain lots held by 
 the State in the city of Richmond to the repairs of the Capitol, 
 and the graduation, planting and permanent enclosure of the 
 public grounds around it. Those sales produced more than 
 $80,000. The task of reducing the revenue after the adoption of 
 the preceding measure was one of no difficulty whatever. 
 
 Being for the last time, while confined by sickness in this dis- 
 trict and not a candidate, re-elected to the House of Delegates, 
 he served at the ensuing session, and on the 14th of December 
 submitted to* the House a resolution, — which he had penned the 
 preceding summer and shewn to many persons, in a long journey 
 to Canada made for the benefit of his health, and which resolu- 
 tion was everywhere approved, — to call on the General Govern- 
 ment for aid in procuring a territory in Africa, or elsewhere (this 
 word being inserted without his consent) to serve as an asylum 
 to such of the free people of color of Virginia as might choose 
 to avail themselves of it, and such of her slaves as their masters 
 might please to emancipate, he had the gratification to witness 
 its passage through the House with the dissent of but fourteen 
 votes, and through the Senate with but one dissentient voice- 
 The resolution passed the House with closed doors, but the in- 
 junction of secrecy was immediately removed. 
 
 For three years after this period the author of this narrative 
 devoted his time almost exclusively to this, to him most inter- 
 esting, object, which finally owed its success to the legislation 
 of Congress quite as much [as], if not more than, to the Ameri- 
 can Colonization Society. In aid of it he collected in Baltimore 
 during a visit of a fortnight, the sum of 4,700 dollars. This sum 
 was applied to defray the cost of the exploring expedition of 
 Mills and Burgess to the coast of Africa, south of Sierra Leone, 
 where it was hoped that a proper site for the contemplated colony 
 would be found. But the writer of this narrative rendered after- 
 
i6 
 
 Bic« lAPHicAL Sketch 
 
 wards much more important aid to the enterprize he had thus set 
 on foot by the first public resolve of Virginia in relation to it. 
 In April, 1817, he was elected to Congress from the district in 
 which he had lived since 1804. His first speech was delivered in 
 support of the authority of the House of Representatives to 
 punish contempts; his second, in favor of the constitutionality 
 of the power of the General Government to appropriate money to 
 internal improvements, both of which he drew out for publication. 
 They were two of the only five speeches out of very many that he 
 prepared for the press in the period of service which lasted 
 through forty-eight sessions of Congress. 
 
 In 1818. He sustained the resolution written by Mr. Clay 
 of Kentucky and moved by Mr. Cobb of Georgia, which con- 
 demned the invasion of Florida by the American army, the cap- 
 ture of the Spanish forts of that country, and the execution 
 of two British subjects after a court-martial had sentenced them 
 to be whipped- This speech he also drew out in part for publi- 
 cation. In the same year he wrote a resolution to publish the 
 Journals of the Convention that framed the Federal Constitution 
 and the private foreign correspondence of the government during 
 the Revolutionary war, both of which were exposed to destruc- 
 tion, and the former existed on separate slips of paper difficult 
 to arrange. A member of the Senate, hearing of this resolution, 
 anticipated the first object of the written resolution in conse- 
 quence of information given him of its existence, and the residue 
 was added to his resolution when it came from the Senate to 
 the House, in which stage, at the suggestion of Mr. Rufus King, 
 the addition to it was made of the correspondence of the govern- 
 ment down to the ratification of the Constitution in 1789. 
 
 In 1819. The State of Georgia having caused certain re- 
 captured Africans wrested from their country by the slave trade 
 in violation of the laws of the United States, to be sold and the 
 moiety of the proceeds of sale to be paid into her treasury, the 
 writer of this narrative prepared the heads of a bill which he 
 prevailed on Doctor Thayer, a member of the committee on the 
 African slave trade, to report to the House, to alter the existing 
 law by requiring the Marshals of the several States, whenever 
 
^‘ALDIE,” LOUDOUN COUNTY, VIRGINIA. 
 Residence of Hon. Charles F'eiiton Mercer. 
 
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Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 17 
 
 captured Africans should be brought into the United States, to 
 take care of them, maintain them at the public charge, and to 
 send them back to their native country. An agent of the United 
 States was authorized to be appointed to receive them there, and 
 100,000 dollars was appropriated to carry the Act into execu- 
 tion. Gov''. Floyd was called home by sickness of his family ; 
 Mr. Middleton, chairman of the committee, proposed to abandon 
 the bill, and it devolved on the writer to sustain it in the House 
 and procure friends for it in the Senate. The bill passed both 
 Houses, and Mr. Monroe, the President of the United States, 
 consented so to construe its provisions as to appoint the physician 
 or Governor of the colony agent of the United States for recap- 
 tured Africans, and in order to provide with a secure station to 
 apply to the use of the first emigrants from the United States the 
 preceding appropriation on condition that no eclat should be given 
 to the Act and his construction of it. 
 
 Out of this appropriation the colony arose, and when some 
 time afterwards the territory of the colony was named Liberia, 
 in gratitude to the President its chief town was called Monrovia- 
 
 For three years the writer of this narrative labored in the 
 cause of African colonization, giving to it all his leisure from 
 other pursuits, conducting a large share of the correspondence 
 of the Society, and writing both its second, and third voluminous 
 reports. On one occasion he franked 8,000 circular letters to. the 
 clergy of every denomination in the United States, urging them 
 on every Sabbath near the 4th of July, to receive subscrfptions 
 towards the support of the colony. 
 
 At a subsequent period he availed himself of the temporary 
 absence of the chairman of the committee on the slave trade to 
 make a report in that character of sundry resolutions for the 
 adoption of the House and an amendment of a bill from the 
 Senate. By the, latter the African slave trade was made piracy, 
 and by the former the President was requested to open a nego- 
 tiation with the several maritime powers of Europe and America 
 in order to render that statutory denomination of this odious 
 traffic part of the law of nations by universal consent and 
 adoption. 
 
i8 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 The amendment received the sanction of both Houses, and 
 in pursuance of the request contained in the resolution negotia- 
 tions were commenced, but proceeded no farther than the ex- 
 tension of the principle of the amendment to Great Britain and 
 the Republic of Columbia, now subdivided into three indepen- 
 dent States. One of the benefits which the mover of the resolu- 
 tion anticipated from its adoption was that it would render the 
 proposal of England to exchange the right of search on the 
 African coast unnecessary, a pirate being at all times liable to 
 search, and to punishment by any nation as hostis humani generis. 
 Nor did the mover indulge this hope till it was confirmed by con- 
 sultation with Chief Justice Marshall and his associate, Judge 
 Washington. The negotiations having fallen short of their in- 
 tended purpose, a treaty was formed with Great Britain to ex- 
 change that right. It was ratified by the Senate with amend- 
 ments which occasioned its final rejection by the other contract- 
 ing party, but not before, by Mr. Monroe’s advice, C. F. M. ad- 
 dressed a letter to Mr. Stratford Canning earnestly defending 
 the amendments of the Senate, and urging the ratification of the 
 treaty as returned in the only form in which it could or ought 
 to receive the sanction of the American government- This ap- 
 peal, though laid before the minister for foreign affairs and the 
 British council, failed of success. It was with some gratification, 
 however, that this writer heard Lord Palmerston express deep 
 regret that it had not produced its desired effect. 
 
 Besides the first appropriation for the abolition of the African 
 slave trade, which afforded the first emigrants to that country 
 the means of comfortable accommodation on their arrival there 
 as well as of defence, other sums were afterwards obtained for 
 the same purpose by the same means. The colony being planted 
 and the society provided by its increasing contributions with the 
 means of engaging a secretary and traveling agents with fixed 
 salaries, this writer turned his attention to another object after 
 three years of zealous labor in this interesting enterprise, now re- 
 warding by its success all its founders. 
 
 In 1823, acting on behalf of a meeting he had convened at 
 Leesburg in Virginia, he invited delegates from Pennsylvania, 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 19 
 
 Maryland and Virginia and the district cities, to meet in conven- 
 tion at the Capitol in this city [Washington] to consider the ex- 
 pediency, and devise some practical plan, of improving the navi- 
 gation of the river Potomac, of connecting it with the Ohio by a 
 tunnel through the Alleghany mountain and a continuous canal 
 along the Youghegany and Monongahela, with the Ohio river at 
 Pittsburg. Accordingly a large convention assembled at Wash- 
 ington and, with some slight modifications, adopted the resolu- 
 tions for that object submitted to them by the author of the invi- 
 tation which brought them together. 
 
 At a subsequent period, in Dec’’-, 1827, he again convened 
 those delegates, multiplied by a number of new friends of the en- 
 terprise and among them three members of the cabinet of Presi- 
 dent Monroe. 
 
 To this meeting he reported the progress which the central 
 committee, of which he was the chairman and almost the only 
 acting member, had made since their first meeting. He had, in 
 fact, procured the harmonious co-operation of the three rival 
 cities of the district, of the old Potomac Company, who agreed 
 to merge their rights in the charter of the Chesapeake and Ohio 
 Canal Company, and sixteen acts of legislation from the three 
 States who had co-operated in forming the convention. Ohio 
 had been invited, but did not send any delegates to the conven- 
 tion except the Post Master Gen’l, Mr. John McLane. Shortly 
 after this second meeting Congress authorized a subscription of 
 one million to the stock of the new company, and this writer 
 having been chosen President of the company, the 4th of July, 
 1828, was fixed upon as the day for commencing the canal, and 
 the President [was] requested to dig from it the first spadeful of 
 earth. This he accordingly did in the presence of more than 
 20,000 people and surrounded by all the foreign ministers in 
 Washington. 
 
 Five years after this work actually began 108 miles of it had 
 been completed. 
 
 For what part of the labor devolved on the President of the 
 company and how that labor was performed, reference may be 
 had to Gen’l., late CoP., McNeal’s report of the plan, cost and 
 
20 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 quality of the entire work, and to the vote of thanks, and the 
 present of $5,000, made to the President of the company when his 
 connection with it was terminated by the influence of Gen’l. Jack- 
 son and the vote of the Stockholders. 
 
 Other labor devolved on the author of this narrative of a very 
 interesting nature during this period last-mentioned. He had, 
 in an address to the people of Virginia, invited her several 
 counties to meet delegates of the County of Loudoun at Staun- 
 ton in that State to consider the expediency of procuring a Con- 
 vention to amend the constitution of the State by equalizing the 
 representation of its counties, reducing the numbers of the House 
 of Delegates and extending the right of suffrage- More than 
 forty counties sent delegates to this Convention, and from its pro- 
 ceedings resulted the Convention of the State in 1829, by which 
 the Constitution was amended in all those particulars. Prior to 
 the assemblage of this body numerous controversies arose and 
 public meetings of the people were held, in all of which the writer 
 of this narrative had to take an active part. 
 
 Most of his acts last-mentioned occurred out of the Halls of 
 legislation, but in no instance did they involve a neglect of his 
 duties in the House of Representatives, except when, with the 
 approbation of his constituents, he remained several weeks in the 
 Convention at Richmond during the session of Congress which 
 occurred at the same time. He was the first member of that 
 body, two days before the Convention adjourned, [who] took 
 his seat in the House, and at no period of his long-continued 
 service was he absent from it except when once confined to his 
 chamber by a disease threatening his life. 
 
 In 1830 he became chairman of the Committee of Roads and 
 Canals, on which he had long served as a member, and so great 
 was the labor cast upon that body that the committee was 
 allowed a clerk to record its proceedings and arrange and keep 
 its papers. The bills and reports of the Committee were, with few 
 exceptions, written by the Chairman, though frequently reported 
 by the members charged with the memorials which gave rise to 
 them. 
 
 During the eight consecutive years that he was chairman of 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 21 
 
 that committee he solemnly avers that not a single instance oc- 
 curred of an attempt to introduce or carry any measure by what 
 is vulgarly, but aptly, called log-rolling. Nor was any measure 
 proposed by the Committee to the House that was not deemed 
 national, nor any canal or road recommended that was not pre- 
 ceded, if an appropriation was proposed for its construction, [by] 
 a previous survey and estimates by some skillful Engineer. Nor 
 did the recommendations of the Committee endanger in any de- 
 gree embarrassment to the government or threaten, as charged, 
 to exhaust the treasury. Charges were made and reiterated 
 against the system of Internal Improvement practised by the 
 committee with undeviating vigor, which no proof was, when 
 publicly challenged, or could be, adduced to sustain. Estimates 
 were quoted, indeed, which, so far from proving those charges, 
 only demonstrated the impracticability of works the Committee 
 never recommended, while the gross absurdities into which the 
 opponents of the constitutionality of the power to make any such 
 improvements [were led], were proper subjects not of argu- 
 ment but of ridicule ; as, for example, that no appropriation to the 
 improvement of the navigation of a river could be constitution- 
 ally applied to any work above a port of entry, — that no work 
 could be national which was constructed within the limits of a 
 single State, — that a road might be national, but its several parts 
 were not so, so that, unless the whole be made at once, it could 
 not be constitutionally made at all ; that the power to regulate 
 trade between the States might warrant a road from one to the 
 other, but where two States had an imaginary line, such as a 
 parallel of latitude, for their common boundary, a road might 
 be constitutionally constructed between them, but then such road, 
 being limited in extent to the breadth of that line, which has no 
 breadth, could not exist at all. 
 
 It was alike untrue that Gen’l. Jackson, or any other Presi- 
 dent, arrested the condemned system of Internal Improvement; 
 on the contrary, its objects were never so numerous, nor the 
 annual appropriations towards it, taken collectively, so large in 
 amount as during his entire administration. The system was 
 arrested after his experiments upon the currency of the country 
 
22 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 for want of funds to carry it [on], while the Seminole war 
 drained the treasury of its specie, and drove the government to 
 the negotiation of loans in order to preserve its credit. The last 
 labor of the chairman of the Committee on Internal Improvement, 
 while he retained his seat in Congress, was bestowed on a report 
 requiring much research not apparent on its face nor in its 
 brevity, but involving an enquiry into all the various routes pro- 
 posed for a connection of the Atlantic with the Pacific ocean 
 thro the Isthmus of Darien. The report, accompanied by a 
 diagram fiom the topographical Bureau, proposed an open cut 
 for a canal of the intervening highland which, for three miles in 
 a distance of fourteen, separates Lake Nicaragua from the Pa- 
 cific. For the rest of this distance, or eleven miles, no ground 
 can be more favorable for such a work. The report does not 
 embrace any view of the practicability of improving in any mode 
 the river descending from the Lake to the Atlantic, no work 
 within reach of the author affording any information upon that 
 necessary branch of inquiry to the solution of all the difficulties 
 opposing such an enterprise. The report itself seems to have 
 escaped all notice but that taken of it by the late learned minis- 
 ter of the United States to the court of Berlin, Mr. Wheaton. 
 
 In his public life of thirty consecutive years the author of this 
 narrative never made but one partizan speech, which, [if] it 
 needed an apology, might point to that prostration of the public 
 credit which at last reduced the United States to the humiliating 
 necessity of recruiting an exhausted treasury by hawking the 
 public securities bearing six per cent, interest through the money 
 markets of Europe, while nations of that continent were borrow- 
 ing at five per cent, of each other without difficulty. With the 
 single exception of his criticism upon- a treasury report at the 
 
 extra session of , the whole public life of the 
 
 writer of this memoir was prompted by the desire to be useful 
 rather than distinguished, and to soothe and allay, rather than 
 excite, party spirit ; to sustain the dignity of Congress by sup- 
 pressing disorder among its members, and sustaining the author- 
 ity of its rules. 
 
 If ever he seemed to interfere officiously in the angry con- 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 23 
 
 troversies of its members, his motive was to settle within the 
 House quarrels which, if left to rankle out of it, might lead to 
 fatal results. 
 
 The last resolutions which he laid upon the table of the 
 House contemplated a reduction of the overgrown power aris- 
 ing from the vast and annually increasing patronage of the Presi- 
 dent, a measure favoured ever by the minority when out of 
 power, but never as yet by the majority who share its benefit, and 
 therefore often proposed but never accomplished. Had he re- 
 mained a member of Congress, he would have devoted the residue 
 of his life to that object, which he thought attainable to a great 
 extent without anj^ amendment of the Constitution. One of Its 
 immediate and best effects would be to diminish the excitement 
 which the vast extent and the gross abuse of that power infuses 
 into every presidential election, and to guard the Union against 
 the untried danger of a presidential election contested on the 
 ground of fraud or violence. 
 
 May not some hope be indulged that the gallant soldier [Gen. 
 Taylor] and patriotic citizen now at the head of the government, 
 untrammeled by party pledges, and holding unsought the highest 
 station by the voice of the freest people on earth, will have the 
 magnanimity to guard his country against such a calamity in the 
 only effectual mode by relinquishing a part of his own power ! 
 
 In December, 1839, the writer of this narrative closed a ser- 
 vice in eight sessions of the Virginia Legislature and forty-eight 
 sessions of Congress by resigning his seat in the House of Repre- 
 sentatives shortly after he had resumed it pursuant to the votes 
 of an increased majority of his constituents in a district adjacent 
 to the seat of government. 
 
 He had entered public life with an ample fortune; he left 
 it encumbered with debts which made his retirement an act of 
 justice to his creditors. It is his pride to reflect that those debts 
 have since been paid, and that not one cent of them arose from 
 the cost of nineteen elections — many of which were closely con- 
 tested. 
 
 On a review of his past life, it is with pleasure he remembers 
 that those associates who most differed Irom him in opinion 
 
24 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 united with his political friends in doing him unmerited honor 
 at his separation from them as well in Washington as in Rich- 
 mond, and that he thrice received the same compliment from 
 Western Virginia, the bone and sinew of his native State. 
 
 He has not been idle since his retirement from the House of 
 Representatives. Two voyages to Europe, six to Texas, added 
 to two years spent on his farm in Kentucky, added to two jour- 
 neys from Florida to Boston, have rendered the last nine years 
 of his life one of business rather than a rest from labor. He has 
 yet to try a life of solitude and comparative inaction, a life 
 which has often proved fatal to minds accustomed to mental ex- 
 citement. 
 
 From the preceding narrative, extended beyond any antici- 
 pation of the writer, some of the most interesting events of his 
 public life have, he perceives on a review of it, been omitted, 
 among them the motion to give a pension and a sword to the 
 gallant son of Virginia when bowed down by age and paralyzed 
 by disease, the heroic George Rogers Clark, a measure the under- 
 signed ventured to introduce without the knowledge of himself 
 or his friends. The sword was to re-enstate one he had broken 
 in indignant feeling at the rejection of his accounts at the 
 treasury of his native State, which in fact led to the ruin of his 
 fortune. But more than enough has been written, as the under- 
 signed greatly fears to subject him to the charge of egotism by 
 a less partial critic than the Secretary of State, to whom this 
 memoir is confided. 
 
 C- F. Mercer, 
 
 Washington, March 14, 1849.” 
 
 [Endorsed in his own handwriting: “Materials for a Life of 
 C. F. Mercer.”] 
 
 This autobiographical sketch deserves enlargement in some 
 particulars. While at Princeton College Mercer became an inti- 
 mate friend jOf John Henry Hobart, later Protestant Episcopal 
 bishop of the diocese of New York, and letters interchanged be- 
 tween them will be found in Dr. McVicar’s “Early Life and 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 25 
 
 Professional Years of Bishop Hobart.” During his college years, 
 and his first trip to Europe in 1802-3, his home was with his sis- 
 ter and brother-in-law, Hon. James Mercer Garnett, at Elm- 
 wood, Essex County, Virginia. After his return from Europe, 
 he made a home of his own at “Aldie,” Loudoun County, Vir- 
 ginia, on a tract of land along the Bull Run mountains, of some 
 three hundred acres bequeathed to him by his father, Judge James 
 Mercer, and named by himself from “Aldie Castle” in Perthshire, 
 Scotland, which he conceived to be the home of his Mer- 
 cer ancestors, but there is no positive proof of this remaining.'’ 
 
