BIOGRAPIHCAL SKETCH 
 
 OF 
 
 ON. MUSCOE RUSSELL 
 HUNTER GARNETT, 
 
 (1821-1864) 
 
 OF 
 
 ELMWOOD," ESSEX CO., VA., 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES MERCER GARNETT, 
 
 Member of American Historical Association and of Maryland 
 
 Historical Society, and Ex-Member of Virginia 
 
 Historical Society. 
 
 Reprint from July and October Numbers (igog) 
 
 of If' il Ham and Mary College 
 
 Sluarterly Magazine. 
 
lass 
 
 £^\b^ 
 
 9\ 
 
 PRESENTi:n BY 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH v/; 
 
 / 
 
 / 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. MUSCOE RUSSELL 
 HUNTER GARNETT, 
 
 (1821-1864) 
 
 OF 
 
 "ELMWOOD," ESSEX CO., VA., 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES MERCER GARNETT, 
 
 Member of American Historical Association and of Maryland 
 
 Historical Society, and Ex-Member of Virginia 
 
 Historical Society. 
 
 Reprint from July and October Numbers (iqoq) 
 
 of fPilliam and Mary College 
 
 Quarterly Magazine. 
 
1- 
 
 1 
 
 Gifg 
 fi£C 24191)^ 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 OF 
 
 Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett, 
 
 OF ESSEX COUNTY, VIRGINIA. 
 
 (1821-1864) 
 
 This brief sketch will serve to introduce to the present 
 generation, and to bring before his contemporaries, few of 
 whom are now living, the memory of one of the younger 
 statesmen of Virginia, who flourished fifty years ago and bril- 
 liantly adorned the annals of the Commonwealth. He was 
 universally regarded as one of the most intellectual, and one 
 of the most highly educated, young men, especially in his 
 knowledge of history and literature, and political science, that 
 this State has ever produced. He was cut off by disease in 
 the vigor of his young manhood, but not before he had made 
 a name for himself, and had already taken a high stand in 
 political life, which bade fair to honor him with the highest 
 honors that the Commonwealth could bestow. The position 
 that he had already attained at forty years of age was but an 
 earnest of what the future had in store for him. 
 
 Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett was born on July 25''', 
 1821, the son of James Mercer Garnett, Jr., and Maria Hun- 
 ter. His father was the eldest son of the Hon. James Mer- 
 cer Garnett, of Elmwood, Essex county, Virginia, and his 
 first cousin, Mary Eleanor Dick Mercer, daughter of Judge 
 James Mercer, of the Virginia Court of Appeals (see William 
 and Mary College Quarterly, XVII. , 2 and 3, October, 1908, 
 and January, 1909). His grandfather Garnett had served in 
 the State Legislature, and in the United States Congress for 
 two terms (1805-1809), when he declined a renomination ; and 
 he afterwards served in that noted Constitutional Convention 
 of 1829-30, which has been called the most distinguished body 
 of men that ever assembled on the soil of Virginia, of which 
 
4 Biographical Sketch 
 
 President Monroe was the president, and President Madison, 
 Chief Justice Marshall, and a host of the most prominent men 
 in the State, were members. 
 
 His mother was a daughter of James Hunter and his first 
 wife, Maria Garnett, daughter of Muscoe Garnett and Grace 
 Fenton Mercer, and sister of Hon. James Mercer Garnett. 
 She was an elder sister of the late Hon. Robert Mercer Talia- 
 ferro Hunter, who served in the State Legislature, the 
 U. S. House of Representatives, of which body he was the 
 Speaker in 1839-40, and later in the U. S. and the Confederate 
 States Senates, and was Confederate Secretary of State for 
 several months. 
 
 His grandfather, Hon. James Mercer Garnett, was the son 
 of Muscoe Garnett and Grace Fenton Mercer, daughter of 
 John Mercer, of Marlborough, Stafford county — a lawyer, au- 
 thor of Mercer's "Abridgment of the Laws of Virginia," and 
 his second wife Anne Roy, He was a grandson of James 
 Garnett and his second wife, Elizabeth Muscoe, daughter of 
 Salvator Muscoe, a lawyer, and a member of the Virginia 
 House of Burgesses (1734-40), of which body James Garnett 
 was also a member (1744-47). James Garnett was the son 
 of John Garnett, of Gloucester county, later of Essex county, 
 Virginia, whose will was proved in Essex county court March 
 II, 1713. He is supposed to have been descended from the 
 Garnetts of Lancashire, England, but the date of his immigra- 
 tion to Virginia is not known. 
 
 James Hunter, maternal grandfather of M. R. H. Garnett, 
 was the son of William Hunter and Sarah Garnett, daughter 
 of William Garnett, — who was the son of the above-named 
 James Garnett and his first wife, Sarah Green, — and Ann 
 Rowzee. Both the parents and the grandparents of M. R. H. 
 Garnett were, therefore, related to each other. Muscoe was 
 the surname of his paternal great-great-grandmother, Russell 
 was a surname in the Hunter family, and Hunter was the sur- 
 name of his mother, who was a first cousin of his father, James 
 Mercer Garnett, Jr. His father was educated at Princeton 
 College, but left before graduation and entered upon the prac- 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 5 
 
 tice of the law. He died in his thirtieth year, too early to 
 make a name for himself, but family tradition credits him with 
 most remarkable talents. His mother was a woman of un- 
 usual intellectual powers, a strong and determined will, and 
 excellent business qualifications, and was one who impressed 
 herself upon all with whom she came in contact. She was 
 very fond of reading, and having access to good libraries in 
 both her father's and her uncle's homes, had fitted herself 
 well to direct the education of her son, who received his 
 early training at her hands, and those of his maternal aunts, 
 all intellectual women. One of these aunts. Miss Martha Fen- 
 ton Hunter, well known in her day as an authoress, chiefly of 
 children's stories and novels — one of which. The Clifford Fam- 
 ily, attained considerable reputation — has left us a sketch of 
 her nephew, which deserves insertion here as the only con- 
 temporary account that has been preserved, written by one 
 who knew him well all his life and took part in his early edu- 
 cation, as did also another aunt. Miss Jane Swann Hunter, who 
 possessed one of the strongest feminine minds that the writer 
 has ever known. 
 
 After the death of his grandfather, Hon. James Mercer 
 Garnett, of "Elmwood," in 1843, his daughter-in-law and her 
 son lived for many years at "Fonthill," Essex county, Vir- 
 ginia, the residence of her brother, the Hon. Robert M. T. 
 Hunter, with whom also Hved his above-mentioned sisters, and 
 it was under such training and influence that young Muscoe 
 Garnett was brought up until he was nearly thirty years of 
 age. 
 
 The following is the sketch referred to above : 
 
 Memoir of Muscoe R. H. Garnett by His Aunt, Martha 
 
 F. Hunter. 
 
 "M. R. H. Garnett [was] born on July 25"', 1821, at Elm- 
 wood in Essex county [Virginia]. Strongly marked traits of 
 character and mind were much earlier developed than is usual 
 with children, in the subject of this memoir. He was gifted 
 
6 Biographical Sketch 
 
 by nature with unusual sensibility, quickness and delicacy of 
 perception, and was always remarked by his friends for a 
 depth and reach of thought far beyond his years. Though 
 his temper was naturally quick and his feelings impetuous, 
 there was so much native kindness and gentleness in his dis- 
 position that no one who knew him can recall an act of boyish 
 cruelty, or violence, ever committed by him ; the sight of suf- 
 fering always caused him pain, partly, I believe, from deli- 
 cacy of organization, partly from strong natural sensibility, 
 and in some measure also attributable to his having been edu- 
 cated by women during the early years of his life. The early 
 influences under which he was fostered, and the circumstance 
 of being an only child, no doubt greatly contributed to 
 strengthen these traits of character, and produced a degree of 
 purity and refinement of feeling, which made the necessary in- 
 tercourse with the world in after life often painful and jarring 
 to his spirit. A few anecdotes will illustrate the very early 
 development of his mind, and the subjects of thought upon 
 which he loved to dwell. 
 
 When not more than five years of age, he used to delight 
 in hearing passages from "The Pilgrim's Progress," and at- 
 tempted to draw a picture of the Last Judgment, the dead ris- 
 ing from their graves, Christ on the throne of His Glory, the 
 sheep on His right hand and the goats on His left. The draw- 
 ing, of course, consisted only of wide, imperfect pencil marks, 
 but the idea which he attempted to explain in all its details 
 with great animation, and something too of solemnity, quite 
 touching in so young a child, was remarkable. 
 
 He showed, when not more than seven or eight years of 
 age, a marked fondness for poetry, history and geography, 
 and made very early attempts at composition; at eight and 
 nine he wrote tales and verses evincing a power of expression 
 and thought very unusual at so early an age. When not more 
 than eight years of age he would spend two or three hours at 
 a time stretched on the floor in the parlor, studying Le Sage's 
 Atlas, perfectly absorbed in tracing the courses of rivers and 
 the relative position [s] of towns and counties. When he was 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 7 
 
 not more than ten years of age, he undertook to edit a literary 
 paper to which he engaged some of his friends and acquaint- 
 ances as contributors, and for which he wrote several articles, 
 but as every number was to be sent in manuscript, the under- 
 taking proved so laborious as to be soon relinquished. His 
 aims were always high and his interest directed to objects 
 which seldom engage the attention of boys. He acquired very 
 early habits of accuracy and research, and a power of syste- 
 matising and generalising whatever knowledge he acquired, so 
 as to bring it to bear upon any subject to which his attention 
 was directed. It was one of his amusements to write histori- 
 cal tables, and when not more than twelve or thirteen one of 
 his favorite plans was, when he was old enough for the 
 undertaking, and had acquired the necessary knowledge, to 
 write a Universal History, the plan of which he had conceived 
 on a very comprehensive scale, and he used to delight to enter 
 into the details of all its intended execution. 
 
 The Romances of History by Henry Neale, Scott's Novels 
 and Shakspeare's Historical Plays, doubtless, increased his 
 taste for historical studies, which was always a very marked 
 one during his life. 
 
 When he was rather more than eight years of age, his 
 grandfather, Mr. James [Mercer] Garnett, having engaged 
 the services of a competent teacher, opened an Academy for 
 boys at Elmwood, his own residence and Muscoe's home. This 
 gave Muscoe an opportunity of mingling with boys of his 
 own age and sharing their studies, but he was so much ad- 
 dicted to his own pursuits, and so fond of the company of his 
 mother and his family, that his intercourse with the boys had 
 much less influence over his character and habits than could 
 possibly have been anticipated, and he always retained a 
 marked individuality of character. As a proof of his zeal for 
 acquiring knowledge, it may be mentioned that he read vol- 
 untarily during his leisure hours a very voluminous and tedious 
 historical work, Rollin's Roman History, when he was not 
 more than ten years of age, and continued without intermis- 
 sion to follow out his own plans for self-improvement. 
 
8 Biographical Sketch 
 
 When the Academy for boys was broken up at Elmwood, 
 he continued to reside there and was instructed by private 
 teachers with two or three other boys. He was, therefore, 
 never removed from home influences until he went to the 
 University of Virginia, when he was rather more than seven- 
 teen years of age, and where, though he remained only a year 
 and was detained at home by sickness for some weeks, he 
 graduated in Mathematics, Greek, Latin, French and German. 
 An extract from one of his letters, written whilst he was at 
 the University, will best explain the nature and extent of his 
 views on self-education. 
 
 'I shall continue my general studies without reference to 
 any particular profession for at least twelve months and prob- 
 ably longer. Of course, then, my three branches of study 
 will be history, metaphysics, and Belles Lettres. I shall frame 
 an extensive course of study in each, and the books may be 
 in any of the five languages I am acquainted with. So by 
 reading authors in the original, my knowledge of the language 
 will be kept up and improved. History I will study not as 
 a mere amusement, but philosophically. I will study it in con- 
 nection with Political Economy and the general doctrines of 
 government, and as an illustration of the science of the mind, 
 in short, as "philosophy teaching by example." By metaphy- 
 sics I mean the whole philosophy of the mind, whether con- 
 sidered individually or in masses, in its most extensive sense. 
 In Belles Lettres I will study the great poets and critics, and 
 view their masterpieces not only as sources of enjoyment, but 
 as works of art, and examine the principles which direct their 
 composition. In a word, I mean to study in these Belles Let- 
 tres what the Germans call Aesthetics. And furthermore, I 
 shall accustom myself to express my reflections on what I 
 read in writing. This will force me to reflect, fix what I read 
 in my memory, and assist me to form a style in writing. Now, 
 look at the advantages of this plan. I am anxious to become 
 well acquainted with the languages, and this plan will cer- 
 tainly make me so. For, if I read Shakspeare, so will I Homer 
 and Gothe. If I read Clarendon, so will I Sismondi and 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 9 
 
 Tacitus, and if I study Bacon, so will I Plato. This plan 
 too embraces everything but mathematics in its connection 
 with the natural sciences, and the sciences themselves. But 
 these can easily be put in. It may be objected that it is so 
 extensive that it would require a long time to do it any justice. 
 I reply that I can stop whenever I find it necessary, and that, 
 as to its requiring so much time and labor, a thorough edu- 
 cation is not be attained without these. I think, in making 
 out a course of reading, the best plan is to put down the very 
 best books we know, without considering whether we have 
 them or not, and also to make the course very thorough with- 
 out noticing how long it would require to go through it. Then 
 we can afterwards modify it to suit our case.' 
 
 There was an interval now of two years spent at home, 
 during which he endeavored assiduously to carry out his views 
 of self-education such as are expressed in the above extract 
 from his letter, and though his views were too comprehensive 
 to be thoroughly carried out in practice, his reading was 
 various and extensive, and the studies to which his attention 
 was chiefly directed were so thoroughly digested and syste- 
 matised in his mind that he could apply the knowledge he 
 possessed to any subject he wished. During this time he paid 
 two or three visits to Washington, where he took great de- 
 light in the access to books which the Congress Library afford- 
 ed him, and the opportunities of attending the debates in 
 Congress. 
 
 At the expiration of two years he returned to the Uni- 
 versity of Virginia for the purpose of attending Judge Tucker's 
 Law Lectures. In the home of this gentleman he found a 
 second home; to his intercourse with Judge Tucker's family 
 and the warm friendship formed with one of his sons, it 
 may be attributed that his time passed off so pleasantly that 
 he often said in after years he looked back upon this year as 
 one of the happiest of his life. 
 
 He entered upon the practice of his profession soon after 
 his return home, where he determined to reside, and attended 
 the county courts in which he practised regularly, studying 
 
10 Biographical Sketch 
 
 conscientiously whatever cases he undertook and giving much 
 satisfaction to his clients, but country practice did not afford 
 sufficient stimulus to his mind to awaken a. very strong in- 
 terest in his profession, and his time was much occupied by 
 pursuits more congenial to his tastes and habits. At this 
 period of his life he was fond of agriculture, both as a study 
 and an occupation ; indeed, the earnest and reflective character 
 of his mind always blended study with his occupation ; he cul- 
 tivated Belles Lettres not only as an amusement but as a 
 study, applying the principles of philosophical criticism to the 
 masterpieces of the best authors, but his especial delight was 
 always in historical studies, which he conducted in the manner 
 indicated in the extract from his letter, in which he lays down 
 the plan he designed to pursue in reading history. He ac- 
 quired such an extensive, connected and systematic knowledge 
 of history as to add rich and varied stores to the furniture 
 of his mind, enabling him to find apt and striking illustrations 
 from the past of present and passing events. He was a warm 
 admirer of Niebuhr, and derived many valuable lessons as to 
 the manner in which history should be studied and applied from 
 the writings of this author. 
 
 German literature opened up to him many new fields of 
 thought in which he delighted to expatiate ; the depth of 
 thought to be found in the celebrated writers of this language, 
 their habits of extensive and accurate research, their philoso- 
 phical manner of treating the subjects upon which they wrote, 
 were peculiarly fitted to excite the admiration of a mind such 
 as his, and exercise a strong influence upon his modes of 
 thinking and mental training. 
 
 One of his first publications was a Review on Heeren's 
 Ancient History. It appeared first in The Southern Magazine, 
 edited by Mr. Edmund Ruffin, and at once excited notice and 
 admiration; it was republished in The Southern [Literary] 
 Messenger. He wrote also a Review of the Life of Calhoun, 
 and a Review of Paget's Hungary and Transylvania, both of 
 which appeared in The Southern [Literary] Messenger [the 
 latter in the Nos. for January and February, 1844]. 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett ii 
 
 The rich materials he possessed for writing in his varied 
 stories of information upon man}^ important and interesting 
 subjects, the trains of thought to which they had given rise 
 in his mind, and the power he possessed of expressing his 
 thoughts not only forcibly and accurately, but also beautifully 
 when occasion required it, made his friends regret that he 
 did not make more frequent use of his pen, but the very high 
 standard of excellence in composition he had formed was one 
 of the chief causes [why] he did not write more, as it was 
 difficult for him to believe that his efforts came up to their 
 requirements. He had many literary plans which were never 
 executed, to the regret of those who knew his capacities and 
 acquirements most intimately, and who believed that he could 
 have adorned and illustrated any subject to which he gave 
 his attention. 
 
