Background
MCDOWELL, Thomas David was born on January 4, 1823 in Elizabethtown, Bladen County, North Carolina, United States, United States. Son of Dr. Alexander McDowell.
MCDOWELL, Thomas David was born on January 4, 1823 in Elizabethtown, Bladen County, North Carolina, United States, United States. Son of Dr. Alexander McDowell.
Private school, southern university.
McDowell attended Donaldson Academy and graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1843. After studying law and being admitted to the North Carolina bar, he began his law practice in Elizabethtown in 1844. He was a Whig in the North Carolina House from 1846 to 1850 and a Democrat in the state Senate from 1854 to 1858.
He was active in the Presbyterian church and maintained a plantation in North Carolina. An advocate of states’ rights and an immediate secessionist, he was elected to the provisional Confederate Congress and to the first Confederate House of Representatives, where he was a member of the Joint Committees on Commerce and the Inauguration. He supported the Davis administration in the provisional Congress but opposed it in the first Confederate House.
While he was elected unanimously to office, he became unpopular among his fellow congressmen because of his extreme states’ rights views. He was defeated for the second Congress because he was out of step with the moderate movement in the state. After the war, McDowell rapidly sank into oblivion, and he returned to his law practice and retired from public life.
There is little record of his postwar career.
"Peculiar institution" of slavery was not only expedient but also ordained by God and upheld in Holy Scripture.
Stands for preserving slavery, states' rights, and political liberty for whites. Every individual state is sovereign, even to the point of secession.