Background
He was born on April 2, 1807 at Staunton, Virginia, United States. He was the son of Archibald Stuart and Eleanor (Briscoe) Stuart and the great-grandson of Archibald Stuart, a Scotch-Irish emigrant to Pennsylvania about 1727.
He was born on April 2, 1807 at Staunton, Virginia, United States. He was the son of Archibald Stuart and Eleanor (Briscoe) Stuart and the great-grandson of Archibald Stuart, a Scotch-Irish emigrant to Pennsylvania about 1727.
After education by private tutors, Stuart attended the College of William and Mary. He studied law under John Tayloe Lomax and graduated from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Stuart was licensed to practise law and began his professional career in Staunton. The Whig party soon claimed his support. As a champion of Henry Clay, he took a leading part in the Young Men's National Convention, which assembled at Washington in 1832.
In 1836 he began a service of three years in the Virginia House of Delegates and made himself conspicuous as a champion of internal improvements. In a report of 1838 he proposed a comprehensive system of communications that would have linked the different parts of the state commercially. Though the plan as a whole was defeated, some of his proposals were carried into effect.
In 1841 he became a member of the federal House of Representatives. There he was one of the few Southerners who supported Adams in his opposition to the "gag rule, " and, when Clay broke with President Tyler, Stuart took the side of the former. Retiring from Congress in 1843, he did not again hold office until President Fillmore appointed him secretary of the interior in 1850. He was largely responsible for organizing the department as it had not been done by his predecessor.
In 1853 he again retired to private life, but continued to take an active interest in politics. He was chairman of a legislative committee which drew up a report on John Brown's raid. In the document, New England abolitionism was roundly denounced, and the righteousness of the Northern attitude in regard to slavery was questioned.
He was a member of the Virginia convention of 1861, and, while not denying the right of secession, he condemned the move as inexpedient, accurately foretold its dire consequence, and opposed it as long as opposition was practicable. During the war, his sympathy was with his section, but his age obviated his taking an active part in the struggle. Immediately after the surrender, he took the leading part in assembling a popular meeting in Augusta County looking toward the reestablishment of peaceful relations with the Union.
In 1866 he published a pamphlet, The Recent Revolution, Its Causes and Its Consequences.
In 1870 he was instrumental in the creation and active in the work of the "committee of nine" that went to Washington and persuaded Congress and the President to permit Virginia to exclude clauses from the "Underwood constitution, " which would have disfranchised the leading elements in the white population of the state and perpetuated "carpetbag" ascendency. The restoration of home rule to Virginia was, therefore, largely his work.
In 1865 he was elected to Congress but was not permitted to take his seat. In 1873 he consented to serve once again in the House of Delegates but retired on account of his health at the end of three years. Throughout the period he advocated the payment of Virginia's pre-war debt. In 1876 he became rector of the University of Virginia, served until 1882, and again from 1884 to 1886.
From 1871 to 1889 he served as a trustee of the Peabody education fund. In this capacity he urged upon the federal government the desirability of its contributing to the education of the negroes.
In 1888 he published A Narrative of the Leading Incidents of the Organization of the First Popular Movement in Virginia in 1865 to Reestablish Peaceful Relations and of the Subsequent Efforts of the "Committee of Nine". In person, Stuart was over six feet tall, handsome and dignified, serious but affable.
Stuart died at his home in Staunton in 1891 (six years following his wife's death).
When the Whig party disintegrated and the American party was formed upon its ruins, he espoused the new cause and in 1856 published a series of letters, the "Madison" letters, which came to be looked upon as an authoritative exposition of the doctrines of the party. The next year he was elected to the state Senate and served until the outbreak of the Civil War.
On August 1, 1833, he married his cousin, Frances Cornelia Baldwin, the daughter of Briscoe G. Baldwin of Staunton. They had nine children.