 Though he was always an interested observer of public af- 
 fairs, and became, as soon as he formed any political opinions, 
 a strong opposer of Northern incroachments and the Northern 
 school of politics and a warm champion of Southern Rights, 
 he made no attempt to enter public life, nor published anything 
 upon political subjects until the winter of 1850. At this period 
 he wrote "The Union, Past and Present [Future]," and the 
 publication of this pamphlet was the commencement of a new 
 era in his life. From this time his attention was more closely 
 directed to political subjects, and his desire to enter public 
 life increased. It was in the summer of 1850 that he delivered 
 an oration at the University of Virginia at a meeting of the 
 Alumni. 
 
 His entrance on public life was as a member of the Con- 
 vention which met in Richmond [in 1850]. As Mr. Tucker 
 is intimately acquainted with all that relates to his political 
 career, it is useless to dwell on the subject, and I will, there- 
 fore, add only a few more observations upon some of the 
 traits for which he was distinguished from childhood.^ A 
 love of truth, a sense of honor, a contempt for all that is mean 
 
 1 This allusion is to the fact that his friend, Hon. John Randolph 
 Tucker, proposed writing a sketch of his life which was never fulfilled. 
 
12 Biographical Sketch 
 
 and base, characterised him even as a child. A love of the 
 beautiful seemed natural to him, and was always a source of 
 exquisite delight. He was always a firm believer in the 
 truth of Revealed Religion, and a champion for it when as- 
 sailed. The purifying influences of the Gospel of Jesus Christ 
 seemed to exert an increasing influence over his character and 
 life until its close. The metaphysical and political aspects of 
 Religion had always peculiar attractions for him from his 
 earliest years. As a proof of these tastes it may be mentioned 
 that Coleridge's writings and Jeremy Taylor's sermons were 
 among his favorite works on Theological subjects.' 
 
 The following extract shows the seriousness of the youth 
 when not yet nineteen years of age. Extract from a letter writ- 
 ten from the University of Virginia, 1839: 
 
 "And, indeed, as I grow older, and direct myself more 
 and more, I feel that I shall meet the common fate of man, 
 which I had one day hoped to escape, — to grow more alone 
 as I grow older. I have an undefinable dread too of the bur- 
 dens, the cares, the responsibilities of life, which weighs much 
 upon my mind. And then, too, when I look back on the bril- 
 liant hopes with which I set out when a child, and watch how 
 they have faded from year to year, it all makes me feel very 
 sad. Even now what great things I would gladly attain, and 
 yet the thought of the immense effort necessary, the intense 
 and unwearying endeavor, and striving, appals me, and after 
 all, if these efforts be in vain ! It almost disposes me to give 
 up all, and hope to find my pleasures in watching the clouds, 
 sowing my corn, going from county court to county court, till 
 the county bench becomes a refuge for my gray hairs. All 
 these things weigh on my mind very much, and I feel a deep 
 regret for what is not so easily described, I mean the passing 
 away of the freshness and brightness of boyhood, for, though 
 I am not an old man, yet the boy has passed into the youth, 
 and I feel sorry that the youth is passing into the man. 
 
 You admire and appreciate that Ode of Wordsworth's, 
 when he describes the 'glory' whose faded colors I so much 
 regret (I believe that it is called "Intimations of Immortality, 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 13 
 
 from [Recollections of] Early Childhood"), and you will not 
 accuse me of affectation when I say that I feel the 'fading' 
 there described." 
 
 When Muscoe Garnett was about eight years of age, his 
 grandfather opened a boys' school at Elmwood, chiefly for 
 the education of his grandson. This school was taught by 
 teachers employed for that purpose, Mr. Garnett attending 
 to business matters, conducting family prayers, and delivering 
 occasional lectures to the boys, a volume of which was pub- 
 lished in 1830, containing four lectures. A girls' school had 
 previously been conducted at Elmwood by Mrs. Garnett and 
 her daughters, to which Mr. Garnett delivered a series of 
 lectures on Female Education, which were published in 1824 
 and 1825, and went through four editions. 
 
 The late Hon. B. Johnson Barbour, who attended the boys' 
 school in 1829, being a schoolmate there of Muscoe Garnett, 
 has left some reminiscences of his school days in a letter to 
 the writer written in 1885. He says of Mr. Garnett: "Mr. 
 Garnett's presence was very imposing, tall, well proportioned, 
 with a fine eye, a full head of gray hair, neatly brought to- 
 gether at the back in a queue, which was the more striking 
 from the fact that that style of dressing the hair had nearly 
 gone out of vogue" and of Mrs. Garnett: "I cannot forbear 
 from paying a deserved tribute to Mrs. Garnett. I still cherish 
 her memory with love and gratitude. During my whole stay 
 at Elmwood she was indeed a mother to me, chiding me gently 
 when in fault, encouraging me in every way to press forward, 
 calling me to her chamber to read a portion of the Scriptures, 
 and afterwards whatever there might be of interest in the 
 newspapers." He adds of "Elmwood" : "I need not attempt 
 any description of Elmwood. I will only say that it has 
 suggested some of the fine old English houses to me, and for 
 years after I lived there, when I would be reading an English 
 novel, Elmwood, with its fine hall, its library and parlor, its 
 corridors and general spaciousness, would rise up before me." 
 Mr. Barbour also pays a warm tribute to his friend and school- 
 mate, M. R. H. Garnett, with whom he continued in bonds 
 of friendship until Muscoe Garnett's death. 
 
14 Biographical Sketch 
 
 After some years of home education under tutors, and un- 
 der the direction of his mother and aunts, studying ancient 
 and modern languages, mathematics, history and general litera- 
 ture, Muscoe Garnett entered the University of Virginia in 
 the fall of 1838 at seventeen years of age. The excellence 
 of his preparation may be inferred from the fact that at the 
 close of this session he graduated in Latin, Greek, mathema- 
 tics, French and German, which course used to be known be- 
 fore the War of 1861 as "the green ticket.'' Had he re- 
 turned the next session, he could readily have completed the 
 course for the degree of Master of Arts, the only academic 
 degree then given at the University besides the degree of 
 Graduate in a School. He did not, however, return to the 
 University the following session, but prepared to pursue a 
 private course of reading and study at home for the next two 
 years. The spirit in which this course was pursued may be 
 seen from his letter quoted above in the sketch by his aunt. 
 While many young men might not profit as much by a course 
 of private study as by a college curriculum, such was his 
 mind and such were his habits, that the result showed that 
 this was best for him. For a young man of eighteen to twenty, 
 with a good previous preparation, it may be a question whether 
 it is not best to let him follow the bent of his own mind, for, 
 after all, such self-education may be the best education, 
 especially when it is as intelligently planned as the above- 
 quoted letter shows that his was. 
 
 A letter from his uncle, the late Hon. R. M. T. Hunter, to 
 his sister relating to her son, quoted in Miss M. T. Hunter's 
 "Memoir" of her father (pp. 82 ff.), shows that it is best in his 
 opinion to devolve responsibility upon a young man as soon 
 as he is able to bear it; and the letter following (pp. 85 ff.), 
 written to his nephew during his law course at the University, 
 shows his deep interest in him and the excellence of the ad- 
 vice that he from time to time gave him. After these two 
 years of private study at home, laying up a stock of physical 
 health as well as making mental acquirements, Muscoe Gar- 
 nett returned to the University of Virginia in the fall of 1841 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 15 
 
 and attended the lectures on Law of Professor Henry St. 
 George Tucker, graduating with the degree of Bachelor of 
 Law at the close of that session. He became very intimate in 
 the family of Professor Tucker, and especially with his son, 
 the late Hon. John Randolph Tucker, two years his junior, 
 forming a friendship that was severed only by death. 
 
 It was at this time that a short-lived periodical, known as 
 The Collegian, was conducted by the students, and Muscoe 
 Garnett was one of its editors. In Vol. IV., No. 2, for No- 
 vember, 1 84 1, will be found an article by the late John R. 
 Thompson, well known in later life as a journalist and 
 litterateur, descriptive of the five editors, Muscoe Garnett be- 
 ing described under the name Emerald. Thompson writes 
 of him as follows : "To begin with our indefatigable 
 Emerald. He is a gentleman who is entitled to your most 
 distinguished consideration. In person he is rather under the 
 middle height. His hair resembles drifts of purest snow, al- 
 beit he labors under the optical delusion that its hue is much 
 darker. He dresses always in black, and although he boasts 
 a connexion with the unterrified democracy, the gold chain 
 which dangles ostentatiously from his neck would certainly in- 
 spire a diflferent opinion. Plis conversation is instructive and 
 diversified. At one time he discourses on the beauties of the 
 dreamy writers of Germany ; at another he enters into an elo- 
 quent and thrilling disquisition on the "Sovereignty of the Peo- 
 ple," but his favorite theme is Italy. He is familiar with 
 every "ruined arch and ivied wall" from Rome and Caracalla's 
 Baths to Tivoli's romantic steep. Her dark-eyed daughters and 
 her sunny skies are associated with his fondest dreams of the 
 Poet Land. He dives deep into the mazes of her philosophy 
 and literature and sighs to think that 
 
 'In Venice, Tasso's echoes are no more,' 
 
 and that the lyre of Ariosto is motionless forever. Emerald is 
 our chairman and presides over the meetings of the Commit- 
 tee with 'dignity blended with ease.' In his room he is generally 
 
i6 Biographical Sketch 
 
 attired in a robe de chamhre of most flaming material, and in 
 his ordinary positions, exhibits an attitudinising elegance 
 which Henry Pelham might have envied. Tobacco he loudly 
 inveighs against, and, when talking on that subject, oites 
 numerous instances of many unfortunate individuals whose 
 sudden and lamentable death is to be attributed to its use." 
 
 In this Number "M. R. H. G." wrote the leading article on 
 'Poets and Poetry,' and one entitled 'A Winter Evening,' also 
 five eight-line stanzas entitled 'Lines,' and beginning: 
 
 'The dove her plaintive note prolongs 
 
 From pine groves far away ; 
 The birds their morning choral songs 
 
 Awake at spring of day.' 
 
 In the only other Number accessible to the writer, that for 
 January, 1842, "M. R. H. G." seems to have drawn upon his 
 home talent, as it opens with a letter ''To the Editors of The 
 Collegian" signed "Oliver Old School," the well known signa- 
 ture of his grandfather, James Mercer Garnett, of "Elmwood," 
 in the Southern Literary Messenger, a prose article by his 
 aunt, Miss Martha F. Hunter, entitled "Historical Scene from 
 the Reign of the Empress Maria Theresa, translated from the 
 German, for The Collegian," and certain lines by this lady en- 
 titled "The Hour to Die," and "The Enchanter's Invitation." 
 
 Muscoe Garnett graduated in Law at the close of this ses- 
 sion, July, 1842, in the same class with the late Hon. John S. 
 Barbour, Hon. Edward C. Burks, Col. H. Coalter Cabell, Maj. 
 George W. Carr, Hon. Thomas Croxton, Hon. William J. 
 Robertson, Col. John Scott, Col. William Watts, and others, 
 twenty-six in all. 
 
 One of his most intimate friends at the University was, as 
 stated above, John Randolph Tucker, son of the Professor of 
 Law, Henry St. George Tucker, and a correspondence be- 
 tween the two extending from this year (1842) to 1853 has 
 been preserved. Most of these letters are of too intimate a 
 character for publication, but citations from a few may be 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 17 
 
 made in order to show the estimation in which Mr. Garnett 
 was held. The following brief letter will be given in full : 
 
 "Winchester, July 6, 1849. 
 
 "My dear Aluscoe : 
 
 "I have just learned by letter from our old friend Dick 
 Noland, whose penchant for you is unsurpassed, that the new 
 Chair of History and Literature has been erected at the Uni- 
 versity." He writes most passionately (in the French sense of 
 the term) for your appointment. Need I tell you, my well be- 
 loved, that I would rather you should have it than all others 
 in the world. But will you take it? The two lines of dis- 
 tinction are before you. Which will you take? Political or 
 literary distinction? I cannot advise as yet, without hearing 
 from you. Let me hear. Let me see you in order to my 
 hearing properly & fully. T believe you could get it. 
 
 I hear also that you are the orator [i. e., of the Society of 
 the Alumni]. Glad am I to hear so. And I am your alternate. 
 Glad also to be just behind you, when the association does 
 me an honour, which my occupancy of the first position would 
 ^e^•er give me. 
 
 Write soon. In haste. 
 
 Your own friend, 
 
 J. R. Tucker." 
 
 Mr. Garnett did not seem to approve of the suggestion of a 
 professorship of History and Literature for himself, as Mr. 
 Tucker's next letter of July 24th, 1849, shows. He writes: 
 "One thing, however, before advancing. You seem to have 
 given up the idea of the merely literary life, and to have be- 
 come enamoured of the politico-literary. Eh! hien, as you will. 
 But what do you mean by going to practise law in a city? 
 Where ? Baltimore ? Not New York or any city north of Bal- 
 timore, surely? The question is one full of interest, i^*, would 
 you suit it? 2"^, will it suit you? 
 
 - This was premature, as this Chair was not finally established until 
 1858. 
 
i8 Biographical Sketch 
 
 "If it be any Northern city or even Baltimore, I would say 
 not. If it be Richmond or a Southern city, it is more probable. 
 This much for the i^*^ question. As to the second, I doubt 
 as to any, for the purpose you propose. Practise law ! You 
 do not like it, and in all human probability never would. There 
 is too much of the merely plausible, of the technically ingenious, 
 of the ad captatidum, in the practise of law to suit your taste, 
 if not the order of your mind. Nor do I depreciate you at all. 
 That is a higher order of mind which cannot deceive itself, and 
 which is consorted with a heart which refuses to deceive 
 others. Now, my own idea is that it would not suit you to 
 devote your life and talents to the pursuit of a profession 
 like that of the bar. To do it in a city requires incessant, 
 persevering, exclusive devotion to its study. In your present 
 situation, or even in mine, time is allowed to some other duty, 
 but in a city success only waits on exclusiveness of attention 
 to the profession of your choice. Would that suit you? But 
 you may look to political preferment in a city. 'Choose you 
 this day whom you will serve.' In a city politics and law will 
 not mingle with success in the latter. It is impossible. It re- 
 sults from the necessity of that exclusiveness above-mentioned. 
 Then, if Politics be your object, flee a city, the most tainted and 
 corrupted air for pure political aspirations like your own, that 
 ever was selected. You may expect the oak to grow in the 
 dark cells of the Penitentiary, but never hope to see the pure, 
 and honest, politician thrive in the heated and putrid at- 
 mosphere in which alone can flourish the political rabble of 
 a city. Upon the whole of this matter let me have a talk 
 with you before you decide. Come here and let me see you.'' 
 
 Immediately after graduation he opened his law office 
 at Loretto, Essex county, the Post Office nearest to "Elm- 
 wood," and continued to reside there until after the death of 
 his grandfather in April, 1843, when he and his mother, as 
 stated above, made their home at "Fonthill," the residence 
 of his uncle, the late Hon. R. M. T. Hunter. For some years 
 he devoted himself to law and literature, of which the latter 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 19 
 
 seems to have accorded best with his tastes. He wrote chiefly 
 review articles, the titles of some of which are given in the 
 above-quoted sketch by his avmt. 
 
 He was a great admirer of Mr. Calhoun and a supporter of 
 his views of Southern Rights, the continued aggressions on 
 which by Northern politicians were creating the gravest ap- 
 prehensions. His review of the "Life" of Calhoun, referred 
 to above a short sketch of whose life from 181 1 to 1843 ^^^ 
 been prepared by the Hon. R. M. T. Hunter — will show his 
 own political opinions, from which he never deviated. His 
 review of Paget's "Hungary and Transylvania" (2 Vols., Lon- 
 don, 1839), published in The Southern and Western Literary 
 Messenger and Rcviezv, as it was then called (Vol XH., Nos. 
 1 and 2, January and February, 1846), under the editorship 
 of the late Benjamin B. Minor, Esq., will give an example of 
 his literary style, which was pure, smooth and flowing, easy 
 and polished, a model of its kind. 
 
 Thus he continued his self-education, reading and writing, 
 and laying up those stores of knowledge and learning which 
 stood him in good stead when he entered later upon political 
 life. 
 
 It was in the year 1850, before he was thirty years of age, 
 that we have Mr. Garnett's first printed address, delivered 
 before the Society of Alumni of the University of Virginia on 
 June 29th, 1850. It is in this address that we first see the re- 
 sults of his literary and political training. 
 
 It shows the ardent devotion of the alumnus to his Alma 
 Mater, the pride of the citizen in his State, which was to be 
 the eoryphaeus of that chorus of Southern States that was 
 eventually to be the leader of the World. But alas ! physical 
 power was to overthrow moral and intellectual. Scarce four- 
 teen months after Muscoe Garnett's death all these visions 
 were ruthlessly shattered, and even then "coming events cast 
 their shadows before." 
 
