Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 2.djvu/245

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VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

vas {rom his mother, and he later attended Dr. James Priestley's Academy at Bards- town, Kentucky. He became a lawyer; in 1/99 ^'2is elected to the constitutional con- vention, and also to the legislature, ol which he was a member till 1806. In i8d6 he be tame a judge of the state supreme court, and afterwards chief justice. In 1807 he resign- ed and removed to Nashville, Tennessee, where he achieved a great reputation as a criminal lawyer. He was elected to con- gress in 181 1 and 1813. In 1819 he was elected to the legislature. In 1829 he was elected to the United States senate. In 1838 he became attorney-general in President Van Buren's cabinet, resigning to reenter the senate. He opposed all protection ex- cept that which is incidental to a tariff levied for revenue, favored the compromise bill of 1833, and suggested and was a mem- ber of the committee that revised it ; his last political act was to speak in Tennessee for Van Buren against Harrison; he was an orator of note, and his most finished ora- tion was that delivered on the death of Jef- ferson and Adams; he died in Nashville, Tennessee, December 19, 1840, his remains were interred in the Nashville City Ceme- tery, where a monument has been erected to his memory.

Gaines, Edmund Pendleton, was born in Culpeper county, Virginia, March 20, 1777, died in New Orleans, Louisiana, June 6, 1849. He ^^s son of James Gaines, who commanded a company in the revolutionary war, was a member of the North Carolina legislature, and took part in the convention which ratified the Federal constitution. He was a grandson of William H. Gaines and Isabella Pendleton, sister of. Hon. Edmund

Pendleton. Edmund early showed a pref- erence for a military life. Having joined the United States army, he was appointed sec- ond lieutenant of the Sixth Infantry, Janu- ary 10, 1799, and in April, 1802, was pro- moted to first lieutenant. He was for many years actively employed on the frontier, and was instrumental in procuring the arrest of Aaron Burr. He was collector of the port of Mobile in 1805, ^^^ ^<^s promoted to cap- tain in 1807. About 181 1 he resigned from the army, intending to become a lawyer, but at the beginning of the war of 1812 re- turned, and became major on March 24. He became colonel in 1813, and at Chrysler's Field, on November 11, covered with his rtgiment the retreat of the American forces. Later in the same year he was made adju- tant general, with the rank of colonel. He was promoted to brigadier-general March 9, 1S14, and for gallant conduct in the defence of Fort Erie, in August, 1814, when he was severely wounded ''repelling with great slaughter the attack of a British veteran army superior in number," he was brevetted major-general, and received the thanks of congress, with a gold medal. Similar honor was done him by the states of Virginia, Tennessee and New York. He was appoint- ed, in 1816, one of the commissioners to treat with the Creek Indians. He was in com- mand of the southern military district in 1817, when the Creeks and Seminoles began to commit depredations on the frontier of Georgia and Alabama, and having moved against them, was in desperate straits when he was joined by Gen. Jackson — a circum- stance which may be regarded as the initia- tive of those measures which in 1820 added Florida to the United States. In the troubles which arose with the Seminoles in 1836, and

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