Background
Zachariah Johnston was born in 1742 near Staunton, Virginia. His father, William Johnston, an Ulster Scot, had lately come from Pennsylvania. The region around the Johnston cabin was still largely unbroken wilderness.
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(This monumental work consists of court records pertaining...)
This monumental work consists of court records pertaining to the Scotch-Irish pioneers who first breached the mountain barrier sealing off the Atlantic seaboard from the country west of the Blue Ridge. In 1738, when Augusta County, Virginia was erected, its domain extended from the Alleghenies to the Mississippi River, and from the northern part of Tennessee to the Great Lakes. Consequently Chalkley's esteemed publication stands as the supreme source of genealogical information for hundreds of thousands who trace their ancestry to Augusta County, and the Great Valley of Virginia. The first volume has abstracts of court order books (1745-1799), plus notes from county court judgments, original papers on suits (1745-1825), and petitions filed in court from 1745 on. Volume II has records of the circuit and district courts, marriage bonds, licenses and returns (1748-1800), land entries (1744-1751), guardians' bonds (1782-1801), administrators' bonds (1776-1810), tax delinquents (1748-1804), proceedings of the Vestry of Augusta Parish (1746-1799), and records of military service in colonial wars and the Revolution. Volume III has will abstracts (1745-1818) and deed abstracts (1745-1792). Each volume is indexed, and the combined total of names is over 50,000!
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(Excerpt from Debates: And Other Proceedings of the Conven...)
Excerpt from Debates: And Other Proceedings of the Convention of Virginia, Convened at Richmond, on Monday the Second Day of June, 1788, for the Purpose of Deliberating on the Constitution Recommended by the Grand Federal Convention; To Which the Federal Constitution This was a spectacle, which the political ah nals of the world had never before displayed. Almost all the governments which had preceded it, had been the offspring of force, or fraud, or ill-digested policy. They had been founded by the despotic power, or the intriguing arts of a few designing men. All the improvements, which had been introduced into their fundamen tal principles, had flowed from the unobserved innovations of time, or sprung from the insur rective impulse of the nation. It was left to the United States to exhibit the unprecedented spec(iv) About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Zachariah Johnston was born in 1742 near Staunton, Virginia. His father, William Johnston, an Ulster Scot, had lately come from Pennsylvania. The region around the Johnston cabin was still largely unbroken wilderness.
The boy Zachariah had a typical frontier upbringing but gathered somewhat of an education from the log academy of John Brown several miles away.
After his marriage he had settled down to the routine of a prosperous farmer when the outbreak of the Revolution introduced his ability to his country and state. In 1776 he was recommended for a captaincy in the Virginia militia and was duly commissioned. His company was unusually active in the frontier patrol against the Indians and in 1781 joined in the campaign that led to Cornwallis's surrender. Johnston's civil service began while he was still active as a militia captain.
In 1778 he was elected a representative from Augusta to the Virginia House of Delegates and continued to be elected without a break for the next fifteen years. When he moved from Augusta to Rockbridge in 1792 he was forthwith elected to represent the latter county. His greatest service to his state was rendered in 1785-86 when as chairman of the House of Delegates' important committee on religion and as an able colleague of James Madison he bore much of the brunt of the fight for Virginia's "Act for Establishing Religious Freedom" (1786).
As a delegate to the Virginia Convention of 1788, he carried the unanimous vote of his section with him for ratification. The importance of the part he played there is indicated by the fact that he made the closing speech for ratification. In the organization of the new federal government Johnston was the first elector for his section and later was urged to be a candidate for Congress but declined. He continued active in the state legislature until a few years before his death but his chief interest seems to have been in connecting the rivers of western Virginia with Washington's proposed system of Potomac navigation. He gave much of time and effort to this project.
An indication of the manner of man he was stands out in his refusal to accept a commission as a justice of the county court system tendered by Governor Jefferson in 1781, his reason being that he felt he should study law for a year or two first. His scrupulousness in all of his various activities is prominently evidenced in the rather copious collection of private papers that is preserved in the substantial house which he built for himself in Rockbridge County during his latter years.
(Excerpt from Debates: And Other Proceedings of the Conven...)
(This monumental work consists of court records pertaining...)
In his closing speech for ratification Johnston summed up the reasons for the appeal of the new Constitution to his section in its provisions for equal representation, fair taxation, and a stronger government; its purported antagonism to slavery; and its denial of any jurisdiction in religion or matters of conscience.
Quotations:
In 1786 Zachariah Johnston made the following speech in the Virginia House of Delegates Assembly in favor of the act establishing Religious Freedom: "Mr. Chairman, I am a Presbyterian, a rigid Presbyterian as we are called; my parents before me were of the same profession; I was educated in that line. Since I became a man, I have examined for myself; and I have seen no cause to dissent. But, sir, the very day that the Presbyterians shall be established by law, and become a body politic, the same day Zachariah JOHNSTON will be a dissenter. Dissent from that religion I cannot in honesty, but from that establishment I will. "
Taken from Zachariah Johnston's 25 Jun 1788 often quoted speech at the Virginia Convention debates ratifying the Constitution:
"It is my lot to be among the poor people. The most that I can claim, or flatter myself with, is to be of the middle rank. I wish no more, for I am content. But I shall give my opinion unbiased and uninfluenced—without erudition or eloquence, but with firmness and candor. And in so doing, I will satisfy my conscience. If this Constitution be bad, it will bear equally as hard on me as on any Member of society. It will bear hard on my children, who are as dear to me as any man's children can be to him. Having their felicity and happiness at heart, the vote I shall give in its favor, can only be imputed to a conviction of its utility and propriety. "
"As to the amendments now on your table, besides the impropriety of proposing them to be obtained previous to ratification, they appear to me, to be evidently and clearly objectionable ……That article says, That no free Government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue, and by frequent re- currence to fundamental principles. " This article is the best of the whole--Take away this, and all is gone. Look at the first article of our bill of rights. It says that all men are by nature equally free and independent. Does that paper acknowledge this? No, --It denies it. They tell us that they see a progressive danger of bringing about emancipation. The principle has begun since the revolution. Let us do what we will, it will come round. Slavery has been the foundation of that impiety and dissipation that have been so much disseminated among our countrymen. If it were totally abolished it would do much good. " . .. 5th and 6th paragraph.
"I am happy to see that happy day approaching, when we lose sight of dissections and discord, which are one of the greatest sources of political misfortunes. Division is a dreadful thing. This Constitution may have defects. " "There can be no human institution without defects. We must go out of this world to find it otherwise. The annals of mankind do not shew us one example of a perfect Constitution. " . .. 8th paragraph.
He ends his speech with: "I am for adopting the Constitution without previous amendments. I will go any length afterwards to reconcile it to Gentlemen by proposing subsequent amendments. The great and wise State of Massachusetts has taken this step. The great and wise State of Virginia might safely do the same. I am contented to rest my happiness on that footing. "
Zachariah Johnston married Ann Robertson, the daughter of a neighboring Scot family.