Background
William Evelyn Cameron was born on November 29, 1842 in Petersburg, Virginia, United States; son of Walker Anderson Cameron and Elizabeth Byrd Walker, of aristocratic and distinguished descent from the Scottish chieftain Ewan Lochiel.
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editor governor military politician
William Evelyn Cameron was born on November 29, 1842 in Petersburg, Virginia, United States; son of Walker Anderson Cameron and Elizabeth Byrd Walker, of aristocratic and distinguished descent from the Scottish chieftain Ewan Lochiel.
After attending local schools and a North Carolina military academy, he entered Washington University, St. Louis, but soon left college for a clerkship on a Mississippi steamboat.
Cameron served in the Confederate army during the war, then worked as a journalist in Petersburg and Richmond, supporting the Conservative Party. Beginning in 1876, he was elected to three consecutive two-year terms as the mayor of Petersburg. Later in the 1870s he began to side with the Readjusters, a faction that sought to adjust the payment of Virginia's prewar debt. He won the governorship as a nominee of the Readjuster-Republican coalition in 1881. Cameron and the Readjusters issued a series of reforms, including repealing the poll tax, but his aggressive use of political patronage angered voters and his opponents. The revived Democratic Party, capitalizing on white supremacy and the electorate's unease over Cameron's tactics, took over the General Assembly in 1883. Cameron left politics after completing his term, but was elected in 1901 to a state constitutional convention. Cameron returned to journalism in 1906, editing the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot until 1919. He died in Louisa County in 1927.
Cameron became active in the Readjuster Party. He was elected as mayor of Petersburg, serving from 1876 to 1882.
In 1881, he was the gubernatorial candidate of the Readjuster Party and elected governor with biracial support defeating John Warwick Daniel (who represented the state Funder faction, a group who wanted to pay the debt and its interest in whole) by nearly 6% of the vote. During his term from 1882–1886, he attempted to implement his party's programs of debt reduction and racial integration in certain areas. In 1882 it led passage of legislation for a land-grant college for blacks, what is now Virginia State University in Ettrick, near Petersburg.
Cameron led an anti-oyster pirate expedition of two boats and armed state militia in the ongoing Oyster Wars of the Chesapeake Bay. The state had attempted to license and control traffic in the popular seafood, but 5, 800 Virginia oyster boats often disregarded laws related to trying to preserve the harvest.
After his term as governor ended in 1886, Cameron briefly left Virginia. He returned and resumed a career in politics, but as a conservative Democrat. Cameron represented Petersburg in the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1901–1902. At this time, the Democrat-dominated legislature created a disfranchising constitution and essentially ended black voting. The Republican Party, which had made a brief and small comeback after the collapse of the Readjusters, ceased to be competitive in the state.
Cameron served as editor of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot newspaper from 1906 to 1919.
Impetuous, eager, courageous, and independent, his forceful personality combined with his talents to make him a leader of local political thought in his day, and although the majority of Virginians did not always agree with him, --especially in his general indorsement of Mahone policies or his treatment of the race problem--they never questioned his patriotism or his sincerity of purpose.
He married, October 1, 1868, Louisa Clara Egerton, of St. Paul.
