James Pleasants was an American politician from Virginia.
Background
He was born on October 24, 1769 in Goochland County, Virginia, United States, the son of James and Anne (Randolph) Pleasants. His grandfather, John Pleasants, was a Quaker who had emigrated to Virginia from Norwich, England, in 1665; his mother, who had been married twice before she married his father, was an aunt of Thomas Jefferson.
Education
He was sent to the College of William and Mary. After graduating there, he read law under Judge William Fleming of the court of appeals.
Career
In 1791 he commenced practice in Amelia County. In 1796 he began his political career when elected to the House of Delegates from Goochland. In this body he supported the views of his famous cousin and voted for the resolutions of 1798.
He was made clerk of the House of Delegates, which office he held until 1811, when he was elected to the federal House of Representatives. Here he supported Madison's policy and the War of 1812. Continuing in the House until 1819, he was elected to the United States Senate in that year, and in 1822 resigned from this body to become governor of Virginia.
He held the governorship for three annual terms and then retired to private life, emerging only to sit in the constitutional convention which assembled in Virginia in 1829. He doubtless favored Crawford for the Presidency in 1824. In the campaign of 1828 he supported Adams against Jackson, and his son, John Hampden Pleasants, became the editor of the Richmond Whig, the principal organ of the anti-Jackson party in the state.
He lived all his life in Goochland County, dying there in his sixty-eighth year.
Achievements
Politics
He objected strenuously to the use of the whipping post in the punishment of free whites and desired fair treatment for free blacks. He was an enthusiastic advocate of the construction of internal improvements by the state, but as a strict-constructionist he opposed improvements by the federal government, and objected to a tariff for protection as adverse to the interests of the South.
He found himself unable to support Andrew Jackson when that personage became the leader of the forces of the new Democracy.
It is said of him that he never solicited an office except the first which he held, and relished no public position except the clerkship of the House of Delegates.
Personality
He was tall and slightly corpulent, with red hair. His features were rugged, and his manners distinguished by pleasantness rather than formality. John Randolph of Roanoke said that he never made an enemy nor lost a friend. He was, in other words, a true gentleman of the Virginian democracy of his day.
Connections
He married Susanna Lawson Rose, who became the mother of eight children.