 It was in this year that his principal pamphlet was pub- 
 lished on "The Union, Past and Future : How It Works and 
 How to Save It. By a Citizen of Virginia (Charleston, 
 
20 Biographical Sketch 
 
 1850)." This is a calm and well-reasoned discussion of the 
 political and economic relations between the Northern and the 
 Southern States since the foundation of the government, that 
 is, during the preceding sixty years (1790-1850), supporting 
 its statements with respect to the economic relations by some 
 half-dozen tables taken from the reports of the Secretary of 
 the Treasury, and other official documents. His view of the 
 political relations may be seen from the opening paragraph : 
 
 "The time has come when it behooves every Southern man 
 to consider the best means of preserving the Union which he 
 loves, and the rights and honor which are yet dearer. Sixty 
 years have passed since the Northern and Southern States 
 entered into a treaty for the common defence and general wel- 
 fare. We joined that league as equals : its strictly defined 
 powers were to be exercised for the equal good of all the 
 parties, and its benefits and burdens were to be equally shared. 
 But our allies at the North have grown strong under the fos- 
 tering protection of this great treaty, and are no longer content 
 with the equal conditions upon which it was formed. They 
 have perverted it from its original character, not only wield- 
 ing the granted powers for sectional and oppressive purposes, 
 but assuming every doubtful power for their exclusive ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 "In this spirit they have advanced far in a series of 
 measures, which, if unresisted, must end in the overthrow of 
 our slave institutions. But it cannot be doubted that a free 
 people, still untamed by the yoke of oppression and the stamp 
 of superiority, will resist such assaults. The South has at 
 stake, not merely the fourteen hundred millions of dollars, 
 the value of her slave property, but all of honor and of hap- 
 piness that civilization and society can give. To count the 
 means of resistance, the relative strength of the opponents, 
 the value of what we must hazard, and the surest ways of 
 preserving the Union in its original equality, is the object of 
 this Essay." 
 
 These quotations show the danger to be apprehended, even 
 in 1850. from the political discussions between the Northern 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 21 
 
 and the Southern States, the continual aggression of the North 
 upon the South on account of slavery, and the natural resist- 
 ance on the part of the South to a violation of her Constitu- 
 tional rights. The bulk of the pamphlet is taken up with the 
 discussion of the disadvantages of the Union to the South from 
 an economic point of view, and the manifest effort of the 
 North "to convert this Federal Union into a grand consolidated 
 State, on the French model, where the numerical majority 
 might have absolute sway." 
 
 This tendency has progressed since the War Between the 
 States and the liberation and enfranchisement of the negroes — 
 itself a fulfillment of the prophecies previously made — so that 
 even now the proposition is discussed in Congress to deprive 
 the Southern States of electoral votes, because, forsooth, 
 negroes are deprived of votes, which, in the opinion of the 
 majority in Congress, they ought to cast, thus importing an en- 
 tirely new principle into legislation. The illegal enfranchise- 
 ment of the negroes should be sufficient, but the end is not yet. 
 
 The pamphlet contains many truths, and then was the time 
 for secession, when the South was stronger and proportionately 
 better able to maintain her "Equality and Independence," but 
 the "numerical majority" proved too strong for her. 
 
 A communication in The Union, a Democratic paper of 
 Washington, D. C, said of this pamphlet: "It is filled with 
 profound thought and powerful argument, which at the present 
 time commend themselves to every patriotic heart which de- 
 sires the preservation of the Union and the restoration of kind 
 feelings between the two sections of our country. A general 
 consideration of this essay will not only diffuse light and in- 
 formation amongst the community, but will show most clearly 
 the indispensable necessity of restoring repose to the public 
 mind. As sincere friends of the Union — as most ardently 
 desirous of giving quiet to the agitated feelings of the coun- 
 try — we recommend to every one to read and circulate it. 
 * * * The facts and statistics are faithfully arrayed, and 
 will well repay a most thoughtful perusal." 
 
 The extracts from Mr. Garnett's pamphlet show his 
 views on the burning questions of the day, especially his 
 
22: Biographical Sketch 
 
 firm determination to resist all Northern aggressions upon 
 slavery, such as the Wilmot proviso and cognate measures, 
 even at the risk of a severance of the Union. If Southern 
 men could not settle freely in the common territory of the 
 Union with their property of all kinds, without any restric- 
 tion, of what good was the Federal Union to them? They 
 were not willing to submit to a circumscription of their rights 
 in any respect, and the manifest tendency of all restrictive 
 measures proposed by the Northern States was to confine 
 slavery to the States in which it already existed, and ultimately 
 to extinguish it even there. This was plainly the object to 
 which all these proposed measures looked, and the South pre- 
 ferred to dissolve the partnerships which they had a perfect 
 right to do, rather than submit. 
 
 Mr. Garnett had, up to this time (1850), never 
 held a political office, but he was now chosen a 
 delegate to the Constitutional Convention that as- 
 sembled in Richmond, Virginia, on October 14th, 1850, repre- 
 senting the district composed of Essex, King and Queen, Mid- 
 dlesex and Matthews counties, and having as his colleagues, 
 James Smith, of King and Queen, and Muscoe Garnett, of 
 lower Essex county, who, if at all related to him, was very 
 distantly related. Mr. M. R. H. Garnett took a very active 
 part in the deliberations of this Convention, especially in the 
 discussion of the basis of representation, on which he delivered 
 a notable speech. He strongly supported the mixed basis, for 
 it was upon this question that the eastern and the western 
 portions of the State were divided, the eastern portion favoring 
 the mixed basis and the western portion, the white basis, the 
 mixed basis allowing certain weight to the negroes, as in the 
 U. S. Constitution. (See Appendix.) 
 
 At the election succeeding the adjournment of the Con- 
 stitutional Convention of 1850-51, Mr. Garnett was elected to 
 the House of Delegates, and served continuously for five 
 years. He was made chairman of the Committee of Finance, 
 and there has been preserved a report of that committee 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 23 
 
 submitted by him on February 4th, 1856, but it is not possible 
 to go into the subject in any detail for want of necessary space. 
 He was specially interested in financial matters, and became 
 thoroughly conversant with them. He seems to have inherited 
 his aptitude for these matters, for his uncle, the late Hon. 
 Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter, United States and Confed- 
 erate States Senator from Virginia, was for many years chair- 
 man of the Committee of Finance in the United States Senate, 
 and was specially prominent in framing the tariff bill of 1857. 
 He favored a low tariff, but not one so low as to reduce 
 the revenues of the country below its expenses ; nor did he 
 believe in levying a tax upon consumers for the benefit of 
 producers. 
 
 In 1855 Mr. Garnett was appointed by the Governor a 
 member of the Board of Visitors of the University of Vir- 
 ginia, and served until 1859. He is said to have been largely 
 instrumental in the establishment by this Board of the Chair 
 of History and Literature in the University of Virginia, the 
 first incumbent of which. Professor George F. Holmes, entered 
 upon his duties in October, 1857. Mr. Garnett was deeply in- 
 terested in the University. 
 
 In the year 1856 the Democratic Representative from the 
 First Virginia District, Hon. Thomas H. Bayly, died, and Mr. 
 Garnett was looked to as a suitable candidate for the va- 
 cancy. The District consisted at that time of the counties of 
 Accomac, Elizabeth City, Essex, Gloucester, King and Queen, 
 James City, Lancaster Mathews, Middlesex, New Kent, 
 Northampton, Northumberland, Richmond, Warwick, West- 
 moreland, York, and the City of Williamsburg, and the nomi- 
 nating Convention met at the Courthouse of Mathews county 
 on Wednesday, the 20th day of August, 1856. The result of 
 the first ballot was as follows : 
 
 Muscoe R. H. Garnett 1^938 
 
 Robert L. Montague, 1,207^/2 
 
 Richard A. Claybrook, 690 
 
 J. B. Cosnahan (not in nomination),. . . . 365^ 
 
 3-872 
 
24 Biographical Sketch 
 
 Mr. Garnett, having received a majority of all the votes 
 cast, was declared the nominee, and, on motion, the nomina- 
 tion was made unanimous. At the election in November Mr. 
 Garnett was duly elected over his opponent of the Know 
 Nothing party. 
 
 The Richmond Enquirer, as quoted in the Democratic 
 Recorder, of Fredericksburg, of Sept. 8, 1856, said of the 
 nominee : 
 
 "Mr. Garnett was first distinguished as the author of a 
 political pamphlet, which elicited immediate and universal ap- 
 plause by its intense Southern spirit, the originality of its 
 speculations, and the sound statesmanship which controlled 
 its conclusions. It was the earliest and the ablest philosophical 
 exposition of the relations of slavery to the Federal Govern- 
 ment ; and as such gave the writer foremost rank among the 
 rising men of the South. But it is not so much for this pro- 
 duction, or his contributions to the Reviews, that Mr. Gar- 
 nett is held in high esteem through the State. His reputation, 
 in Virginia at least, rests on the more solid basis of an ap- 
 proved ability in practical legislation. 
 
 "The last session of our General Assembly was dis- 
 tinguished by the discussion of some of the most profound 
 and difficult problems in finance and general policy ; and in 
 virtue of his position at the head of the leading committee, 
 Mr. Garnett bore a conspicuous part in every debate. The 
 promptitude of suggestion, the fertility of resource, the mature 
 thought and ample information which he displayed, in col- 
 lision, too, with some of the first minds of the State, were 
 attested and applauded by men of all parties. 
 
 It is compliment enough for one so fresh in public affairs, 
 to say that he sustained himself in strenuous hand to hand 
 debate with a person of the experience and ability of John 
 B. Floyd. The contest between these gentlemen was worthy 
 of any arena. Mr. Garnett certainly suffered no loss of 
 credit, but (and it is a rare thing) he fully redeemed the 
 reputation of his writings. * * * Mr. Garnett is known 
 through the North as the most prominent and brilliant of 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 25 
 
 that rising school of statesmen in the South who defend the 
 institution of slavery on grounds of moral, social, and political 
 expediency — of that school which, discarding the prejudices 
 and rejecting the dogmas of an obsolete age, boldly claims 
 for the civilization of the South the sanctions of a juster 
 and truer philosophy. He is known, too, for that sort of 
 ultraism which is unwilling to brook any further infringement 
 of the Constitution and encroachment upon the rights of the 
 South. 
 
 The effect of the defeat of a person with this reputation and 
 these opinions, at this particular crisis, will be to confirm 
 the impression now so actively propagated in the North, that 
 the people of Virginia are not so loyal to its institutions and 
 so jealous of its rights as the papers and politicians repre- 
 sent. And the effect of that pessimism would be to stimulate 
 the fanaticism of the Abolitionists, and encourage them to 
 still more violent assaults on the Constitution. * * * The 
 people of that district owe it to themselves, to the State and to 
 the South, to reinforce the ranks of the slavery champions in 
 Congress with the best talent, the best energy, and the best 
 spirit which they can press into the public service. We 
 cannot doubt the election of Mr. Garnett." 
 
 In consequence of this election in November, 1856, Mr. 
 Garnett's political activity was transferred from the State 
 Legislature to the halls of Congress, which he entered the fol- 
 lowing month, Dec. i, 1856. The experience that he had had 
 in the State Constitutional Convention, and in the Legislature, 
 especially as chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means 
 of the House of Delegates, was, doubtless, of great service 
 to him in this larger field of legislation. Some half-dozen or 
 more separate printed speeches delivered in the House of 
 Representatives, have been preserved, but we can do no more 
 than mention them here. 
 
 The first that we have available is one on "Public Expendi- 
 tures and the Tariff'," delivered on Feb. 14, 1857, about two 
 months and a half after he took his seat. Here he advanced 
 the views that he always held of economy in expenditures 
 
26 Biographical Sketch 
 
 and a low tariff, the limitation of expenditures to the actual 
 needs of the Government, and the reduction of the tariff to 
 the demands of the revenue. This whole speech shows the 
 Democratic position on the tariff, especially at that time when 
 a reduction of duties was necessary to avoid piling up a surplus 
 revenue. 
 
 The arnounts a half-century ago were ridiculously small 
 when compared to the colossal receipts and expenditures of 
 the present day, but the principle of retrenchment and re- 
 form was the same. It was no part of the office of govern- 
 ment to assist individuals in amassing huge fortunes, and to 
 levy taxes on the necessaries of life, which oppresses the poor 
 and increases the inequality of wealth already existing. 
 
 The principles of the Democratic party have remamed the 
 same, and they have ever striven against the exorbitant duties 
 which go from bad to worse, but the people are blind to their 
 true interests, and the oppression of the poor by means of the 
 tariff continues and will continue against all opposition. The 
 following year, on March 22"*^, 1858, Mr. Garnett delivered a 
 speech on the admission of Kansas into the Union under a 
 Constitution which authorized its admission with slavery. 
 He showed clearly that the anti-slavery feeling was at the bot- 
 tom of the opposition to the admission of Kansas, while there 
 was no opposition to the admission of Oregon and Minnesota, 
 notwithstanding certain irregularities, because the Constitu- 
 tions of these States forbade slavery. He asserted that the 
 Senator from New York [Mr. Seward] "disclosed the true 
 secret when he declared that it was a dynastic struggle between 
 North and South whether another slave State could be ad- 
 mitted into the Union," and he gave an interesting historical 
 review of the issue. 
 
 Less than two months later, on May 4th, 1858, Mr. Gar- 
 nett spoke on the admission of Minnesota, opposing such ad- 
 mission not on political grounds, but because of serious irregu- 
 larities in the adoption of its Constitution. 
 
 The enabling act permitted unnaturalized foreigners to 
 vote ; it violated the compact entered into on the cession of 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 27 
 
 the Northwest Territory in that five States had already been 
 formed from it and now twenty thousand square miles more 
 went to the formation of Minnesota; moreover, there were 
 irregularities in the organization of the conventions, hence 
 the Constitution was not the act of the people of Minnesota, 
 even if it was afterwards adopted by the people; this act 
 could not make that lawful which was previously unlawful. 
 Again, the population did not justify the number of represen- 
 tatives allowed to the State. Minnesota, therefore, had not 
 complied with the enabling act and did not have a population 
 that justified more than one representative, and such an amend- 
 ment Mr. Garnett offered to the pending bill. He protested 
 against allowing to Minnesota twice the power and influence 
 given to his people. 
 
 We have another speech on "Public Expenditures," de- 
 livered by Mr. Garnett on February 14"^, 1859. He takes up the 
 expenditures of the different departments, Army, Navy, Post- 
 office, Public Lands, and others, and proposes reductions in 
 them all, showing again his advocacy of retrenchment and re- 
 form. Without going into details, which would be of no ser- 
 vice at this day, we may quote his closing paragraph as show- 
 ing the principles which actuated him in his Congressional 
 career. He says : 
 
 "There are but two modes of organizing parties. One 
 is on principles — principles fixed and eternal ; the other is by 
 patronage and expenditure and personal combinations. The 
 State-rights Democratic party commenced its career with the 
 foundation of the Government. It began on principle ; on 
 the strict construction of the Constitution ; that Government 
 should do as little, and that the individual should do as much, 
 as possible. It has been a party of free trade, of low duties, of 
 economy, of retrenchment, and of a strict construction of the 
 Constitution. It is because it has been such a party that it 
 has commanded the affections of the people of the country. 
 
 My heart warms to its old banner inscribed with the names 
 of many a glorious achievement and soiled with the smoke 
 of many a gallant action ; warms to it when I remember that, 
 
28 Biographical Sketch 
 
 under the auspices of that party, our country has grown from 
 the few feeble settlements of 1789 to the magnificent Con- 
 federacy in which we now live ; warms to it when I remem- 
 ber that it laid down, in lygS-'gg, in my own old State, the 
 chart of constitutional construction, which, amid all aberra- 
 tions, it has ever returned to since ; when I remember that, 
 despite the opposition of its foes, it added to our country the 
 mouths of the Mississippi ; that it added Florida and Texas, 
 and gave us the Pacific Coast. I thank it when I remember 
 that, under its care, we have been gradually brought from a 
 system of high duties, paper currency and of Government 
 interference, to a system where we have a sound metallic cur- 
 rency, and comparative free trade ; where our trade and com- 
 merce, our imports and exports, have outstripped those of 
 any other nation of the world. 
 
 I value it for all these things ; and let me say to my friends 
 of the Democratic party, that, if we once permit ourselves, 
 for the sake of carrying this election or that election, in 
 this State or the other State — ay, even in the old Keystone 
 State itself — to desert our principles, and to become a pro- 
 tectionist party, — when we depend for success, not upon prin- 
 ciples, but upon expenditure — then the days of the party are 
 numbered, and its mene, mene, tekel upharsin, are written on 
 the wall. By adhering to principles, though we may be in 
 the minority for a moment, we will ultimately control and 
 carry the country with us, and command the destinies of the 
 Confederacy and of the western hemisphere, till we shall have 
 fulfilled that high mission on earth for which God designed our 
 race." 
 
 This speech also shows his steadfast adherence to the 
 principles of the Democratic party, economy in expenses, low 
 tariff, and strict construction of the Constitution. 
 
 Mr. Garnett sometimes joined in brief remarks on bills 
 before the House. On Jan. 15, i860, the Civil Appropriation 
 bill being under consideration, he moved to amend the 21st 
 amendment made by the Senate by adding thereto the follow- 
 ing proviso : 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 29 
 
 "Provided, That the opprobrium of American art, pur- 
 porting to be an equestrian statue of Washington, shall be 
 removed and melted down and the bronze sold to defray in 
 part this appropriation," — on which he remarked as follows : 
 "Mr. Chairman : In the last sixty-odd years the memory of 
 the Father of his Country has been harassed by Fourth of 
 July orations and by disgraceful statues and monuments all 
 over this country, and by pictures such as that wretched daub 
 which we see there in the corner of this Hall. Not many 
 years ago we placed him in an almost naked condition out in 
 these grounds to endure the hot sun of summer and the cold 
 frosts of winter.* And not content with thus pillorying him 
 in the public grounds, we have now mounted him on what 
 purports to be a horse, but what any gentleman who has been 
 accustomed to see horses will pronounce to be an intolerable 
 beast. But not content with that, this so-called artist has 
 placed him in a position in which it would be impossible for 
 any rider to continue in his seat for two consecutive minutes. 
 The horse is rearing, while the rider, instead of leaning for- 
 ward, is falling back, about to pitch backwards over the thing 
 intended for the horse's tail. I think it great ingratitude on 
 the part of the American people to keep their "Father" in 
 such a position any longer. That figure, sir, is a caricature 
 of every lineament of his face, and every feature of his form ; 
 and I do hope that Congress, if it means to pass this amend- 
 ment at all, will, before they inclose this circle with an iron 
 railing, take down this wretched abortion." 
 
