St. George Tucker's Law Reports and Selected Papers, 1782-1825 (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press)
(Best known for his edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, ...)
Best known for his edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, St. George Tucker (1752-1827), a lawyer and judge in the state and federal courts of Virginia, played a central role in the legal history of post-Revolutionary Virginia and of the new nation. This comprehensive three-volume edition of Tucker's law reports and selected loose papers, edited by Charles F. Hobson, is an unsurpassed archive for studying the "republicanization" of the common law as it unfolded in the commonwealth of Virginia. In addition, Tucker's papers provide an invaluable source for tracking Virginia's efforts to establish a system of state superior courts operating alongside the older county court system dating from the colonial period.
Tucker's reports fill a documentary gap caused by the 1865 fire that destroyed Virginia's higher court records. The editor's general introduction supplies an informative overview of Tucker's life and judicial career. Editorial aids and appendixes include a guide to Tucker's abbreviations, a short-title bibliography, a glossary of selected legal terms, a biographical register of the Virginia bench and bar, and correspondence and documents relating to the rupture between Tucker and Spencer Roane.
View of the Constitution of the United States: With Selected Writings
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As professor of law at the College of William and Mary,...)
As professor of law at the College of William and Mary, St. George Tucker in 1803 published View of the Constitution—the first extended, systematic commentary on the United States Constitution after its ratification and later its amendment by the Bill of Rights. View was originally part of Tucker's "Americanized" or "republicanized" edition of the multivolume Commentaries on the Laws of England by Sir William Blackstone. Generations of American law students, lawyers, judges, and statesmen learned their Blackstone—and also their understanding of the Constitution—through Tucker. As Clyde N. Wilson notes, "Tucker is the exponent of Jeffersonian republicanism . . . in contrast to the commercial republicanism of New England that has since the Civil War been taken to be the only true form of American philosophy." In addition to the entirety of View, the Liberty Fund volume includes seven other essays from Tucker's renowned edition of Blackstone. These include "On the Study of Law," "Of the Unwritten, or Common Law of England," and "Of the Several Forms of Government."
St. George Tucker (1752–1827) was an officer in the American Revolutionary Army, a Professor of Law, justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, judge of the Federal District Court for Virginia by appointment of President James Madison, progenitor of a long line of jurists and scholars, and stepfather of John Randolph of Roanoke.
Clyde N. Wilson is Professor of History and Editor of The Papers of John C. Calhoun at the University of South Carolina.
A letter to a member of Congress; respecting the Alien and Sedition laws.
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The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration...)
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.
Delve into what it was like to live during the eighteenth century by reading the first-hand accounts of everyday people, including city dwellers and farmers, businessmen and bankers, artisans and merchants, artists and their patrons, politicians and their constituents. Original texts make the American, French, and Industrial revolutions vividly contemporary.
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The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:
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Library of Congress
W006392
In response to Evans, Thomas. An address to the people of Virginia, respecting the Alien & Sedition laws (Evans 33702). Caption title. Signed and dated on p. 48: Columbus. Virginia, June 6th, 1799. Manuscript notes on the Virginia Historical Society copy identify the author as St. George Tucker.
Virginia? : s.n, 1799?. 48p. ; 21 cm
The probationary odes of Johnathan Pindar, Esq., a cousin of Peter's, and candidate for the post of poet laureat to the C.U.S.: in two parts.
(Title: The probationary odes of Johnathan Pindar, Esq., a...)
Title: The probationary odes of Johnathan Pindar, Esq., a cousin of Peter's, and candidate for the post of poet laureat to the C.U.S. : in two parts.
Author: St George Tucker
Publisher: Gale, Sabin Americana
Description:
Based on Joseph Sabin's famed bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana, Sabin Americana, 1500--1926 contains a collection of books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s. Sabin Americana is rich in original accounts of discovery and exploration, pioneering and westward expansion, the U.S. Civil War and other military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition, religious history and more.
