Background
MACFARLAND, William H. was born on February 9, 1799 in Lunenburg County, Virginia, United States, United States.
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William H. MACFARLAND
Edit ProfileEducation
Private school, southern university.
Career
He attended the College of William and Mary and became a lawyer in Richmond during the 1820s. MacFarland was a vestryman in the Episcopal church and a unionist Whig. In 1836, lie was president of the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad.
He delivered a funeral oration for James Madison while lieutenant governor of Virginia in 1837. From 1837 to 1865, he was president of the Farmer’s Bank of Richmond. He also owned coal mines and was a financier.
MacFarland supported public education, and in 1846, he was a member of the Richmond Educational Association. In 1850, he helped to organize the Richmond Historical Society. In 1860, he waselected to the Virginia secession convention as a unionist.
He was an anti-administration member of the provisional Confederate Congress, where he served on the Commercial Affairs and Inauguration Committees and the special committee for comfort of wounded soldiers. He ran unsuccessfully for the first Confederate House against former President John Tyler ), who accused MacFarland of threatening his debtors with foreclosures if they failed to support him. MacFarland gave no further public service to the Confederacy.
In 1864, he helped to provide artificial limbs for soldiers. Throughout the war, he provided needed business advice to the Confederate government. After the war, he helped to achieve a civil rather than a military government for Richmond in the early days of Reconstruction.
He signed Jefferson Davis’s ) parole bond. In 1867, along with R.M.T. Hunter and Thomas Jefferson Randolph, MacFarland joined the Conservative party.
Religion
"Peculiar institution" of slavery was not only expedient but also ordained by God and upheld in Holy Scripture.
Politics
Stands for preserving slavery, states' rights, and political liberty for whites. Every individual state is sovereign, even to the point of secession.