 The letters in the “Life of Bishop Hobart” give an interesting 
 account of their early friendship, and of a vacation visit paid to 
 Mercer by Hobart at “Elmwood,” Essex County, Virginia, the 
 residence of his brother-in-law, Hon. James Mercer Garnett.* 
 The latter was much pleased with his visit and thought of set- 
 tling in Virginia- 
 
 The letters quoted below give a brief view of this period of 
 Mercer’s life. After his graduation Mercer returned to Princeton 
 and remained there for three years studying law. In 1802 he 
 visited Europe in the effort to recover property once belonging 
 to his uncle. Col. George Mercer, of the Gontinental service dur- 
 ing the French and Indian war. Gol. Mercer was a colleague and 
 friend of Col. George Washington, and represented Frederick 
 County, Virginia, in the House of Burgesses with him in 1762, 
 and until he went to England as agent of the Ohio company, of 
 which his father, John Mercer, of “Marlborough,” was the Secre- 
 tary. Col. George Mercer was appointed distributor of stamps in 
 1765, but being unable to issue them, he resigned and returned to 
 England. He married Mary Neville, of Lincoln, in 1767, who 
 
 3 The writes visited this place in 1869, and found it a small and 
 dilapidated stone building, in the lower story of which cattle were then 
 stabled. It had long since been disused as a residence. The property 
 was in the hands of a care-taker, who informed him that it was owned 
 by the Baroness of Keith and Nairn, a descendant of the Mercer family, -f 
 
 -j- See Black’s “Guide to Scotland” in which this castle is mentioned. 
 
 ♦ See my sketch of the Life of Hon. James Mercer Garnett. 
 
26 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 died in Richmond, Va., in 1768. He then returned to England 
 and died there in 1784.® 
 
 [The following letters are taken from Dr. John McVicar’s 
 “The Early Life and Professional Years of Bishop Hobart, 
 Oxford: D. A. Talboys, MDCCCXXXVHI,” bequeathed to 
 the writer by his great-uncle, C. F. Mercer. 
 
 I have also a copy of the earlier work, “The Professional 
 Years of Bishop Hobart,” New York, MDCCCXXXVI, in- 
 scribed to the writer’s mother, “Mrs. F. I. Garnett, from her 
 uncle, C. F. Mercer, Jany. 16, 1852.” 
 
 The writer’s family spent from August, 1851, to February, 
 1852, with his great-uncle at his residence, “Fentonville,” on the 
 Kentucky river, near Carrollton, Ky., at which place the Ken- 
 tucky river empties into the Ohio- The writer’s father, Theodore 
 S. Garnett, a civil engineer by profession, was at that time en- 
 gaged in surveying a railroad line in Kentucky, which passed 
 through Drennan, the site of the Kentucky Military Institute. 
 In February, 1852, the writer’s family removed to Hillsboro’, 
 N. C., and his father was engaged on the North Carolina Central 
 Railroad running from Goldsboro’ to Charlotte, now the main 
 line in North Carolina of the Southern Railway. In 1856, his 
 family removed to Tallahassee, Florida, where his father was 
 chief engineer of the Pensacola and Atlantic R. R.] 
 
 (J. H. Hobart to his mother-) 
 
 Princeton, August 28th, 1797. 
 
 * * * It seems as if, whatever losses I may sustain, I am 
 not to be left wholly destitute of those enjoyments my feelings 
 lead me most to value. I have experienced from an amiable 
 young man (Mercer) who lives with me, the sage counsel of 
 manhood, with the tenderness and affection of the warmest heart. 
 He receives the first honours of his class, and graduates this fall, 
 and presses me with tender solicitude to spend the six weeks’ 
 
 5 See my skeleli of Judge James Mercer, in the William and Mary 
 College Quarterly for December, 1908, and January, 1909. 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 27 
 
 vacation with him, in Virginia. The disinterested kindness with 
 which he urges the necessity of some great change of scene for 
 my health and spirits, with my own conviction that it would be 
 beneficial, incline me to go. I mention these circumstances that 
 I may receive direction and advice upon the subject. I am, my 
 dear mamma, your sincerely affectionate 
 
 John H. Hobart. 
 
 (J. H- Hobart to his mother.) 
 
 Fredericksburgh, October 26, [1797.] 
 
 My dear Mamma . — I got to this place from Mr. Garnett’s 
 in Essex County, about an hour ago ; but, on application at the 
 office, find the stage full, and no possibility of my getting on 
 before Monday. I don’t know wEen I have met with a severer 
 disappointment. Considering the short time I shall be with you, 
 two days are of material consequence. I must, however, sub- 
 mit, and endeavour to make myself as contented as possible. You 
 may expect to see me much fatter than when I left home ; but still 
 do not raise your expectations too high. I don’t know when I 
 have spent my time more agreeably. The family in which I have 
 been form a scene of domestic happiness that my imagination has 
 often painted, but such as I have never before found realized. 
 Ever)^ want and even wish supplied by an amply sufficiency, con- 
 tent beams, I may say, in every countenance. And then their 
 manners, unfettered by the artificial forms of politeness, and yet 
 entirely removed from rustic plainness, mark the artless expres- 
 sion of internal goodness wishing to dispense happiness to all 
 around. In such society could I be otherwise than happy? With 
 love to all, yours, etc-. 
 
 John H. Hobart. 
 
28 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 (J. H. Hobart to C. F. Mercer.) 
 
 Philadelphia, November 5th, 1797. 
 
 I was disappointed, my dear Mercer, in not getting a letter 
 from you by yesterday’s mail. The amiable and delightful society 
 of Essex are almost constantly in my thoughts ; I fancy myself 
 still among them, and I cherish the pleasing delusion. The time 
 spent there was a period of unaffected happiness, such as I never 
 before enjoyed: it was perfectly congenial to my wishes: it 
 realized those scenes of domestic bliss and social life, amiable and 
 refined, — of simplicity and ardent benevolence, which my imagi- 
 nation has often exhibited to me, but rather as visionary forms 
 with which she so often dazzles us, than as realities that I should 
 ever enjoy in this world. If I am ever happy in life, it can only be 
 in such society as that ; and I am daily and hourly more confirmed 
 in the plan I had thought of, to settle in Virginia. The obstacles 
 to this plan from this quarter, though I never supposed they 
 would be serious, are even less than I expected ; and what sanc- 
 tions my wishes is the consideration, that, where I can live most 
 happily, I can there be also most useful. Yes, my dear Mercer, 
 the affable and open manners of those of the Virginians I have 
 seen, their desire and constant attention to make others happy, 
 are precisely what I have always wished to find in the society 
 where I should fix. And if the ardent desire of my soul should 
 be gratified in possessing the affections of one who possesses all 
 mine, where is the constituent of human bliss that I should 
 need ? But let me moderate these anticipations of happiness ; let 
 me remember that disappointment and affliction must still attend 
 my weary pilgrimage. To you, my much-loved Mercer, I owe 
 much, very much. Your counsel has aided me ; your sympathy 
 has soothed me ; your unwearied attentions and exertions have 
 contributed to restore peace to a disordered mind. Let me still, 
 my dearest friend, enjoy your friendship, and I shall have at 
 least one worldly comfort among its many, many sorrows. Do 
 not think of renouncing your plan of returning to Princeton : as 
 it respects advantages for study and means of enjoyment, it is in 
 every way most eligible. 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 29 
 
 Remember me affectionately to your sister and the rest of the 
 family at Essex ; and when you have an opportunity, let your 
 friends at Salvington know that I shall not soon forget their 
 kind attentions to me. 
 
 With much affection, yours, 
 
 J. H. Hobart. 
 
 (J. H. Hobart to C. F. Mercer.) 
 
 Princeton, November 21, 1797. 
 
 My dear Mercer . — I have been waiting impatiently to hear 
 from you, both while I was in Philadelphia, and since I came to 
 this place- I directed my letter to you at Fredericksburgh, at 
 which place you will doubtless be before you come on. You see 
 I am calculating on this event. Indeed, I believe it will be so in- 
 strumental to your improvement and happiness, that I am par- 
 ticularly desirous of it. Your old room shall receive you. I will 
 welcome you with open arms, and you will enjoy happiness from 
 the society of those who esteem and love you. Believe me there 
 are not a few particularly earnest in their inquiries when you 
 are coming. I have received two kind and, let me add, tenderly 
 affectionate letters from Mr. Garnett and your sister. Oh ! my 
 friend, what a luxury it is to me to enjoy the esteem of the vir- 
 tuous and the feeling! I sometimes think I am too desirous of 
 it ; it makes my happiness depend too much upon others ; it ren- 
 ders me tremblingly, and often painfully alive even to the ap- 
 pearance of displeasure in them, and consequently to the small- 
 est error in myself. But the society of your friends in Essex 
 yielded me a pleasure indeed unmixed with pain. I never think 
 of them but with emotions of the highest affection; and am only 
 pained that it is not in my power to express my feelings other- 
 wise than by words. Let their own goodness of heart supply 
 what words must ever want. Let me again express the interest 
 I take in your return, if yourself and friends should deem it 
 proper. In no place can you enjoy equal advantages for study; 
 
30 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 in no place, I think, will external circumstances be more favour- 
 able to your happiness- True, it is our first duty to adapt our 
 minds to our situation, and thus learn to be content in any ; and 
 I trust you will always endeavour to be so ; but then we are 
 not required, for the mere sake of self-denial, to relinquish any 
 real happiness. Let then the enjoyments of a college life again 
 be yours. 
 
 With the sincerest friendship, truly yours, 
 
 J. H. Hobart. 
 
 (J. H. Hobart to C. F. Mercer.) 
 
 POTTSGROVE, May 15th, 1798. 
 
 I cannot express to you, my dear Mercer, the pleasure I re- 
 ceived from your letter. It spoke a language that touched my 
 heart, and excited all its tenderest affections. Friendship when 
 sincere, it is said, burns with a steady flame; its joys are even 
 and tranquil, but there certainly are moments when kindred 
 spirits swell their joys into rapture. In a moment of this kind, 
 my dear Mercer, you poured forth your tender expressions. My 
 soul united with yours, and though at the distance of many miles, 
 I pressed you to my bosom. My much loved friend, I feel an af- 
 fection at my heart too big for utterance. The tender and ami- 
 able disposition of heart that first attracted me to you, has ap- 
 peared more worthy of my love, the more I know of it ; and 
 when I found it united with the powers of genius, and firm and 
 noble principles, admiration and respect were joined to affec- 
 tion. If therefore my heart has fixed on you with fond attach- 
 ment, if I have delighted in your society, and sought every means 
 in my power to make you happy, the impulse was natural, the 
 exertion involuntary. But, my dear Mercer, I gave no counsel 
 that was not repaid with rich increase, — I gave no consolation 
 that was not poured back a hundred-fold into my own bosom. 
 
 I owe to your goodness, to your prudent counsel, to your sym- 
 pathy, your tender and assiduous attentions, all that I can ever 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 31 
 
 owe to the most ardent and faithful of friends, and I trust that 
 neither the chances nor duties of life will prevent many happy 
 meetings between us. But I have become familiar with separa- 
 tion- My dearest friends have been torn from me for life, and 
 these mournful events, under the counsels of religion, have 
 moderated the violence of my feelings. I now more fully realize, 
 I trust, the duty of resignation to God in all the events, and under 
 all the circumstances of life, teaching me to submit with holy 
 confidence to all his dispensations, and directing my affections 
 to that glorious state where my soul shall be satisfied with the 
 fruition of God, and where I shall be reunited to those I have 
 here loved. But perhaps this composure is only vain confidence, 
 and any severe or unexpected trial would awaken, as hitherto, 
 sorrow and repining. I already begin to regret that scene of re- 
 tirement and study I enjoyed at Princeton, where, in the society 
 of a few select friends, the vain desires of the world were shut 
 out, and improving intercourse enlivened our spirits. But I 
 check these emotions as inconsistent wtih my duty, and destruc- 
 tive of my peace, and resolve to endeavour at least to be con- 
 tented with any situation in which I may be placed, while the 
 review of past scenes of happiness will ever be the subject of my 
 most soothing and pleasing thoughts. 
 
 College, I suppose, is again settled- May you experience in it 
 both happiness and improvement. Few are more indebted to 
 nature than yourself, and the assiduous cultivation of your powers 
 (to which indeed you are so strongly disposed) is the only way 
 to repay the debt. I am daily more sensible to the advantages 
 of your situation, and regret that my health and spirits would 
 not permit me to enjoy them longer. Something more I now find 
 is necessary to improvement than retirement and leisure, or even 
 a strong sense of the value of knowledge. There must be occa- 
 sional contrasts with others to show us our defects, and to 
 sharpen our diligence — there must be literary conversation 
 to unbend the mind without dissipating its vigour — there 
 must be scientific meetings to compel us to investigate useful 
 subjects, and extend our knowledge of them. All these you have 
 at Princeton in greater perfection than any where else I know 
 
32 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 of ; and were it not impracticable, I should even now resolve to 
 spend there two or three years more, unfettered by an office, the 
 duties and cares of which, while there, absorbed my time and 
 bowed down my spirits. I am therefore desirous, my dear Mer- 
 cer, that you should remain there as long as with propriety you 
 can. Do not suffer temporary inconveniences, or even perma- 
 nent ones, to make you dissatisfied- We always think we shall 
 do better in some other situation than the one we are in. The 
 disadvantages of a present situation are always felt, while those 
 of another are either unthought of or but imperfectly realized. 
 I have often found this the case, at least, I know with myself. 
 
 College scenes and engagements, our pleasant walks, our 
 cheerful meetings, often come over me with great force, and 
 occupy my thoughts, so that I find it necessary in order to pre- 
 serve contentment, to magnify as much as possible my present or 
 future advantages. I wish much to pay you a visit, but know not 
 when it will be practicable. I shall expect with eager desire to 
 see you at Frankfort. In your society I shall experience a joy 
 I have not felt since I left Princeton. 
 
 The first Sunday in June is fixed on for my ordination. 
 Whatever concerns me I know will excite your affectionate inter- 
 est, and you shall therefore hear of all ; and be assured, my dear 
 Mercer, that I am no less anxious for your welfare and happiness. 
 I am as well as I had probably any reason to expect, though not 
 as well as I could wish, and in proportion as I can settle my mind 
 to perfect reliance on the Divine will, I am happy. With you, my 
 dear Mercer, I am persuaded that this alone is the source of 
 real happiness. 
 
 Your affectionate 
 
 J. H. Hobart. 
 
 1 
 
 Princeton, July 14th, 1799. 
 
 I am doubtful, my dear Mercer, whether or not to write to 
 you, as I suspect you will be on your way home. I will write, 
 however, were it but to assure you that no absence, no engage- 
 ment can make me forget you. I have much wished that you 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 33 
 
 were here, that I might advise with you on the subject of my 
 future plans- 
 
 I spent a week on Long-Island. The village of Hempstead, 
 within which is the church and parsonage, lies at the south bor- 
 der of an uncultivated plain, about four or five miles in width. 
 A residence there would be very retired ; I am almost afraid too 
 much so for me. You may, perhaps, wonder at this, after my 
 frequent eulogies on a retired life ; but remember that at Prince- 
 ton, though retired from the busy and gay world, I yet enjoyed 
 the highest pleasures of society in daily intercourse with intelli- 
 gent and affectionate friends. However, should I go, I must 
 summon resolution to occupy my mind wholly with study, and 
 the duties of my profession, till I find in domestic joys a solace 
 for low spirits and disquietude ; and I rather think Miss C.’s 
 wishes, which would determine mine, are in favour of Hemp- 
 stead. 
 
 To your sister, and all friends, give my warmest affection. I 
 long once again to embrace you, and rest assured, that, with the 
 most fervent prayers for your welfare and happiness, I am 
 
 Your faithful and affectionate, 
 
 J. H. Hobart. 
 
 (From letter of introduction of Rev. J. H. Hobart to Rev- 
 Dr. Boucher, Vicar of Epsom, England.) 
 
 New York, November 22, 1802. 
 
 Charles F. Mercer, Esq., carries a letter of introduction from 
 the Rev. Mr. Waugh, but I cannot refrain from mentioning those 
 traits of his character which have been the foundation of the 
 closest friendship between us. Intelligent and amiable, ardent in 
 his feelings, and persevering and noble in all his aims, he obtains 
 general esteem and respect wherever he is known; and, what will 
 enhance his character in your estimation, he has, in this age of 
 degeneracy, openly professed his belief in the religion of Jesus, 
 and among the young men of his country afforded almost a 
 
34 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 solitary example of a consistent and uniform submission to the 
 faith, the ordinances, and precepts of the Gospel. 
 
 Be pleased to excuse the long encroachment which I have 
 made on your time. Accept my most ardent wishes that your de- 
 clining years may be cheered by all the exalted rewards of dis- 
 tinguished science and eminent piety- Permit me to subscribe 
 myself. 
 
 Most respectfully. 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 John H. Hobart. 
 
 fC. F. Mercer to J. H. Hobart.) 
 
 Leicester Place, London, July 29th, 1803. 
 
 I believed, for a moment, that I saw the old patriarchal sim- 
 plicity revived; and I felt deeply interested in the journey which 
 the venerable head of this amiable family was performing. His 
 gardens, his grounds, his house, his library, and the af¥ection with 
 which he seemed to be regarded by all around him, gave me a very 
 pleasing view of his character. They told me that he used to say 
 that his three temporal blessings were, his family first, his books 
 next, and his garden. He preserves an afifectionate remembrance 
 of our country. His daughter pointed out to me many Ameri- 
 can plants and trees which he had nurtured with great care. I 
 was particularly pleased with his library, which is the largest I 
 ever saw in a private house ; it must contain five thousand volumes. 
 
 The most interesting object in it was a pile of quarto manu- 
 scripts, two feet high, which comprised, I was told, the first part 
 of his Archaeological Dictionary. The unfinished remainder, I un- 
 derstood, would occupy as many more, and require his unremit- 
 ting attention for several years. All the books, amounting to six 
 or seven hundred volumes, which he had consulted in the course 
 of his labours, were neatly arranged in the middle of his library, 
 on a separate stand of shelves. 
 
 From the windows of his library the Doctor has a prospect of 
 some of his American trees, and of a beautiful green, surround- 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 35 
 
 ing a sheet of clear water ; this is itself encompassed by a walk 
 consisting of a double row of evergreens and tall trees, which, 
 obstructing the view of every outward object, must peculiarly dis- 
 pose the mind to abstract study. 
 
 I bade adieu to this charming retreat, and this worthy family, 
 which reminded me sorrowfully of my distant home and friends, 
 on the evening of the second day after I entered Epsom. 
 
 [C. F. Mercer.] 
 
 (J. H. Hobart to C. F. Mercer.) 
 
 New York, February 19th, 1814. 
 