Sabin Americana offers an up-close perspective on life in the western hemisphere, encompassing the arrival of the Europeans on the shores of North America in the late 15th century to the first decades of the 20th century. Covering a span of over 400 years in North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, this collection highlights the society, politics, religious beliefs, culture, contemporary opinions and momentous events of the time. It provides access to documents from an assortment of genres, sermons, political tracts, newspapers, books, pamphlets, maps, legislation, literature and more.
Now for the first time, these high-quality digital scans of original works are available via print-on-demand, making them readily accessible to libraries, students, independent scholars, and readers of all ages.
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The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:
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SourceLibrary: Huntington Library
DocumentID: SABCP00179800
CollectionID: CTRG10146845-B
PublicationDate: 17960101
SourceBibCitation: Selected Americana from Sabin's Dictionary of books relating to America
Notes:
Collation: 103 p. ; 19 cm
Blackstone's Commentaries: With Notes of Reference to the Constitution and Laws, of the Federal Government of the United States, and of the Commonwealth of Virginia : In Five
(5 vols. Originally published: Philadelphia: William Young...)
5 vols. Originally published: Philadelphia: William Young Birch and Abraham Small, 1803. The American Blackstone. A monumental work of continuing relevance,
this reprint edition is prefaced by a new critical introduction
by Paul Finkelman
President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy, Albany Law School
and David Cobin
Professor, Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul Minnesota
Tucker s Blackstone is a key resource for understanding how Americans viewed
English common law in the years following the adoption of the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights. Based on his lectures at the College of William and
Mary, Tucker interprets Blackstone s often antidemocratic viewpoint in an
American context. A strong proponent of the First Amendment, he elaborates
a theory of free speech that is more expansive than in the English tradition.
More recently, Tucker s Blackstone has been cited in numerous constitutional
cases by the U.S. Supreme Court relating to original intent. Reprint of the
rare sole edition.
(Leopold Classic Library is delighted to publish this clas...)
Leopold Classic Library is delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive collection. As part of our on-going commitment to delivering value to the reader, we have also provided you with a link to a website, where you may download a digital version of this work for free. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. Whilst the books in this collection have not been hand curated, an aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature. As a result of this book being first published many decades ago, it may have occasional imperfections. These imperfections may include poor picture quality, blurred or missing text. While some of these imperfections may have appeared in the original work, others may have resulted from the scanning process that has been applied. However, our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. While some publishers have applied optical character recognition (OCR), this approach has its own drawbacks, which include formatting errors, misspelt words, or the presence of inappropriate characters. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with an experience that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic book, and that the occasional imperfection that it might contain will not detract from the experience.
St. George Tucker was a lawyer, teacher, poet, essayist, inventor, and judge.
Background
Tucker was born near Port Royal, Bermuda, to English colonists Anne Butterfield (1797) and Henry Tucker (1713–1787). His father was the great-grandson of George Tucker, who emigrated to Bermuda from England in 1662. The Tuckers were well-regarded in Port Royal. St. George's older brother Thomas Tudor Tucker migrated to Virginia in the 1760s after completing medical school in Scotland, and settled in South Carolina before the American Revolutionary War. George Tucker, a politician and author, was a relative of theirs. The name St. George had been in the family since his great-great-grandfather George Tucker married Frances St. George.
Education
As a young man of 19, Tucker moved to the colony of Virginia in 1772 to study law under George Wythe. Upon arriving in Williamsburg, Tucker entered the College of William & Mary. After six months at the College, Tucker took private law lessons from Wythe.
The Board of Visitors awarded Tucker an honorary Doctor of Civil Laws degree and named him the new professor of law.
Career
He was admitted to the bar and began the practice of his chosen profession in Williamsburg.
His career as a lawyer was interrupted by the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, into which he threw himself on behalf of the struggling colonies. At the battle of Guilford Court House he distinguished himself by his bravery and military skill as a colonel of the Chesterfield County militia. Later he became lieutenant-colonel of a troop of horse and took part in the siege of Yorktown, where he was wounded.
In public office he spent virtually the whole remainder of his life. In 1786 he became one of the commissioners at the Annapolis convention.
His judicial career, in which he was to attain distinguished eminence, began when he became judge of the general court of Virginia in 1788.
