William Fitzhugh Gordon was born on January 13, 1787, at Germanna, Orange County, Virginia, of Scotch-Irish ancestors who had been prominent in Revolutionary Virginia. He was the second son of James Gordon of Orange, who married his first cousin, Elizabeth Gordon.
Gordon's primary education was completed in the neighborhood Oldfield school, but in his thirteenth year, he was sent to learn the mercantile business in Fredericksburg.
His intellectual development was such that in a few years he was able to teach school long enough to obtain sufficient funds for a two-year course at Spring Hill Academy.
Returning to Fredericksburg in 1807, William worked as a law clerk, meanwhile studying law, was admitted to the bar and practiced one year at Orange Court House, but moved in 1809 to Albemarle County. He was chosen an attorney for the commonwealth in 1812 but resigned before his term expired to continue his general practice.
During the War of 1812, he served as private in the Virginia militia; later the Assembly named him successively brigadier-general and major-general.
After the war, he returned to his practice, and in 1818 was elected to the House of Delegates, where, save for one session, he was a member continuously until 1829, his most important work in this body being his energetic support of Jefferson’s projected state university.
In the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829-30, Gordon was conspicuous as the framer of the successful compromise measure fixing the representation in the two houses of the General Assembly on “the mixed basis” of population and taxation.
He was elected to the Virginia Senate for the 1829-30 session but resigned to succeed William Cabell Rives in the House of Representatives, where he served in the Twenty-first, Twenty-second, and Twenty-third congresses, from January 25, 1830, to March 3, 1835.
The most notable event of his congressional career was his introduction, on June 20, 1834, of a bill providing for the establishment of an independent treasury. The idea was not entirely a new one, nor was it enacted during Gordon’s incumbency, but the bill represented the first step toward the separation of bank and state which became an actuality under Van Buren’s policy.
Always an extreme state-rights Democrat, Gordon, in protest against “Jacksonian Democracy, ” became a Whig, and as such was defeated in the elections for the Twenty-fourth Congress.
In 1837, he followed Calhoun in the return to the Van Buren Democrats, but his days of active politics were over, and he retired to his law practice and to his agricultural activities at “Edgeworth, ” his home in Albemarle County.
Only once again did he appear before the public, when in 1850, he was one of the leading figures in the Southern Convention at Nashville.
Gordon served in the House of Representatives in the Twenty-first, Twenty-second, and Twenty-third congresses. The most notable event of his congressional career was his introduction, on June 20, 1834, of a bill providing for the establishment of an independent treasury. He was also one of the leading figures in the Southern Convention at Nashville.
Both as statesman and citizen, Gordon sustained a reputation for honor and integrity.
He also stood high at the bar, where his dignity and courtesy combined with his “persuasive arts of conciliation and of personal appeal” to make him an able advocate.
Gordon was twice married: first, on December 12, 1809, to Mary Robinson Rootes, and, second, on January 21, 1813, to Elizabeth Lindsay.