 My dear Mercer . — This will be handed to you by the Rev. R. 
 C. Moore, D. D., of this city, who has received very pressing soli- 
 citations to take charge of the new church at Richmond.® The 
 interest you have taken, my dear Mercer, in my concerns, has 
 doubtless led you to notice Dr. Moore’s name, as connected with 
 the late differences in the Church here ; I think it, therefore, due 
 to him to state that he did not advise or sanction the publica- 
 tion of Mr. Jones ; that the part he took in his favour was dictated 
 by a sense of obligations to him, and not by any motives of hos- 
 tility to me ; that since the settlement of the question by diocesan 
 authority. Dr. Moore has acted with the utmost propriety as re- 
 gards the authority of the Church, and with great kindness to- 
 ward me, and has in no degree abetted Mr. Jones in any of his re- 
 cent measures hostile to the order, interest, and peace of the 
 Church. So confident, indeed, am I of Dr. Moore’s friendship 
 and co-operation, that in this point of view I shall regret his re- 
 moval out of this Diocese. 
 
 On the subject of the Church, my dear Mercer, you know my 
 principles, views and feelings ; you know my attachment to her 
 primitive order and inimitable worship, as well as to her evan- 
 gelical doctrines ; you know how I have mourned over the deso- 
 lations of our Zion in your State, and how my heart has grieved 
 
 6 The Monumental Church, so-called, as being erected on the ruins of 
 the theatre burnt; an event which desolated the families of Richmond by 
 the members of those destroyed in the conflagration. 
 
36 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 at beholding that Liturgy, which was the delight and glory of 
 holy saints now in that paradise for which its sacred devotions 
 prepared them, neglected, mutilated, despised, almost trodden 
 under foot. On all these subjects I have had full, unreserved 
 communications with Dr. Moore, which have resulted in an en- 
 tire persuasion that, should he settle in Virginia, it will be his un- 
 remitting endeavour, combining prudence with zeal and firmness, 
 to restore our Church to purity and vigour in her doctrines, in- 
 stitutions and worship. 
 
 It is this joyful hope, that, by the Divine blessing, he will be 
 instrumental in repairing the waste places of our Zion, and in 
 building her up in the beauty of holiness that leads me to wish 
 him God-speed. 
 
 I trust, my dear Mercer, he will receive your influence in his 
 endeavours to remove the prejudices which subsist against our 
 Church; that j'ou will aid him to present the Liturgy unmutilated, 
 by stating among your friends and acquaintances w^hen necessary, 
 that this is required, not only by consistency of character, but by 
 fidelity to his ordination vows ; and by reminding him of those 
 da3rs when, amidst clergy often negligent and lukewarm, and 
 sometimes immoral, it was this Liturgy which drew, and attached 
 their forefathers to the Church. 
 
 Mr. Moore’s character justifies the expectation that he will 
 display all the pious zeal and activity required by the arduous 
 stations in which he will be placed. But certainly, were I not 
 persuaded that his zeal for God’s glory, and for the salvation of 
 men would be regulated by the form of sound words professed by 
 our Church, by her order and institutions, I should not antici- 
 pate, as I now do, any good to our Church from his going among 
 you. I hope he may find you in Richmond, and that I shall hear 
 from you on his return. 
 
 Be assured, that, different as are our pursuits, and distant as 
 we are in place, 
 
 I remain, as ever, dear Mercer, 
 
 Most affectionately, 
 
 John H. Hobart. 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 37 
 
 (J. H. Hobart to C. F. Mercer.) 
 
 New York^ March 17th, 1815. 
 
 My dearest Mercer . — I have just received a letter from the 
 Rev. Mr. Dunn, which fills me with most agonizing apprehensions 
 for my beloved friend. Though he states that the physicians 
 think you have passed the crisis of your disorder, yet still your 
 situation was such as to excite the most painful solicitude. Yet 
 God has sent this visitation in mercy; there was only one thing 
 wanting to make my friend one of the most perfect of men, the ex- 
 perience of the renovating power of religion, a lively sensibility to 
 his need of the mercy and grace of God, through the Saviour of 
 the world. This greatest of blessings you have now attained, and 
 I trust it has been followed by that lively view of the fullness of 
 divine mercy, through Jesus Christ, and of the all-sufficiency of 
 the merits of him who came to seek and to save that which was 
 lost, which diffuses through the soul a peace that the world “can 
 neither give nor take away.” Your future life — and oh, may 
 God long spare it! — will, I trust, be devoted to the active ser- 
 vice of Him who hath “loved you, and washed you from your sins 
 in his own blood.” 
 
 Mr. Dunn informs me that your first exclamation on seeing 
 him was that the Prayer-book had been your comfort. Let me 
 beseech you, my dear Mercer, continue to value it; make the 
 Bible and the Prayer-book your companions. While in the 
 affecting service for the communion you acknowledge that the 
 “remembrance of your sins is grievous unto you, and the burthen 
 intolerable,” then hear addressed unto you the language of your 
 Saviour, “Come unto me all ye that labour, and I will give you 
 rest.” Do not, my dear Mercer, distrust the love of God; that 
 love which gave his only Son to die for you. Do not distrust the 
 love of your Redeemer ; that love which endured for you an 
 agony and bloody sweat, a cross and its passion. Be assured 
 your God is more ready to receive you than you can possibly be 
 to go unto him. 
 
 That God may bless you, is the fervent prayer of 
 
 Your affectionate, John H. Hobart. 
 
38 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 (C. F. Mercer to }. H. Hobart.) 
 
 Locust Hill, near Leesburg, Va-, 
 
 March 24th, 1815. 
 
 My beloved Hobart’s letter did not reach me until last Tues- 
 day, and I make a great effort today to write a few lines in re- 
 ply to it, that our mail, which travels but once in the week to the 
 north, may take charge of them tomorrow. 
 
 My body is wasted to a skeleton, and my mind is, I believe, 
 impaired. My memory of what passes in the day is much so ; 
 but it pleases Almighty God still to support me. Half my time I 
 spend in communion with him ; in deploring my past transgres- 
 sions, and pleading for his forgiveness, through the merits, and 
 in the name, of our blessed Saviour. I use in the morning and 
 evening, with the assistance of a friend, the form of family prayer 
 provided by our Church ; and have read to me through the day, 
 when my strength will permit me to listen to advantage, passages 
 of the New Testament. I have got through the Gospel of St. 
 Luke, and as far as twenty chapters in that of St. Matthew. 
 
 Mr. Dunn has again been to see me, and was so kind as to 
 remain with me several days. I was much worse after his first 
 visit. For ten days, I expected twice in each day to breathe my 
 last- It is only within a few days past that I have thought my 
 recovery probable. I have now reached the twenty-seventh day 
 of my confinement, but, much as I have suffered, dearest Hobart, 
 I would not exchange my present situation to obliterate all that 
 has passed in those days of bodily and mental anguish, and to 
 be restored to perfect health again. Humility and resignation, 
 and the blessed assurance that my numerous sins and transgres- 
 sions are forgiven, have made my sick bed, a bed of roses, my 
 pillow, the pillow of repose. 
 
 To have had you, my beloved friend, to soothe, to console, and 
 guide my often sinking and wandering spirit, during this trial, 
 would have been the first wish of my heart. But a merciful God 
 has provided me with some pious friends, on whose bosoms I have 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 39 
 
 wept tears of indescribable joy. The happiest hours of my life 
 have been spent in this darkened chamber. 
 
 My love to your family, dearest Hobart, and may Almighty 
 God of his infinite mercy, unite us again in a world where we 
 shall not be separated, either by our professions or our abodes. 
 
 Your affectionate, C. F. M. 
 
 {To James M. Garnett, Esqr., Loretto, Essex County, Virginia.) 
 
 Secy- of State’s Office, 
 Washington, April 29th, 1813. 
 
 My dear Sir : — I shall make some atonement for my late 
 silence, in reminding you of a friend who just now inquired very 
 particularly and affectionately for you ; I mean Mr. F. Key, who 
 I overtook, on his way to Washington, as I returned from the 
 Georgetown post-office. He asked me to accompany him, which 
 I would have gladly done, but for the business which brought 
 me here yesterday and may possibly keep me here, much against 
 my inclination, for several days to come. The unwelcome task 
 had been devolved upon me to press the Govt, of the U. S., for a 
 reimbursement of several sums of money expended at different 
 times, by our Commonwealth, on the detachments of militia which 
 she (furnished for her own defence, or that of other states. I 
 have written a letter to Genl. Armstrong which remains un- 
 answered; and have come to learn his decision upon the subjects 
 which it involves. It is very hard to get from these patriots 
 payment for services already performed- I mean to stick to them, 
 however, until they give me an answer of some sort or other. 
 
 I am at the fountain of news : but have collected none. The 
 worst that I have heard, and the most acceptable to the great 
 men of this place, is from our friend Randolph’s district. I 
 consider his election lost. Cumberland will not carry him thro’. 
 He left Washington on the 4th of March in very bad spirits, and 
 has not, since, exerted himself sufficiently to defeat the unre- 
 mitting efforts of his numerous and zealous enemies. ... I wish 
 
40 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 we may be able to turn his attention to the State Legislature, 
 where I have, for some time, thought his presence would be more 
 useful than in Congress. Should his disappointment (which I 
 do not expect) prey upon his spirits, had you not better pay him 
 a visit both to soothe and to arouse him? — He has taken up a 
 very unjust opinion of himself — that his talents are declining — 
 and unless inspired to renewed action, he will waste away the best 
 half, that which remains, of his valuable life. To prevent this de- 
 plorable result of a wounded sensibility should be the object of all 
 his friends. 
 
 Mr. Monroe is the only person whom I visit here. I saw 
 him in his office yesterday ; but gathered from his conversation 
 nothing which could interest you. The dispatches of the Rus- 
 sian Embassy, he told me, had been forwarded for several days, 
 and the newly appointed ministers were daily expected to embark 
 for Petersburg — I have myself no hope remaining of a success- 
 ful termination of their mission- 
 
 My anxiety has been much awakened for your peace in Es- 
 sex ; I mean peace of mind ; for I do not believe that the British 
 squadron will personally incommode you inland in any other way. 
 Their forbearance towards Norfolk, which five hundred men 
 might have carried, with great ease and safety, satisfies me that 
 they do not mean to invade our territory. They attain their ob- 
 ject, at least in Virginia, without. Our drafted militia have en- 
 gaged as substitutes all our quota of the Canadian Army, and 
 the four thousand militia now in our service will produce a simi- 
 lar diversion of the treasure of the Union. The defence of Vir- 
 ginia, for the current year, will not cost the United States less 
 than two millions; and if all the other Atlantic States follow our 
 example, the loan will be consumed without any aid from the 
 conquerors of Canada. . . . Our Legislature has been convened 
 to put down our State regiment, to which I shall give my cordial 
 assent, altho’ it will terminate my military career. I have an 
 abhorrence of State armies. They constitute, in my opinion, the 
 first step towards disunion. 
 
 I have already, while in a state of great despondency, written 
 a few lines to my sister. The exertion which they have cost me, 
 aided by this letter, has afforded me considerable relief, and pre- 
 
Portrait of Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer, 
 painted by Chester Harding in 1830; now in the 
 Municipal Engineering Building in Washington. 
 City. 
 
1 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 41 
 
 pared me much better than I expected for my interview with 
 Genl. Armstrong, which I earnestly hope will terminate my minis- 
 terial functions. 
 
 I hope to see you the week after next at your house, which 
 always seems to me more like a home than my own. I could 
 easily obtain my own consent never to see the latter again- 
 
 Very affectionately 
 yrs., 
 
 C. F. Mercer. 
 
 SERVICE IN CONGRESS. 
 
 Gen. Mercer retired from the House of Delegates in the 
 spring of 1817, when he was elected to Congress from the Lou- 
 doun district, and during his long term of service in Congress, 
 from December, 1817, to January, 1840, he served on several 
 committees, among the most important being that on Roads and 
 Canals, and that on the District of Columbia. There are pre- 
 served in the corridors of the Engineering Building, of Washing- 
 ton city, the portraits of those who served as Chairmen of the 
 Committee on the District of Columbia, and among these is the 
 portrait of Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer, the only one known to 
 exist, which was painted in pursuance of the following resolu- 
 tions of the Aldermen and Common Council of the city of Wash- 
 ington : 
 
 “An Act authorizing the Mayor to request Charles Fenton 
 Mercer to sit for his portrait. 
 
 Be it enacted by the Board of Aldermen and Board of Com- 
 mon Council, of the city of Washington, that the Mayor be, and 
 he is hereby authorized to request Charles Fenton Mercer, 
 of Virginia, to sit for his portrait, to be taken for the Corpora- 
 tion and placed in the City Hall. 
 
 Sec. 2. And he it enacted, that the expense of taking such por- 
 trait shall be paid out of the general fund. 
 
 Joseph Gales, Jr., Mayor. 
 
 Approved June 3d, 1829;” 
 
42 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 and 
 
 “An Act making an appropriation to pay for the portrait 
 of Charles Fenton Mercer: 
 
 Be it enacted by the Board of Aldermen and Board of Com- 
 mon Council, of the city of Washington, that the sum of one 
 hundred and seventy-five dollars, be, and the same is hereby ap- 
 propriated, out of the general fund, to pay for the portrait of 
 Charles Fenton Mercer, painted by Chester Harding, under the 
 authority of the Act passed June the third, eighteen hundred and 
 twenty-nine. 
 
 Approved June ist, 1830.” 
 
 Charles Fenton Mercer was noted as a remarkable conversa- 
 tionalist, and as a speaker. Very many of his speeches are con- 
 tained in the Annals of Congress and in the Register of Debates. 
 He was also similarly noted in the House of Delegates of Vir- 
 ginia, and in the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829-30. 
 His most important speech was delivered in the latter body on 
 November 4th and 5th, 1829, and fills thirty pages of fine print in 
 the “Debates of the Convention” (pp. 174-204). His most nota- 
 ble paper in the Virginia House of Delegates was on “The Right 
 of Instruction,” and it was characterized by the late Professor 
 John B. Minor, for fifty years professor of law in the Univer- 
 sity of Virginia, as the ablest argument on this subject that he 
 had ever read. The Virginia Legislature, however, by a large 
 majority, sustained his opponent, Mr. B. W. Leigh. Mr. Mer- 
 cer’s substitute for Mr. Leigh’s resolution will be found in the 
 Journal of the House of Delegates for 1811-12, pp. 145-159, 
 folio, for February 19, 1812. In Mr. Mercer’s copy of this Jour- 
 nal, which is in my possession, will be found a note in his own 
 handwriting at the foot of p. 155: “All the learning here dis- 
 played will be found in one of Burgh’s disquisitions. It is quoted 
 verbatim, tho’ without acknowledgment, and is obviously misap- 
 plied.” 
 
 In the last year of his service in the Virginia Legislature, 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 43 
 
 (1816-17) Gen. Mercer presented a bill for organizing education 
 in Virginia, including a university, which passed the House of 
 Delegates in February, 1817, but was defeated in the Senate by a 
 tie vote in a slim House near the close of the session.’' Fie was 
 elected to Congress during that spring and took his seat in De- 
 cember, 1817, which prevented the further prosecution of this 
 effort to establish a university of Virginia, two years before the 
 charter was granted for the present university. In 1826, on oc- 
 casion of receiving the degree of LL. D. from Princeton College, 
 he delivered there an address on “Popular Education,” to which, 
 when printed, his bill of 1817 was attached.® It will also be found 
 in “Sundry Documents on the subject of a System of Public Edu- 
 cation for the State of Virginia, 1817.” A copy of this volume 
 will be found in the Library of the Johns Hopkins University, 
 Baltimore, Md- 
 
 Among other subjects of public interest that occupied his at- 
 tention, while in Congress, were efforts in behalf of the Ameri- 
 can Colonization Society and of the Colonization Society of Vir- 
 ginia, of which last, both he and his brother-in-law and cousin, 
 Hon. James Mercer Garnett, were Vice-Presidents in 1836. His 
 last visit to Europe in 1853 had for its object conferences with 
 prominent men in different countries on the abolition of the slave 
 trade, and he went as far as St. Petersburg in his travels. His 
 was a remarkable instance of a man of seventy-five years of age 
 undertaking such a journey in the prosecution of this philan- 
 thropic object. But for the officious agitation of the anti-slavery 
 societies of the thirties, it is highly probable that slavery would 
 have been gradually abolished in Virginia many years before the 
 war, and this cause of the war would have ceased to operate, for 
 many of the most prominent men in Virginia were opposed to 
 slavery, but were not to be forced into its abolition. In this 
 connection it may be mentioned that “In 1823, Charles Fenton 
 
 7 See my History of the University of Virginia, Vol. 1., pp. 43-47, 
 1899. 
 
 8 A copy of this speech and bill was in the Library of the Universtiy 
 of Virginia, but it was destroyed in the fire of October 27, 1895. 
 
44 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 Mercer had secured the passage through Congress of a resolu- 
 tion authorizing the President to enter into such an arrange- 
 ment” (i. e., relating to the rig-*ht of search), ‘'but the thing had 
 fallen through,” (Tyler’s ‘‘Letters and Times of the Tylers,” IT 
 230) ; and again, ‘‘It was C. F. Mercer, a Virginian, that secured 
 the passage through Congress of a resolution that proposed to con- 
 cede to Great Britain the mutual right of search of vessels sus- 
 pected of slave-trading {op. cit., II., 469, note 2).” Mr. Tyler 
 says further, ‘‘Virginians instituted the African Colonization So- 
 ciety.” Not only this, but they instituted the Virginia Coloniza- 
 tion Society, the beneficent work of which was interfered with 
 by the abolitionists of the North. 
 
 If people would mind their own business, and let other peo- 
 ple, whose more immediate concern it is, attend to theirs, the 
 world would get along better. The abolition of slavery zvithoiit a 
 war was not an impossible thing, but it was impossible as at- 
 tempted. 
 
 As a further illustration of Mr. Mercer’s ability as a speaker, 
 I quote from Sargent’s ‘‘Public Men and Events,” I., 92, refer- 
 ring to the dinner given to Lafayette by Congress on January 
 I, 1825: 
 
 ‘‘Mr. Clay spoke briefly, but with great feeling and eloquence. 
 
 Col Monroe, who was present less in his official character as 
 President than as an officer of the Revolution, responded by a 
 toast, but Mr. Charles Fenton Mercer enchained the attention of 
 the company, not only by his very eloquent remarks, but also by 
 relating many circumstances of the Revolutionary struggle, which 
 he must have obtained from General Washington and ‘Light- 
 Horse Harry’ Lee, who had both been his neighbors,” — although 
 not very near neighbors, but both were his correspondents. 
 
 As mentioned above, Gen. Washington had offered him, when 
 a young man, commissions of Lieutenant and Captain of cavalry, 
 but as he did not wish to devote himself to the profession of arms, 
 he declined them. His subsequent service in the war of 1812 was 
 in defence of his country. 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 45 
 
 Presentation of Sword to Gen. George Rogers Clark. 
 
 The following letter relating to the presentation of the second 
 sword to Gen. George Rogers Clark, by Charles Fenton Mercer, 
 will be found in English’s “Conquest of the Northwest, 1778-83, 
 and Life of George Rogers Clark,’’ (Vol. II., pp. 876-884,) to- 
 gether with the Act of the Virginia Legislature, February 20, 
 1812, (pp. 876-7). This Act was proposed by the Hon. Charles 
 Fenton Mercer, member from Loudoun County, Va. The letter of 
 Gen. C. F. Mercer to Joseph H. Hawkins, Esq., Lexington, Ky., 
 dated Richmond, Va., February 21, 1812, is given in English’s 
 book, (pp. 878-880) : “I have it in my power to communicate to 
 you one of the most interesting events which has occurred to me 
 in the course of my short public life. Our Legislature adjourned 
 this morning, and, in doing so, terminated the longest session 
 which we have had since the foundation of the Commonwealth. 
 Yesterday I asked leave to bring in a bill, to be entitled ‘a bill 
 concerning General George Rogers Clark.’ My object was to 
 secure him the half-pay of a colonel for the residue of his life, 
 and to replace the sword which had been given to him by this 
 State many years ago, and which, under an impression that Vir- 
 ginia had treated him with injustice, he had proudly broken and 
 thrown away- 
 
 Notwithstanding the nature of my request, the lateness of the 
 session, the prejudices always operating against the appropria- 
 tions of money, the speed with which the law must be hurried 
 through the two Houses, if it passed at all, I had the happiness 
 to secure its passage through both branches of the Legislature on 
 the same day. It was enrolled last night, and subscribed by our 
 Speakers to-day. I am sure this event will give you some part 
 of the satisfaction which I have enjoyed, and I therefore commu- 
 nicate it to you. I have just enclosed to Major Croghan a copy 
 of the law for General Clark. It announces to him that he is 
 entitled to draw from our treasury, when he pleases, the sum of 
 $400, and on the first day of January, ever after, a like amount. 
 