 "Mr. John Cochrane. I call for tellers on the Father 
 of his Country. [Laughter]." 
 
 "Mr. Garnett. I withdraw the amendment. The amend- 
 ment of the Senate was non-concurred in." 
 
 As showing his care for the purity of the English 
 language, on another occasion he remarked : "I move to strike 
 out the word 'donated' and insert the word 'given,' the word 
 'donated' not being properly a word in the English language 
 in that sense." 
 
 * This extraordinary statue has been transferred to the Smith- 
 sonian Institution. 
 
30 Biographical Sketch 
 
 "The amendment was agreed to." 
 
 Turning aside for the present from Mr. Garnett's political 
 and economic speeches, we may glance at his private life. We 
 have already stated that, after the death of his grandfather, 
 Hon. James Mercer Garnett, he and his mother had removed 
 from "Elrnwood" and taken up their residence at "Fonthill," 
 the home of his uncle, Hon. Robert M. T. Hunter. "Elm- 
 wood" meanwhile came into the possession of his mother and 
 himself, and during the fifties considerable expense was in- 
 curred in its repair and improvement. (See cut.) 
 
 It was a handsome brick dwelling of two stories and base- 
 ment, containing wide halls running from front to back, that 
 is, approximately, south to north, and from east to west, 
 along the front of the house, the first floor containing, to the 
 right of the main hall, a parlour and a very large dining-room, 
 and to the left, a library and a large chamber. The second 
 story contained a hall running from east to west over the 
 front hall on the first story, and some half-dozen spacious 
 chambers. A wide staircase to the left of the main hall con- 
 nected the two stories. 
 
 When Mr. Garnett remodeled the dwelling about i856-'57, 
 he removed this staircase and placed it in a tower to the 
 west, or left of the main entrance, which enlarged the upper 
 hall and improved the external appearance of the house, al- 
 though it destroyed the exact rectangular form. He also im- 
 proved the porches both front and back, and at the east and 
 west ends. 
 
 The estate contained about one thousand acres of low 
 grounds and forest land, and was situated on the second rise 
 from the Rappahannock River, some six or seven miles dis- 
 tant, and from the hill on which the house was built there 
 was a beautiful view of the river, both up and down. A large 
 garden, with a family burying-ground adjoining it, was back 
 of the house. 
 
 The house was built by Mr. Garnett's great-grandfather, 
 Muscoe Garnett, and was completed just before the Revolu- 
 tionary War, all except the porches, the construction of which 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 31 
 
 was interfered with by the outbreak of the war. It is said 
 that the bricks were imported from England, but this will 
 not be vouched for, as mistakes of this kind have been made 
 in respect to the old colonial churches. 
 
 Vawter's Church, built in 1731, about three miles distant, 
 was always attended by the family, and of this church the 
 Hon. James Mercer Garnett was a vestryman, a delegate to 
 the Diocesan Convention, and often a delegate to the General 
 Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 
 
 On July 26*'', i860, Mr. M. R. H. Garnett married Miss 
 Mary Picton Stevens, daughter of Edwin A. Stevens, Esq., 
 of Hoboken, New Jersey. There were two children born from 
 this marriage, James Mercer, born July 7. 1861, and Mary 
 Barton Picton, born May 28, 1863. 
 
 The state of the country, however, did not long permit 
 a quiet enjoyment of his married life. 
 
 The couple resided at "Elmwood" except during the ses- 
 sion of Congress following their marriage, when they spent 
 the winter in Washington.* 
 
 The election of Lincoln in November, i860, increased the 
 apprehensions already felt by the Southern people. It con- 
 clusively settled their exclusion from the territories, and ren- 
 dered probable speedy interference with their domestic in- 
 stitutions. The Union would no longer be a union of States 
 with equal rights, as intended by the Constitution, but a Union 
 in which the numerically stronger would rule, and the weaker 
 would have no security for their rights but the arbitrary will 
 of the stronger. 
 
 South Carolina had already declared that the election of 
 Lincoln would in itself constitute a sufficient justification for 
 her withdrawal from a Union in w^hich she could no longer 
 enjoy her equal rights. She, therefore, repealed the ordinance 
 adopting the Federal Constitution and took her position as an 
 independent State on December 20th, i860. Six other States 
 speedily took similar action, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mis- 
 
 * See Mrs. Clay-Clopton's book, "A Belle of the Fifties," p. 50. 
 
33 Biographical Sketch 
 
 sissippi, Louisiana, and Texas, so that by February ist, 
 1 86 1, seven States had formally withdrawn from the Federal 
 Union, in the exercise of their sovereign rights, as declared 
 in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798- '99, which 
 had been for over sixty years the tenets of the Jefifersonian 
 Democracy. These States, by the mouths of their delegates 
 appointed for the purpose, assembled in Montgomery, Ala- 
 bama, on February 4th, 1861, and formed a union of the Con- 
 federate States, choosing Jefferson Davis as President, and 
 Alexander H. Stephens as Vice-President. 
 
 The Virginia Legislature invited a Congress of all the 
 States to meet in Washington on February 4th, 1861, the day 
 of the meeting of the Congress of the Confederate States, to 
 take into consideration the state of the country. 
 
 This Congress was presided over by Ex-President John 
 Tyler, of Virginia, venerable from age, dignity, and official 
 position, and it deliberated for about three weeks (February 
 4th-27th) on the present alarming condition of affairs. 
 
 The Crittenden resolutions, which had been proposed in the 
 Senate by Senator Crittenden of Kentucky, or some similar 
 terms, were approved by the Southern men, but the Northern 
 men were opposed to all compromise of the questions at issue, 
 so that the deliberations of the Congress resulted in nothing 
 acceptable. 
 
 The Virginia Legislature also called a State Convention 
 to meet on February 13th, and to decide upon the course to 
 be taken by the State. 
 
 Virginia had voted for Bell and Everett, candidates of the 
 Constitutional Union party, and when the Convention as- 
 sembled, the majority was composed of Union men. Senti- 
 ment in the State, however, had greatly changed since the 
 election in November, i860, and when the Convention met 
 on February 13th, 1861, many who had voted for Bell and 
 Everett were now in favor of immediate secession. Mr. Gar- 
 nett was not an original member of this Convention, but was 
 chosen to fill a vacancy from Essex and King and Queen 
 counties, caused by the resignation of the former member. 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 33 
 
 He discharged his duties as Representative in Congress until 
 the secession of the State on April 17th, 1861. He had, how- 
 ever, expressed his views on the questions at issue, which 
 were in favor of immediate secession from the Union by Vir- 
 ginia and the resumption of her independent so\ereignty. 
 Along with other Southern Senators and Representatives he 
 had signed early in January a paper indicating the course that 
 the South should pursue. He delivered in Congress during 
 this winter two speeches, one on January i6th on "The State 
 of the Union," and the other on February 20th, on "The 
 Bill for the Increase of Vessels in the Navy," which show 
 clearly his position. 
 
 Events moved rapidly during the winter of 1861. One 
 month later, on February 20th, Mr. Garnett delivered in Con- 
 gress the last printed speech that has been preserved. It was 
 on the bill for the increase of vessels in the navy, to which 
 he offered the following amendment : ''Provided, That the 
 said ships shall not be used to execute the Federal laws, or 
 aid other land and naval forces in executing the Federal 
 laws, in States claiming to be without the Federal jurisdiction," 
 which amendment he supported in a brief speech. 
 
 During this speech he engaged in a colloquy with certain 
 other members of the House, one of whom, Mr. Anderson, 
 of Kentucky, remarked : 'T say that I am still for the Union, 
 and I ask the gentleman whether he is or not," to which Mr. 
 Garnett replied : "I am in favor of the State of Virginia 
 seceding from this Northern Union at the earliest possible 
 moment." He argued that "this executing the laws, as you 
 call it, is coercion, and coercion is war" ; "and while the sands 
 of life are still running for this Congress, the question of 
 peace or w^r is in your hands." 
 
 Mr. Garnett was very right in his position. The Southern 
 States that had already seceded held that they were out of the 
 Union, and that the Federal Government had nothing more to 
 do with them. They had withdrawn their ratification of the 
 Federal Constitution, — as they had a perfect right to do, — 
 and were now foreigners as far as the Federal Union was 
 
34 Biographical Sketch 
 
 concerned. Then was the time for the Virginia Convention 
 to have withdrawn from the Union instead of talking for two 
 months and then withdrawing after the poHcy of coercion 
 had been determined upon. If Virginia and the other border 
 States had then seceded, it is highly probable that there would 
 have been no war, but their continual delay encouraged the 
 Federal Government to think that they would not secede, and 
 the policy of coercion was resolved upon. The firing upon 
 Fort Sumter was an act of self-defence, but was seized upon 
 as an excuse for a policy already decided on, and was used 
 as a means of "firing the Northern heart," and of putting the 
 South in a false position. 
 
 Mr. Garnett argued that, if the independence of the Con- 
 federate States were acknowledged, they might have peace, 
 and might possibly keep the border slave States peaceably, 
 but if not. Congress would inaugurate a war, — and open war, 
 in which there was no doubt where the border States would 
 stand. He repeated that he was in favor of the secession of 
 Virginia, because he believed that it was "the best possible 
 mode of preventing war and reconstructing a Union of 
 equality." "But secession ofifers the best, if not the only 
 chance for peace ; and peace, the only hope of reconstruction." 
 He concluded with the remark : "The Sibylline books are 
 nearly destroyed. Only one-third remain, and they contain 
 the issues of peace and war. Choose ye between them ! We 
 of the South desire peace, we desire friendship with you ; 
 but choose which you may, the people of the South, and their 
 brethren on the Southern border — brethren in heart, if not in 
 name, ay, and many brave lovers of justice in the North, — 
 stand ready to meet you in the name of the God of battles and 
 of our fathers." 
 
 The inaugural address of President Lincoln on March 4th, 
 1861, instead of allaying, only increased the apprehensions 
 of war, which was finally declared by his proclamation of 
 April 15th, calling for troops from each of the States. This 
 caused the Virginia Convention to hesitate no longer, and the 
 ordinance of secession was passed on April 17th, 1861. 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 35 
 
 The secession , of Virginia compelled her Senators and 
 Representatives to withdraw from the U. S. Congress, and 
 Mr. Garnett retired at once. 
 
 As we have seen from the preceding speeches, he was in 
 favor of the earlier secession of the State, but, as the majority 
 of the Convention were Union men, they refused to take this 
 action until troops were called for to coerce the seceding 
 States, — a result that might have been foreseen, — when the 
 State withdrew from the Union and cast her lot with the 
 Confederate States. It is useless to speculate on what might 
 have been, but the earlier secession of the border States might 
 possibly have prevented war. 
 
 Virginia appointed as her representatives in the Provisional 
 Congress of the Confederate States, then in session at Mont- 
 gomery, Ala., the Hons. Robert M. T. Hunter, William C 
 Rives, John W. Brockenbrough, Waller R. Staples, and George 
 D. Camden. Mr. Hunter presented the resolutions of the 
 Virginia Convention, adopted April 27, 1861, inviting the au- 
 thorities of the Confederate States to make Richmond the 
 seat of government of the Confederacy, which invitation was 
 duly accepted, and on June ist Richmond became the capital 
 of the Confederate States and so continued until the end. 
 
 On the resignation of Dr. R. H. Cox, the member of the 
 Virginia Convention from the counties of Essex and King 
 and Queen, Mr. Garnett was chosen to succeed him, and took 
 his seat in the Convention on June 15th, 1861. (See Journal 
 of Virginia Convention of 1861, p. 246.) On June 19th he 
 submitted an ordinance to prohibit citizens of Virginia from 
 holding office under the U. S. Government. His name ap- 
 pears frequently in the votes on different measures, and he 
 served on several committees. He was appointed on June 21st 
 on a committee on the expediency of districting the State into 
 Congressional districts ; on June 24th, on the Committee of 
 Elections ; on a committee to which were referred an ordinance 
 and a substitute providing for the organization of volunteers 
 for special service in the northwestern part of the State ; and 
 on June 28th, on a committee to authorize absent voters in 
 the military service to vote at encampments. 
 
2,6 Biographical Sketch 
 
 The Convention took a recess from July i to Nov. 13, 
 1 86 1. On Nov. 16, 1861, Mr. Garnett voted for Robert L. 
 Montague as President of the Convention to fill the vacancy 
 occasioned by the resignation of Hon. John Janney. On the 
 same day he offered a resolution to consider the proposed 
 amendments of the State Constitution, which was laid on the 
 table. 
 
 After Nov. 19"', 1861, his name does not appear again as 
 voting until Dec. 4*'', probably on account of absence, and the 
 Convention adjourned sine die Dec. 6"^, 1861. 
 
 While he was not a member of the Convention when the 
 ordinance of secession was passed, it is believed that he signed 
 it later. We have seen that, in his speech in Congress of 
 Feb. 20th, he had announced himself in favor of the secession 
 of Virginia ''at the earliest possible moment." He was not 
 in favor of waiting until the inauguration of President Lin- 
 coln, for he knew that each day's delay only made more prob- 
 able the coercion of the State. As stated above, unanimous 
 action on the part of the South by Jan. ist might have averted 
 war, and even by Feb. ist the North imagined that there would 
 be no further secession, and that Virginia and the other border 
 States would still cling to the Union. Little did they know 
 the spirit of Virginia which was largely in favor of secession, 
 except in the northwestern counties. 
 
 Mr. Garnett was elected in November, 1861, to represent 
 the First Virginia District in the Confederate House of Repre- 
 sentatives, and in the Journal of the Confederate Congress we 
 find that on Feb. 21^', 1862, he qualified and took his seat. Also, 
 Messrs. Pugh, of Alabama, Perkins, of Louisiana, and Gar- 
 nett, of Virginia, were appointed on Oct. 2"'', 1862, a Commit- 
 tee of Conference on disagreeing votes of the two Houses, and 
 later, on April 13"', 1863, Messrs. Kenner, of Louisiana; Lyon, 
 of Alabama, and Garnett, of Virginia, were appointed a simi- 
 lar Committee of Conference on the bill to lay taxes for the 
 common defence; on Dec. 7"\ 1863, Messrs. Garnett, of Vir- 
 ginia, Chilton, of Alabama, and Swan, of Tennessee, were ap- 
 pointed a committee to wait on the President, and notify him 
 of the organization of Congress. 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 37 
 
 On Feb. 25'*^, 1862, Mr. Garnett was appointed on the Com- 
 mittee of Ways and Means, but on April 5th he moved that 
 he be excused from serving on that committee, and on April 
 Q*** he was appointed on the Committee on Military Affairs. 
 
 He reported from that committee a bill to allow commuta- 
 tion for deficiencies in rations, which was duly passed ; and later 
 a bill to allow commutation for clothing to militia "in actual 
 service of the Confederate States," which was amended and 
 also passed. Later still he reported the same bill as amended 
 by the Senate, changing the rate of commutation, and it was 
 passed. 
 
 It is not known why he preferred service on the Committee 
 on Military Affairs to that on the Committee of Ways and 
 Means, considering his familiarity with the latter subjects, 
 but the facts are given as stated in the Journals. 
 
 At the election in November, 1863, he was defeated for re- 
 election by the Hon. Robert L. Montague, his opponent having 
 received the soldier vote, which was preponderating, as a large 
 portion of the First District was in the hands of the enemy. 
 
 He continued to serve during his term, but in January, 
 1864, while attending the Congress in Richmond, he was 
 seized with typhoid fever, received leave of absence on account 
 of sickness Feb. i^^, and died at "Elmwood" not long after 
 reaching home, on Feb. 14''', 1864. 
 
 The following resolutions were offered in the House of 
 Representatives by one of his colleagues, Mr. Lyon, of Vir- 
 ginia, and duly adopted : 
 
 "Resolved, That we have heard with deep sorrow of the 
 death of the Hon. M. R. H. Garnett, a member of this House, 
 distinguished for his learning, ability, and integrity, and in 
 testimony of respect for his memory, we will wear the usual 
 badge of mourning for thirty days. 
 
 "Resolved, That we tender to his bereaved widow our 
 sincere sympathy in her suffering for the great loss which she 
 and our country have sustained in the death of her distin- 
 guished husband. 
 
38 Biographical Sketch 
 
 "Rcsolz'cd, That the Speaker of this House communicate a 
 copy of these resolutions to the widow of the deceased^and 
 to the Senate. 
 
 "Resolved, That, in further testimony of our respect for 
 the memory of the deceased, this House will now adjourn." 
 
 The death of Mr. Garnett was announced in the Senate 
 on Feb. 17th, 1864, by Mr. Dalton, and the following resolu- 
 tions of Senator Caperton, of Virginia, were adopted : 
 
 "Resolved, That the Senate receives with sincere regret 
 the announcement of the death of the Hon. Muscoe R. H. 
 Garnett, late a member of the House of Representatives from 
 the State of Virginia, and tenders to the relatives of the de- 
 ceased the assurance of their sympathy with them under the 
 bereavement they have been called to sustain. 
 
