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John Taylor (December 19, 1753 – August 21, 1824) usually called John Taylor of Caroline was a politician and writer. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates (1779–81, 1783–85, 1796–1800) and in the United States Senate (1792–94, 1803, 1822–24). He wrote several books on politics and agriculture. He was a Jeffersonian Democrat and his works provided inspiration to the later states' rights and libertarian movements. Sheldon and Hill (2008) locate Taylor at the intersection of republicanism and classical liberalism. They see his position as a "combination of a concern with Lockean natural rights, freedom, and limited government along with a classical interest in strong citizen participation in rule to prevent concentrated power and wealth, political corruption, and financial manipulation" (p. 224).
Taylor argued that the national government was entirely a creature of the states and was subordinate to them.
In the creation of the federal government, the states exercised the highest act of sovereignty, and they may, if they please, repeat the proof of their sovereignty, by its annihilation. But the union possesses no innate sovereignty, like the states; it was not self-constituted; it is conventional, and of course subordinate to the sovereignties by which it was formed — John Taylor of Caroline
John Taylor was born in Orange County, Virginia, in 1750. His father was James Taylor, who married Ann Pollard a sister of Sarah Pollard, who married the celebrated Edmund Pendleton, president of the famous Convention of May, 1776, that declared for independence. He was of the same distinguished family as General Zachary Taylor, who became the President of the United States. He attended William and Mary College and graduated there in 1770. He studied law and, settling in Caroline County, began the practice in 1774. He entered the army when the Revolutionary War began, and was a colonel of cavalry.
He served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1779 to 1787, being one of the leading members. About this time he gave up the practice of law and devoted his ample time to politics and agriculture. In 1792 he was appointed to fill the unexpired term of Richard Henry Lee in the United States Senate, and was elected to the term that began March 4, 1793, but resigned, May 11, 1794. He served as a presidential elector in 1797. Taylor was a close friend of Thomas Jefferson, and, as member of the house of delegates, was one of the men who offered the Virginia Resolves to that body.
Taylor served in the U.S. Senate on two additional occasions. He appointed to the Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Stevens Thomson Mason, and served from June 4, 1803, until December 7, 1803, when he resigned. In 1822, he was appointed to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of James Pleasants., and was elected later to serve the regular term for six years beginning December 18, 1822, but died at his estate in Caroline county, August 20, 1824.
Taylor was a prolific political writer, and was the author of "An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Governmant of the United States," 1814; "Construction Construed and the Constitution Vindicated." 1820; "Tyranny Unmasked. 1822; "New Views of the Constitution of the United States." 1823. He was also a scientific agriculturist, and in 1811 was first president of the Virginia Agricultural Societies, His little books. "Arator," being a series of agricultural essays, practical and political. 1818, was one of the first American books on agriculture. Taylor County, West Virginia. was named in his honor.[1]
English legal historian M.J.C. Vile views Taylor as "in some ways the most impressive political theorist that America has produced." [2] Historian [5] "Taylor took solid liberal ground in holding that men were a mixture of good and evil. Self-interest was the only real constant in human action. . . . . Indeed, while other thinkers, from Thomas Jefferson to Federalist John Adams, agonized over the need for a virtuous citizenry, Taylor took the view that 'the principles of a society may be virtuous, though the individuals composing it are vicious.'" [6] Taylor's solution to the effects of factionalism was to "remove the base from under the stock jobbers, the banks, the paper money party, the tariff-supported manufacturers, and so on; destroy the system of patronage by which the executive has corrupted the legislature; bring down the usurped authority of the Supreme Court." [7] "The more a nation depends for its liberty on the qualities of individuals, the less likely it is to retain it. By expecting publick good from private virtue, we expose ourselves to publick evils from private vices." [8]
Taylor wrote in defense of slavery, although he admitted it was wrong.[9] "Let it not be supposed that I approve of slavery because I do not aggravate its evils, or prefer a policy which must terminate in a war of extermination."[10] Rather, he defended the institution because he "thought blacks incapable of liberty."[5] Taylor feared that widespread emancipation would ultimately, and invariably in his view, lead to the horrific bloodshed witnessed in the French colony of Santo Domingo in 1791, the site of the greatest of all successful slave insurrections, the Haitian Revolution.[11] "Taylor is one with most American thinkers from Washington to Jefferson to Lincoln in doubting that the free Negro could ever be anything but a problem for American politics . . . ." [12] Thus, he advocated the deportation of free African Americans.
"Negro slavery is a misfortune to agriculture, incapable of removal, and only within the reach of palliation." [13] Taylor criticized
Stromberg, says Taylor's role in calling for Virginia's secession in 1798 and his role in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, "show how seriously he took the reserved rights [interposition (nullification) and secession] of these primary political communities [the States]." [15] Taylor was responsible for guiding the Virginia Resolution, written by James Madison, through the Virginia legislature.[16] He wrote: "enormous political power invariably accumulates enormous wealth and enormous wealth invariably accumulates enormous political power." [17] "Like his radical bourgeois counterparts in England, Taylor would not concede that great extremes of wealth and poverty were natural outcomes of differences in talent; on the contrary they were invariably the result of extra-economic coercion and deceit." [18] "Along with John Randolph of Roanoke and a few others, Taylor opposed Madison's War of 1812--his own party's war--precisely because it was a war for empire." [19]
Tate (2011) undertakes a literary criticism of Taylor's book New Views of the Constitution of the United States, arguing it is structured as a forensic historiography modeled on the techniques of 18th-century whig lawyers. Taylor believed that evidence from American history gave proof of state sovereignty within the union against the arguments of nationalists such as U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall.[20]
Taylor's primary plantation estate, Hazelwood, was located three miles from Port Royal, Virginia and is on the National Register of Historic Places.[21]
Taylor County, West Virginia was formed in 1844 and named in Senator Taylor's honor.
The last three books listed "are to be valued chiefly for their insight into federal-state relations and the true nature of the Union." M. E. Bradford, ed., Arator 35 (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund 1977).
The above publication notations are credited to F. Thornton Miller, ed., Tyranny Unmasked, Foreword ix-xxii (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund 1992).
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