Background
Reuben Chapman was born on July 15, 1802 in Bowling Green, Virginia, United States. He was the son of Colonel Reuben Chapman and Ann Reynolds of Virginia.
Reuben Chapman was born on July 15, 1802 in Bowling Green, Virginia, United States. He was the son of Colonel Reuben Chapman and Ann Reynolds of Virginia.
Reuben received his education in a school at Bowling Green, Virginia.
In 1824 Chapman located at Huntsville, Alabama, which was then the abode of large planters and the most promising town in the state. After a year of reading in the office of his brother, Judge Samuel Chapman, he was admitted to the bar and practised law for a time at Sommerville, Morgan County.
In 1832 he was elected to the state Senate, and in 1835 to the national House of Representatives, to which he was returned for five successive terms. In 1847 he retired from Congress to accept the nomination of the Democratic party for the governorship. He was put forward as a compromise candidate by the Martin and Terry factions of the party, and although the Whigs, heartened by the rift in the opposing party over the state bank question, nominated Nicholas Davis of Limestone County, a popular planter with a distinguished public career, Chapman was victorious by a handsome majority. As governor, he pursued an economical and business-like policy, which was fortunate for the state, at a time when its finances were in a deranged condition.
But the breach in Democratic ranks produced by the bank issue was scarcely closed before another, quite as serious, was occasioned by William L. Yancey’s bold “Alabama Platform. ”
Yancey supported Chapman for reelection, but an alliance between the opponents of Yancey and Ex-Governor Martin’s friends, who were disgruntled because their hero had not been allowed a second term, prevented Chapman from polling the required two-thirds majority. He retired to his estate at Huntsville, but entered the political arena again in 1855 to help defend the Democracy against the onrush of the Know-Nothings.
He was elected to the lower house of the legislature, defeating Jeremiah Clemens. When the crisis of 1860 came he ranged himself on the side of the conservatives. He attended the Democratic convention at Baltimore and did his utmost in a vain attempt to bring about a reconciliation between the Northern and Southern wings of the party which shortly before had split asunder at Charleston.
During the war the Federal troops burned his handsome residence, laid waste his property, annoyed and imprisoned him, and finally drove him beyond their lines. When the war was ended, he returned to Huntsville. He remained faithful to the white man’s cause during the Reconstruction period, and after it was over he settled down to a quiet and unobtrusive life.
Chapman was an ardent states' rights Democrat. He used his governorship as a platform to rail against any attempt to exclude slavery from California. He was also firm in his opposition to banks. During the post-war period, he was affiliated with the Democratic and Conservative party.
Chapman was married on October 17, 1838, to Felicia Pickett, daughter of Colonel Steptoe Pickett, a Limestone County planter who had come down from Virginia.