 "Resolved, That the Secretary of the Senate be directed 
 to transmit to the family of Mr. Garnett a certified copy of 
 the foregoing resolution." 
 
 Mr. Garnett's remains were interred in the family grave- 
 yard at "Elmwood." 
 
 A portrait of him, presented by his daughter, Miss Mary 
 B. P. Garnett, was unveiled in the Court House of Essex 
 county at Tappahannock, on June 20th, 1898, on which oc- 
 casion an address was delivered by his first cousin, Judge 
 Theodore S. Garnett, of Norfolk, Virginia, commemorative of 
 him, and of his uncle, Hon. R. M. T. Hunter. (See Southern 
 Historical Society Papers, Vol. XXVH., 1899.) 
 
 These portraits hang on the walls of the Court-room along- 
 side of many other portraits of members of the Garnett family 
 and other worthies of Essex county* 
 
 The reviews and addresses, the reports and speeches, re- 
 ferred to above, give illustrations of the character of Mr. 
 
 * This custom of thus adorning the walls of the Court Houses in the 
 several counties of his judicial district was inaugurated by Judge T. 
 R. B. Wright, of Tappahannock, to preserve the memory of prominent 
 men of the respective counties, and it deserves to be followed in every 
 county in the State. 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 39 
 
 Garnett's mind and of his favorite studies. Like many other 
 Virginia country gentlemen, he devoted his leisure to the study 
 of history, literature, and political science, of all of v^rhich 
 he was very fond, and having based his studies on a thorough 
 private school, academic, and legal education, he became expert 
 in these subjects. Few young men have ever qualified them- 
 selves so thoroughly for a political career, using the word 
 "political" in its highest sense. His countrymen early ap- 
 preciated his abilities and culture, sending him first to the 
 Constitutional Convention of 1850, then to the State Legis- 
 lature, and, as soon as a vacancy occurred, to the United 
 States, — and after the secession of Virginia, — to the Confed- 
 erate States House of Representatives. The highest political 
 honors in the gift of his State were within his reach, and 
 with the example of his distinguished uncle before him, it was 
 reasonable to expect that he too would have represented the 
 State in the Senate. 
 
 His abilities were pre-eminent, and his qualifications ex- 
 traordinary, as acknowledged by all with whom he came in 
 contact. Though but of medium stature, his personal ap- 
 pearance was exceedingly attractive. With light hair, almost 
 white, blond complexion, bluish eyes, anci clear-cut, regular 
 and refined features, and a massive head in proportion to his 
 size, showing great intellectual power, he would have attracted 
 attention in any company. His disposition was gentle, and 
 his temper quick, but under easy control. Having been trained 
 at home until he went to college, he was very fond of domes- 
 tic life, and was the companion of his widowed mother until 
 he entered upon political life, the affection and intimacy that 
 existed between the two being much greater than is usual be- 
 tween mother and son. This is remarkably illustrated in a 
 series of letters that have been preserved, but the correspon- 
 dence is of too intimate a character to allow of quotations. 
 His married life was very happy, but of short duration, ex- 
 tending over but little more than three and a half years. Dying 
 at the early age of forty-two, he had already distinguished 
 himself in his short public life, and had attained a reputation 
 
40 Biographical Sketch 
 
 second to but few in his State. An ardent Virginian and a 
 strong Southerner, he showed on all public occasions his de- 
 votion to Virginia and the South, and did not hesitate to 
 throw himself into the fray in defence of Southern principles. 
 As may be seen from his speeches in Congress, he believed 
 thoroughly in the right of secession, and thought, in the 
 winter of 1861, that the time had arrived for the exercise of 
 it. Like most public men of his time, he thought the subjuga- 
 tion of the South impossible, notwithstanding the inequality in 
 numbers of men and resources. It is bootless to inquire into 
 the causes of that subjugation ; it is sufficiently explained by 
 the words of the great leader of the Southern army, "Over- 
 whelming numbers and resources," and if we still push the 
 inquiry one step further, we may say that the stringent block- 
 ade prevented the South from increasing those numbers and 
 resources, and consequently from decreasing the inequality 
 of four to one in the former and of at least ten to one in the 
 latter. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 PRELIMINARY NOTE. 
 
 The following extracts from the writings of the Hon. 
 Muscoe R. H. Garnett, of Virginia, have been added to the 
 "Biographical Sketch," which has appeared in the William and 
 Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine for July and 
 October, 1909, (Vol. XVIIL, Nos. i and 2), that those who 
 read the sketch may have examples of his mental powers 
 and oratorical ability. I think that they will agree with 
 the writer that he was one of the ablest and most highly 
 cultivated young men that the State has ever produced. 
 
 His Alumni Oration, his pamphlet on "The Union : Past 
 and Future," his speech in the Virginia Convention of 
 1850 on the Basis Question, his Financial Report to the 
 Virginia Legislature, 1856, and his speeches in Congress, 
 i856-'6i, are good illustrations of his varied powers and 
 his well-trained mind, in dealing with financial and political 
 questions. His early death in the 44th year of his age was 
 a great loss to his State. 
 
 The writer is greatly indebted to William Baird, Esq., 
 P. Stephen Hunter, Esq., and Hon. T. R. B. Wright, of 
 Essex County, Va., for material used in the preparation of 
 this sketch. 
 
 J. M. G. 
 
 December 20. 1909. 
 
42 Biographical Sketch 
 
 From Oration Before the Society of Alumni of the 
 University of A'^irginia. 
 
 A few extracts from the xMiimni address will show his 
 point of view. He says (p. 26) : 
 
 "I assert, without fear of successful contradiction, that 
 what America has done best, and what will exert the largest 
 influence on other countries and posterity, is in political 
 literature, and that is almost exclusively the work of 
 Southern minds. It is true that some Northern critics have 
 cooked over the old dishes of the schools about aristocracy, 
 democracy, and monarchy, and the notions which the liberal 
 thinkers of the last century made commonplaces ; and it is 
 evidently on such food that Northern statesmen have been 
 reared ; all that is deep, and original, and vital, in American 
 politics is Southern. You will feel the difference sensibly 
 if you compare the writings of the elder Adams with those 
 of his great rival, Jefferson, or with Taylor's.^ And who 
 is worthy to be named in the same breath with the tran- 
 scendent Carolinian we still mourn, and on whose imper- 
 ishable glory Death has placed his seal. No speeches were 
 so widely or so eagerly read on their first appearance as 
 his, for all felt them to be the final word on his side of 
 every great question ; but still more earnestly will they 
 be studied by future ages, for they are not wholly disjointed 
 members of a great body of political philosophy, which the 
 world has rarely seen equalled, and never surpassed. And 
 if the South has done but little in other departments of 
 literature, it is that she there missed the stimulus which 
 the Constitution has hitherto secured to her slaveholders 
 in politics. It would seem that studies not immediately 
 connected with our practical interests, need the stimulus 
 
 1 John Taylor, of Caroline County, Virginia, author of "New View^■' 
 of the Constitution," "Construction Construed," "Tyranny Unmaske-'," 
 "Arator," and others. 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 43 
 
 afforded by concentrated wealth, concentrated either by the 
 patronage of a central government, which, as in imperial 
 Rome or France, makes an imitative literature ; or in the 
 hands of individuals, and by the patronage of rival insti- 
 tutions and centres of activity, which creates an original 
 literature, as in Greece, Germany and England. Now, this 
 stimulus the South has entirely wanted. It is true, there 
 is a greater degree of physical well-being amongst her 
 population, and a higher average of wealth amongst her 
 whites, than in any other part of the world, but the habits 
 of her people require many things as necessaries, which are 
 elsewhere regarded as luxuries, and this high standard of 
 comfort diminishes the surplus which is destined to pur- 
 chase the refined elegancies of life, and to support literature 
 and the arts. Yet this surplus would have been ample, 
 and though we have no such overgrown fortunes as Astor's 
 or Girard's to spare out of their abundance to letters, yet 
 we might have concentrated our means to great literary ad- 
 vantage by voluntary associations, had not even this surplus 
 been exhausted by the course of Federal taxation and 
 legislation, by which we have lost the use of an average 
 amount, since 1790, of seventy-odd millions of dollars of 
 our commerce, and at the same time paid in taxes a tribute 
 averaging some fourteen millions of dollars per annum, 
 to be spent at the North. And with the ability to encourage 
 our own literature, we began to lose the desire — to lose that 
 faith in ourselves and our duties, and our own institutions, 
 without which no nation has ever accomplished anything great. 
 The origin of this feeling goes far back ; the Revolution 
 found us with entails, primogeniture, and an established 
 church, and also with their natural consequence, a well- 
 educated class, of whom our Wythes, Pendletons, and 
 Masons, our Madisons, Jeffersons, and Randolphs, were the 
 representatives — men whose minds were trained to such 
 soundness of judgment that they could see the injustice, 
 and the invidious distinctions of the system they grew up 
 under, and be the first to abolish it. But in escaping the 
 
44 Biographical Sketch 
 
 evils of the system, we lost the advantages it conferred, for 
 no system of education adapted to the new order of things 
 took its place." 
 
 This, in his opinion, made the next generation greatly 
 inferior to their fathers in learning, and "Mr. Jefferson saw 
 this danger, and designed the University to avert it," He 
 continues (p. 28) : "When our illustrious Jefiferson founded 
 this University, he laid the axe at the root of the Upas 
 tree of self-distrust. He struck the rock in the desert, and 
 instead of the waters of bitterness we had quafifed, there 
 gushed forth, in these Virginia mountains, plentiful streams 
 of sweet waters, where all the tribes of our Southern Israel 
 might quench their thirst. The University was on a new 
 plan ; it was an original selection and revival of all the best 
 features of ancient institutions adapted to the wants of our 
 age and country. No Procrustean bed was devised for 
 every mind, where, as in the Northern colleges, no matter 
 what the need, or object, all are subjected to the same dis- 
 cipline and instruction. One of its chief characteristics was 
 the choice left the student of the schools he would attend, 
 and the partial dependence of the professors on fees. The 
 same principle was observed in the great seminaries of 
 learning that illuminated the middle ages, Oxford and 
 Paris, Bologna and Salamanca. It still distinguishes the 
 schools that have made modern Germany almost the Attica 
 of Europe. The whole course and spirit of instruction was 
 changed ; it was capable of an expansion as infinite as the 
 name. University, implies ; it was designed to be no mere 
 smattering of infinitesimal doses of the classics, and mathe- 
 matics, and philosophy, but whatever was taught was to be 
 taught thoroughly. Jefferson framed the discipline to rely 
 upon the principles of honor, and self-command, and good 
 faith, so as to make gentlemen ; he founded the luminous 
 tuition, so as to make philosophic scholars ; he combined 
 both to make statesmen and accomplished men of the world. 
 Already the good effects are seen. Our University at this, 
 its tAventy-fifth anniversary, has just attained her majority 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 45 
 
 according to the civil law, yet her sons are found in the 
 highest offices of our country. They are seen in the Senate 
 and the House of Representatives; they throng in our 
 Legislature ; they govern sovereign States ; they shine in 
 the pulpit and at the bar; they are professors in our colleges 
 and teachers in our schools. There are academies now, in 
 this and other States, founded and taught by graduates of 
 this University, which supply a better education than could 
 be had twenty-five years since at any college in the Union, 
 and which can be surpassed by few now. These academies 
 will in their turn aid the University in training an army of 
 teachers for primary schools. Our State will thus establish 
 a great system of popular education on the only plan con- 
 sistent with the principles of free government and the rights 
 of private property. She will aid in educating the teachers, 
 leaving their employment to be determined by that volun- 
 tary principle which she has already applied to religious 
 instruction." 
 
 Continuing the same line of thought, he says (p. 30) : 
 "Let us keep clear of centralization, of the meddling inter- 
 ference of what are called paternal governments. Let us 
 give government as little, and leave as much as possible for the 
 people, to do, for it will be infinitely better done. Remove 
 the weights from their energies, and they will soon cover 
 the State with a network of roads and canals ; they will use 
 her coal and her water-power ; they will disembowel the 
 earth of her minerals, and above all, they will improve her 
 agriculture. By these means you will lay the foundations 
 of as high a culture for your citizens as the world has ever 
 seen. If the elements of wealth are abundant, equally great 
 are the social advantages. We are about to make a new 
 Constitution. We have no occasion to go abroad for 
 models ; or to import a ready-made structure of Yankee 
 notions, just as you would a house. No! let us build upon 
 the rocky foundations of old Virginia customs, and en- 
 large upon old Virginia models. Let us cautiously remove 
 abuses, and breathe new life and vigor into the many wise 
 
46 Biographical Sketch 
 
 institutions our ancestors have left us. We are not en- 
 tirely without the Athenian elements of education. In 
 the numerous political debates, which the habits of our 
 people require, we have our Pnyx and our Ecclesia ; in the 
 free religious assemblies, where our laity are admitted on 
 an equality with the clergy, in our juries and county 
 courts, we have so many local legislatures and tribunals 
 which are to us what his councils and his juries (his 
 Boulai and Hcliaca) were to the Athenian. In the sessions 
 of our Legislature, and high salaries to our State ofificers. 
 we have the means of counteracting those influences of the 
 Federal patronage which draw ofif all our best talent from 
 the immediate service of the State, which direct the popular 
 attention to Federal opinion for its guide, and tend to cen- 
 tralize all power at Washington. In our University let us 
 have our Lyceum and Academy ; let us devote ourselves to 
 realizing the plan of its founder; let us multiply its means 
 of instruction and its schools ; let us make it the nucleus 
 of our literary societies, and of our literary activity. Gather 
 in these halls all the treasured wisdom of the past ; here 
 guides, learned as the Sybil in all the mysteries of the 
 spiritual world, may conduct the youth of the State through 
 the Elysian fields of a vast Library, and teach them to 
 question the shades of the departed mighty on the problems 
 of the Future." 
 
 The concluding paragraph of this address is but the 
 culmination of its patriotic burden (p. 36) : "Let us add 
 to the honors of the proud mother of States and statesmen 
 the noble title of Mother of Letters. Her shield shows that, 
 on this day, seventy-four years since, she transfixed the 
 tyrant to the earth; her device, Sic semper Tyrannis, pro- 
 claims that eternal in her breast, alta mentc rcpostum, lives 
 the stern spirit of resistance to all outrage on her rights or 
 her honor. Let the future prove that she knows how to 
 create, as well as to destroy ; to elevate her citizens, while 
 she crushes her foes. Methinks, in the prosperity of this 
 University, in the awakening spirit of the people, in the 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 47 
 
 roused energies of the whole South, I see the day-spring 
 breaking upon our Hterary sky ; I see its dawn casting a 
 rosy blush upon the murky clouds of our horizon, and a 
 silvery veil over the mists that steal up from wood and 
 stream ; and soon shall the bright sun of Southern genius, 
 uprising, change the darkness of our waters into the shining 
 of burning gold, while the matin songs of our poets shall 
 hymn his welcome. When Pericles had placed before the 
 Athenians all the reasons they had to love and value their 
 country, and shown to what pitch of greatness she might 
 be raised, if they would act worthily of her and of them- 
 selves, he thought that he could sum up all — the fame of 
 the past, the glory of the future, the duties of the present, — 
 in one word, by saying that Athens was the School of 
 Greece. Let us, I beseech you, gentlemen, apply that one 
 word to ovirselves. Here, in these walls, may Virginia con- 
 tinue to educate the Southern vouth, here may she bind 
 their affections to the land of their ancestors, and hence 
 send them out as missionaries of her principles! May her 
 genius build up a new Parthenon of letters on this 
 Acropolis ! Long, long may the old Mother Commonwealth 
 hold high festival on this anniversary of her Independence ; 
 long may she assemble her daughters at these, her yearly 
 I'anathenaea ; long may she be the leader, the model, and 
 THE School of the South, — of that South, which, by her 
 noble people, her wise institutions, her future glorious litera- 
 ture, is destined some day to be the School of the World." 
 
 From His Pamphlet ox "The L'Nion, Past and Future." 
 
 The author refers in this pamphlet to the sacrifices 
 made by the Southern States, Virginia especially, "for the 
 sake of the Union," as in the case of the cession of the 
 Northwest Territory, "an act of grosser fatuity," as Ran- 
 dolph said, "than ever poor old Lear or the Knight of 
 La Mancha was guilty of," and the Missouri Compromise, 
 quoting Randolph again, made under the influence of a 
 "politico-religious fanaticism," which "has insinuated itself 
 
48 Biographical Sketch 
 
 wherever it can to the disturbance of the public peace, the 
 loosening of the keystone of the Constitution, and the 
 undermining of the foundation on which the arch of our 
 Union rests." 
 
 "In vain did Randolph say to the South, 'principiis 
 obsta,' — in vain did his shrill Cassandra tones point out the 
 nature of the attack, that the enemy was proceeding, 'not 
 to storm the fort, but to sap' ; that we ought to remember 
 the sentiment, 'iion vi scd sacpc cacdciido,' and 'permit no 
 attack to pass, no matter in how demure and apparently 
 trivial an aspect it may be presented.' " 
 
 So with respect to the abolition petitions, and the oppo- 
 sition to the return of fugitive slaves, which Governor 
 Marcy, of new York, in 1836, acknowledged to be one of 
 "the sacred obligations which the States owe to each other 
 as members of the Federal Union." Further, the proposi- 
 tions to exclude the South from the territory of California 
 and New Mexico, and to abolish slavery in the District 
 of Columbia, which last would be so detrimental to the 
 interests of both Virginia and Maryland. "The Northern 
 vote in Congress on these questions is almost unanimous 
 without distinction of parties, against the South." So, even 
 at this time, Northern aggression was progressing to the 
 abolition of slavery within the States, for, to quote Ran- 
 dolph once more, " 'Fanaticism, political or religious, has 
 no stopping-place short of Heaven, or of — Hell !" " 
 
 From Reply to Review of the Pamphlet by Mr. E. H. 
 