 It apprises him of the high sense which his native State enter- 
 tains of his integrity as a man, and his undaunted courage and 
 
46 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 consummate skill as a soldier ; and it informs him that the Gov- 
 ernor of this Commonwealth will have manufactured, at the arm- 
 ory of Virginia, a sword, with suitable devices engraved upon it, 
 and, when complete, will cause it to be presented to him, with an 
 expression of the condolence of the General Assembly of Vir- 
 ginia for his misfortunes, and their gratitude for his meritorious 
 services. I hope what I have done will meet with his approbation. 
 
 I should not have delayed it till so late a period of the session, 
 but the calamity which I have before mentioned [the death of his 
 brother, John Fenton Mercer], and other business, either en- 
 grossed my time for the last fortnight or incapacitated my mind 
 for any exertion, until yesterday; and I could not but resolve to 
 avail myself of the only opportunity I might ever have, of being 
 instrumental in the accomplishment of so signal an act of justice. 
 
 That General Clark’s feelings might not be hurt by the failure 
 of such an effort in his behalf, I implored the House to deny me 
 leave to bring in the bill which I read on the motion, unless it 
 would agree afterwards to pass it. Accordingly, on every ques- 
 tion to which it gave rise we had a majority, after the leave was 
 granted, of more than two-thirds of all the members present. 
 
 I could not forbear communicating to you what has interested 
 me so much as even to withdraw my imagination from the grave 
 of my poor brother. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 C- F. Mercer.” 
 
 The Act itself will be found in English’s “Conquest of the 
 Northwest, Vol. IL, pp. 876-7:” 
 
 “The law provided that, 
 
 ‘Whereas the General Assembly of Virginia have ever enter- 
 tained the highest respect for the unsullied integrity, the valor, 
 the military enterprises and skill of General George Rogers Clark, 
 to whom and to his gallant regiment, (aided by the justice of their 
 cause and the favor of heaven) the State of Virginia was in- 
 debted for the extension of her boundaries from the Atlantic to the 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 47 
 
 Mississippi ; and whereas the General Assembly have been in- 
 formed that the hand of misfortune has overtaken this veteran 
 chief, and that he, whose name was once a host, filling his friends 
 with confidence and his foes with dismay, is now himself a victim 
 of age and of disease, and a dependent on the bounty of his rela- 
 tives ; 
 
 “Be it therefore enacted, that the /governor of this common- 
 wealth shall be and is hereby authorized and requested to have 
 manufactured at the armory of this State, a sword, with suitable 
 devices engraved thereon, and to cause the same to be presented 
 to General George Rogers Clark, accompanied with an expression 
 of the gratitude and friendly condolence of the General Assembly 
 of Virginia. 
 
 “And he it further enacted, that General George Rogers Clark 
 shall be and is hereby placed on the list of pensioners and that he 
 shall receive annually from the public treasury one-half of the 
 full pay which he received as colonel of the Illinois regiment ; that 
 is, immediately after the passage of this Act, the sum of four 
 hundred dollars, and annually thereafter on the first day of Janu- 
 ary of every year, the sum of four hundred dollars ; and the audi- 
 tor of public accounts is required to issue his warrants therefor, 
 payable out of any money in the treasury.” 
 
 “This Act shall be in force from the passage thereof, Febru- 
 ary 20, 1812.” (See also Acts of 1811-12, Chapter CXI). 
 
 In the Journal of the House of Delegates for 1811-12, we find 
 the following under date of February 20, 1812, pp. 160-1 : 
 
 “On motion of Mr. Mercer, Ordered that leave be given to 
 bring in a bill 'concerning General George Rogers Clarke,’ and 
 that Messrs. Mercer, Anderson, (of Augusta) Leigh, (of Din- 
 widdie) Armistead, Purnall, Randolph, and Johnson do prepare 
 and bring in the same. The order of the day on the state of the 
 commonwealth was postponed until to-morrow- Mr. Mercer, ac- 
 cording to order, presented a bill ‘concerning General George 
 Rogers Clarke,’ which was received, read a first, and, on motion, 
 a second time, and ordered to be re-committed to the Committee 
 
48 Biographical Sketch 
 
 which brought it in. The said Committee having considered the 
 said bill, Mr. Mercer reported the same without amendment. 
 
 Ordered that the said bill be immediately engrossed and read 
 a third time. The same was accordingly engrossed and read a 
 third time, and several blanks therein were filled. 
 
 Resolved, that the bill do pass, and that the title be ‘an Act 
 concerning General George Rogers Clark. 
 
 Ordered, that the Ayes and Noes on the passage of the said 
 bill be inserted in the Journal.. 
 
 The names of those who voted in the affirmative are Messrs. 
 
 (See Journal) — 83. And the names of those who voted 
 
 in the negative are Messrs. (See Journal) — 33. 
 
 On motion of Mr. Jesse, seconded by Mr. Mercer, 
 
 Ordered, that Mr- Mercer carry the said bill to the Senate and 
 request their concurrence.” 
 
 These extracts from the Journal of the House of Delegates 
 are taken, from Mr. Mercer’s own copy of this Journal, be- 
 queathed to me by him. Later Mr. Mercer presented to Gen. 
 Clark this sword in person. 
 
 As stated above, Mr. Mercer served in the Legislature of 
 Virginia from 1810 to 1817, when he was elected to the United 
 States Congress, and served from 1817 to 1840, when he resigned 
 his seat to accept the position of cashier of a bank in Tallahassee, 
 Florida, and that necessitated his removal from the State. His 
 service in the Legislature will be found recorded in the Journals 
 and Acts, some of which have been mentioned above. His service 
 in Congress will be found recorded in the Annals of Congress 
 and in the Register of Debates, to which reference is made. As 
 these volumes will be found in the public libraries, it is unneces- 
 sary to go into details. The indexes to these volumes will facili- 
 tate convenience of reference. A few of his most important 
 speeches are mentioned below- 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 49 
 
 Extracts from Hon. C. F. Mercer’s speech on Internal Im- 
 provements, Thursday, March 12, 1818, Annals of Congress, 15th 
 Congress, ist Session, Vol. I., 1817-1818, columns 1284 f¥. 
 
 “Mr. Mercer, of Virginia, rose and addressed the commit- 
 tee, as follows : “* * * gut my honorable colleague, who 
 
 has just addressed you, (Mr. Hugh Nelson) has ardently en- 
 deavored to interpose a yet more formidable obstacle to the adop- 
 ticr of these resolutions. He has gallantly unfurled the ancient 
 banner of his party, and sought to rally his Republican forces 
 on the side of the Executive. He has reminded them of their an- 
 cient victories, and summoned them to the same field of triumph — 
 a triumph of the States over the Federal Constitution. He de- 
 rives his principles, he tells us, from the resolutions of the Vir- 
 ginia Legislature, and the argument of Mr. Madison, to which 
 he ascribes what he is pleased to call, the glorious Revolution of 
 1798. It is, perhaps, common to the inhabitants of every State 
 in this wide-spread Union, nay, to every people on the habitable 
 globe — it is certainly imputed to us — that we pride ourselves on 
 the land which gave us birth ; and I cannot refuse to acknowl- 
 edge the glow of feeling which mounted to my cheek, when my 
 colleague thus swelled the political consequence of Virginia in 
 the councils of the Union- But I too, Mr. Chairman, have some 
 recollection of the times of which we have been just reminded ; 
 and, in spite of all my native sensibility, I am driven to other 
 causes than those assigned by my honorable colleague, to account 
 for the political revolution of that day. I no more ascribe it to the 
 argument of Mr. Madison than I should the origin of the wind to 
 the weathercock which indicates its present course ; or the im- 
 pulse and direction of the passing current to the feather which 
 floats upon its surface. 
 
 The basis of that argument, that the States are parties to the 
 Federal Constitution, is not only unsound in fact, but inconsistent 
 alike with the preamble of the Constitution, and with the doc- 
 trines of the Federalist, that able defence of it to which the 
 author of this celebrated argument so largely contributed, and of 
 which he now shares the glory with his illustrious associates. The 
 
50 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 very resolutions which this argument was designed to sustain, 
 held out to the nation as objects of wasteful extravagance in 
 themselves, and of alarm in their consequences, a navy consisting 
 of a few frigates, an army of half the extent of that which now 
 makes the military posts that encircle and guard our territory. 
 The political revolution, of which the honorable member has so 
 triumphantly boasted, began in opposition to the Federal Consti- 
 tution, was accelerated by the French Revolution; was stayed for 
 a while, indeed, by the great but declining influence of General 
 ^^^ashington, whose administration it often shook to its base ; 
 and finally vanquished a disunited party, guided by discordant, 
 rash, and improvident counsels.” 
 
 Speech of C. F. ]\Iercer on the Seminole war, Annals of Con- 
 gress, 15th Congress, 2d session, ^^ol. I., 1818-19; cols. 819 et 
 scq., Januar}-, 1819: 
 
 “The general order of the 29th of April [1816], commanding 
 the immediate execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, uncon- 
 demned even to this da)', nay, more than tacitly approved, is, IMr. 
 Chairman, a stain on the records of the judicial proceedings of this 
 nation, to the insecurity of the honor and life of every officer 
 and soldier of the armies of the U- S., and of every citi- 
 zen of America who may be legally, or otherwise, subjected 
 to the judgment of a court-martial, a proceeding which im- 
 periously calls for the interposition of the authority of Con- 
 gress, in order that, instead of being converted into a precedent 
 for future imitation, it may be shunned as an object of abhor- 
 rence. Sir, it is no little cause of alarm to behold the highest 
 military court of criminal justice, which should be the shield of 
 innocence, converted into a rod of oppression. While I listened 
 with equal attention and delight to the eloquent and able argu- 
 ment of m)" honorable friend from New York, I thought that even 
 he underrated the security which a military court is designed to 
 afford to an innocent prisoner. I thought he supposed that a 
 militaiw judge was not sworn to discharge the duties of his of- 
 fice with fidelity and impartiality. [ISIr. Storrs arose to explain. 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 51 
 
 He had remarked, he said, that the charges were not sworn to on 
 which a prisoner was arrested]. I misunderstood my honorable 
 friend, said Mr. Mercer ; but even here the charge must be sanc- 
 tioned by the honor of an officer. A general court-martial derives 
 its appointment from the sound discretion of the highest military 
 authority in an army ; its sentence is inoperative until it receives 
 his approbation, and any officer who should seek, by the instru- 
 mentality of such a court, to gratify secret resentment or malig- 
 nity, would render himself odious to his whole corps. The in- 
 genuity of my honorable colleague (Mr. Smyth) will in vain at- 
 tempt to discover an analogy between this trial and any event in 
 the judicial history of this nation. The board of officers who re- 
 ported Major Andre to be a spy were not constituted a court- 
 •nartial, but, if they had been, their sentence was not disregarded. 
 The gentleman will turn in vain to the annals of the Revolution 
 for a precedent to extenuate the enormity of this whole pro- 
 ceeding. 
 
 We have been asked, "whence this sympathy for two British 
 prisoners?” Sir, my sympathy is not with them, but with our 
 violated laws. The people have seated us by the foundation of 
 justice, and charged us to preserve its purity from contamination. 
 Extraordinary and alarming as are the doctrines of martial law 
 maintained in this debate, there is yet some consolation in per- 
 ceiving that our opponents have deemed it necessary to take a 
 double ground; and, lest the judgment of the court-martial should 
 not sustain the execution of the prisoners, they have resorted to 
 the broad right of retaliation — which brings me to the last propo- 
 sition that I undertook to maintain — that the accustomed clem- 
 ency of this nation, manifested in all former wars, has been dis- 
 regarded in the late Seminole campaign, by the execution in cold 
 blood of unresisting captives, subjected to our arms by the chance 
 of war. Without inquiring into the manner in which the two 
 Suwanee chiefs were decoyed into our grasp by the use of the 
 British flag, or Arbuthnot was dragged from beneath the protec- 
 tion of the neutral flag of Spain, acts which, coupled with the 
 l ucceeding tragedy, imbrue its closing scene with deeper horror — 
 I utterly protest against the implication which has been made 
 
52 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 of the exploded usages of war to justify these barbarities. Nor 
 will I distinguish between the treatment of our Indian and white 
 prisoners — a distinction which, until this debate, was never 
 heard within the councils, nor known until the late Seminole war, 
 in the practice of this nation, or of any of the numerous States 
 of which it is composed. The doctrine that Ambrister was not 
 entitled to be regarded as a prisoner of war, because he had no 
 commission from his own sovereign, would have equally applied, 
 as the select committee have remarked, to the most distinguished 
 officers of our Revolution ; men to whom the venerable Congress 
 of that day voted statues and monuments, and whom our enemy, 
 in all the pride of his power, dared not but respect. 
 
 The other doctrine of my honorable colleague, (Mr. Smyth) 
 that Ambrister had no commission from the Indian nation, to 
 which he united his arms, is disproved by an authority which he 
 himself will admit — by the charge to which the prisoner plead- 
 [ed] guilty, and upon which he was condemned to be shot by his 
 prcsecutor; the charge of leading and commanding the Lower 
 Creek Indians in carrying on a war against the United States — 
 unless, indeed, it be contended that he commanded and led his 
 forces without their consent. The crime of aiding, abetting, and 
 comforting them, on which the remaining charge was founded, 
 is evidently merged in the heavier accusation to w'hich he plead- 
 [edl guilty, and which he sought at least to justify. And if, sir, 
 the war was defensive on the part of those unhappy Indians, a 
 justification more complete in all its parts could not be well 
 imagined. The benefit of that justification would alike be ex- 
 tended to Arbuthnot, a mere trader in the usual subjects of Indian 
 commerce, since they have laid down the bow and arrow, and re- 
 sorted for subsistence as well as security to the musket and rifle, 
 if he had not, in fact, discountenanced their resistance of a force 
 that he saw must overwhelm them.” 
 
 [Lack of space will not permit further extracts from Mr. Mer- 
 cer’s speeches in Congress.] 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 53 
 
 Chesapeake and Otiio Canal- 
 
 About six years after Mr. Mercer entered Congress he be- 
 came interested in the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal project. An 
 accorint of this project will be found in the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
 versity Historical Studies, Series XVII, Nos. 9, 10, ii, for Sep- 
 tember, October and November, 1899, by Dr. George W. Ward, 
 to which I would refer for Mr. Mercer’s connection with the 
 Canal. 
 
 The friends of the scheme held a meeting in Leesburg, Va., 
 August 25, 1823, and adjourned to meet in the Capitol, at Wash- 
 ington, on November 7th, at which meeting Mr. Mercer offered 
 the following preamble and resolution : 
 
 “Whereas, a connection of the Atlantic and Western waters by 
 a canal, leading from the seat of the National Government to 
 the river Ohio, regarded as a local object, is one of the highest 
 importance to the States immediately interested therein, and con- 
 sidered in a national view, is of inestimable consequence to the 
 future union, security and happiness of the United States, 
 
 Resolved, that it is expedient to substitute for the present de- 
 fective navigation of the Potomac river, above tide-water, a navi- 
 gable canal from Gumberland to the coal banks at the Eastern 
 base of the Alleghany, and to extend such canal, as soon there- 
 after as practicable, to the highest constant steamboat navigation 
 of the Monongahela or Ohio river.” (See speech of C. F. Mer- 
 cer, Convention of 1823, and his later speech in Proceedings of 
 the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Convention in 1823 and 1826)- 
 
 The company was finally organized on June 20, 1828, by the 
 election of Mr. Charles Fenton Mercer as President and six 
 directors. Dr. Ward says (p. 88, note) ; “Mr. Mercer had been 
 the moving spirit in the Leesburg meeting, the first public meet- 
 ing held in the interest of the canal project. From that time for- 
 ward few, if any, had labored so persistently or so effectively as 
 he. His presidency continued for five years, lacking fifteen days. 
 For the period of Federal interest and encouragement, about ten 
 years, Mr. Mercer was the soul of the project.” 
 
54 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 The ceremonies attending the breaking of ground for this 
 canal were very elaborate, and were marked by an appropriate 
 oration from President Adams on July 4, 1828. (See Niles’s 
 Register, XXXIV, 325-8, and letters referred to by Dr. Ward, 
 p. 91, ad fin.) 
 
 Lack of space will not permit a more particular account of the 
 canal, for which reference must be made to Dr. Ward’s pamph- 
 let. Suffice it to say that the chartering of the Baltimore and 
 Ohio R. R. and the resulting controversy, interfered very much 
 with the progress of the canal. Mr. Mercer had written in 
 November, 1828: “We shall in the next year reach the mouth of 
 the Shenandoah ; in three years from the stroke which the Presi- 
 dent first struck for us, Cumberland but he was too sanguine. 
 After the election of Jackson there came a reaction. He opposed 
 the construction of internal improvements by the Federal govern- 
 ment, and when this support was withdrawn, the original pro- 
 ject collapsed. The company’s appreciation of Mr. Mercer’s 
 labors was shown by “the vote of thanks and the present of 
 $5,000 made to the President of the company when his connec- 
 tion with it was terminated by the influence of Gen’l. Jackson 
 and the vote of the stockholders-” (See ante, “Materials for Life 
 of C. F. Mercer”). Canals cannot compete with railroads as a 
 means of transportation, and the C. & O. Canal led but a strug- 
 gling existence until its final collapse. 
 
