John Taylor of Caroline

John Taylor (Dec 19, 1753-Aug 21, 1824) of Caroline County[?], Virginia was a politician and writer. He served in the Virginia house of delegates[?] (1779–81, 1783–85, 1796–1800) and in the U.S. Senate (1792–94, 1803, 1822–24). He was the author of several books on politics and agriculture. He was a Jeffersonian Democrat[?] and his works provided inspiration to the later state's rights and libertarian movements.

He was orphaned when he was 10 and adopted by his uncle Edmund Pendleton, a leading Virginia politician. He attended a school sponsored by his uncle with fellow students: James Madison (a distant cousin), George Rogers Clark[?], and John Tyler. Taylor attended the College of William and Mary and then studied law under his uncle. He served in the American Revolutionary War, rising to the rank of colonel, and serving under Patrick Henry, General William Woodford[?], and leading a regiment under Marquis de Layfayette[?].

After the war he lived as a lawyer, gentleman farmer and part-time politician, served several partial U.S. Senate terms. He was a leading of the Quids[?] opposing the election of Madison as President and supporting James Monroe.

His estate Hazelwood is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Writings of John Taylor of Caroline:

• Arator (one of the first books on the problems of Amercan agriculture)
• New Views of the Constitution of the United States
• Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated
• A Defence of the Measures of the Administration of Thomas Jefferson, attributed to "Curtius".
• An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States
• Tyranny Unmasked

From Reprints of Legal Classics (1) (http://www.lawbookexchange.com/reprints02/books/Sears)

"Little-known today, Taylor's work is of great significance in the political and intellectual history of the South and is essential for understanding the constitutional theories that Southerners asserted to justify secession in 1861. Taylor fought in the Continental army during the American Revolution and served briefly in the Virginia House of Delegates[?] and as a U.S. Senator. It was as a writer on constitutional, political, and agricultural questions, however, that Taylor gained prominence. He joined with Thomas Jefferson and other agrarian[?] advocates of states' rights[?] and a strict construction of the Constitution in the political battles of the 1790s. His first published writings argued against Secretary of the Treasury[?] Alexander Hamilton's financial program. Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated was Taylor's response to a series of post-War of 1812 developments including John Marshall's Supreme Court decision in McCulloch v. Maryland, the widespread issuance of paper money[?] by banks, proposals for a protective tariff[?], and the attempt to bar slavery from Missouri. Along with many other Southerners, Taylor feared that these and other measures following in the train of Hamilton's financial system, were undermining the foundations of American republicanism. He saw them as the attempt of an "artificial capitalist sect" to corrupt the virtue of the American people and upset the proper constitutional balance between state and federal authority in favor of a centralized national government. Taylor wrote, "If the means to which the government of the union may resort for executing the power confided to it, are unlimited, it may easily select such as will impair or destroy the powers confided to the state governments." Jefferson, who noted that "Col. Taylor and myself have rarely, if ever, differed in any political principle of importance," considered Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated "the most logical retraction of our governments to the original and true principles of the Constitution creating them, which has appeared since the adoption of the instrument." Later Southern thinkers, notably John C. Calhoun, were clearly indebted to Taylor."

- Sabin, A Dictionary of Books Relating to America 94486.

- Cohen, Bibliography of Early American Law 6333.(21527)