 Derby. 
 
 This pamphlet was reviewed by Mr. E. H. Derby, of 
 Massachusetts, in the October, 1850, number of Hunt's Mer- 
 chants' Magazine and Commercial Review, and this review 
 was replied to by Mr. Garnett in the number of Hunt's 
 Magazine for April, 185 1. After replying at length to Mr. 
 Derby's criticisms and sustaining the views expressed in 
 his pamphlet, Mr. Garnett concludes: 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 49 
 
 "With Mr. Derby's permission, I will suggest the true 
 conditions of harmonious Union. Let the North cultivate 
 a friendly feeling towards the South, and try to understand 
 her institutions. Let her remember that Caucasians and 
 Negroes are of different races; that they can never amal- 
 gamate ; that it is absurd to talk of transporting either 
 across the seas ; and that while several millions of each 
 live together at the South, the best possible relation for 
 both which can exist between them, is that of master and 
 slave. Let the North, therefore, cease to regard slavery as 
 such an evil and reproach, and let her recollect that she is 
 in no manner responsible for institutions of other sovereign 
 States. She may then cease to direct all the moral power 
 of her press, her pulpit, and her Senates, to the destruction 
 of the dearest right of the Southern people — their domestic 
 peace. Let both sections, the North and the South, recog- 
 nize the great principle of the equality and sovereignty of 
 the States, whether slave labor or hireling, and open the 
 common territory equally to both. Let the Federal Gov- 
 ernment be closely confined to its few duties and powers, 
 as defined by the letter of its charter ; and let us equalize 
 the burdens of taxation by free trade, economy, retrench- 
 ment, and a strict adherence to the Constitution. 
 
 "If such proposals as these seem ridiculous, it must be 
 ]>ecause the Constitution is a dead letter, and actual despot- 
 ism, wielded by a sectional majority, threatens to usurp 
 the place of the simple, but glorious confederacy of sov- 
 ereign republics. If the latter be the Union for which 
 INIr. Derby prays, csto pcrpetua, I join in the prayer; but if 
 the former, I would cry, woe to it ! or still greater woes 
 await the country which tamely submits to its oppressive 
 tyranny ! 
 
 "The reviewer tells us that the fanatical abolitionists are 
 comparatively few and harmless ; I am glad to believe it. 
 But the true danger is from men like Mr. Derby himself, 
 who are continually talking of the evils of slaver}^ and 
 strengthening the moral sentiment of the Northern people 
 
50 Biographical Sketch 
 
 against it. This moral sentiment, this 'spirit of the age/ 
 as A^r. Derby calls it, must constantly force its way into 
 legislation, in a Democratic age and country like ours. And 
 this result becomes more certain, as the consolidation of 
 all powers in the Federal Government fosters the feeling of 
 the Northern people that they are responsible for slavery, 
 and all the other institutions of the country. The true 
 enemies of the Union are those who so 'ardently desire to 
 alleviate slavery, and promote its eventual extinction.' They 
 are kindling a fire which they will be unable to extinguish, 
 and before they are aware of the danger, the Union will 
 perish in the flames. Its true friends are those who stand by 
 the Constitution, and manfully defend their rights. The 
 Union was fovmded on the basis of political equality, and 
 independence, and domestic peace amongst its meiiibers; 
 and on this basis alone can it be preserved." 
 
 From Speech on the Basis Ol'Estion. 
 
 "Speech of M. R. K. Garnett, Esq., of Essex County, 
 in Committee of the Whole, on the Basis Question, deliv- 
 ered in the Virginia Reform Convention, on Monday. April 
 14, 1851. 
 
 Richmond, Va., 1851." 
 
 In discussing this question, Mr. Garnett drew arguments 
 from the Constitutions of other States, and from modern 
 and ancient history, with which he was perfectly familiar. 
 He said (p. 10) : "Like Georgia and North Carolina, South 
 Carolina has apportioned representation in the two Houses 
 of her Legislature upon a different basis. The Senate is 
 arranged upon a purely arbitrary territorial basis, which 
 cannot be changed except by an amendment of the Con- 
 stitution. The House is arranged upon our mixed basis. 
 Now, the effect of this combination is to give to the eastern 
 or tide-water section of the State a majority in the Senate, 
 which remains fixed without regard to the changes of popu- 
 lation and property. On the other hand, the mixed basis 
 
Hon. Ml'scoe Russell Hunter Garnett 51 
 
 gives the majority in the House to the western portion of 
 the State, and it is one of its recommendations that, if any 
 county or section is overtaxed for one decade, it thereby 
 becomes entitled, in the next ten years, to an overshare of 
 representation, so as to increase its power to correct this 
 excess of taxation. It is a self-adjusting machine. And in 
 taking the average of taxes for ten years, it not only secures 
 representation from accidental variations of taxation, but it 
 furnishes security that the majority will not use the taxing 
 power to increase the future representation of its section. 
 The Constitution of South Carolina is thus arranged upon 
 the very principle which I have before advocated as true ; 
 that is to say, it requires the concurrent assent of the two 
 great interests to the passage of any law. It gives the 
 political power, not to the numerical majority, but to the 
 concurrent majority. I think, at a different stage of this 
 debate, the gentleman from Accomac (Mr. Wise), whose 
 absence I regret, stated in answer to the gentleman from 
 Fauquier (Mr. Scott), that the opinions of Mr. Calhoun 
 were adverse to the mixed basis. Now, I have in my pos- 
 session a letter which Mr. Calhoun published in 1846, in 
 reference to this subject, explaining the character and his- 
 tory of the Constitution of South Carolina, and discussing 
 this whole question. It will be found that he strongly com- 
 mends the mixed basis, partly upon such considerations as 
 I have urged, while he regards the principle of what he calls 
 concurrent majorities as the true basis for our State govern- 
 ments. 
 
 If you refer to the history of other countries for author- 
 ity,, you will obtain similar results; look, for instance, to the 
 French revolution of 1789. The first French constitution, 
 that of 1 79 1, framed by the national iVssembly, apportioned 
 representation among the different departments of France 
 upon a combined basis of territory, taxation and population. 
 The gentleman from Berkeley (Mr. Faulkner) quoted from 
 Burke's criticism upon this constitution, in support of his 
 argument against the mixed basis. It surprised me that 
 
52 BlOGRxVPHICAL SkETCH 
 
 the gentleman should cite Burke on his side of the question, 
 when Burke's very objection was that he considered that 
 no one immutable and fixed rule could be applicable to all 
 governments at all times and in all places. Why, sir, he 
 even tells us that property must be "predominant in repre- 
 sentation" to be rightly protected. No man could have been 
 more utterly opposed to a basis of mere numbers than Mr. 
 Burke ; no man reprobated more eloquently such doctrines 
 as are avowed by the party of which the gentleman from 
 Berkeley is a distinguished member. 
 
 My friend from Accomac (Mr. Wise) referred to the 
 same French constitution as leading to all the horrors of 
 the French revolution — to its desecration of the altars and 
 its Saturnalia of blood. He truly astonished me by such a 
 reference. Did he forget that whatever good sprung out 
 of the French revolution was the work of the National 
 Assembly, which adopted that mixed basis constitution? 
 The whole system of equal civil rights, of civil liberty in 
 France, arose from the liberal legislation of the National 
 Assembly. And has the gentleman forgotten that the very 
 moment the party which advocated the national right of 
 the mere numerical majority to govern, obtained the as- 
 cendency, they abolished the mixed basis, and provided by 
 the constitution of 1793 that representation should be 
 based upon population alone. That was th(? doctrine of 
 Robespierre and his followers, the constitution-makers, the 
 Anacharsis-Clootzes,^ and the "orators of the human race" 
 in that day. So far did they carry their principle, that they 
 provided that the legislature should consist only of a single 
 branch, so that there should not be even a chance of a 
 minority checking a majority through another House, or by 
 an executive veto. And the principle led to its natural con- 
 sequence — the Reign of Terror! Why, if it were fully car- 
 ried out in this country, without the restraints of the Fed- 
 eral Government and the conservative influence of slave 
 
 ^ See Encyclopaedia Britannica, s. v. Clootz. 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 53 
 
 institutions, we would have like scenes of horror occurring 
 here. Truly, if theory and practice always went together, 
 the debates we have listened to in this Convention might 
 well excite our apprehensions for the safety of our social 
 system, and our constitutional freedom. They have almost 
 made me fear I had overrated the power of the conservative 
 influences to which I before alluded. When I have seen 
 gentlemen, time and again, looking up to the galleries for 
 applause, in the course of their arguments, and have even 
 heard them appealing to the spectators to know whether 
 certain constituencies would tolerate the opinions avowed by 
 the other party, and have heard those galleries responding 
 to the call, I could not but remember the National Assembly 
 of France, when the mountain called upon the mob to over- 
 power the conservative portion of that body ; I could almost 
 fancy myself on the eve of those days, when neither life, 
 liberty, property, nor the pursuit of happiness, found any 
 protection from government. Ah ! this numerical majority, 
 to which, you tell me, God gave a natural right to rule, then 
 perpetrated crimes which filled the whole earth with their 
 horror. It used its sovereignty to massacre the wretched 
 victims in its prisons, and vindicated its authority by cover- 
 ing the rivers of France with the bodies of her murdered 
 women and children. 
 
 Let gentlemen once succeed in making the poor of this 
 country believe that their interests are directly opposed to 
 those of the rich, and that they are oppressed by a tyran- 
 nical aristocracy of slaveholders ; once tolerate the principle 
 that the mere numerical majority is to dispose, at its 
 pleasure, of all the interests of society, and all the rights of 
 individuals ; that it is to be the sole judge of the extent of its 
 own powers, and is to be restrained in the gratification of 
 its passions only by its sense of justice, — and the whole 
 fabric of your civilization is undermined ! "' 
 
 Mr. Garnett drew illustrations also from the history of 
 Athens and of the Roman republic, and continued: 
 
54 Biographical Sketch 
 
 "Where there are separate interests, legislation by any 
 one will be for its own benefit, to the injury of the rest. To 
 be just, and for the benefit of the whole, it must be by the 
 consent of all. Now. in most countries there is a natural 
 and necessary diversity of interests in the parts, resulting 
 from geographical as well as social and other causes. In 
 Virginia and all the Southern Atlantic States, such a diver- 
 sity grows out of the physical structure. The Blue Ridge 
 and the Alleghany mountains run parallel to the seacoast, 
 and at a considerable distance from it in all these States, 
 and that geographical fact creates a natural difference of 
 interest. Survey your great State of Virginia, and all the 
 complex varieties of its domain, from its extreme verge, 
 where the blue waters of our western Rhine rush past their 
 green banks to bear the teeming commerce of the Trans- 
 Alleghany basin to the Father of Waters. Behold the 
 Southwest ! Its fertile valley, flanked b}^ mountain walls 
 filled with mineral treasures, a great natural highway from 
 the Atlantic border to the Mississippi and the Pacific coast ! 
 Or look down upon those Alleghany chains, rising, range 
 after range, like the furrowed surface of some troubled sea — 
 those innumerable herds of cattle, pasturing on a thousand 
 verdant hills — those rich bottoms sunk down Avith the abun- 
 dance of their fatness.^ Or descend from the Blue Ridge 
 along that slope which we call the Piedmont. Gaze upon 
 its rolling lands, its forests, and its champaigns, all sending 
 down the fair fruits of their agricultural toil, gathering from 
 every quarter, in a growing current like the rills and streams 
 from their own hills, swiftly and at once, towards the Tide- 
 water, that ancient seat of our race, the true Old Dominion, 
 where Virginia sits enthroned upon her many waters, — 
 that Tide-water whose highways are mighty rivers, and whose 
 fields were designed by Nature for blooming gardens, — 
 that Tide-water of which our forefathers exclaimed in rap- 
 ture, as for the first time they ascended the majestic Pow- 
 hatan, and gazed on its green savannahs and its forests, 
 bursting into leaf and flower in all the radiant glory of 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 55 
 
 the new-born Spring, that surely Heaven and Earth seemed 
 never to have agreed better to form a commodious and de- 
 lightful habitation for man. 
 
 "Shall we bid defiance to all these differences of soil and 
 structure? Shall we forget the consequent diversities of 
 occupation, of character, of interest and of population? 
 Shall we vainly strive against the decrees of Providence 
 itself stamped upon the face of Nature? You tell me that 
 your public works, your puny borings, tunnellings, and cut- 
 tings through the eternal hills of granite, nay, that your 
 paper constitution is to obliterate all sectional lines, and 
 level the Blue Ridge itself! The world has heard monarchs 
 boast before that the Pyrenees were levelled, but the 
 Pyrenees still stand ; and so long as that Ridge lifts its 
 blue summits into the azure of Heaven, so long will these 
 divisions and diversities remain, so long will the constitu- 
 tion proclaimed by Nature set at naught your paltry efforts. 
 
 You may unite the sections of our State, you can never 
 identify them. Your attempt to consolidate them into a 
 homogeneous whole by making one geographical interest 
 supreme over the rest, will only aggravate and embitter 
 the difference. Strip it of all its disguises, and it is a sec- 
 tional despotism which you are seeking to create. You 
 may secure the seeming uniformity of such a government, 
 but how opposite is that to the harmony of a free and equal 
 union of all the interests of the State? Look at Virginia — 
 not as you may wish or fancy it, not as a Utopia, a field 
 for the trial of your experiments and theories, but as it 
 actually is, and make your constitution the faithful reflec- 
 tion of nature. Here 'yo" possess' — let me apply to your 
 condition the words of a great man on another occasion — 
 'you possess that variety of parts corresponding with the 
 various descriptions of which your community is happily 
 composed. You have all that combination, and all that 
 opposition of interests, you have that action and counter- 
 action, which, in the natural and political world, from the 
 reciprocal struggle of discordant power, draws out the har- 
 mony of the universe.' 
 
56 Biographical Sketch 
 
 "These opposed and eonflicting interests, tvhich you con- 
 sider as so great a blemish in our old and present constitu- 
 tions, interpose a salutary check on all precipitate resolutions. 
 They render deliberation a matter, not of choice, but of neces- 
 sity; they make all change a subject of compromise, tvhich 
 naturally begets moderation, and under all the headlong exer- 
 tions of arbitrary pozver in the fezv or in the many, forever 
 impracticable." 
 
 Mr. Garnett continued further: "And, sir, if I support 
 what is called the mixed basis upon this occasion, it is not 
 as my first choice. I believe, myself, in a system of repre- 
 sentation founded upon the history and geography of the 
 country, in what is called an arbitrary system of representa- 
 tion — one springing out of the interests and the wants of the 
 community. I support this mixed basis because it comes 
 nearer to such a system than the white basis. It comes 
 nearer because, as I have said before, it does not confine 
 itself to the consideration of man simply in his capacity to 
 be numbered. It does not commit the absurdity of sup- 
 posing that all men are perfectly alike in interest and char- 
 acter. It considers man in another important element of 
 his existence. It regards property and adapts its representa- 
 tion in some measure to the different conditions of that 
 property and its relations to society. Since this discussion 
 commenced, sir, we have been told by the advocates of the 
 white basis that property is the creation of government 
 and that the powers of government belong, by natural and 
 indefeasible right, to the numerical majority. The inevit- 
 able conclusion, then, is that the numerical majority, has 
 the absolute control over property, its creature, and may 
 abolish any or all kinds of it when it pleases. 
 
 "Now, sir, I entirely repudiate such doctrine. Our bill 
 of rights classes the right to property among our natural 
 rights. Property is not the creature of government, but 
 one of its primordial elements. It is coeval with society 
 and political organization, — all spring from the necessities 
 and the irresistible instincts of our moral nature, implanted 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell .Hunter Garnett 57 
 
 by the Creator himself. What is property? It is that por- 
 tion of the surrounding world which each man has been 
 able to conquer to his use by his industry, his reason, and 
 his will. It is the indispensable condition of life to the 
 individual, and of civilization to society. What is man's condi- 
 tion without it? He comes into the world 
 
 ■ iiifaiis iiidigus oiniii 
 
 Vitali auxilio ; 
 
 [Lucretius Y. 223-4. J 
 
 he is cast upon the earth, as the old jurist describes 
 it, nudiis ill nudum. By the accumulations of those who 
 have preceded him, by the institution of hereditary prop- 
 erty, his existence is preserved, and his faculties, bodily 
 and mental, nourished until he is able to protect himself. 
 And if he then acquires property for himself, it must be 
 by the application of his labor to the capital which others 
 have created before him. The necessary instruments of his 
 toil he owes to the institution of property. Without prop- 
 erty, man could never have accomplished the wonders with 
 which he has filled the habitable globe. And the whole 
 property of the country is but the material representation 
 of the reason and will of its past and present generations. 
 Property is interwoven through the whole social fabric, and 
 enters into and modifies all the relations of men to each 
 other. Its different kinds and quantities are not an unfair 
 exponent of the different interests, wants, and character of 
 the various parts of a State. The property of Virginia has 
 grown out of her natural condition and her history, and it 
 has modified both. By its mutations, you mark the progress 
 of those mighty changes which it was the means, in the 
 hands of our ancestors, of effecting. Three centuries since, 
 our country was covered by dense primeval forests, whose 
 silence was rarely broken by a human voice ; and now thou- 
 sands of household lights cheer the darkness of night from 
 every eastern hill, and in every mountain valley, and near 
 these household fires have arisen the altars of our God. 
 
