Background
William Grayson was born in Prince William County, Virginia. His father, Benjamin Grayson, married the twice-widowed Susana Monroe, aunt of James Monroe, and William was the third child and third son of their four children.
William Grayson was born in Prince William County, Virginia. His father, Benjamin Grayson, married the twice-widowed Susana Monroe, aunt of James Monroe, and William was the third child and third son of their four children.
Grayson attended the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania) and is said to have attended the University of Oxford and to have studied law in London.
The outbreak of the Revolution found Grayson engaged in the practice of law at Dumfries, Virginia. On August 24, 1776, he was commissioned lieutenant-colonel and aide-de-camp to General Washington.
Promoted colonel in January 1777, he took part in the battles of Long Island, White Plains, Brandywine, and Germantown. At Valley Forge, in the spring of 1778, he served on the commission appointed by General Washington to arrange for the exchange of prisoners with Sir William Howe and later testified at the trial of Major-General Charles Lee regarding the confusion prior to the battle of Monmouth.
He retired from the army in April 1779, and later became a commissioner of the Board of War. Resigning in September 1781, he practiced law at Dumfries until in 1784, he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates and to the Continental Congress.
Taking his seat in Congress in March 1785, he was active in the debate preceding the passage of the Land Ordinance of May 20, 1785. He was much interested in the development of the western country and Manasseh Cutler found his influence of value in procuring the enactment of the Ordinance of 1787.
Grayson was not the author, as is alleged, of the anti-slavery clause in the Ordinance, though he approved it as a voluntary concession to Northern and Eastern opinion; Nathan Dane may have added the clause upon Grayson’s suggestion.
It was agreed to by the Southern members, Grayson wrote to Monroe, in order to prevent “tobacco and indigo from being made on the northwest side of Ohio, ” and for “several other political reasons” - meaning, principally, a settlement of the Mississippi question in accordance with Southern interests. This argument Grayson developed in the Virginia convention of 1788.
Free navigation of the Mississippi, he declared, in opposing the ratification of the Federal Constitution, would be safer under the Articles of Confederation. He feared that the North, using the treaty-making power, would yield the Mississippi to Spain, and by preventing the development of the Mississippi country, assure to itself a permanent position of dominance.
Following the passage of the first tariff act in 1789, he wrote to Patrick Henry predicting that the South would prove to be the “milch cow of the Union”.
After ratifying the Constitution, Virginia, in a repentant mood, elected Grayson and Richard Henry Lee, both Anti-Federalists, to the United States Senate. Grayson died at Dumfries during the second session of Congress.
Skilled in the debate, Grayson loved the sport of dialectics, and is said to have excelled “in fascinating manners, in humor, in wit, ” and “in an almost unrivaled play of the intellectual powers”.
Grayson was married to Eleanor Smallwood, sister of William Smallwood.