John Randolph Chambliss Sr.

John Randolph Chambliss senior (born March 4, 1809 in Sussex County , Virginia , † April 3, 1875 in Emporia , Virginia) was an American lawyer , politician and officer. He was a member of the Whig Party . The Brigadier General John Randolph Chambliss junior (1833-1864) and the Lieutenant Walter Blow Chambliss (1846-1886), both in the Confederate Army served were his sons.

Career

John Randolph Chambliss Sr., son of Lucy Rives Newsom and James Jarred Chambliss, was born in Sussex County about three years before the outbreak of the British-American War . Nothing is known about his youth. He studied law at the College of William & Mary between 1829 and 1830 . In June 1830, he was admitted to the bar in Greensville and Sussex Counties. He then settled in the first-mentioned county and practiced there in the town of Hicksford (now part of Emporia). On December 25, 1830, he married his cousin Sarah John Rives Blow, also from Greensville County. Of their three sons and at least four daughters, one son and two daughters died in childhood. From 1840 to 1841 he worked as a town clerk ( county clerk ) and in the same decade as a district school inspector. He was appointed Commissioner in Chancery in 1845 - a post he held until September 1847 when he became Commonwealth's Attorney . In 1850 he owned about 1,000 acres in the county and 22 taxable slaves over the age of 12. The past decade was overshadowed by the economic crisis of 1837 and the Mexican-American War .

He ran for four seats in the Virginia Constituent Assembly in 1850, along with six other candidates . The following counties were represented by these four delegates: Greensville County, Isle of Wight County , Nansemond County , Southampton County , Surry County, and Sussex County. In the election that took place in August 1850, he received the second highest result. He was on the judiciary committee. There he agreed with the Western delegates that the right to vote should no longer be dependent on property, but stood on the side of the Eastern delegates, who advocated and opposed a combined composition of population and property as the basis for the allocation of seats in the General Assembly to the western delegates, who wanted to allocate the requested seats exclusively on the basis of the white population. He discussed the matter twice and finally decided against a compromise, but later accepted it, which gave the eastern counties, where the slave owners had more weight, a majority of the seats in the Virginia Senate , but the western counties the majority Seats in the House of Representatives , since slavery was economically less important there. Chambliss also rejected the demand by Western delegates to tax slaves at their market value rather than the lower per capita rate set out in the earlier constitution. On this point he and the other eastern delegates prevailed. On July 31, 1851, he voted against the draft constitution, while the assembly adopted it with 75 votes to 33 and submitted it to the electorate for ratification.

Chambliss took in 1857 at the Southern Commercial Convention in Knoxville ( Tennessee part), where he was selected as one of ten vice-presidents. Like many other voters in Virginia, he supported the presidential candidacy of Union candidate John Bell (1797-1869) in 1860 . At that time he owned 27 taxable slaves. After Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) won the presidential election, Chambliss began to believe that the slave states should remain united, as a result changed his mind and reluctantly advocated secession as a last resort. In response to the crisis of secession, he was elected as a delegate for Greensville County and Sussex Counties to the Secession Assembly in February 1861 and sat there on the Committee on Elections. Although the application for secession was still rejected on April 4, 1861, the majority voted on April 17, 1861 to split off and submit a decree of secession to the electorate for ratification. Chambliss went on to oppose the Western delegates when they reintroduced the taxation of slaves based on their market value and voted against a constitutional amendment on this point, which the Assembly put in a referendum. He returned to Richmond for a brief second session in June and a third session in November . During the previous session, he chaired a special committee to report on actions on the supplies and equipment at the Harpers Ferry Arsenal.

From August 5 to December 2, 1861, he was again active as the Commonwealth's Attorney for Greensville County.

Chambliss was elected to the Confederate Congress on November 6, 1861 . He represented the following counties: Greensville County, Isle of Wight County, Nansemond County, Norfolk County , Princess Anne County , Southampton County, Surry County and Sussex County, and the city of Norfolk . Between February 18, 1862 and February 17, 1864, he attended all four sessions of the First Confederate Congress. During his Congressional tenure he sat on the Committee on Naval Affairs, where he supported Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) policies regarding the construction of gunboats to protect the Virginia coast, and on the Special Committee on the final weeks of his tenure Veteran Soldiers' Home . On three occasions he presented his drafts for a national flag, made decisions or changes on topics such as the navy and engagements in the army. Refugees from areas under Union occupation and tax breaks for people living in those areas were among his other concerns, probably because parts of his district were under Union control during part of the civil war . In 1863 he decided not to run for re-election.

In the summer of 1865, Chambliss took oath of pledge to the United States and was pardoned by the President on October 16 of that year . In late September 1865, he gave his opinion on the Andrew Johnson (1808-1875) administration in a speech in Lawrenceville in neighboring Brunswick County . After that, he no longer appeared politically. Chambliss lived in Hicksford with his wife, widow and children of his son John Randolph Chambliss Jr. After nearly six months of illness described as a nervous weakness , Chambliss died in his Greensville County residence in 1875 and was buried in the family cemetery on his estate, a location in what is now downtown Emporia.

Chambliss served in the Virginia vigilante group, where he held the rank of colonel . He was a Baptist and a Freemason .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ John Randolph Chambliss Jr. in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved January 10, 2015.
2. ^ Walter Blow Chambliss in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved January 10, 2015.
3. ↑ Commissioner in Chancery Law & Legal Definition , US Legal, Inc.
4. ↑ Möbs, Thomas Truxtun: Confederate States Navy Research Guide , Möbs Publishing Company, 1991, p 26

Web links

• John Randolph Chambliss senior in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• John Randolph Chambliss Sr. on The Political Graveyard website
• John Randolph Chambliss Sr. on the Library of Virginia website