 While Gen. Mercer was resident in Florida, an effort was 
 made by the friends of agriculture, in which his brother-in-law, 
 Hon. James Mercer Garnett, was greatly interested, to form a 
 National Society of Agriculture. A list of the officers was pub- 
 lished in the National Intelligeneer, of May ii, 1842, and from 
 this list we find that James M. Garnett was chosen President, and 
 among the Vice-Presidents were Hon. R. J. Walker, of Missis- 
 sippi, Amos Kendall, of the District of Columbia, and C. F. 
 Mercer of Florida. At the meeting of the convention for organi- 
 zation the )'ear before, Mr. Garnett had been appointed Chair- 
 man of the committee to draft a constitution, and his address 
 appeared in the National Intelligencer, of December 21, 1841. 
 He was chosen President to serve until May, 1842, and then re- 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 55 
 
 elected, but he died in April, 1843, before the expiration of his 
 term of office.® 
 
 After a few years spent in Tallahassee, Florida, Gen. Mercer 
 visited the Republic of Texas, in the colonization of which he had 
 become interested. Here he made a contract with that Republic 
 for the settlement of so many families for which he was to receive 
 so much land. He fulfilled his part of the contract, but never 
 received the land. After the annexation of Texas the United 
 States fell heir to the engagements of the Republic of Texas, but, 
 after a long litigation, the suit was finally decided against Gen- 
 Mercer and his co-partners in this colonization scheme. While 
 engaged in looking after his interests in Texas, he was taken very 
 seriously ill in New Orleans and it became necessary for the 
 writer’s father to visit New Orleans in the effort to nurse him 
 back to health, in which effort he was finally successful 
 
 As Gen. Mercer had given up his position in Tallahassee, he 
 concluded to settle near the mouth of the Kentucky river, not far 
 from Prestonville, opposite Carrollton, where he built a large 
 mansion. The writer and his family spent with him from August, 
 1851, to February, 1852, there, when the writer’s father, having 
 received employment on what was then known as the North Caro- 
 lina Central R- R., running from Goldsboro to Charlotte, the 
 family removed to Hillsboro, North Carolina. Gen. Mercer con- 
 tinued his residence in Kentucky until the following year, when 
 he sold his property there and went to Europe in the interest of 
 the discontinuance of the African slave trade. On his return to 
 this country, he made his home with his relatives, the children of 
 his niece, daughter of the Hon. James Mercer Garnett and the 
 first wife of the Rev. John P. McGuire, Rector of the Episcopal 
 High School of Virginia. The writer was at that time a student 
 in the University of Virginia, but on the suspension of lectures 
 there owing to the prevalence of typhoid fever in that institu- 
 tion, he came to the Episcopal High School to aid in nursing his 
 
 9 I am indebted for these and other particulars relating to this Society, 
 taken from the 'National Intelligencer, to Mr. Henry Barrett Learned, of 
 New Haven, Conn. He it was who sent me the item mentioned above 
 relating to Hon. C. F. Mercer. 
 
56 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 great-uncle- On the resumption of lectures in the University, he 
 returned to his studies, and his father took his place as nurse. 
 This was on May i, 1858, and Gen. Mercer died on May 4th, 
 nearly eighty years of age, and was buried at Leesburg, Virginia. 
 
 Few, if any, members of Congress from Virginia have equalled 
 him in continuous length of service. 
 
 His first election was contested by Hon. Armistead T. Mason, 
 but the contest was decided in Gen. Mercer’s favor by the House 
 of Representatives. The circumstances connected with this elec- 
 tion led to the issue of a pamphlet by Gen. Mercer, entitled 
 “Controversy between Armistead Thompson Mason and Charles 
 Fenton Mercer, Washington, January 19, 1818.” 
 
 Gen. Mercer was small in stature and stout in proportion to 
 his height. He entered the Junior Class at Princeton College 
 in 1795, at seventeen years of age, graduating in 1797, after 
 which he spent three more years there studying law and prepar- 
 ing himself in history and general literature- He inherited a 
 talent for speaking from his father. Judge James Mercer, first 
 a judge of the General Court, and afterwards a judge of the 
 Court of Appeals of five judges in Virginia.^® 
 
 As showing Judge Mercer’s contemporary reputation, I find 
 in Mr. Wm. Wirt Henry’s “Life of Patrick Henry, L, 315,” 
 mention of the Committees of Safety appointed by the Conven- 
 tions of August and December, 1775, in both of which Judge 
 Mercer served; the Committee of the Convention of May, 1776, 
 “to prepare a Declaration of Rights and 'a Plan of Govern- 
 ment,” on which James Mercer was third on a committee of 
 thirty-two members ; a letter of John Augustine Washington to 
 R. H. Lee, dated May 15, 1776, in which Mr. Washington men- 
 tions him along with Henry and Mason as “among our best 
 speakers and as the leaders of the bar of the General Court in 
 1769, Pendleton, Randolph, Wythe, Nicholas, Mercer, Jeffer- 
 son, and Thomson Mason ; “all were men of eminence in their 
 profession.” 
 
 10 See my pamphlet on Judge James- Mercer reprinted from the Wil- 
 liam and Mary College Quarterly for October, 1908, and January, 1909. 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 57 
 
 Further, in Mr. Gaillard Hunt’s “Life of James Madison,’’ 
 page 3, we find, “According to Edmund Randolph (Ms. History 
 of Virginia), who was one of the few young members, those of 
 the convention [of 1776] who were most in the public eye, be- 
 side Mason, Pendleton and Henry, were James Mercer, Robert 
 Carter Nicholas, Richard Bland, Thomas Ludwell Lee, Richard 
 Henry Lee, George Wythe, John Blair and James Madison, Jr. 
 hence Gen. Mercer’s ability as a speaker came by inheritance. 
 
 The Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829-30. 
 
 While Gen. Mercer was in Congress, he was chosen a mem- 
 ber of the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829-30, from 
 the district composed of Loudoun and Fairfax counties. Each 
 district was entitled to four delegates, and those elected from 
 this district were James Monroe, ex-President, of Loudoun, who 
 was afterwards made President of the Convention ; Charles F. 
 Mercer, of Loudoun ; William H. Fitzhugh, of Fairfax, and 
 Richard H. Henderson, of Loudoun. In choosing delegates 
 ■“there was no restriction in the right of selection, either as to 
 the office which was held, or as to the place where the delegate 
 resided.” Ex-President Madison was a delegate from Orange 
 County, and Chief Justice Marshall, from Richmond city, and 
 when ex-President Monroe was made President of the Conven- 
 tion, Messrs. Madison and Marshall conducted him to the chair. 
 A committee of one member from each of the twenty-four 
 Senatorial districts was appointed to consider amendments to the 
 Constitution, and on this Committee, Mr. Mercer represented the 
 Loudoun district. Ex-President Madison was Chairman of this 
 committee, but, owing to his feeble health, Mr. Mercer fre- 
 quently acted as such. A part of Mr. Mercer’s speech on the 
 basis of suffrage follows: 
 
58 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 Proceedings and Debates of the Virginia 
 Convention of 1829-30 — pp. 174-183. 
 
 “Mr. Mercer then addressed the committee: 
 
 In casting himself on the indulgence of the committee, in the 
 present stage of the interesting debate by which its attention 
 had been so long occupied, Mr. Mercer said, he labored under 
 the influence of feelings which he had not language to convey, and 
 the expression of which he feared would disqualify him for the 
 arduous task which he had undertaken to perform. The senti- 
 ment first at his heart was, that the depending question might ter- 
 minate in a result propitious to the union and happiness of the 
 whole Commonwealth. While desirous of extending to the peo- 
 ple of the West a just participation in the political power of the 
 government, a power proportioned to their relative numbers, 
 he entered upon the present discussion with no unfriendly feel- 
 ing towards the East. Such a feeling would be equally at war 
 with all his recollections and all his hopes. His cradle was 
 rocked by the margin of the placid tide, though Providence had 
 placed his dwelling by the side of the mountain torrent. He had 
 not a drop of kindred blood flowing in the veins of any living 
 being that did not warm the heart of some lowland man, or low- 
 land woman. He came into this Convention not to assert the 
 power of one portion of the State to control the other, but with 
 a fixed determination to uphold the rights and interests of all, 
 on the broad and solid basis of those great principles of political 
 liberty which our forefathers had at all times struggled to main- 
 tain. Emphatically might he say this, and vouch this assem- 
 bly itself for his proof. Through what channel, he asked, did the 
 resolution of the Legislative Committee, now in discussion, reach 
 this Convention ? By what hand was the report of that Committee 
 presented in this Hall ? By that hand, which, more than any 
 other now in being, had contributed to trace the outline and lay 
 the foundation of the great structure of our free institutions 
 [Mr. Madison]. By whom had the principles of this report been 
 just sustained? By his illustrious co-patriot, who, alone, of this 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 59 
 
 assembly, had enjoyed the high honor of consecrating those 
 principles by his blood [Mr. Monroe]. 
 
 We are charged with asserting new and impracticable doc- 
 trines. Behold the proof of this allegation. Are they not 
 on the principles, if the term may now be allowed him, of 
 every Bill or Declaration of Rights of every State in this Union, 
 which has framed a Constitution since our glorious Revolution? 
 Are they not sanctioned by the concurrent voice of the wisest 
 statesmen, and the purest patriots, on both sides of the Atlantic? 
 Are they not the principles of the father of English metaphysics 
 and champion of British liberty — the immortal Locke? Are the}'- 
 not the principles for which Milton successfully contended 
 against the united power of political and ecclesiastical tyranny ; 
 and for which, in a still earlier age, the noble Sidney bled? 
 
 Could this question be tried without prejudice, its issue 
 would not long be doubtful. The very process by which our 
 assailants seek to over-power us, affords sufficient evidence of 
 the strength of our cause. Principles must be true which can be 
 successfully controverted only by such arguments — arguments in- 
 vented and most ably enforced, by gentlemen inured to the habits 
 of a profession which, above all others, teaches its professors 
 how to discover, to touch, and to move all the secret springs of 
 the human heart. What are the prejudices which seek to ob- 
 struct our better judgment on the present occasion? Some are 
 too obvious to elude our perception, and must be dissipated when 
 approached. The eloquent member from Chesterfield [B. W. 
 Leigh] proclaims with seeming regret that, between the dis- 
 trict [Loudoun], which I have the honor, in part, to represent, 
 and the western counties of Virginia there are no longer any 
 Pyrenees. From Ashby’s Gap to the Potomac, the Blue Ridge, 
 he tells us, has disappeared. This illusion of his own imagina- 
 tion the honorable member infers from the sympathy subsisting 
 in the present contest between the people of Loudoun and their 
 fellow-citizens of the West. To the other districts, on the east- 
 ern face of the Blue Ridge, which espouse the same side of this 
 cause with my constituents, and obviously for the same reason. 
 
6o 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 he liberally awards the praise of magnanimity which he denies 
 to them. 
 
 Might he not have more impartially accounted for the zeal 
 of Loudoun for a Convention from the notorious fact that, while 
 she pays into the public treasury twenty times the amount of 
 taxes paid by the county of Warwick, and has more than six- 
 and-twenty times the free white population of Warwick, she 
 has but the same political weight in the House of Delegates 
 under the Constitution of Government which this Convention 
 has been deputed to amend. That twenty-six freemen of Lou- 
 doun have, in this branch of the Legislature, the weight of but 
 one freeman of Warwick. 
 
 But the honorable member, disregarding this inequality, has 
 found the origin of the present Convention in splendid schemes of 
 internal improvement, to which the constitutional scruples mani- 
 fested by Virginia in the councils of the Union, oppose a barrier 
 that the new distribution of political power sought to be effected 
 by the resolution in debate, will enable the West to prostrate. 
 In that ardent zeal which had prompted so many other gentlemen, 
 as well as the member from Chesterfield, to impute to the friends 
 of a Convention, local, selfish and sordid motives for their pres- 
 ent union of council, they have forgotten much, and, in part, 
 the history of our Legislation on this subject. 
 
 Internal improvement — the cause of this Convention ! Who, 
 until the second day of March, 1817, had ever heard of an ob- 
 jection started to the constitutional power of the Federal Gov- 
 ernment to aid, by the resources of the Union, the efforts of the 
 States to construct roads, or canals of general interest? A few 
 days only prior to this period, a resolution, recommended by the 
 unanimous report of the Board of Public Works, passed both 
 branches of the General Assembly, with like unanimity, to re- 
 quest of the Government of the United States pecuniary aid in 
 promoting the then contemplated junction of the Eastern and 
 Western waters of Virginia by the James and Kanawha rivers. 
 A similar resolution had passed the House of Delegates without 
 opposition at the preceding session of 1815. It was, however, 
 near the close of that session, on the eighth of February, 1816, 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 6i 
 
 that a bill to take the sense of the people on the propriety of call- 
 ing a Convention first received the sanction of a majority of the 
 House of Delegates, and that majority embraced both the dele- 
 gates from Loudoun [Noland and Mercer]. 
 
 This bill was afterwards lost at its third reading; but a simi- 
 lar one finally passed the House of Delegates with the co-opera- 
 tion of the Loudoun delegation during the succeeding winter, 
 and more than a month before the President’s message, of the 
 2nd of March, 1817, had excited a doubt in the public mind of the 
 constitutional authority of Congress to aid the several States in 
 the construction of works of internal improvement- A State fund 
 for roads and canals had been already created, and was in suc- 
 cessful operation. How, then, can it be candidly maintained that 
 the efforts so steadily prosecuted, to amend the Constitution of 
 Virginia by a Convention, sprung from those impediments which 
 this Commonwealth has since thrown in the path of internal im- 
 provement, whether by withholding from that object her own 
 resources, or restraining the application of those of the Union? 
 
 He would, said Mr. Mercer, proceed one step farther and, to 
 refute this charge, very briefly state a few of the reasons which 
 prompted the fruitless effort to obtain a Convention in 1815, and 
 which have since been more successfully urged. Among the most 
 prominent of those reasons was that very inequality of repre- 
 sentation which has given rise to this debate, and which so 
 shocks every feeling of political justice that no argument has 
 yet been heard in its vindication. Another grievance, then, also, 
 pressing on the public consideration, was the overgrown and 
 disproportionate numbers of the House of Delegates. 
 
 When our forefathers penned the present Constitution, there 
 were about 140 members in that House ; and they chose twenty- 
 four as a suitable proportion for the number of the Senate, a 
 body designed not only to revise the acts of the popular branch 
 of the Legislature, but to constitute a check on the possible ambi- 
 tion of its leaders. But while the Senate, by the constitutional 
 limitation of its numbers, has been stationary, the House of 
 Delegates has been extended, from time to time, by the multi- 
 plication of counties, to 214. More than seventy members have 
 
62 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 been thus added to the numbers of the Legislature during a 
 period in which the territory of the Commonwealth has been 
 greatly reduced. For, from the County of Illinois, wrested from 
 Great Britain in 1779, by the forces of the Commonwealth under 
 the command of the gallant Clark, and ceded in 1784 to the 
 United States, no less than three States to the East, and one 
 to the West of the Mississippi, have arisen. The county of 
 Youghiogania, once represented on this floor, now supplies no 
 less than eight counties to Western Pennsylvania; Kentucky has 
 been erected into a separate State ; and, along our Southern 
 border. North Carolina has a slip of our former territory, be- 
 ginning at a point on the Atlantic, and gradually widening to- 
 wards the Cumberland mountain. 
 
 While a reduction of the sphere of Legislation recommended 
 a correspondent limitation of the numbers of the Legislative 
 body, the progressive augmentation of its annual expenditure 
 merited regard. In 1810, the entire cost of this Department of 
 the Government did not exceed 50,000 dollars a year. It has, 
 since, mounted up to more than twice that sum. 
 
 To restore the original proportion between the two branches 
 of the General Assembly, and to prevent a still further augmen- 
 tation of the number of the House of Delegates, a measure re- 
 quired by no State necessity, and forbid by a due regard to 
 economy, was always in the scope of that Gonstitutional reform 
 contemplated by the friends of a Convention- 
 
 The abolition of the Council of State was another of their 
 objects. Economy condemned this worse than useless appendage 
 to the Executive, which, in destroying its unity, impaired both its 
 vigor and responsibility. A feeble Chief Magistrate is but the 
 tool of his Council, while to an able and unprincipled Governor 
 they serve as a cloak. 
 
 The friends of a Convention, with but few if any exceptions, 
 had another and more aggravated cause of complaint. Is there 
 a member of this body who thinks that the right of suffrage now 
 rests on a proper basis? Who would not, if disposed to restrict 
 its exercise to a freehold qualification, substitute for quantity 
 a valuation of the land required to confer a vote? Should a 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 63 
 
 freeholder be allowed to exercise the right of suffrage on fifty 
 acres of land situated upon the summit of a barren mountain, 
 where the crow would not build her nest, while this right is with- 
 held from the proprietor of a farm of twenty-four acres in some 
 fertile valley, which with its improvements may be worth as many 
 thousand dollars? In one of the most flourishing townships of 
 Connecticut, a territory of more than twenty square miles, there 
 is not a farm exceeding twenty-five acres in dimensions, the mini- 
 mum estate which the present Constitution annexes to the right 
 of suffrage without regard to its value. 
 
 Are we then, Mr. Chairman, with these apologies, to be re- 
 garded as coming here in the prosecution of schemes of narrow 
 and sordid speculation? May I not pronounce such a charge to 
 be the offspring of prejudice, and say that it is repelled by the 
 history of the proceedings which have led to this Convention? 
 
 There is yet another of analogous birth which remains to be 
 refuted before I proceed with my enquiry into the expediency 
 of the proposed amendment of the gentleman from Culpeper 
 [Mr. Green]. 
 
 It has been more than insinuated, that, by the transfer of 
 political power from the Eastern to the Western portion of the 
 Commonwealth, the friends of a Convention design to shake the 
 ascendancy of certain political doctrines, supposed to be essential 
 to the rights of this Commonwealth as a member of the Union. 
 
 If this transfer is required by political justice, how poor a 
 compliment does this insinuation pay to the rights which it thus 
 seeks to defend? 
 
 But of the members of the Virginia Delegation in Congress 
 residing to the West of the Blue Ridge, how few are there who 
 differ from a majority of the people of the State in construing 
 the Constitution of the United States, to say nothing of the gen- 
 tlemen on this floor, from the counties below the mountain, who 
 are alike advocates for the strictest construction of that instru- 
 ment, and for a thorough amendment of our Constitution of the 
 State Government? 
 
 His venerable colleague [Mr. Monroe], said Mr. M., had 
 successfully repelled other prejudices which, if not utterly un- 
 
64 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 founded, might prove of fatal influence to the object of the Con- 
 vention, and he now came to the consideration of the real propo- 
 sition before the Committee. 
 
 The resolution of the Legislative Committee proposes to make 
 the white population of the Commonwealth exclusively the basis 
 of the apportionment of representation in the House of Dele- 
 gates- It is moved by the member from Culpeper to rest such 
 apportionment on white population and taxation combined. After 
 the most laborious attention to all the arguments as well of -the 
 mover of this amendment, as of the gentlemen who had sus- 
 tained him, Mr. M. said he was at a loss to know how this com- 
 bination was to be effected — in what proportions population and 
 taxation were to be combined. If that of perfect equality, then 
 what description of taxes were to be balanced against the rights 
 of the freemen of Virginia? Shall one of the compounds be de- 
 lermined by taxing all the property of every citizen, visible and 
 invisible? To this, almost insuperable objections might be urged, 
 some of which had been forcibly pointed out by the member from 
 Northampton [Mr. Upshur]. If visible property only shall be 
 taxed, is all that a man possesses to be comprehended, moveable 
 and immoveable? If one description only, or a portion only of 
 each, which, or what part, and by what rule or ratio of numbers, 
 quality or of value? Is it practicable to form this combined basis, 
 and to impart to it the simplicity, the stability, to say nothing of 
 its intrinsic justice or propriety, which should, in a Constitution 
 of Government designed to be perpetual, form the ground-work 
 of the representation of the people? 
 
 The author of the proposed amendment, since he designed to 
 give property a certain practicable weight in the Government, 
 would more readily accomplish his purpose by constituting as its 
 measure wealth for taxation, the thing taxed for the tax itself. 
 This change of the basis of representation, in terms, would not 
 alter the principles on which its justice and propriety rest, and 
 both parties would, by such conversion, be enabled better to com- 
 prehend the precise end, as well as the practicability, of the pro- 
 posed amendment. 
 
 For the sake of my own argument at least, I purpose making 
 
MINIATURE OB' 
 
 HON. CHARLES FENTON MERCER. 
 
 Now ;n the possession of his great niece, Miss Ella J, 
 (xarnett, sister of the Author. 
 
Vr 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 65 
 
 this substitution of wealth itself for that which is its measure, 
 in any equal system of taxation. Wealth the basis of representa- 
 tion ! It is proposed, indeed, to combine it with numbers, but the 
 quality of the subject must follow it through every possible com- 
 bination, and what is true of it as a simple, may be affirmed of 
 it as an ingredient of any compound basis of representation of 
 which it may become an element. 
 
