John Warwick Daniel

Background

John Warwick Daniel was born on September 5, 1842 in Lynchburg, Virginia, United States. He was the only son of William and Sarah Anne (Warwick) Daniel.

Education

Daniel attended Gessner Harrison’s classical school.

Career

Daniel went into the Confederate army as a private in May 1861.

At twenty he was major and chief of Early’s staff, but a wound in the battle of the Wilderness (May 1864) ended his military career and put him on crutches for life. After a year at the University of Virginia (1865 - 66) the young major began the practise of law with his father in Lynchburg. Slowly, against keen competition, he won a remunerative practise. He was peculiarly good at oral argument before the state supreme court. Slowly and laboriously he brought to publication A Trcatise on the Law of Negotiable Instruments (1876).

Meanwhile he had entered politics, in the House of Delegates he spoke out boldly against the passage of the debt-funding act in 1871; but as state senator (1875-1879), believing that the honor of Virginia was involved, he worked for its support through measures of Spartan economy. On this issue he stumped the state in 1879 against the Readjusters.

Meanwhile he had twice unavailingly sought the Democratic nomination for Congress and once (1877) for governor.

When, in 1881, he gained the gubernatorial nomination, he was decisively defeated by a coalition of Readjusters and Republicans.

Elected to Congress, however, in 1884, and a year later to the United States Senate for the term beginning March 4, 1887, he represented his state continuously, and was a member of every Democratic national convention, until his death. In the Senate, despite his excellent committee assignments, he initiated no important legislation.

He felt that fighting the Civil War to the last ditch not only “gave finality to its results and well-nigh extinguished its embers with its flames” but also preserved to Southerners “their title to respect and their incentive to noble and unselfish deeds. ”

Achievements

• Daniel organized the Democratic convention for Free Silver and delivered the key-note address; in 1900 and in 1904, as a faithful friend of Bryan, he headed the convention’s Committee on Resolutions.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Character of Stonewall Jackson

    (This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)

  • The passage of Thoroughfare Gap and the assembling of Lee's army for the second battle of Manassas

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • The campaign and battles of Gettysburg

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • A treatise on the law of negotiable instruments, including bills of exchange; promissory notes; negotiable bonds and coupons; checks; bank notes; ... bills of lading; guaranties; letters of credi

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

Politics

As a party leader his chief concern was the solidarity of the whites.

“I am a Democrat, ” he said in 1881, ‘‘because I am a white man”; and in 1902 he forced through the constitutional convention of Virginia suffrage provisions which still substantially secure his great objective.

Though associated with the Democratic machine, he was never a part of it; and he virtually spurned the powerful and politically inclined Anti-Saloon League.

Personality

To Daniel's personal friends alone, however, were known his open-heartedness, his loyalty, and his brave fight against unceasing pain.

Connections

Father:

William Daniel

Mother:

Sarah Anne (Warwick) Daniel

Wife:

Julia E. Munnell