In 1800 he became professor of law in the College of William and Mary.
In 1803 he was elected to the supreme court of appeals of Virginia as the successor of Edmund Pendleton. He sat for eight years, adding no little to his own growing fame and enhancing the reputation of the court.
He resigned from this court in 1811, but in 1813 he was appointed by President Madison judge of the district court for the district of Virginia. For nearly fifteen years he continued as a federal judge before failure in health prompted his resignation.
He then retired to the home of Joseph C. Cabell in Nelson County, Va. , where he died. His grandson, John Randolph Tucker, 1823-1897, many years later cited his opinion in Kamper vs. Hawkins, in the general court, that the state constitution of 1776 was a sovereign act of the people of Virginia and therefore the supreme law, and that any act of the legislature or the government in conflict with it was null and void.
Among his other important opinions are his dissenting opinion in Woodson vs. Randolph, also in the general court, holding that it was a violation of the federal Constitution for Congress to undertake to change the rules of evidence with reference to a state contract sued upon in a state court, and his opinion, in the supreme court of appeals of Virginia, in Turpin vs. Locket sustaining the constitutionality of the act of 1802 by which the glebes of the Episcopal Church were to be applied to the relief of poor of each parish.
His reputation rests in no small part on his juridical writings. His pamphlet Dissertation on Slavery: with a Proposal for its Gradual Abolition in Virginia (1796 and reprinted in Philadelphia 1861), advocating the emancipation of children born to slave mothers, was widely read and acclaimed. His annotated edition of Blackstone's Commentaries (5 vols. , 1803) was one of the most important law books of its day. In an appendix he discussed the principles of government as related to the nature and interpretation of the federal Constitution. He also wrote minor poetry of some charm, as Liberty, a Poem on the Independence of America (1788) and The Probationary Odes of Jonathan Pindar (2 pts. , 1796), originally published in the National Gazette and often erroneously attributed to Philip M. Freneau.
Tucker had a stroke and died on November 10, 1827. He had been staying at Edgewood, the home of his stepdaughter, Mary Carter Cabell and her husband, state senator Joseph Carrington Cabell, in Warminster, Nelson County, and is buried there.
Achievements
St. George Tucker was one of the most influential jurists and legal scholars in the early years of the United States, he sat on three courts in Virginia: the General Court (1789–1804), the Court of Appeals (1804–1811), and the U. S. District Court for the District of Virginia (and later the Eastern District of Virginia) (1813–1825). He also served as rector (1789–1790) and professor of law (1790–1804) at the College of William and Mary. His five-volume edition of Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in 1803, was the first major treatise on American law.
Following the American Revolutionary War, Tucker supported the gradual emancipation of slaves, which he proposed to the state legislature in a pamphlet published in 1796.
Tucker wrote several pamphlets, including a discussion as to what extent the United States had adopted the common law, and several works under the pseudonym "Columbus" in support of the Democratic-Republican Party.
Views
Quotations:
"That provision in the constitution which requires that the president shall be a native-born citizen (unless he were a citizen of the United States when the constitution was adopted, ) is a happy means of security against foreign influence, which, where-ever it is capable of being exerted, is to be dreaded more than the plague. "
"Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. "
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, and this without any qualification as to their condition or degree, as is the case in the British government. "
"Whilst America hath been the land of promise to Europeans, and their descendants, it hath been the vale of death to millions of the wretched sons of Africa . .. Whilst we were offering up vows at the shrine of Liberty . .. whilst we swore irreconcilable hostility to her enemies . .. whilst we adjured the God of Hosts to witness our resolution to live free or die . .. we were imposing on our fellow men, who differ in complexion from us, a slavery, ten thousand times more cruel than the utmost extremity of those grievances and oppressions, of which we complained. "
"The congress of the United States possesses no power to regulate, or interfere with the domestic concerns, or police of any state: it belongs not to them to establish any rules respecting the rights of property; nor will the constitution permit any prohibition of arms to the people. "
"Nothing is better settled at the common law than the doctrine that the children, even of aliens, born in a country, while the parents reside there under the protection of the government, and owing a temporary allegiance thereto, are subjects by birth. "
"There was a sorry judge who lived at the Swan by himself. He got but little honor, and he got but little pelf [i. e. wealth], He drudged and judged from morn to night, no ass drudged more than he, And the more he drudged, and the more he judged, the sorrier judge was he. "
"Civil rights, as we may remember, are reducible to three primary heads; the right of personal security; the right of personal liberty; and the right of private property. In a state of slavery, the two last are wholly abolished, the person of the slave being at the absolute disposal of his master; and property, what he is incapable, in that state, either of acquiring, or holding, in his own use. Hence, it will appear how perfectly irreconcilable a state of slavery is to the principles of a democracy, which form the basis and foundation of our government. "
Membership
He was a member of the F. H. C. Society.