 Was wealth, then, ever before proposed in America, except in 
 South Carolina, to be made the foundation of political power 
 in the popular branch of a Government professing to be free? 
 An oligarchy this may be, open to all bidders for power ; but if 
 not an oligarchy, I have no conception of the import of the term. 
 
 And why prefer wealth, if equality of right be disregarded 
 among the freemen of Virginia? 
 
 In savage life, mere personal qualities, as strength, courage, 
 confer distinction, and not without reason. The term in our lan- 
 guage which denotes the perfection of moral worth, is borrowed 
 from latin virtus, which originally signified strength, that quality 
 of man which barbarians esteem the first of virtues, because 
 among them the most useful. In the rudest as the wisest nations, 
 age has its claims to veneration, of which my feelings, in this 
 assembly, hourly remind me- To wisdom, all men yield respect ; 
 and as society grows older, birth asserts its more questionable 
 claims to our homage, and learns at last to back them by 
 authority. Wealth comes last of all, to buy power and distinc- 
 tion, and if I must cease to be a freeman, ’tis the very last 
 dominion to which I will ever bow my neck. If I must choose 
 between the aristocracy of birth or fortune, I do not hesitate a 
 moment which to prefer. Had I not better trust my liberty, if 
 I must have a master, to the descendant of honest parents, who 
 may be presumed to have reared and educated their offspring 
 with care and tenderness, than to a man I do not know, for his 
 mere riches? If the latter be obtained by sudden acquisition, or 
 by secret or unknown means, I should think it incumbent on their 
 possessor, if he claimed my confidence, and much more, if my 
 obedience, to show that he himself had honestly acquired his 
 title. 
 
66 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 To the argument of my friend from Frederick, (Mr. Cooke) 
 that wealth would protect itself, the gentleman from Northamp- 
 ton, (Mr. Upshur) had replied, that it could do so only by cor- 
 ruption, by the employment only of the basest means. And shall 
 representation be based on wealth? (Here Mr. Upshur ex- 
 plained). Mr. M. said he had not misunderstood the eloquent 
 member from Northampton, though he could not do justice to his 
 former language, nor had the gentleman himself done so in his 
 explanation. If unexceptionable in all other respects, wealth 
 (Mr. M. said) would be found in all countries too fickle a basis 
 of representation for a distribution of political power, designed 
 to balance the interests of individuals, or of distinct portions even 
 of the same community. Individual wealth! Who can fix it? 
 He who can stop the ever-revolving wheel of fortune. National 
 wealth is subject, though not in the same degree, to like uncer- 
 tainty. Of what does that of Virginia consist? Chiefly of lands 
 and slaves. No estimate of the value of the 450,000 slaves of 
 Virginia accompanies the Auditor’s Report. The lands of the 
 Commonwealth were valued in 1817 at 206,000.000 of dollars. 
 What are they now worth? Half that sum? He had carefully 
 sought, throughout the Convention, for information to correct the 
 results of his own observation, within late years, as to the change 
 of the value of lands in Virginia. After all his enquiries, he 
 believed they had fallen to two-fifths of their former estimated 
 value; and could not, now, be computed at more than eighty, or 
 at most, than ninety millions. Next, as to slaves. 
 
 A gentleman sitting near him, had, at the period to which he 
 had just referred of the passage of the equalizing land law, sold 
 eighty-five slaves in families, at 300 dollars round. He had been 
 assured by him, and by other gentlemen, equally well-informed, 
 from other portions of the Commonwealth, that 150 dollars for 
 each slave, taking them in families, would be a fair price at the 
 present moment. This description of labour, then, has fallen one- 
 half, and lands more than a half, in very little more than ten 
 years- In the estimate of the last, the tables supplied by the 
 auditor comprehended $26,500,000 for city and town lots ; chiefly 
 for the value of those at Richmond, Petersburg, Norfolk and 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 67 
 
 Fredericksburgh — a value dependent on the fluctuations of domes- 
 tic and foreign trade. What was once its extent in this city, the 
 metropolis of the Commonwealth, we all remember. What it is 
 now, I know not; since commerce, the inconstant hand-maid of 
 fortune, has turned her helm from our ports to the favoured 
 harbor of New York. Wealth attracts wealth. Fortune not only 
 withdraws her gifts from those who abuse, but from those who 
 fail to use them, taking from those who have little that which 
 they cannot spare, to pour it into the lap of abundance. While 
 we have been quarreling about Internal Improvement, New York 
 has swallowed up the commerce of America. Driven from us by 
 our unkindness, it has gone where it was invited by wiser 
 councils. 
 
 There are fluctuations of the value of property, however, 
 which no wisdom can elude or avert. The value of our land and 
 labor depends on the value of the staple commodities which they 
 produce ; this on the demand for them at home and abroad, and 
 that again on physical and moral causes which no Constitution of 
 Government, which man himiself, cannot control ; on the seasons, 
 in other countries, as well as our own, on the policy of other 
 nations, on peace, on the varying events of foreign war. The 
 act of Congress reducing the minimum price of the national 
 lands, struck down, at a blow, the value of every landed estate 
 in Virginia. The tide of wealth which set in from Europe to 
 America during the wars of the French Revolution, rolled back 
 at the general peace which succeeded our last contest with Great 
 Britain. 
 
 If this uncertainty of wealth operated uniformly on all the 
 interests of our Commonwealth, their relative proportion would 
 not be sensibly disturbed by it. Such, however, is not its effect- 
 The cotton, the tobacco, the grain, and even the grazing interest, 
 are affected, in different degrees, by the same agents ; and al- 
 though the natural tendency of the profits of stock, the rent of 
 land and the wages of labour, in the same country, is to one level, 
 it requires time to still the successive agitations of their vary- 
 ing values. In the interim, new causes are continually arising 
 to delay their subsidence to one common level ; and this principle. 
 
68 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 the truth of which is unquestioned, though constantly operating, 
 may never accomplish its end. 
 
 But had wealth the necessary stability to serve the purpose of 
 the proposed amendment, is taxation in any known system a 
 just measure of that wealth? 
 
 Taxation is the instrument by which legislation draws from 
 the private revenue of each citizen his fair proportion of the 
 public expenditure. It should be proportioned to his ability to 
 pay it. It should, therefore, be drawn from his income, and not 
 from his capital, except with a view that his income shall supply 
 the call. His income cannot be reached, if at all, by expedient 
 means ; and wisdom suggests the propriety of taxing his expen- 
 diture, which usually bears a certain proportion to his income. 
 
 The constitutional power of another Government restrains the 
 application of these principles to taxation in Virginia under the 
 authority of the State ; and, in other respects, diversifies the 
 action of our local system of public revenue.” 
 
 When Mr. Mercer determined to resign his seat in Congress, 
 which he had filled continuously for twenty-three years (1817- 
 1840), he issued the following “Farewell Address to his Constitu- 
 ents.” It is believed that this term of service is greater than that 
 of any member of Congress from Virginia up to the present time. 
 
 The high estimation in which he was held by his constituents 
 is shown by this length of continuous service, he being often re- 
 elected without opposition and without contest after his first 
 election. The Annals of Congress, the Register of Debates, and, 
 during the latter part of his term, the Congressional Globe, show 
 the subjects which chiefly engaged his attention. He devoted 
 himself most assiduously to the interests of his constituents and his 
 country, and no one stood higher than he in the esteem of his 
 colleagues. His devotion to his duties impaired his fortunes, and 
 rendered necessary a withdrawal from the public service at over 
 sixty years of age in order to confine his attention to his private 
 affairs, but even then his life was spent in the service of others. 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 69 
 
 THE FAREWELL ADDRESS OF THE HON. C. F. MER- 
 CER TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 
 
 To THE Voters of Loudoun, Fairfax and Fauquier. 
 
 Fellozv-Citizens - — Being about to leave my present for a re- 
 mote abode, as you were publicly apprized more than twelve 
 months ago that I had long contemplated, it will shortly become 
 my duty to resign the public station for which I am indebted 
 to your suffrages. 
 
 I might perform that office with the customary brevity, if I 
 did not feel something to be due to the intimate relation which 
 has united me to all of you for several years, and to many of 
 you for more than thirty, I might say, for very near the third 
 of a century, the better moiety of the active term of the longest 
 life; for, prior to my election to the House of Delegates, I was 
 deputed to Richmond, two successive winters, as the special agent 
 of important public interests of the county of Loudoun. 
 
 Nor can I forget that, by the same portion of my constitu- 
 ents, I was twice elected, without personal solicitation, a member 
 of that body when unopposed, and thrice when absent from the 
 hustings. At one of those periods, occurring in the last war, I 
 was engaged as a volunteer on a distant military service; at 
 another, supposed to be at the point of death in the vicinity of 
 Leesburg ; and at the last, without the Commonwealth ; and de- 
 sirous to retire from a station, the duties of which I had not, I 
 believed, strength to perform. 
 
 A seventh time, however, you commanded my service, and I 
 rendered it to the best of my poor ability. 
 
 Need I say, you have done much to attach me to your interest, 
 and to render a separation from you^ painful ? 
 
 What I have related constitutes a small part, only, of the ex- 
 tent of my obligations to you. 
 
 During my long continuance in your service, you have judged 
 me as you would be judged ; not by a solitary vote, or a single 
 measure of my political life, but by the general tenor of my con- 
 
70 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 duct as your representative ; and you have allowed my motives 
 to plead an excuse for my actions. 
 
 One evidence of candor was so often manifested as to be in- 
 delibly engraven on my heart ; and has never recurred to my 
 memory without awakening feelings of pride as well as gratitude. 
 
 During the war, which some of you thought unjust, many, un- 
 warranted by the occurrences which immediately led to its decla- 
 ration, and many more, as I did, impolitic, because declared with- 
 out adequate preparation, while you sustained my predecessor in 
 opposing every warlike measure of Congress, you generously per- 
 mitted me, as your delegate in the General Assembly, not only to 
 enlarge the old and to invent new taxes, in aid of the revenue 
 which that war required, but to authorize the substitution of a 
 regular army of ten thousand men for the services of our patri- 
 otic but harassed militia. 
 
 You allowed me, without withdrawing your suffrages, to quit 
 the station which you had assigned me in the Legislature, to ac- 
 company the Governor to Norfolk, as his aid in planning the de- 
 fence of our Atlantic frontier ; and to be subsequently appointed, 
 by himself and his Council, second in command of the only regu- 
 lar regiment then contemplated to be raised for the security of 
 the State. You saw me, without jealousy or distrust, chosen by 
 a majority of the General Assembly, to whom you were politi- 
 cally opposed, to command a brigade of regular troops, after 
 having been recently appointed, by an Executive in whose elec- 
 tion you would not have concurred, Inspector-General of the 
 large army, hastily gathered, for the defence of the capital of 
 Virginia when threatened with invasion. 
 
 The gratitude of a Representative to his constituents for a 
 confidence thus expressed and continued, is doubly augmented 
 by my remembrance of the patience with which you have at all 
 times awaited my vindication when unjustly accused, and the un- 
 failing indulgence with which you have ever regarded the errors 
 of a too fallible judgment. 
 
 To one feature of our connection, most honorable to your- 
 selves, I cannot forbear adverting- While it began, as I have 
 stated, without the slightest solicitation on my part, and has been 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 71 
 
 continued till my fortune has been greatly impaired by neglect, 
 no part of that fortune has been expended in purchasing your 
 favor. However countenanced I might have been by usage in 
 adopting a different mode of canvassing, all my elections to- 
 gether — and several of them, you know, have been zealously and 
 ably contested — have not cost me a farthing. 
 
 ^ly constituents of the counties I represent, in conjunction 
 with that of Loudoun, will, I am sure, pardon me for dwelling, 
 in an address due to them collectively, on the early instances of 
 kindness manifested towards me by that portion of my fellow- 
 citizens among whom I have resided. 
 
 Towards all who have, at any time, honored me with their 
 suffrages, I cherish the most grateful emotions. 
 
 About to interpose a vast distance between your abode and 
 mine, I shall not be suspected of insincerity if I add that, in the 
 whole course of my public life, I have considered myself equally 
 the servant of all my constituents, and, after every election, how- 
 ever contested, have desired to forget who vofed for and who 
 voted against me. 
 
 To my political opponents, some, indeed many, of whom are 
 among my most respected associates, I have felt peculiar pleasure 
 in tendering every personal service in my power ; and if among 
 my competitors for the station I am now about to resign, there be 
 one whom I more highly esteem than the rest, he is the magnani- 
 mous friend — for friend I am proud to call him — who, more 
 than once, endangered my political life. 
 
 Believing that, under all free governments, and full well 
 knowing that, under our own, party spirit would acquire and 
 retain sufficient strength, without artificial excitement, I have 
 sought to repress its excess in myself, and to allay its fervmr in 
 others. I have done this certainly with no view to my political 
 advancement, since the party with which I have generally acted 
 has, at all times, possessed a decided ascendency in this Congres- 
 sional district. 
 
 The natural bias arising from my earliest associations in life 
 prompted this moderation ; and it has been confirmed by the pecu- 
 liar character of the objects of my subsequent pursuit. 
 
72 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 In Congress, as in the State Legislature, I found enough to 
 animate my zeal and to reward my labor, in endeavoring to ac- 
 complish measures wholly disconnected with the politics of the 
 day. Many of these measures could not, indeed, have been suc- 
 cessfully prosecuted without the concurrence, to a certain extent, 
 of both the parties which have, at all times, agitated our public 
 councils. 1 
 
 To go back to the General Assembly for examples. What 
 visible connection is there to be found, let me ask, between the 
 distinguishing principles of the old or new parties which have 
 divided you, and the establishment of “the University of Vir- 
 ginia,” along with “such additional colleges, academies, and 
 schools, as shall diffuse the benefits of education throughout the 
 Commonwealth?” Such is a literal quotation from the language 
 of a resolution, which, without preconcert with any party or per- 
 son, but with the support of all, I submitted to the Legislature in 
 i8i6, and which received the immediate sanction of both Houses, 
 accompanied by an appropriation of near a million and a half 
 of dollars towards its execution. 
 
 Whatever may be the state of parties at present, there existed 
 at that time as little connection between their peculiar opinions, 
 and that enlargement of the banking capital of Virginia by the 
 extension of the charter of the old, and the creation of a new 
 bank, which enlarged the fund for internal improvements to near 
 a million and a half, while it gave a new spur to commerce and 
 the arts, and, by counterbalancing, neutralized the sinister in- 
 fluence of a single pre-existing and powerful moneyed corpo- 
 ration. 
 
 Surely no transient party interest was sought to be promoted 
 by the creation and constitution of a fund for internal improve- 
 ment, and a board of public works to suggest and supervise its 
 judicious application to the roads and internal navigation of the 
 State, on terms of equal justice to all her great and vital interests. 
 
 As little real connection can be discerned between the fleeting 
 purposes of party politics, and the renovation of the principles 
 of civil liberty, by availing ourselves of a period of general tran- 
 quillity at home and abroad to amend our State Constitution by 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 73 
 
 equalizing the basis of popular representation and extending the 
 right of suffrage. 
 
 The unanimitj^ with which you concurred in calling a Conven- 
 tion for those and other objects, manifested how little party 
 politics, although charged upon its prime mover, prompted its 
 inception or prosecution. 
 
 The plan of colonizing our free colored population upon the 
 coast of Africa, submitted to the General Assembly early in De- 
 cember, 1816, after much previous consultation, and almost unani- 
 mously approved by both Houses, affords a like example of a 
 measure requiring and receiving the support of all descriptions of 
 political partisans, while its benevolent and comprehensive pur- 
 poses embrace the interests of two continents, and are entitled to 
 the benediction and favor of all men. Such are some of the 
 measures which occupied my time and filled my thoughts, while 
 serving seven years apprenticeship in the House of Delegates of 
 Virginia- 
 
 Turning from the legislation of the State to that of Congress, 
 since I have had the honor to participate in its proceedings, simi- 
 lar features will be found to distinguish the far greater part of 
 the subjects that have most deeply interested me as your Repre- 
 sentative. Some of these are almost identical with those which 
 I have briefly enumerated; as, that Act of 1819 for the sup- 
 pression of the African slave trade, to which the colonization of 
 Liberia is mainly ascribable, and the subsequent denunciation of 
 that odious traffic as piracy, designed in part for the protection 
 of that infant colony, by inviting the whole civilized world to 
 unite, under our example, in exterminating the most formidable 
 enemy of its peace and prosperity. 
 
 A like affinity to the object of the Virginia fund for inter- 
 nal improvement is to be discerned in the incorporation of the 
 Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, and the subscription by 
 Congress of a million of dollars to its stock — a company depend- 
 ing for its success as well as its existence on the concurrent action 
 of three States, each having a rival work to accomplish ; on the 
 Union of as many cities, competing for the same commerce; and 
 the co-operation of Congress, the exclusive legislature of the 
 
74 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 District of Columbia — an enterprise, moreover, predicted to cost 
 more than twenty millions, and actually requiring the labor of 
 six years, and seventeen acts of legislation for its commence- 
 ment. Need I add that it could not have been begun, or, so far, 
 successfully prosecuted, without the countenance and favor of 
 both the parties which have divided the councils of the State as 
 well as of the Union ; and that its ultimate extension to the Ohio 
 now rests on the same generous combination. 
 
 Further, let me remark that there are no measures whatever 
 calculated to insure the permanency and promote the improve- 
 ment of the seat of government, in which you have not all an 
 immediate and obvious interest, which a faithful Representative 
 cannot disregard ; while it would be difficult to point out a single 
 measure of that tendency at all connected with party views, since 
 the citizens of the District of Columbia are denied by the Con- 
 stitution any participation in the government of the United 
 States. 
 
 In a station of great labor, unsought by me, I have for the 
 last ten years been, moreover, charged by the House of Repre- 
 sentatives with duties analogous, in all respects, to the objects 
 I have specially recited ; with studying and reporting upon the 
 examinations, surveys, and estimates of sites for new, or plans 
 for the improvement of old harbors on the Atlantic, the Gulf of 
 Mexico, or the Northern lakes ; with the development of the re- 
 sources of our vast public domain to the South and West by the 
 construction of those roads, and the removal of obstructions from 
 those rivers, and along those coasts, designed to open the forest 
 to the light of cultivation, and to afford an asylum to the poor and 
 adventurous emigrant. Although not immediately, you cannot 
 fail to perceive that you are ultimately interested in all those 
 works which have been constructed to improve the value of those 
 lands, of which, in common with the whole people of the United 
 States, you are the undoubted proprietors. By their sale your pub- 
 lic debt has been discharged, your State treasury enriched, and 
 your language, laws and forms of free government spread over 
 a trackless wilderness of almost boundless extent. 
 
 You have not blamed me, nor will you hereafter, for having 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 75 
 
 devoted my time and thoughts, along with whatever industry or 
 ability I could exert, to the objects I have described, while there 
 remained so many of my colleagues and associates in public life 
 seeking merited distinction through other paths of State or 
 Federal legislation. 
 
 In the prosecution of their labor, wherever I approved of its 
 direction, they have received such aid as my sentiments, ever 
 freely imparted, and my votes, never withheld through a dread 
 of your displeasure, could at any time afford them. 
 
