Archibald Roane was the second Governor of Tennessee, serving from 1801 to 1803.
Background
Archibald Roane was born in Derry township, Lancaster (now Dauphin) County, Pennsylvania, the son of Andrew and Margaret (Walker) Roane. His father, a weaver, who had emigrated from Ireland in 1739, died when the lad was but eight years of age, and his death was followed shortly by that of his wife.
Education
Left thus an orphan, the child became the ward of his uncle, John Roane, a Presbyterian clergyman, who gave him a careful education. Having studied law, young Archibald, under what inspiration we do not know, turned his face toward the frontier country of the Southwest where lawyers were in great demand.
Career
For a time he made his home at Liberty Hall, Rockbridge County, Virginia, where the Presbyterians maintained an academy. In any event, it is clear that he became associated with some of the leading men of the Southwest on his first arrival in that region.
In 1787, along with another budding lawyer of the frontier, Andrew Jackson, he signed a petition wherein the people of western North Carolina asked that state to grant them independence. The following year he and Jackson were simultaneously granted permission to practise their profession before the court of Washington County, then in North Carolina, now in East Tennessee.
When in 1790 Tennessee became a territory of the United States, Roane became attorney-general for the district of Hamilton, while Jackson occupied the same position in Mero district. When the territory became a state in 1796, Roane was a member of the convention which framed her constitution, and immediately thereafter he was placed upon the bench of the superior court of errors and appeals. In 1801 he was elected governor.
His term of office proved most dramatic. John Sevier, who had preceded him as governor, ran against Andrew Jackson, now a judge of the superior court, for the major-generalship of militia. The vote was tied and Roane, as governor, decided the contest in favor of Jackson. In connection with this election, charges of corruption were brought against Sevier by Roane and Jackson, and bitter enmities were engendered.
In 1803 Sevier ran against Roane for the governorship and defeated him. This vindication by the people has generally been accepted as adequate acquittal of Sevier, but the evidence is strongly in favor of the case which Roane and Jackson made against the popular hero. The whole incident, however, seems to have been merely a matter of politics for all concerned. The state was divided into two factions, one adhering to Sevier, the other following Senator William Blount who had been governor of the territory. Jackson and Roane were of the Blount faction, and when Sevier came back into office in 1803, Roane retired to private life for a number of years.
In 1811, with the Blount faction back in power under the leadership of Willie Blount, Roane became a circuit judge, and in 1815 he was once again placed upon the bench of the superior court.
He died in 1819.
Achievements
Politics
There is an obituary in the Nashville Whig, Jan. 16, 1819.
Personality
Roane was a man of good education, reflective habits of mind, and quiet demeanor. While endowed with a commanding physique, he was not marked by the crude virility, the military glamor, nor the ardent temperament which characterized the figures of most of the western heroes. Sound intellect and good connections accomplished for him what very different qualities accomplished for others.
Connections
He met Anne Campbell, daughter to David and Mary Hamilton Campbell of Virginia, who became his wife.