58 BlOGRAPHJCAL SKETCH 
 
 And around these hearths and altars have gathered our 
 children and our slaves, our herds and our crops, the metes 
 and bounds, the fences and landmarks of our property. And 
 the whole represents the industrious toil, the talents, and 
 the energies and virtues of the communities which own it, 
 whose affections and thoughts are infinitely complicated 
 with it, and the very manner of whose existence it modifies and 
 determines. The foundations of this property, of these monu- 
 ments of industry, were laid by our ancestors, and we guard 
 and add to it, not merely for ourselves, but for the posterity 
 to whom we hope to deliver it. In its perpetual increase 
 and hereditary transmission, we have visibly before us one 
 of the strongest of the bonds which draw together and 
 cement into one all the generations of man, the past, the 
 present, and the future. How narrow must be a scheme of 
 representation which wholly overlooks this mighty element 
 of society, as one of the just measures of the interests and 
 necessities of its parts ! How unwise and unjust would be 
 your government, which regards man only as an abstraction 
 and forgets the vast development of his nature manifested 
 and realized in property. And such is your basis of mere 
 numbers. On the contrary, the mixed basis which I advo- 
 cate, by combining with the element of population the addi- 
 tional element of property as measured by its contributions 
 to government, furnishes a rule which must obviously make 
 representation a truer reflection of all the interests of 
 society." 
 
 In the latter part of his address, Mr. Garnett discusses 
 the internal improvements that have been made for the 
 benefit of the western portion of the State, and in conse- 
 quence of which a huge public debt was piled up. He also 
 discusses the threatened division of the State by the western 
 portion, from which we see that ten years before the Civil 
 War, a division of the State was foreshadowed, if the West 
 did not get what it wanted. He concludes his speech as 
 follows : 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 59 
 
 "But I trust, sir, that such a catastrophe may be averted, 
 and when the heat of the discussion has subsided, calmer, 
 wiser counsels may succeed. God forbid that a foreig^n 
 flag should ever wave over any portion of the soil of Vir- 
 ginia ! Let us preserve her, one and indivisible, in all her 
 ancient glory. But it cannot be done by this principle of 
 consolidation and socialism, which you are attempting to 
 introduce into our government. It cannot be done by this 
 surrender of the interests of the minority into the hands of 
 the mere numerical majority, by thus binding one section 
 hand and foot, and delivering it over to the tender mercies 
 of the other. All our ills cannot be cured by continually 
 crying to us, white basis ! white basis ! This white basis 
 seems to be a sort of panacea in the eyes of some gentle- 
 men. No evil under the sun can be named which it will 
 not cure. Whatever may be the subject of discussion, 
 the same cry of white basis perpetually recurs. It reminds 
 me of the verse : 
 
 'Abra was present ere I called her name. 
 And when I called another, Abra came.' 
 
 — Prior's "Solomon." 
 
 "The present is a contest between the opposite prin- 
 ciples of consolidation on the one hand, and individualism 
 on the other. It is a contest of individual rights against 
 despotism of all kinds, whether they be despotic kings or 
 despotic numbers — freedom against absolute government — 
 the sovereign rights of the individual against the despotic 
 rule of the mere numerical majority. It is a question 
 whether fanciful theories shall overrule experience and be- 
 come the basis of our Constitution — whether the numerical 
 majority shall absorb all the powers of the community, 
 shall define what constitutes the highest degree of civiliza- 
 tion, shall dictate to every man the aims and course of his 
 life, and shall then relieve him of all moral responsibility 
 by undertaking to provide for all his wants at the expense 
 of the rest of society. This controversy is going on through- 
 
6o Biographical Sketch 
 
 out the whole world. Ours is but one phase of it, not so 
 portentous as in other countries, on account of the peculiar 
 influences existing here, but the principle is the same. It 
 is the anti-republican principle of the pure, absolute democ- 
 racy of mere numbers, which has everywhere begotten 
 socialism, and as such, in the name of freedom, I utterly 
 abhor and abjure it. No such principle as this was brought 
 by our ancestors to Jamestown, as the gentleman from 
 Kanawha (Mr. Summers) seemed to imagine; but from the 
 season when the first log cabins were raised at old James- 
 town to the present day, Virginia has lived under a gov- 
 ernment organized by our republican fathers on entirely 
 different principles — on the principles of individual rights, 
 of protection and security to all — a government, not for the 
 greatest good of the greatest number, but for the greatest 
 good of each and all. The lesser number was not sacrificed 
 to the greater, but both were equally protected. The ob- 
 jects and powers of government were few and simple ; in- 
 dividual freedom was enlarged, and every man was left to 
 achieve his happiness according to his own views and in his 
 own way. Dependent on his own resources, looking to 
 the charity neither of society nor of government, but trust- 
 ing to God alone for help, man became the noble, independ- 
 ent being he was intended for, and all his faculties and 
 talents were exercised and developed. 
 
 "In such principles have been the strength and glory of 
 Virginia. They have been illustrated not only in her domes- 
 tic, but in her federal policy, and not merely there, but in 
 the great men whom she has given to immortal renown. 
 When our ancestors sought this country, they imagined that 
 the empire they were founding would extend from ocean to 
 ocean, and that the waves of the southern Pacific would 
 alone terminate their dominion. In this they were mis- 
 taken. Their territory was not so extensive as they hoped ; 
 but the}^ founded an empire of ideas — of the true principles 
 of government, — which extended still further, which has 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter GariVett 6i 
 
 stretched not only from sea to sea, but throughout the 
 world, and has won a fame that shall never die. And in 
 this sense they truly founded the 'Old Dominion.' an 
 
 'Iiiipcriitni Occano, faiiiam qui tcrininct astris.' " 
 
 [Virgil, Acncid. I. 287.] 
 
 These quotations have been made at length because of 
 the importance of this speech, and the fact that the copy 
 from which they are made is the only copy known to be 
 in existence. 
 
 From Financial Report to Virginia Legislature of 1856. 
 
 The following extracts from this Financial Report to the 
 House of Delegates will show the principles on which Mr. Gar- 
 nett thought the finances of the State should be managed, and 
 his views on that subject. He says : "The first principle of a 
 sound financial system is to provide for the ordinary and regu* 
 lar necessities of the year by taxation within the year. Public 
 debt ought never to be incurred except for the public de- 
 fence in war, or for extraordinary public works, which are 
 finished once and forever and are to yield their returns in future 
 years." The details of this Report would not now be of in- 
 terest, but where principles are involved, it is illustrative of 
 his character and ability to state his views. On the sale of 
 the bank stocks owned by the State he says: "If the proposed 
 sale of our bank stocks is judicious in a financial aspect, it is 
 still more to be recommended in a political point of view. It 
 is. indeed, absurd for a Commonwealth, which is perpetually 
 seeking to borrow money, to undertake to lend it to the mer- 
 chants and manufacturers of the State ; yet such is Virginia's 
 position as a stockholder. It is wholly inconsistent with all 
 sound political principles, especially as taught in the Old Vir- 
 ginia School, for a State to become a partner in commercial 
 enterprises, or to go beyond the legitimate functions of gov- 
 ernment. The connection with the bank deprives the State 
 of all effective power over the currency, for her interest 
 paralyzes every efifort at control or reform, and is continually 
 
62 Biographical Sketch 
 
 invoked to protect the abuses of banking. Her directors repre- 
 sent only the stockholders' feeling, and are useless, except as 
 their appointment affords political patronage. Her great 
 visitorial and inquisitorial powers slumber, while the protest, 
 that there are State directors in the bank, is used to prevent 
 inquiry. Nor is this all ; a constant fear and danger that the 
 dominant political party may increase the State directory, and 
 convert the banks into political machines, keeps down the 
 value of the stock. There is just ground for such fears, while 
 the State remains in partnership with the banks. For there 
 are many in every party wlio care more for spoils than 
 measures, and still more, v/ho confide for success rather to 
 patronage and corruption than to the innate power of truth. 
 Should such opinions prevail, and subject the banks and in- 
 ternal improvement companies to political control, and convert 
 them into political machines, we may expect commercial and 
 financial disasters, and what is far worse, deep political cor- 
 ruption and profligacy. Let us then, in time, sever this un- 
 natural and dangerous union of bank and State, leave business 
 and currency to the control of the laws of business and cur- 
 rency, and we shall have achieved an immense good for our 
 State. 
 
 "Your committee, therefore, earnestly recommends a sale 
 of the bank stocks." 
 
 The same reasoning will apply to canals and railroads as 
 to banks ; the State should keep clear of all such entangle- 
 ments. 
 
 Finally, Mr. Garnett states what the committee proposed, 
 and that they were aware how far they had fallen short of 
 what they proposed. He says : 
 
 "In commencing their labors, your committee proposed to 
 themselves to reform the complications and obscurities of our 
 present fiscal affairs ; to make them so simple and clear as to 
 be intelligible to everybody, and thus increase the responsi- 
 bility of their guardians to public opinion ; to check the great 
 and growing abuses in the management of our credit and 
 loans, by remodeling that department of government ; to in- 
 crease th.e resources of the treasury by a more faithful assess- 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 63 
 
 ment of the vast property of the State, a diminution in the 
 expenses of collection, and the exaction of interest from the 
 corporations, who are the Commonwealth's beneficiaries and 
 debtors; to adjust the receipts through the year to the expendi- 
 tures ; to enforce prompt payments by the collectors, and 
 establish regularity in the fiscal operations ; to cover the 
 present deficiency by taxation, and yet to distribute the burden 
 so as not to press too hardly on the community ; to restore 
 the balance of receipts and expenditures, and place the re- 
 demption of all our engagements beyond a possible doubt, by 
 honest and adequate taxation ; to reduce the public debt, and 
 pay off. in a moderate time, all that existed before the new 
 Constitution ; to separate the banks from the State so as to 
 purify both, and remove every political obstacle from the resto- 
 ration of our currency. 
 
 "Such was the large field for your committee to labour in. 
 They are aware how far the result falls short of their wishes ; 
 but they have deeply felt the responsibilities of their position 
 in this critical period ; and they will be more than rewarded 
 for all their toil and anxious thought, if aught of success has 
 crowned their earnest endeavors in the discharge of their 
 duties. No true Virginian can be insensible to the hazard of 
 any imputation on her honour. It has never been stained by 
 any delay in fulfilling her promises, and it never shall be. 
 When a few months have past, the disorder in her finances 
 corrected, and her afifairs settled on a surer foundation, her 
 credit will recover, and assume a higher rank in the markets 
 of the world." 
 
 This shows the views of a "true Virginian," endorsed by 
 the Committee of Finance of the House of Delegates, as to 
 how the finances of the State should be managed, and as to 
 how the credit of the State should be restored to its former 
 high position — good Democratic doctrine conducive to the wel- 
 fare of the Common v.-ealth. 
 
 From Colloquy in Congress. 
 
 Engaging in a colloquy with the chairman of the Commit- 
 tee on Ways and Means [Mr. Campbell of Ohio], he re- 
 
64 Biographical Sketch 
 
 marks: "Sir, when that gentleman, and those who think 
 with him, are legislating for the benefit of classes and manu- 
 facturing capitalists, let them remember that largest of all 
 classes, the laboring poor. When the poor constituent of such 
 Representatives rises in the morning and looks through the 
 window that admits the light of heaven into his cabin, let him 
 recollect that light is still taxed as heavily as ever by his 
 Representative when he had $24,000,000 of taxes to remit. 
 When he puts on his coarse cotton shirt, and draws about him 
 the woolen coat that is to shield him from the blasts of a 
 northwestern winter, let him bear in mind that his Represen- 
 tative had $24,000,000 of taxes to release, but not one dime 
 would he abate from the tribute upon these necessaries of 
 life. When he goes forth to his daily work, whether he 
 turns the sod of the prairie with his plow, or in the forge the 
 anvil rings with his sturdy blows, let him again remember that 
 the tools of his industry, the plow which he guides, and the 
 hammer which he wields, still pay the same heavy taxes, 
 while his Representative had these $24,000,000 to repeal. And 
 this is the tariff which the gentleman seriously proposes for 
 our acceptance. Sir. if such be the creed of the party of 
 which the gentleman is a distinguished leader, I take it that 
 they cannot long maintain their hold upon the agricultural 
 Northwest. 
 
 "Mr. Campbell, of Ohio : For the benefit of the Republi- 
 can party, let me say that T am not recognized, I believe, as 
 one of its leaders. 
 
 "Mr. GaRxNEtt : Well, sir, I always thought I saw a bright 
 spot about that gentleman, and I am glad to hear that my 
 sagacity is justified. Since that party does not recognize him, 
 he stands by himself ; and let me warn him to get, as quick 
 as he can, out of the uncomfortable position in which he 
 has placed himself, both in regard to his party relations and 
 his tariff scheme [Laughter]. The doors of the Democratic 
 fold are still open to him ; but he must first wash himself seven 
 times in the waters of Jordan. [Much laughter.]" 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 65 
 
 From Speech on Admission of Kansas, March 22, 1858. 
 
 He says : 
 
 "I beg you, Mr. Chairman, to look back at its history. In 
 1820 we were excluded from more than nine-tenths of our 
 common territory ; slavery and slave States were forever pro- 
 hibited in nine hundred and sixty-five thousand square miles 
 of the Louisiana territory, while only one hundred and ten 
 thousand miles were left open to Southern immigration and 
 the possible extension of Southern institutions. For the sake 
 of Union we submitted to this unjust decree. In 1845 Texas, 
 a sovereign State which had formed and maintained her in- 
 stitutions outside of the Union, came in by annexation. And 
 here let me warn my Southern friends that, if our Federal 
 boundaries are to be further enlarged, it is far safer to annex 
 slave States ready formed to our hand, than to acquire terri- 
 tories to be struggled and disputed for. 
 
 "A few years after we acquired a vast region on the 
 Pacific — some four hundred and sixty-four thousand square 
 miles. But were we of the South allowed to enter on its pos- 
 session as equals ? Gentlemen on the other side tell me, yes ; 
 the ^lassachusetts man could no more carry a slave there 
 than the Virginian. Sir, when the man of the North went 
 there, he took with him all his property, all his institutions, his 
 whole system of society ; he was free to give honor and 
 power to his native land by establishing another New England, 
 kindred and sympathizing republics, on the Pacific shore, 
 but the Southerner had no such privileges. He must qualify 
 himself first by selling his property, by severing the kindly 
 ties and life-long afifections that bind master and slave to- 
 gether, and by abandoning the institutions under whose shelter 
 he was born, and amid which he was proud to live and hoped 
 to die. Here was a vast and almost uninhabited region ; its 
 secular silence was unbroken, save by the monotonous roar of 
 the Pacific waves and the sighing of the wind among the 
 gigantic trees, which seemed relics of the elder world — fit 
 shelter for the Titanic races of an earlier creation. 
 
66 Biographical Sketch 
 
 "At last the man of fate, the Anglo-Norman, came, the 
 Aladdin of a more wondrous story than ever x\rabian dreamed. 
 The forests fell ; light broke through their primeval shades. 
 The wilderness blossomed. Streams, lately dark and turbid, 
 rolled bright over golden sands, and mountains, but yester- 
 day sombre and barren, now gleamed and glowed with the 
 shining metal that shot and sparkled through every vein. 
 
 "But when the Virginian, or the man of the South, came 
 to the portals of this mighty region, he was denied admission. 
 He found the gates spread wide. He saw all the tribes of 
 the earth — the Celt and the Teuton — the coppervisaged Chinese 
 and the swarthy Hindoo — swift to share the spoils. He saw, 
 day and night, the restless stream of Northern emigrants pour- 
 ing through the gates ; the men of New England and New 
 York, bearing with them their property and their laws, their 
 houseliolds and their household gods, their Lares and Penates. 
 All, all were admitted, he only excluded ! In vain did he 
 recall that his valor had helped to unbar those portals ; in 
 vain did he tell that one Virginian had driven back the foe 
 in Northern Mexico, while another made a march more won- 
 derful than Cortez, from Vera Cruz to the palace of the 
 Aztecs ; in vain did he recount how the Mississippi rifles 
 stemmed the tide of battle at Buena Vista, and the Palmettos 
 reaped the harvest of death and of glory amid the fires of 
 Churubusco ; in vain did he point to the honorable scars upon 
 his body, won in many a tented field — still, still, he was for- 
 bidden to pass, unless he would first despoil himself of his 
 property, abdicate his duties as a master, desert his household, 
 and forswear his nationality. He might then, indeed, degraded, 
 enter ; but he must never sing the songs of his own country, 
 or transplant its laws into that strange land. And this, we 
 are told, is equality !" 
 