 Early taught, by precept and example, the obligation to be 
 useful rather than distinguished — a maxim of Christian rather 
 than of heathen philosophy — I have sought no offices but those in 
 your gift, and found both occupation and pleasure in endeavoring 
 to advance your permanent welfare and happiness. I have dili- 
 gently prosecuted this first duty of your Representative, some- 
 times with the certain knowledge that, until time should reveal 
 the true effect of the means which I selected for the attainment 
 of my end — the only end worthy of a statesman — they would not 
 receive your approbation, though they might your forgiveness. 
 If I have of late appeared to some of you, who would prefer the 
 services of other candidates for your favor, too tenacious of 
 the station I have so long filled in Congress, it has obviously been 
 from no sordid or ambitious motive. 
 
 I entered your service rich- I shall leave it poor, though, I 
 trust, independent. Such, at least, whatever may be my fortune, 
 shall be my conduct through life. Having repeatedly sustained 
 an amendment of the Constitution of the United States which, 
 if adopted, would deprive the President of the power of appoint- 
 ing a member of Congress to any office whatever, I declined an 
 honorable and lucrative employment, when that high station was 
 filled by one of my earliest friends, and against the recommen- 
 dation and advice of the oldest and most revered friend I have 
 now living. 
 
 May I not, fellow-citizens, be permitted to say that, in thirty 
 years devoted to her interest, I have rendered the Common- 
 wealth I am now about to leave, whether she be sensible of it or 
 not, some small service ; and to carry that reflection with me as 
 
76 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 a solace for a reduced fortune, and the final separation that 
 awaits us? 
 
 In returning to your hands the high trust you have so long 
 confided to me, shall I incur the imputation of arrogance or 
 vanity if I say that it has been neither neglected nor abused? 
 That I have often silently allowed the good I may have done, or 
 sought to do, to be ascribed to the labors or suggestions of 
 others? That I have diligently sought to accomplish measures 
 of essential consequence to the community at large, while I have 
 quietly borne the accusation of neglecting those to which the 
 politics of the day impart a transient, yet an engrossing, interest? 
 
 I have, in truth, fellow-citizens, at all times preferred your 
 welfare to your applause, and afforded my enemies (and what 
 public man is without?) a temporary triumph; while I relied, 
 not without reason, on your justice to acquit me of indolence or 
 treachery. 
 
 I love labor for its own sake ; and have ever considered the 
 rigor of that primal curse, which expelled our first parents from 
 Eden, as mercifully tempered by the sentence which condemned 
 them to gather their subsistence by the sweat of their brows. 
 
 The latter imputation I now disdain to notice; but I have 
 sometimes repelled it, in your presence, at the hazard of incur- 
 ring the reproach of egotism, though in the appropriate exercise 
 of that right of self-defence with which all animals are endowed, 
 and the innocent and the guilty of our own species are invested 
 by reason and by law. 
 
 I am about to bid you final adieu ; but many of you will be 
 gratified, I well know, to learn that I go to a remote, indeed, but 
 beautiful Territory, as its name implies, to renew the society of 
 ancient friends who have preceded me, and under circumstances 
 conducive to my personal interest, which no longer admits of 
 postponement without injustice to others as well as to myself. 
 
 I shall not attempt to conceal from you, nor shall I disguise 
 in my new abode, the regret I shall feel in resigning the high 
 station which you have so often conferred on me, and recently 
 by an augmented vote; and in quitting a Commonwealth whose 
 soil embosoms the remains of my kindred for three generations. 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 77 
 
 and to whose welfare I have devoted the better half of a nearly 
 expended life. 
 
 The station of a member of the House of Representatives, 
 the popular branch of the Legislature of fifteen millions of peo- 
 ple, is a high trust, and has at all times great, and at this period 
 peculiar attractions, from the importance of the measures which 
 its approaching deliberations must necessarily involve. I have, 
 moreover, an earnest desire to see completed those works over 
 the commencement and progress of which I have most anxiously 
 watched. 
 
 Among those I regard as of the first magnitude the extension 
 of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal to its contemplated western 
 termination ; and for the last three years I have been engaged 
 through a long correspondence in collecting materials to demon- 
 strate the facility of its execution. 
 
 Among my last and most urgent requests of you is, that you 
 will never allow this work, which originated among you, and is 
 so important to yourselves and to the Union, to terminate at the 
 eastern base of the Alleghany. 
 
 One other measure, and one onl}^ but of a different cast, I 
 beg leave to recommend to your special regard. I mean a practi- 
 cal expedient for reducing the overgrown executive power of 
 the Federal Government. 
 
 One, and but one, political opinion of any magnitude, do I 
 remember to have changed since I entered your service. Cradled 
 in the Revolution, I have never wanted an ardent love of genu- 
 ine freedom, nor have I approved of all the measures of any party 
 which has hitherto existed under our present Government. 
 
 While I acknowledge that, in the outset of life, I believed 
 the Executive too weak to counterpoise the Legislative depart- 
 ment of our Federal Government, I avow a reversal of that 
 opinion within the last four or five years. This revolution has 
 been effected rather by the gradual change of the circumstances 
 around me, than by the operations of my own mind upon those 
 of antecedent existence. The introduction of new States into 
 the Union, and the consequent multiplication of federal offices 
 of high dignity and emolument ; the wanton enlargement of the 
 
78 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 diplomatic corps, a station in which will always be pre- 
 ferred to a seat in either House of Congress ; the great augmen- 
 tation of all salaries, so that a clerkship at Washington has be- 
 come the retreat of members of Congress ; the growth of cor- 
 ruption, and its visible fruit in the audacious avowal of the 
 monstrous but practiced maxim that all executive offices are but 
 the just spoils of party triumph ; all, united together, have sub- 
 jected the Legislature to the influence of the Executive, to such 
 extent as to leave the President without any adequate constitu- 
 tional check upon the abuse of his power. Upon this most 
 solemn topic, the purpose of this already protracted address does 
 not allow me to expatiate as freely as I would wish. Allow me, 
 however, to say that, as the party in power will always desire 
 to preserve this undue influence, a sufficient number of States, 
 all of whom are torn more or less by the same factions, will 
 never be induced to apply an adequate remedy by amending the 
 Constitution, which requires the concurrence of three-fourths. 
 It behooves the people, therefore, to try the efficacy of ordinary 
 legislation directed to the same end, within the limitations pre- 
 scribed by that instrument. 
 
 With this view, I instituted, during the last Congress, through 
 the agency of a select committee, an inquiry into the practica- 
 bility of reducing, by dividing the power of appointment, and of 
 subjecting its abuse to new restrictions. 
 
 The authority for such reform is to be found in the clause 
 of the Constitution which gives to Congress the power of vest- 
 ing the appointment to such offices as have not their mode of 
 appointment prescribed by itself, “in the courts of law, or in the 
 heads of departments.” Considering the latter in the light in 
 which the late President regarded them, as divested of all dis- 
 cretion, except at his will, nothing would be gained in the choice 
 of proper officers by vesting the power of appointment in them. 
 But, by subjecting them to the necessity of giving to Congress, 
 whenever called upon, their reasons for every removal of an 
 officer appointed by them, a salutary restraint would be imposed 
 on the abuse of that power, which, by an early and uniform 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton IMercer 79 
 
 construction, rather than the language of the Constitution, has 
 been regarded as absolute in the President. 
 
 The judges of the courts of the United States may, assuredly, 
 be regarded as competent, and safely entrusted with the power 
 to select suitable persons, within their respective districts, to 
 fill the offices of marshals and attorneys of the United States — 
 both of which offices have been conferred by the President on 
 members of the National and State Uegislatures as the reward 
 of past, or an incentive to future, subserviency. 
 
 The inquiry to which I have adverted further contemplated 
 several amendments of the existing laws in relation to the Post 
 Office Department. For a special and transitory purpose, the 
 salary of a former most estimable Postmaster General, now 
 occupying a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court, was aug- 
 mented very inconsiderately, as I now think, and the officer was 
 immediately translated to the President’s Cabinet, to add to the 
 number of his constitutional advisers. The duties of such a sta- 
 tion would seem, however important to the revenue and the pub- 
 lic accommodation, to require very different qualities from those 
 which have distinguished the political partisans usually selected 
 for heads of Departments. The Postmaster General need be 
 neither an able writer, nor orator, nor even a theoretical or prac- 
 tical statesman. An industrious and expert accountant, of in- 
 corruptible integrity and steady habits, would suffice for the 
 performance of all the duties of such a station; which, let me 
 remark, of all others under our Government, has, in its nature, 
 the least connexion with party politics, if honestly administered : 
 but admits, if corruptly used, of the most dangerous application, 
 since, with a revenue of four millions, its influence extends to 
 the interests and conduct of many thousand subordinate depu- 
 ties, contractors, and agents, spread over the United States and 
 their Territories. 
 
 Uet the salary, therefore, of this office be reduced to its for- 
 mer amount, so as to countervail the inference deduced from 
 its last augmentation, that Congress desired its incumbent to be 
 made a daily counsellor of the President ; and let him appoint 
 all his deputies, and be required to communicate the reason of 
 
8o 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 their removal to each succeeding Congress. You will thus re- 
 store the irreproachable administration of that office which pre- 
 ceded the augmentation of its salary. 
 
 Publicity, which, so long as the people preserve their purity, 
 will expose guilt to disgrace and shame, is the most efficacious 
 temporal restraint upon the indulgence of base or unworthy 
 motives, and should be applied, where practicable, to all re- 
 movals from office merely ministerial, as a check upon the abuse 
 of the power of appointment, and a safeguard to the indepen- 
 dent and faithful officer. 
 
 But, fellow-citizens, I am departing from the object of this 
 address ; I have lingered upon the threshold as it were of your 
 dwellings, to delay the painful moment of our final separation. 
 I close this address with a simple explanation of my reason for 
 not immediately resigning into your hands the office you have be- 
 stowed on me. 
 
 Had the necessity of my resignation been manifest early 
 enough for the election of my successor in time to occupy my 
 seat at the opening of the approaching session of Congress, it 
 would have instantly succeeded the event which causes it. Per- 
 ceiving this to be impracticable, after making it extensively 
 known by letters to various gentlemen of both parties that I 
 meant to remove to Florida, I felt it to be due to you, however 
 personally inconvenient to myself, to defer my resignation till a 
 quorum of the next House of Representatives shall have as- 
 sembled, and its organization [been] completed. 
 
 For every practical purpose, at home, in the intermediate 
 period, I wish you, however, to consider the station I hold as 
 already vacated ; and with this view I have hastened the publi- 
 cation of this address- As no opportunity will be afforded me 
 of taking leave of you in person, I avail myself of this occa- 
 sion to bid you an affectionate farewell, and to add my fervent 
 prayer that heaven may bestow on you and your latest posterity 
 its choicest blessings. 
 
 C. F. Mercer. 
 
 Aldie, Loudoun Co., Va., 
 
 November i6, 1839. 
 
BUST OF HON. CHARLES FENTON MERCER. 
 Now at “Elmwood,” Essex County, Virginia. 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 8i 
 
 The original pamphlet contains an account of a “Public Din- 
 ner to the Hon. Charles F. Mercer,” from the Leesburg “Genius 
 of Liberty,” on Friday, December 27, 1839, at which numerous 
 toasts were drunk, among them the following: 
 
 “By Dr. Wm- B. Cochran — our esteemed friend Colonel 
 Charles Fenton Mercer; May he find in Florida not only friends 
 and fortune, but the spring of perpetual youth, vainly sought for 
 by Ponce de Leon !” and 
 
 “By Col. Lloyd Noland — The Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer, 
 the gentleman, the statesman; may heaven’s choicest blessings 
 follow him wherever he may go!” 
 
 The pamphlet contains also an account of a “Dinner to Gen- 
 eral Charles Fenton Mercer,” in Washington, D. C., on Janu- 
 ary , 1840, at which Senator Southard, of New Jersey, pre- 
 
 sided and offered the following toast: “Charles Fenton Mercer — 
 a scholar rare and ripe — a patriot of enlarged and liberal views — 
 a man without reproach. We may testify our respect and love 
 for him without the purity of our principles or of our hearts 
 being called in question.” 
 
 A few letters follow written to relatives during his last visit 
 to Europe, the principal object of which was to unite the gov- 
 ernments of Europe in putting an end to the African slave trade, 
 which, at his instigation, had already been denounced as piracy 
 by some of them. 
 
 He had for many years been interested in African coloniza- 
 tion, and had used his best efforts to secure the settlement of 
 emancipated slaves in the colony of Liberia. It has been men- 
 tioned above that, on his return from his last visit to Europe, 
 he made his home at “Howard,” the Episcopal High School of 
 Virginia, then under the rectorship of the Rev- John Peyton 
 jMcGuire, whose first wife was his niece, and where he ended 
 his life on May 4, 1858. He carefully preserved all letters re- 
 ceived by him, and the writer recalls that he had with him at the 
 High School a tin trunk full of such letters from the most promi- 
 
82 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 nent men in the country. This trunk was still there when the 
 buildings were taken as a Federal Hospital, and this valuable 
 correspondence was dissipated. 
 
 (To Mrs. Maria H. Garnett) 
 
 Paris, Deer. 8th, 1854. 
 
 My dear Cousin . — Having just ended an excursion of 3,730 
 miles to St. Petersburg and Revel, in order, chiefly, to see two Rus- 
 sian friends, of Isthonia, residing near Napsal, on the Baltic, 
 before I proceed to England, next Monday, to attend the con- 
 vention of the British Parliament, I seize a vacant hour to re- 
 mind you that your debt, as a correspondent, is increasing; so 
 that you will have to pay it with heavy interest. 
 
 I should now be in Munich, or Vienna, on my way to Trieste, 
 where I expected about this time to embark for Athens and Con- 
 stantinople, but thro the miscarriage of a letter mailed for me 
 at St. Petersburg by the American Minister, Mr. Seymour, the 
 funds, which were to meet me at Dresden, I found lying here, on 
 my arrival a fortnight ago. Being here, instead of Vienna, and 
 the Parliament, in which I have some acquaintances in Messrs. 
 Hume and Cobden [being in session], I shall repair to London, in 
 hope of obtaining their aid in the promotion of one, or both the 
 objects, which have tempted me at 76 years of age, to cross the At- 
 lantic a seventh time. A journey to St. Petersburg, distant, hence, 
 near 1800 miles, has proved, at an inclement season, no small un- 
 dertaking. From Konigsberg for 800 miles, it was performed over 
 bad roads, requiring six horses, and often twelve, to be attached 
 to the diligence, to drag it thro the ruts and mud, made by the 
 thousand carriages, transporting the produce of Russia, Hemp, 
 Flax and Tallow, to Memel, in order to avoid the blockade of all 
 the Russian ports on the Baltic. The journey, however, which, 
 in going and returning, cost me nineteen nights travel, (six of 
 them in succession) from Tilsit to St. Petersburg, has not been 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 83 
 
 without enjoyment. At Berlin and St. Petersburg, at each of 
 which cities I spent a fortnight, I acquired the friendship of our 
 ministers, Messrs. Groom, late Gov’r of N. Jersey, and Seymour, 
 late Gov’r of Connecticut. From both I received the kindest at- 
 tention, and by the latter I was hospitably received and enter- 
 tained, while in the Russian Capital. He insisted upon my 
 occupying a chamber in his splendid suit of apartments, and 
 made me personally acquainted with Count Nesselrode, who has 
 been the confidential jMinister of the Emperors of Russia for 34 
 years. Altho within two years of my age, as he told me, his 
 brow is unfurrowed by a wrinkle ; his eyes are bright, and his 
 frame unbent by time. He kindly offered me letters to the Com- 
 mander of the 30,000 men assembled for the defence of Revel, 
 and desired to know if I wished to see the Emperor. A review 
 of 65,000 men occurred whilst I was in St. Petersburg, but I 
 declined an introduction to the Emperor, when I learnt that I 
 must pay the price of a General’s Uniform, correspondent with 
 my Military title, to procure the honor. A grand dinner given 
 me by my newly acquired friend, Seymour, brought me ac- 
 quainted with all his Russian friends, and I was feasted, in re- 
 turn, along with the Minister, during the fortnight in which I 
 partook of his hospitality. At length, the uncle of the lady I 
 went to Russia to see once more before I died, being ready to 
 proceed to Revel, where we were to meet her, and her most es- 
 timable husband De Gernet, I accompanied him to her mother’s, 
 his sister-in-law’s, the widow of his recently deceased brother, a 
 late Captain of the Emperor’s guards, in his carriage 360 versts, 
 seven of which make five English miles. It would be difficult 
 to describe the varied enjoyments which a visit of fifteen days to 
 ^Madame Von Krehmer’s afforded me. Her brother-in-law, one 
 of the most intelligent men I have met with anywhere, and tho- 
 roughly acquainted with our institutions and the men who 
 founded and have conducted them, was my sole companion in a 
 journey of two days and nights, which he cheered by lively con- 
 versation ; his sister received me as if I had been her father, and 
 De Gernet and hig most lovely and accomplished wife, as if I 
 were their graandfather, as I am quite old enough to be. The 
 
84 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 table of Madame Von Krehmer was daily spread for at least a 
 dozen guests, whose seats were occupied by the Generals of the 
 Revel army, and the chief nobility of Isthonia, including the 
 Marshal de la Noblesse, the president of the annual Convention 
 of Nobles, who govern the country according to its ancient insti- 
 tutions. The wife of this Nobleman, and he himself, with both 
 of whom I had much conversation, spoke English fluently. Mons. 
 and Madame de Gernet spoke it as well as I could, and with it 
 she spoke five, and he six, other languages. They came loo 
 versts to meet me at her mother’s. The best chamber in her spa- 
 cious dwelling was allotted to me. That, with the appearance 
 of a cottage, contained eleven other apartments, besides a con- 
 servatory, Library and bathing-room, under the same roof. A 
 grapery and spacious fruit and vegetable garden of several acres 
 was attached to the cottage. All its rooms were well, and mine 
 elaborately, supplied with furniture by a Spirit which had more 
 than anticipated all my wants, real, or imaginary. We played 
 whist and chess every night but the Sabbath, which, with the 
 Greek, as well as the Catholic Church, ends at twelve on Sun- 
 day. When I came away, as I did reluctantly, after resisting 
 their invitation to spend my life with them, they loaded me 
 with presents. Among these, Madame Von Krehmer brought 
 me a little purse filled with the ancient gold coins of Russia, 
 but finding I could not be persuaded to accept the contents, 
 which she told me was but the luck-penny, which, in England, 
 made part of all such presents, she slid away for a moment and 
 brought me a gold heart suspended from a silken cord, and filled 
 with the ebon hair of her daughter. This I could not refuse, and 
 it now rests upon a heart that warmed it, where it will remain 
 till that heart is cold in death. We mistake in judging of the 
 Russian despotism. Bad as it is, it leaves in the provinces an- 
 nexed by conquest to the former Government, seated at Mos- 
 cow, the ancient rights and customs of the conquered unaltered. 
 Isthonia has been the subject both of Denmark and Sweden. 
 From the latter, it was wrested after an occupation of a hun- 
 dred years. The mechanics of Revel, the capital, and very ancient 
 it is, have a charter of incorporation from Canute the 6th. It was 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 85 
 
 once the property of the Teutonic Knights, and the globular 
 minarets of its ancient churches [are] in one instance within 
 two feet of the highest spire of Europe, while they maintained 
 the Oriental form. It will surprise you, perhaps, when I tell 
 you that my residence near Revel, the first abode of Peter the 
 Great, and containing the palace and park provided by him for 
 the servant girl he married, reminded me of the days of my 
 boyhood, and my humble birthplace, Fredericksburg. At my 
 father’s, as at Madame Von Krehmer’s, a hospitable table spread 
 every day, and abundantly provided, was rarely, if ever, without 
 guests, who, tho often invited, needed no invitation to welcome 
 them. At candle-light, except on Sunday, the card table and 
 chess board were brought out, and within my memory were 
 never neglected. IMy father taught me piquet, and my Aunt, 
 the widow of Sir John Peyton, my mother’s only sister, taught 
 me chess, at eight years of age. A supper, at ten, usually ended 
 our games, but we never gambled. I lost my mother in in- 
 fancy, but my surviving and venerated parent was the mother, 
 as well as the father, of his children. Often do I weep over 
 the recollections of those years of unmingled happiness, for 
 when he died, I ceased to have a home. You, who must know 
 my very limited resources, the remains of a fortune which had it 
 been preserved from the claims of my two brothers-in-law, 
 would now greatly exceed half a million, may well be surprised 
 at the extent of my travels, prosecuted as they have been with- 
 out a rigorous economy. My presents have quite equalled those 
 that I have received, and my postages, alone, exceed fifty dol- 
 lars, the 30th part of my income. But I travel without either 
 courier or servant and over countries of vast extent, like Russia, 
 whose languages I neither speak nor comprehend. Indeed some 
 of my highest pleasures may be traced to my ignorance, for I have 
 never been involved in any difficulty that some good spirit, in the 
 form of a woman, has not come to my rescue. One disposed to 
 be pleased, may find pleasure almost every where, except indeed 
 in Washington or Alexandria, where I remained three months 
 or more, in solitude. At Verona, to which I had come from 
 Venice, thro Padua and Vicenza, I was seated at a Table d’Hote, 
 
