William Richardson Davie was born on June 20, 1756 at Egremont, Cumberlandshire, England. Taken by his father, Archibald Davie, to the Waxhaw settlement, South Carolina, United States in 1763, he was there adopted by his maternal uncle, William Richardson, a Presbyterian clergyman.
Davie attended Queen’s Museum College, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Princeton, where, after about four years of study and a bit of military service in New York, he graduated with first honors in 1776. Though Davie at once began to study law at Salisbury, North Carolina, and was licensed to practise in 1780, he chiefly pursued war during the next seven years.
After three months’ service under General Allen Jones in the Camden region during 1777-78, he helped raise a troop of cavalry near Salisbury and received successive commissions as lieutenant, captain, and major.
Joining Pulaski’s division, he was seriously wounded on June 20, 1779, while leading a charge at Stono, near Charleston.
After a slow recovery he raised another troop early in the next year, equipping it partly from a bequest from his uncle.
Operating north of Waxhaw Creek, independently or with Sumter, he kept the Patriot cause alive in western North Carolina despite Tarleton and the numerous Loyalists.
When Gates fled from Camden, Davie, now a colonel, acting contrary to that general’s orders, thrust his little command to the rear, saved valuable equipment, fought a reckless but brilliant rear-guard action at Charlotte on September 26, 1780, and continued to harass Cornwallis until the latter retreated into South Carolina in October. These glorious six months Davie was seeking a separate command when General Greene enlisted him as commissary-general for the Carolina campaign and procured his appointment in a similar capacity by the North Carolina Board of War on January 16, 1781.
Though almost without funds, he succeeded in feeding Greene’s army and the state militia to the satisfaction of that general, who liked him and kept him with him from Guilford Court House to Ninety-six (March-May 1781).
Davie detested his work and resented bitterly the inevitable criticism, but persisted in the office until it was discontinued and his voluminous accounts were fully made up.
For the next fifteen years he rode the circuits of the state, save the westernmost, as a lawyer.
Soon he was appearing in all the important civil cases, and for the defense in every capital case. Men ranked him with Alfred Moore as first of an able bar.
Since he liked to argue broad principles rather than precedents, he was helpful in the necessary adjustment of the old law to the new situation.
Representing the borough of Halifax in the legislature of North Carolina almost continuously from 1786 to 1798, he more than any one else was responsible for the action of that body in ordering the revision and codification of the laws, the sending of representatives to the constitutional conventions at Annapolis and Philadelphia, the cession of Tennessee to the Union, and endeavoring to fix disputed state boundaries.
As Grand Master of the Masons he laid the cornerstone of its first two buildings.
In the Federal Convention, though he represented a large state, he swung his delegation to the “Connecticut Compromise, ” lest the movement for stronger government fail. He there favored election of senators and later of presidential electors by the legislature, and strenuously insisted on representation for slave property.
In the fight for ratification in North Carolina he was second only to Iredell.
While governor he denounced the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions and accepted appointment from President Adams, first as brigadier-general for the French War, and in 1799 as peace commissioner to France.
Refusing either to modify his aristocratic habits or to solicit votes personally, he was eliminated from politics by the Jefferson-Macon machine in the important congressional election of 1803.
Disgusted with politics and saddened by the loss of his wife, he retired in 1805 to his plantation, “Tivoli, ” in Lancaster County, South Carolina, where he could enjoy farming, friends, horses, and books, and give an occasional bit of advice to his university or make a biting remark about North Carolina politicians.
Though long an admirer of Madison, he declined appointment as major-general in 1813 and defended the conduct of the New England Federalists during the War of 1812.
Davie was the first president of the South Carolina Agricultural Society. He was chiefly responsible for the establishment, location, building, and endowment of the University of North Carolina, selected its instructors and planned for it an elastic curriculum that included literary and social studies as well as the familiar mathematics and classics.
Davie advised against Federalist support of Burr as bad policy, but urged the appointment of popular and active men as federal judges since the cause of Federalism depended on their exertions.
Under presidential appointment, he negotiated the Tuscarora treaty in 1802 but otherwise waved aside overtures from “that man” Jefferson.
His political attitude seems to have been grounded originally on contempt for the war boards, the judges, and the legislators whom democracy thrust up; it was confirmed by the subservience of politicians to Virginia leadership.
Tall, elegant, and commanding Davie had a mellow and flexible voice and a “lofty and flowing” style which became him well and “astounded and enraptured” his audiences.
Settling at Halifax in 1782, he married Sarah Jones, daughter of his old commander and niece of Willie Jones, who brought him a fine farm and eventually bore him six children.
