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Senate Years of Service: 1815-1825 Party: Anti-Democrat/Whig
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Library of Congress |
BARBOUR, James, (brother of Philip Pendleton Barbour and cousin of John Strode Barbour),
a Senator from Virginia; born at Frascati, near Gordonsville,
Orange County, Va., June 10, 1775; attended the common schools; deputy sheriff
of Orange County; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1794 at Orange Court
House; served several terms in the Virginia house of delegates between 1796 and
1812, serving as speaker from 1809 to 1812; Governor of Virginia 1812-1814;
elected as an Anti-Democrat and State Rights candidate to the United States
Senate in 1814 for the term commencing March 4, 1815; subsequently elected to
fill the vacancy in the term ending March 3, 1815, caused by the death of
Richard Brent; reelected in 1821 and served from January 2, 1815, to March 7,
1825, when he resigned to accept a Cabinet portfolio; served as President pro
tempore of the Senate during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Congresses; chairman,
Committee on Foreign Relations (Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Eighteenth
Congresses), Committee on the District of Columbia (Seventeenth Congress);
appointed Secretary of War by President John Quincy Adams and served from March
7, 1825, to May 26, 1828, when he resigned to accept a diplomatic position;
United States Minister to England from May 26, 1828, to September 23, 1829;
chairman of the Whig National Convention in 1839; founder of the Orange Humane
Society, established for the advancement of education; died in Barboursville,
Orange County, Va., June 7, 1842; interment in the family cemetery.
BibliographyDictionary of American Biography; Lowery,
Charles D.
James Barbour, a Jeffersonian Republican. University, AL:
University of Alabama Press, 1984.
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