86 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 some distance — seven or eight chairs at least — from a beautiful 
 lady, whose amiable, and intellectual countenance attracted my 
 attention, as female beauty ever does and ever will ; a plate of 
 strawberries, the first of the season, was handed around, and 
 when it came to me, I readily perceived that, before it reached 
 her, there would be none left, so I took them all to myself and 
 sent them around to her, for which she repaid me by a smile, and 
 very slight inclination of her head. At Verona I saw, no more 
 of her, and did not learn her name. From Verona I went to 
 Milan, where I remained ten days- On renewing my journey to 
 Como, and preparing to ascend that beautiful lake, the lady I 
 had seen in Verona stept out of a boat just as I was preparing to 
 enter it, and a few words passed in conversation between us, 
 from which I learnt that she was about to leave Italy for Switzer- 
 land, but to my regret, by way of Turin, while my journey was 
 to lead me by the Borromean Isles, on Lake Maggiore, and the 
 Simplon, to Geneva, the point she wished to reach, by a more 
 sure than direct route, across the Alps. Still I did not learn her 
 name. Some weeks after, I was seated at a Table d’Hote, a 
 place I abhor, when I know no one with whom I can converse, 
 while more than an hour is usually consumed by a succession of 
 dishes, handed around at long intervals. I rose from my seat 
 weary of detention where I had nothing to occupy my mind. 
 But as I left the Salon a manger, an old gentleman bvertook 
 me, and kindly laying his left arm upon me, his right being, as 
 I afterwards learnt, left at the walls of Ciudad Roderigo, in 
 Spain, he insisted on my returning to the table I had left, at the 
 head of which he had been seated with his family. I did so 
 most cheerfully, when he introduced me to his wife. Lady Napier, 
 her two sons by a former marriage, one of whom had his wife 
 and two young gentlemen her children. Sir George Napier’s 
 grandsons. The junior, Mr. Freeman, & his lovely wife were 
 the persons who met me at Lake Como, and gladly did I recog- 
 nize and salute them. From this moment I became no longer 
 a stranger in Geneva. I dined with this charming family occa- 
 sionally, and every other evening for thirty days took tea with 
 Sir George & Lady Napier. 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 87 
 
 I found my young friend, Mrs. Freeman, had been recently 
 married, had spent her honeymoon in Italy, and was the grand- 
 daughter of the Duke of Richmond. I met her again in Switzer- 
 land and was again indebted to her for a pleasant day at Mr. 
 C.’s, the Secty. of the British Legation at Berne. In riding out 
 with her & our most amiable Minister, Theodore S. Fay, I asked 
 her where we had first met ; her prompt reply was, “Don’t you 
 remember the strawberries of Verona?” She is the lineal desce- 
 dant of the Louisa Querouailles, sent by Louis the 14th to Eng- 
 land in order to bind Charles the 2nd more firmly to his alli- 
 ance, and whom that worthless monarch made Duchess of Ports- 
 mouth. I have promised to visit them on my return to England 
 from the Erench Exhibition next Spring. Thus you see I do not 
 get on in my travels without gathering some flowers in my way. 
 
 I must conclude this very long letter with the name only of 
 the writer. 
 
 Charles Eenton Mercer. 
 
 (To Mrs. Maria H. Garnett) 
 
 No. I Little Byden Street near St. James, 
 
 London, June 6th, 1856- 
 
 My dear Cousin. — Your long silence renders it doubtful 
 whether my letters interest you, yet you are told by another that 
 I keep up my only intercourse with “Essex,” where I spent very 
 many of the happiest days of my life, with an aunt I loved, an 
 uncle I respected, and a sister who was object of universal 
 affection. 
 
 Indeed, I may say that the waste of time ended with me, when 
 my father’s death at fifty-six left me an orphan boy of fifteen, 
 thoughtless indeed but happy, for my father had been what a 
 celebrated Erench Bishop required of his parochial clergy at one 
 of their conventions that they should be towards their flocks, 
 “Soyez Peres, — ce n ’est pas asses, — Sfoyes Meres.’^ My mother 
 died before I could know a mother’s love. I was her youngest 
 child. My father was the mother of all his children, but mine 
 
88 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 especially. Often have I rested my head on his manly bosom, 
 the seat of every noble affection, above all of his devoted patriot- 
 ism. Often did he join me in my boyish amusements — to sail 
 my little boat, or float a balloon constructed by himself. His 
 first present to me was a box of tools of which he taught me the 
 use. Sadly and very long did I mourn his sudden death in 
 Richmond, whither my sister Garnett hastened on the first re- 
 port of his illness, but too late to receive his parting breath, and 
 in the churchyard of Richmond Hill lie his undistinguished re- 
 mains. In Florence, last winter, I engaged my friend Hiram 
 Powers, the celebrated sculptor, to obtain for me a tombstone of 
 marble broad enough to cover this father and his youngest son. 
 My first inquiry on reaching Richmond next winter will be to 
 learn where my father rests, that, when I die, I may lie by near 
 his revered ashes. This reminds me of a former request of you 
 to obtain for me a daguerreotype — it may now be photographic — 
 of my beloved sister’s picture at Elmwood, to which I would 
 have added copies of her husband’s, my father’s and grand- 
 father’s. I pray you not to forget this. Your draft for their cost 
 shall be immediately paid where it may point out. My father’s 
 death removed me from Fredericksburg, the birthplace of my 
 mother’s children, and the seat of my happy boyhood. It told 
 me, moreover, that I had a life of poverty before me. Until 
 November, 1795, my time was spent between Loudoun and Es- 
 sex. In 1794 having chosen your uncle James, my sister’s hus- 
 band, as my guardian I, in the first months, indeed until I left 
 Virginia for Princeton — lived at Elmwood: — then without a 
 name, in intimate communication and laborious, but delightful, 
 study with your very dear mother whose sister I loved. Those 
 studies formed my character and the basis of whatever improve- 
 ment I have since made. Her letters for the five following 
 years, that with little intermission I spent in New Jersey, 
 strengthened the lofty sentiments that have never ceased to ani- 
 mate me under many and severe trials of a varied life. The 
 
 list. John’s Cliureh. The place of sepulture was not marked and 
 is now unknown. — J. M. G. 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 89 
 
 years I spent at Princeton now rise in retrospect as my Golden 
 Age, the only period I would be willing to pass over again. The 
 last three of that happy period of my existence, — following my 
 first degree in the Arts — I spent in the College of Nassau so- 
 called in [New Jersey] more than a century ago — unrestrained 
 by its discipline, the companion of its professors, pursuing my 
 professional studies without a guide, but assisted by the advice 
 of my Godfather and constant friend through life. Judge Wash- 
 ington, who had been a student of my father’s. I had ever be- 
 fore me the example of a second parent whom I had found in 
 the venerable president of the College which had become my 
 home. I had entered that College a Stoic, if indeed I had any 
 settled opinions on the subject of religion. In outward form a 
 Christian, I had derived my principles of action and theory from 
 Plutarch, and the fhen /fashionable democratic ^philosophy of 
 Godwin, whose Political Justice and Inquiries were among my 
 favourite volumes. — Both had taught me that I was to live not 
 for my country, but in a sense more enlarged, for mankind. I 
 left Nassau Hall after five years of close application, a Chris- 
 tian, numbering among my friends Bishop Hobart and Doctors 
 Smith, Kollock, Hare and Beasley, who had been my friend 
 and classmate for five years. I have now all the letters I have 
 ever received. Among the first, the only one from my revered 
 father bearing date 64 years ago ; — of course I have all your 
 mother’s. Mine to her, my excellent friend. Miss Patsy Hunter, 
 once offered to me ; — I have often since wished I had taken 
 them. They would afford me a mournful, but soothing, pleasure 
 when read along with those I possess. I well remember how they 
 strengthened and confirmed my resolution to live unspotted from 
 the world, and to devote my life to the service of my God, my 
 country, and my friends. To the latter my life has been given 
 to the ruin of my fortune. But I do not now repent the sacri- 
 fice. I had two estates, worth at present $800.000 ; I own not a 
 foot of either. But I have enough, and even more than enough. 
 Since I came last to Europe, — now near three years ago — I 
 have paid in America of interest on two small debts, all I owe, 
 and for the principal sum of which, but $2000, I have paid 
 
90 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 out of my present income $250. — I have also paid for printing in 
 aid of my efforts in behalf of Africa $100, in postages $60 per 
 annum, remitted to my fellow-citizens, the sufferers in Norfolk 
 and Portsmouth, $50 — paid my French and Italian teachers $120, 
 while I have maintained among gentlemen the state in abode and 
 the outward appearance of one in Ireland, England, France, 
 Italy, Switzerland, Germany & Russia. My income, in truth, has 
 been more than enough, for when I come to add up my pur- 
 chases and remittances to America of books & furniture for my 
 new abode there, I am amazed at the result. I have had much 
 more than enough for all my personal wants,— beyond them, 
 and their personal gratification, all expenditure is vain. For 
 no wealth can purchase happiness. If found in a life like mine, 
 it must be in employments that leave no mental reproach behind. 
 I have made up my mind to return to America next month, and 
 to hasten from New York to Howard & White Sulphur Springs 
 in Virginia, to boil out a visitation of Neuralgia and to heal a 
 sore lip that has resisted two years’ attempt to cure it. The for- 
 mer is always painful, the latter is so when exposed to the air, 
 as it is when I leave my apartments. One consolation attends 
 it ; it is not a cancer’^^ and is nearly stationary, but has cost me 
 fifty-five dollars in medical advice and medicines, which shoulc|. 
 have figured along with $25 for two new teeth in my late budget 
 of Expenses. Although I have resolved to return in July to 
 America, I have not resolved to remain there. I wish to lie 
 {remainder lost). 
 
 12 He was mistaken. It was a cancer and it ended his life at the 
 Episcopal High School of Virginia on May 4th, 1858. The writer nursed 
 him there during his last illness, and when I returned to the University 
 of Virginia on May 1st, my father nursed him until his death. — J. M. G. 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 91 
 
 (Mrs. Maria H. Garnett, Elmzvood, Essex County, Virginia.) 
 
 Howard, near Theological Seminary, 
 Fairfax County, Virginia, Nov. 29th, 1857. 
 
 My dear Cousin . — I have some doubt whether it would not 
 be best to defer this letter until I reach Washington tomorrow, 
 but I cannot longer delay acquitting myself of debt to you as a 
 correspondent. Who I have to blame, I know not, as your son 
 tells me they too have a letter from you long unanswered. I 
 have certainly supposed you to be my debtor. But in truth if it 
 be otherwise, I feel that I am likely to be classed among the 
 numerous bankrupts that the money panic has created, for my 
 late life has been spent in a manner so irregular, that my very 
 thoughts reject all arrangement, and are not worth perusal. A 
 month in [Prunty]-town and Clarksburg and the Capital of 
 Lewis County, the only one I ever named, myself — has not added 
 to my stock of new ideas, altho I do not admit, with Solomon, 
 that even in our day there is nothing new under the Sun. My 
 Western journey, that used to cost me many days, carried me to 
 Prunty-town, the Capital of Taylor County, where I speedily 
 accomplished the chief object that led me, for the last time, I 
 hope, across the Alleganeys, with which I first became acquainted 
 in 1804. My late journey is, however, memorable, as it has ac- 
 quitted me of my last debt, but one, on earth, the debt that is to 
 rest me in its bosom till the trumpet of the Archangel shall rouse 
 me to a new Existence. For a moment, after I escaped the thral- 
 dom of fifty-three years, I must acknowledge that I felt a new 
 delight, for [of] all the calamities I have endured debt, from its 
 long continuance, and heavy pressure, has been the most severe. I 
 have now the means to return to Europe, with an unincumbered 
 income, much larger than I last carried there, and if my malady, 
 which has so long subjected me to the doctors, regular and irregu- 
 lar, surgeons and quacks, will permit me, I shall be in Florence 
 next June, after entering on my eighty-first year. But no one 
 knows what may happen to himself in six days, and still less can 
 he predict where he will be at the end of as many months. I 
 
92 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 confess I am weary of murders and robberies, and treachery and 
 demagoguism, and am ready to enjoy the quiet of a despot- 
 ism that never disturbed my rest, in the many months I 
 submitted to the Government of a very weak, but amiable 
 Prince, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, with whom I commenced 
 my acquaintance in bad Italian and he in worse English, so, by 
 common consent, we ended our intercourse in a hearty laugh ! 
 He afterwards included me in his invitations to five grand balls, 
 during the carnival of 1856, to which my bankers enclosed four 
 in the succeeding season of Lent when Catholics [renounce?] 
 all dances. A beautiful Villa, adjacent to a ducal summer resi- 
 dence was offered me, through the latter, for fifteen [lire?] 
 a month, and I have lately written to learn of Mr. M. if it can 
 now be had, and on what terms- First, however, I must be as- 
 sured that another slice from my lip will not be required, to ar- 
 rest my movements abroad, and this will impose on me the neces- 
 sity of partaking of another American winter. Where to spend 
 it, I have for the same reason not yet determined, but if in 
 America, I wish to pass it as near the Gulf of Mexico as I did the 
 greater part of the last, in the charming society of Tallahassee, 
 among numerous friends, who spend their time in entertaining 
 each other. In New Orleans I have an adopted daughter (Lucy 
 Betton) who has made me a grandfather, and between that city 
 and Tallahassee, I have a charming resting-place, in the house of 
 Dr. Levert and his accomplished wife, an old correspondent, as 
 well as friend, and their travelled daughter, just launched into the 
 world. By the by, have you seen Mrs. Levert’s Travels? They 
 are a fair and true copy of herself, and have charmed our rela- 
 tions here. We met twice, the last time for weeks, in Paris; and 
 her Souvenirs of Travel^ are written as objects she beheld im- 
 pressed their beauty on her heart. Most beautiful many of them 
 were, and the study of many years, of diligent preparation, enabled 
 her to enjoy their loveliness, and to be inspired by their history. 
 Your son, in the only letter I have received from him, notices one 
 of mine, from Florida, and accompanies his by one from my name- 
 sake in Brazil. {Note. Charles F. M. Garnett, Engineer, built the 
 principal railroad at that time in Brazil).^® I am glad to know 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 93 
 
 that the writers make exceptions to the general decline of my fam- 
 ily. In a letter to Lord Clarendon I remarked that I was the last 
 of my name in Virginia, but I met as I returned from the West, 
 Richard Mercer, late of West River, who is pleasantly settled, and 
 married to a lovely wife, near Leesburg, adjoining Morven, the 
 summer residence of Thomas Swann, the present mayor of Balti- 
 more, who made a large fortune of half a million by marriage, as 
 his brother Doctor Swann has, one much larger in Philadelphia, in 
 the same manner; the last are remote connections with my race 
 and your son. Your great-grandmother was a Roy, my grand- 
 mother was a Mason, on the father’s side, a Roy on the mother’s, 
 for my two grandfathers married two sisters. The second wife 
 of John Mercer of Marlboro’ was a Roy — the first, Catherine 
 Mason, Aunt of George Mason of Gunston, to whom Virginia 
 has prepared to erect a monument near Washington’s Equestrian 
 Statue [in Richmond, Va]. Has it ever occurred to you, or have 
 you not needed such a check to pride of ancestrjq how fast our re- 
 lations, our lineal ancestors, multiply as we go back in time? The 
 ratio from generation to generation is quadruplicate, so that six 
 generations hence we count more than a thousand who lived to 
 mature age. Of these how many there must have been of which 
 we might well be ashamed. I have made this rambling letter long 
 enough to give me the credit of an honest debtor- As to the 
 money with which I seek to pay you, it resembles, more than I 
 could wish, that which passes current in this neighborhood. If 
 hluscoe Garnett has not set out for Washington, give my 
 love to him, and believe me truly. Your friend and affectionate 
 uncle, 
 
 C. F. MERCER. 
 
 P. S. I have taken time, while preparing to go to Washing- 
 ton, for a letter to your son (Muscoe), which I shall send under 
 cover of that already written to yourself. 
 
 C. F. M. 
 
 13 He was Chief Engineer of the Dom Pedro II Kailroad, and was 
 in Brazil from 1856 to 1859. 
 
94 
 
 Biographical Sketch 
 
 Concluding Note by his Great Nephew, Theodore S. 
 
 Garnett, in Criticism of Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer. 
 
 His mental and moral excellence, his philanthropic endeavors 
 to benefit his people and his country, his broad statesmanship and 
 far-reaching plans for developing the resources of Virginia and 
 the United States, all entitle him to be regarded and remembered 
 as one of the great men of that day, the formative period of Vir- 
 ginia’s statehood, and to rank with the best of her sons in intel- 
 lectual power and patriotic achievement. As a soldier, he was 
 zealous and brave, ready to spend and be spent in defense of 
 Virginia against British invasion ; as a statesman, he was full 
 of resourceful energy and wisdom in providing for her needs 
 in times of great stress and emergency; and as a pioneer in the 
 field of State education and industry, he was foremost in legisla- 
 tion for that system which has since developed both the State 
 University and internal improvement by public aid. His wide 
 acquaintance in this country and abroad with the leading men of 
 his day, gave him exceptional advantages of intercourse, and cor- 
 respondence. His colleagues and compatriots in arms and legis- 
 lative halls nearly all preceded him to the grave, leaving their tes- 
 timony to his great worth and abilities. May this far too brief ap- 
 preciation of his life and labors serve to revive his memory, and 
 excite to a study of his career the intelligent and ambitious youth 
 of this great and growing Republic. 
 
Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer 
 
 95 
 
 The following inscription was placed on his tomb-stone in the 
 cemetery at Leesburg, Va., by his nephew, Theodore S. Garnett: 
 
 Sacred to the Memory of 
 Gen. Charles Fenton Mercer. 
 
 Born June i6, 1778, 
 
 Died May 4, 1858. 
 
 Aged 79 years, 10 months and 18 days. 
 
 A Patriot, Statesman, Philanthropist and Christian. 
 
 After spending his life in the service of mankind, he died at 
 peace with the world and in the favor of God. 
 “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.” 
 
 Rev. 14 Chap. 13th verse. 
 

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