Connections
In 1778, Tucker married Frances (Bland) Randolph, a wealthy young widow who was the daughter of Theodorick Bland of Cawsons and mother of three young boys, Richard, Theodorick, and John. He moved to her plantation, Matoax, in Chesterfield County. Tucker and Frances had three sons together, Henry St. George Tucker, Sr. , Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, and Theodorick Thomas Tudor; they also had two daughters, Anne Frances and Elizabeth. Frances died in 1788 after giving birth to Elizabeth.
After Frances's death, Tucker left Matoax for a house facing the Palace Green and Market Square in Williamsburg; this house remains today on the grounds of Colonial Williamsburg as the St. George Tucker House. In 1791, Tucker married Leila Skipwith Carter, a widow who was previously married to George Carter, descendant of Robert "King" Carter. Leila and her two children, Charles and Mary "Polly" Carter, joined Tucker and his children in Williamsburg. After Tucker retired from the bench in 1825, he and Leila would alternate time between their home in Williamsburg and a cottage on the Edgewood estate.
Tucker's youngest step-son, John Randolph of Roanoke (1773–1833), served as House majority leader and chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, as well a US Senator representing Virginia, and later America's ambassador to Russia.
Tucker's son Henry St. George Tucker, Sr. (1780–1848) served in both the state legislature and the U. S. House of Representatives, as well as President of the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, and later declined an appointment by Andrew Jackson to become U. S. Attorney General.
Tucker's second son, Nathaniel Beverley Tucker (1784–1851) was a professor of law at William & Mary and published works on political economy as well as literature.
His grandson, John Randolph Tucker (1823–1897), served as Virginia's attorney general, as well as U. S. congressman and Dean of Washington and Lee University School of Law.
His grandson, Nathaniel Beverley Tucker (1820–1890), was a newspaper editor in Washington, D. C. before the Civil War, U. S. counsel at Liverpool, England, and later the Confederate States' "economic agent abroad. "
His great-grandson, Henry St. George Tucker, III (1853–1932), served in U. S. House of Representatives, as Dean of Washington and Lee University School of Law and later of the George Washington University Law School.
Father:
Henry Tucker
(1713–1787)
Mother:
Anne Butterfield
(d. 1797)
Grandson:
Nathaniel Beverley Tucker
(June 8, 1820 – July 4, 1890)
He was an American journalist and diplomat.
Grandson:
John Randolph Tucker
(December 24, 1823 – February 13, 1897)
He was an American lawyer, author, and politician from Virginia.
Daughter:
Anne Frances
Daughter:
Elizabeth
Son:
Nathaniel Beverley Tucker
(September 6, 1784 – August 26, 1851)
He was an American author, judge, legal scholar, and political essayist.
Son:
Theodorick Thomas Tudor
Son:
Henry St. George Tucker Sr.
(December 29, 1780 – August 28, 1848)
He was a Virginia jurist, law professor, and U.S. Congressman (1815–1819).
Spouse (2):
Leila Skipwith Carter
Great- greatson:
Henry St. George Tucker III
(April 5, 1853 – July 23, 1932)
He was a representative from the Commonwealth of Virginia to the United States House of Representatives, professor of law, and president of the American Bar Association.
stepson:
John Randolph
(June 2, 1773 – May 24, 1833)
He was a planter, and a Congressman from Virginia.