 One of his concluding paragraphs follows : 
 
 "Sir, I speak for myself and the people whom I especially 
 represent on~this floor, and I think I can speak with equal 
 confidence for the whole South, when I say that while we 
 love our mother State above all things — first, last, and for- 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 67 
 
 ever — yet we are sincerely attached to the Union of all the 
 States ; that we love every star which glitters on the azure 
 field of its banner ; we prize the common glories that consecrate 
 that flag, we wonder at the beneficence of a kind Providence, 
 which has made a vast granary in the Northwest, which has 
 lavished water-power and mechanical advantages and in- 
 genuity in the Northeast, which has stored up Nature's golden 
 treasury in the California hills, and has endowed the agricul- 
 ture-loving South with the staples of man and the sceptre of 
 his commerce ; we are grateful to the wisdom that has united 
 these different sections into one grand alliance, which secures 
 a perfect free trade in the exchange of our varied produc- 
 tions, and the supply of our mutual wants ; and we admire the 
 universal peace which the Union has spread over a mighty con- 
 tinent. I say we value all these things, and, therefore, that we 
 stand here this day, as in days past, to do battle for the only 
 means of preserving them to you and to us — to defend the 
 Constitution of our country. It is because we value them that 
 we will ask nothing but what is right, and submit to nothing 
 that is wrong. And what is right is State equality in the 
 enjoyment of our territories, and opportunity peacefully to ex- 
 tend our several institutions." 
 
 From Speech on the State of the Union, Jan. 16, 1861. 
 
 The first of these speeches is a thoughtful review of the 
 anti-slavery agitation, and a consequent discussion of the 
 course of the Southern States. He says : 
 
 "Mr. Calhoun, as long ago as 1833, predicted that this 
 anti-slavery feeling would dissolve all parties formed on other 
 issues, and were it possible to restore the old Whig and Demo- 
 cratic parties, the history of the last twenty years would be 
 repeated more quickly. This consequence necessarily results 
 from the organization of political society at the North. In 
 populous communities, where all are of the same race, and 
 universal suffrage and apportionment of representation on mere 
 numbers prevail, the Democracy necessarily becomes a govern- 
 ment, or rather a despotism, of the numerical majority. There 
 
68 Biographical Sketch 
 
 are many who have to labor too severely for their daily sub- 
 sistence to devote much attention to political affairs, or to 
 acquire that training which is necessary to freemen for an in- 
 telligent judgment of the issues of the day. Many votes are 
 controlled in great part by patronage and money, directly or 
 indirectly used. Where parties are nicely balanced, that will 
 be successful which commands the largest influences of this 
 corrupting kind. Hence party contests are chiefly for the 
 spoils ; and there is a constant tendency to increase the num- 
 ber of offices, the amount of expenditures, and contracts, and 
 jobs — in one word, to swell the spoils. In this state of things, 
 when a party appears like the original anti-slavery party, 
 animated by fanatical zeal for a single idea, each of the great 
 divisions of the spoils parties of necessity begins to bid for 
 its vote, and, instead of resisting, to yield to its errors. Thus 
 its principles are gradually diffused through the masses, until at 
 last, adopted openly by one of the regular parties, they con- 
 duct it to victory, and gain for it the coveted spoils.'' 
 
 Mr. Garnett goes on to argue .that "it is in vain, therefore, 
 to expect safety from a change of parties at the North." He 
 contends that "The present Constitution, as our fathers made 
 it, was all-sufficient, while it protected kindred and friendly 
 States, and would be so still, were all disposed to fulfill its ob- 
 ligations with a good faith, inspired by mutual good-will and re- 
 spect. There is danger that new declaratory clauses or promises 
 would be regarded no more than the old." After glancing at 
 the improbability of securing any proper amendments to the 
 Constitution, he continues : "Meantime Virginia, my own 
 State, has called a Convention of her people in their sovereign 
 capacity for the 13th of February, which will decide her future 
 course. She has been, she still is, sincerely attached to the 
 Union : she would gladly have preserved it ; she would willingly 
 reconstruct it. Not long since she would have accepted, and 
 advised her Southern sister States to accept, a most moderate 
 basis of settlement. But events daily strengthen the feeling 
 for secession. Your defiant speeches, and still more insulting 
 indifference, your threats of military coercion, inflame her 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 69 
 
 people; your rejection of all compromises induces the belief 
 that you are determined to rule, if need be, by the sword ; and 
 as-this belief grows into conviction, so rises Virginia's estimate 
 of the conditions which would make this a safe Union for 
 the South. And let no man doubt where she would be in 
 the final disruption. She will join no border State Confede- 
 racy, with two frontiers to defend instead of one, cut off from 
 the natural outlet for her emigration in the South, and with 
 all the territorial and slavery controversies in the new Union, 
 which drove her out of the old." 
 
 Mr. Garnett continued to argue that Virginia could not 
 hesitate as to which Confederacy she should join. "She will 
 never abandon her principles, or those Southern States which, 
 sprung from her loins and formed in her similitude, have multi- 
 plied her honors, and endowed the Old Dominion with a 
 youth ever new." 
 
 He asserted further that, if peace could be preserved, a 
 reconstruction would be possible and desirable. The Union 
 could not be safe or happy except as a Union of equal sections. 
 He looked to a Northern and a Southern Confederacy. "Let 
 not theirs be a contention with blood-stained arms, but a gen- 
 erous rivalry in the arts of peace" ; this he thought both "pos- 
 sible and desirable." This speech shows the desire of the 
 Southern people for peaceable secession. It shows, too, that 
 secession was the act of the people of the Southern States, 
 and not of a few leaders, as is sometimes erroneously asserted. 
 
 From an Address to the Voters of the First Congres- 
 sional District of Virginia, 1863. 
 
 Tn the fall of 1863 Mr. Garnett issued an address 
 
 "To the Voters of the First Congressional Distriet: 
 
 "The session of Congress has been protracted to so late a 
 day that I shall not be able to visit you at your several courts, 
 as is usual before an election. I regret this the less because 
 I am sure that your feelings, as well as my own, would dis- 
 approve an electioneering canvass amid the perils and anxie- 
 
/O Biographical Sketch 
 
 ties of this momentous war. I feel also that, as I am well 
 known to you all, and there is happily no difference of politi- 
 cal opinion amongst us, I may well leave you to decide whether 
 I can any longer be useful to you or our country in my present 
 position. For I assure you, fellow-citizens, that in asking a 
 re-election, I am influenced by no motive of personal advan- 
 tage or ambition. 
 
 "Early in the war, when the whole District was in our 
 possession and able to vote, I was elected by its almost unani- 
 mous voice, and I have devoted myself ever since to a zealous 
 and faithful discharge of the duties then imposed on me, to 
 the serious neglect of my private interests. For I feel, dur- 
 ing this struggle for all that makes life dear to us, my time 
 and my talents, such as they are, belong not to myself, but 
 to the sacred cause we defend. The oflfice of Representative 
 in Congress is one of neither pleasure nor profit ; its only 
 value to m'e is the opportunity it affords of serving the country 
 in that way for which my previous experience and training 
 best fit me. Placed on this post of duty by your voice, I have 
 not felt free to abandon it at my own option, until relieved 
 by your command to give way for another whom you may 
 prefer. I have, therefore, considered iit my duty to an- 
 nounce myself a candidate for re-election ; but I do not seek 
 your votes on any grounds of mere personal preference, or 
 advantage to myself. On the contrary, these are no times to 
 reward any man, or to indulge personal preferences, but it is 
 the solemn duty of every true lover of his country to vote for 
 that man whose abilities and experience will be most useful 
 in Congress, whosoever he may be. This is the question you 
 are called on to decide at tbjs election, and for one, I shall 
 cheerfully acquiesce in your decision. 
 
 "Fortunately the political divisions of former times no longer 
 exist. We are all united with the single purpose of a vigorous 
 prosecution of the war, until God shall bless the firmness and 
 valour of our people with independence and honorable peace. 
 In the presence of the vital issues of this war, how distant 
 and how trivial does the party strife of other days appear! 
 
r Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 71 
 
 "You will bear me witness that, though firm in my own 
 opinions, I never was personally offensive to those who dif- 
 fered with me, and I always maintained that all parties were 
 equally governed by pure and patriotic motives. The severe 
 tests of war and invasion have gloriously proved this truth ; 
 men of all parties hurried to defend the imperilled country; 
 none have been laggard — all alike are ready to sacrifice life and 
 property for the cause. 
 
 "I trust that even when peace and prosperity give rise to 
 new parties, we may still remember the lessons of charity, of 
 concord, and of harmony thus emphatically taught us. 
 
 "In my service in this Congress, I have had to deal with 
 questions of unusual difficulty. We found ourselves almost 
 without mechanical or financial resources to meet a war of un- 
 paralled magnitude and ferocity ; we had to provide — nay, to 
 create an army, and arms, munitions of war, an organization, 
 and money. This time last year, your army had not 100,000 
 effective men ; it was deficient in organization, and on the eve 
 of dissolution. Badly clad, poorly armed, with a scant supply 
 even of powder and ammunition, they were obliged to retreat 
 in every quarter. 
 
 "Our credit was so low that no resource was open but 
 an indefinite issue of Treasury notes, the evil consequences of 
 which it was easy to foresee, but impossible to avoid. Now 
 you have an army of half a million of splendid soldiers, well 
 organized and disciplined, well armed and clothed, amply pro- 
 vided with powder and ammunition, and ready to attack a 
 demoralized enemy on all sides. Your credit is established by 
 a loan, authorized at this session of Congress in the money 
 markets of Europe, where your bonds sell above par, and there 
 is reason to hope that recent measures of legislation will arrest 
 the depreciation of the currency. 
 
 "During this eventful period, I have supported every 
 measure which in my opinion would increase the efficiency of 
 the armv, add to the comfort of the soldiers, protect our 
 
72 Biographical Sketch 
 
 citizens, sustain our finances, reform the currency — in short, 
 every constitutional measure which would contribute to the 
 defence of the country, the defeat of the enemy, and the 
 achievement of independence and peace. 
 
 "A time of war and invasion devolves unusual responsi- 
 bilities and powers on the Executive, and it is our duty to sus- 
 tain it with generous confidence. All the world has admired 
 the patriotism and ability which has distinguished the Adminis- 
 tration, and while exercising an entire independence of action, 
 I have been happy in giving to it a liberal support. 
 
 "I have heard of no complaint against my course as your 
 Representative ; I am confident it has your approval, and even 
 the approval of my opponents. For I am told that the only 
 charges against me are that I, or my kinsmen, have served 
 long enough. I claim nothing on either account, but I do 
 claim that my past services shall not count against me, and 
 that I shall not be proscribed on account of my family, or 
 the service that any of them may have rendered the country 
 in times past. 
 
 "The next Congress will have momentous questions to 
 settle. We may confidently hope that before its termination 
 the terms of peace will be made, and our peace establishment 
 organized and settled on a broad and firm foundation. Vir- 
 ginia will be deeply interested in its legislation ; her bounda- 
 ries may be in question ; her territory has been ravaged by 
 war and by the contending armies, and her people will have 
 large claims for indemnity ; she will need the highest wisdom, 
 the best talents, and the largest experience she can summon 
 to her councils, and it is with sincere diffidence that I ask 
 an election at such a time. You are fairer judges of my 
 capacity than I can be ; all I can certainly promise is entire 
 devotion to your cause, which is also mine. 
 
 M. R. H. Garnett." 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 73 
 
 From Letter to the Writer by Hon. T. R. B. Wright. 
 
 The following tribute from the Hon. T. R. B. Wright, Judge 
 of the Twelfth Judicial Circuit of Virginia, who knew Mr. 
 Garnett well, is appended : 
 
 "Tappahannock, Va., 
 
 January 2"], 1909. 
 
 "The first time I remember ever seeing Hon. M. R. H. 
 Garnett was while a school boy at Fleetwood Academy, under 
 Mr. Oliver White, a fine scholar and great teacher. 
 
 "Mr. Junius Roane, of King and Quaen County, was 
 the Whig candidate for the House of Delegates, and Hon. 
 M. R. H. Garnett was the Democratic candidate. The District 
 was composed of King and Queen and Essex Counties. These 
 two candidates met in joint debate at Old Clark's precinct, 
 King and Queen County. Partizan and red-hot politics ran 
 high. Mr. White, a great Democrat, gave us holiday that day 
 to attend the discussion, and the whole Academy went. I 
 think Essex was called a Whig county, and King and Queen 
 a Democratic Gibraltar. Hon. M. R. H. Garnett, of Essex, 
 was nominated by the Democrats, with all the eclat of great 
 scholarship and political philosophy, wisdom and acumen. 
 He was heralded as a little giant in debate. Junius Roane 
 had fine gifts, dashing and very aggressive. He was put up 
 by the Whigs to meet and demolish as a Whig champion his 
 opponent. Of course I was too young to judge of the merits 
 of the discussion. The applause was deafening. The con- 
 sensus of opinion was, and the aftermath seemed to be, that 
 Roane had received such a hammering from Garnett that in 
 the final analysis it would prove a Waterloo to Roane. The 
 gifts and attainments of these two young gladiators were of 
 the first quality, and the thrusts at each other were quite bril- 
 liant. What Garnett lacked in logic, he made up in voice and 
 volume, yet I thought in all these Garnett was the superior. 
 
74 Biographical Sketch 
 
 At any rate Garnett carried his District in the fall election. 
 My father was a supporter of Garnett and it may be I was 
 a little prejudiced. 
 
 "I remember that I also saw him during the Gubernatorial 
 contest between Wise and Flournoy. Henry A. Wise spoke at 
 this place in the Court House. An immense throng greeted 
 Mr. Wise, and there was hardly standing room. M. R. H. 
 Garnett introduced Wise to the Essex people. His strong, 
 resonant, clear voice rang to the uttermost parts of the crowd 
 with a searching timbre. It was thrilling. His manner was 
 graceful and easy, and his well-chiseled face and charming 
 personality were simply superb. He appeared every inch a 
 man and a statesman. The tribute paid to him by the Essex 
 people exceeded Carlyle's 'Hero Worship." 
 
 "It was whispered at the time that the entente cordial be- 
 tween him and Mr. Wise was not good and genuine; but Gar- 
 nett inspired all with confidence, and Wise had a perfect field- 
 day and a grand ovation. 
 
 "I never heard him in the Congressional contest with John 
 Critcher. Mr. Garnett always told his friends that Critcher 
 improved in every debate with him and proved himself a 
 skilful debater. Garnett was elected to Congress. 
 
 "I heard Garnett in one debate with Prof. Saunders, of 
 William and Mary College. Saunders was a great scholar, 
 but no match for Garnett in debate ; Garnett also beat him. 
 During the War between the States, when Gov. Robert L. 
 Montague beat him, I do not think they ever met in debate. 
 
 "In the Constitutional Convention of 1849-50, his debates 
 with Gov. Floyd gave him great prestige and eclat. 
 
 "It is often said that Garnett was the most brilliant man 
 Essex ever produced. Whether he had a more brilliant mind 
 than his distinguished uncle. U. S. Senator R. M. T. Hunter, 
 I am unable to say. I have heard Mr. Hunter, and I regard 
 him in physique, voice, delivery and matter one of the greatest 
 orators and statesmen America has produced. I never com- 
 pare the two. Both were gifted, brilliant, and great orators, 
 debaters and statesmen. 
 
Hon. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett 75 
 
 "Their portraits — faces strong, striking and intellectual — 
 embellish the walls of our court-room here and are the pride 
 of our people — the Castor and Pollux of our gallery — the twin 
 stars that shine in the brilliant galaxy. 
 
 "I have it from the highest authority that Mr. Calhoun 
 remarked once to Dr. A. Y. P. Garnett, of Washington, D. C, 
 that M. R. H. Garnett was the best-informed man he had ever 
 conversed with ; that in his last speech in the Senate Garnett 
 was the man that he got his points from ; that he was a walking 
 encyclopedia, and Mr. Gales, former editor of the National 
 Intelligencer, stated in his paper that Mr. Calhoun informed 
 him that Garnett was the best-posted man he ever met. 
 
 "Mr. Clay once visited Essex — I do not know whether he 
 was a visitor at Font, Hill (the Hunter residence) or Elm- 
 wood (the Garnett residence). While attending church at old 
 Vawter's he was heard to pay a grand tribute to Mr. Garnett. 
 This is a tradition, but easily authenticated, I believe, from 
 the source I heard it. H you will read the literary address 
 of Mr. Garnett before the Society of Alumni of the University 
 of Virginia in the Rotunda 29 June [July 4], 1850, you will 
 see readily the breadth of his mind and the depth of his 
 scholarship. 
 
 "He was intensely Southern, and Virginia and the South 
 were a religion on his lips. I take a short extract from his 
 peroration : 
 
 " 'When Pericles had placed before the Athenians all the 
 reasons they had to love and value their country, and shown 
 to what pitch of greatness she might be raised, if they would 
 act worthily of her, and of themselves, he thought that he 
 could sum up all — the fame of the past, the glory of the future, 
 the duties of the present — in one word, by saying that Athens 
 was the School of Greece. 
 
 " 'Let us, I beseech you, gentlemen, apply that one word 
 to ourselves. Here, in these walls, may Virginia continue to 
 educate the Southern youth ; here may she bind their affections 
 to the land of their ancestors, and hence send them out as mis- 
 sionaries of her principles ! May her genius build up a new 
 
76 Biographical Sketch 
 
 Parthenon of letters on this Acropohs ! Long, long may the 
 old Mother Commonwealth hold high festival on this an- 
 niversary of her independence; long may she assemble her 
 daughters at these, her yearly Panathenaea ; long may she be 
 the leader, the model, and the School of the South — of that 
 South, which, by her noble people, her wise institutions, her 
 future glorious literature, is destined some day to be the 
 School of the World!'" 
 
 "T. R. B. Wright, 
 
 "Judge Twelfth Judicial Circuit of Virginia." 
 
I III mil mil 1111 III! 
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