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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 March 2019
The politics of war severely divided the Virginia Southside during the American Revolution. Laborers, ship pilots and other landless men and women bitterly resented the efforts of the patriot gentry to stop trade with Great Britain and to establish a military force. Planters feared that the presence of the British Navy would encourage slaves to flee or attack their masters. What role did law play in the patriot response to these conditions? This essay uses the case of Josiah Philips, who led a banditti residing in the Great Dismal Swamp, to show how law intersected with class and race in patriot thinking. The gentry's view of the landless as dependent and lacking in self-control and its view of black slaves as posing a constant threat of violence supported the application of special legal regimes suited to these dangers. In particular, Philips was “attainted” by the General Assembly, a summary legislative legal proceeding traditionally employed against offenders who threatened government itself. While the attainder was uncontroversial when it passed, the significance of the Assembly's intervention changed over time. By the late 1780s, some among the state's legal elite regarded the Assembly as having unnecessarily interfered in the ordinary course of justice, which they were then seeking to reform. This opened the way to recharacterize the Assembly's extraordinary legal jurisdiction as an arbitrary exercise of lawmaking power.
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82. Randolph, History of Virginia, 219. In a statement to the House of Burgesses, John Randolph conceded that although he never “heard the Governor expressly say, that he would proclaim freedom to the Slaves, but he was so well satisfied that such was his Lordships Intentions,” if he thought it necessary “in defence of his Person.” Deposition of John Randolph in Regard to the Removal of the Powder, in “Virginia Legislative Papers (Continued),” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 15 (1907): 149. On the connection between the gunpowder seizure and the fear of a slave uprising, see Hume, Another Part of the Field, 141–42.
83. Deposition of Dr. William Pasteur, in “Virginia Legislative Papers,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 13 (1905): 49.
84. Holton, Black Americans, 7. For a sample of the unending stream of “fake news” in the Virginia press during this period, see Parkinson, The Common Cause, 213–39; and Hume, Another Part of the Field, 282–302, 335–42.
85. McDonnell, Politics of War, 143.
86. “My Mother,” in Lower Norfolk County Antiquary, vol. 2, ed. Edward W. James (Baltimore: 1897), 134–35.
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88. Jefferson's famous account of black Virginians in Query XIV of Notes on the State of Virginia, suffused with a kind of scientific racism, described them as exhibiting a “lack of forethought” and black men as being “more ardent after their female,” their “love [being equivalent to] an eager desire.” Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 139. For a recent, highly compelling construction of Jefferson's view of black and poor “corporality,” see Valsania, Maurizio, Jefferson's Body: A Corporeal Biography (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2017), 22–23Google Scholar, 109–12, 146–63. The sexualization of black violence was widespread. Consider the Petition of the Citizens of Halifax County opposing emancipation, which warned of “all the Rapes, Murders, and Outrages, which a vast multitude of unprincipled, unpropertied, vindictive, and remorseless Banditti are capable of perpetrating.” Petition to the Virginia General Assembly, November 10, 1785, in Holton, Black Americans, 90–91. Even the abolitionist Benjamin Franklin could speak this way, describing “the wanton and unbridled Rage, Rapine and Lust, of Negroes, Mulattoes, and others, the vilest and most abandoned of Mankind.” “Plain Truth,” quoted in Gould, Among the Powers, 33.
89. Parkinson, Common Cause, 186–87, 227–29, 256–59; Lee, Crowds and Soldiers, 140–44; and Holton, Black Americans, 6–7. Holton observes that, although patriots accused Britain of fomenting slave rebellion, “[a] careful review of the chronology of the relationship … shows that it was often the slaves who incited the British.”
90. Cary to Richard Henry Lee (December 24, 1775), quoted in Holton, Black Americans, 10. As historian William Nelson describes this attitude, “the potential for black resistance arguably threatened poor whites as well as wealthy ones and thereby gave upper-class whites an argument for uniting the white underclass with them in their practices of repressing blacks.” Nelson, Common Law, 3:32.
91. McDonnell, Politics of War, 135–74; and Eckenrode, Revolution in Virginia, 86–88.
92. Shepard, “The Administration of Justice,” 85.
93. This obligation lay near the center of the gentry worldview. Isaac, Transformation in Virginia, 131–32. For a period expression, see the letter from William Byrd II to Charles, Earl of Orrey, July 5, 1726, in “Virginia Council Journals,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 32 (1924): 27. Jefferson, too, imagining himself as the “most blessed of the patriarchs” in a letter to a friend, placed himself at Monticello, surrounded by family (and books). It was an image he would invoke repeatedly. Isaac, Rhys, “The First Monticello,” in Jeffersonian Legacies, ed. Onuf, Peter S. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1993), 90–91Google Scholar; and Gordon-Reed, Annette and Onuf, Peter S., Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2016), 28–40Google Scholar.
94. Petition of the Inhabitants of Norfolk and Princess Anne Counties, undated, in Revolutionary Virginia, The Road to Independence, vol. 5, The Class of Arms and the Fourth Convention, 1775–1776, ed. Robert L. Scribner and Brent Tarter (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1979), 362–63. For a vivid account of a “midnight intrusion” into a bed chamber “with drawn daggers and bayonets,” related by a family member of one of the Norfolk petitioners, see “My Mother,” 136–37.
95. Charles Lee to John Page, April 8, 1776, in Revolutionary Virginia, The Road to Independence, vol. 6, The Time for Decision, 1776, ed. Robert L. Scribner (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1981), 352.
96. Berkin, Carol, Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for American Independence (New York: Knopf, 2005), 38–42Google Scholar.
97. Scriber and Tarter, Revolutionary Virginia, 5:402 n. 3; and Unanimous Resolution for the Evacuation of Parts of Norfolk and Princess Anne Counties, April 10, 1776, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 6:369–70.
98. Petition of the Committee of Safety of Princess Anne County, 1776, in “Virginia Legislative Papers (Continued),” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 17 (1909): 173. The Princess Anne Committee asserted that only “fifteen or Twenty” of their slaves had joined Dunmore, and that, in general, “[w]e have but few” slaves. For the modified order, see Virginia Committee of Safety, Proceedings of the Committee, May 3, 1776, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 6:514.
99. Eckenrode, Revolution in Virginia, 91. A blanket removal was again ordered in October 1777. For the context of this order, which was made by Governor Patrick Henry and the Privy Council, see George, “Virginia Loyalists,” 205; and Robert Leroy Hilldrup, “The Virginia Constitution of 1776: A Study in Revolutionary Politics” (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1935), 119. The General Assembly indemnified the governor and the council for the removal: An Act for indemnifying the Governor and Council, and others, for removing and confining Suspected Persons during the late public danger. Hening, Statutes at Large, 9:373–74. Jefferson apparently drafted the statute, which appears in his papers. Bill Indemnifying the Executive for Removing and Confining Suspected Persons, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 2, 2 January 1777 to 18 June 1779, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950), 119.
100. Other county courts were also affected by the outbreak of hostilities. The first Provincial Convention had permitted the court “fee bill” to expire, effectively closing the courts to suits for recovery of a debt, but justices in most counties remained active throughout the war collecting taxes, settling estates, convening grand juries, and generally preserving what one contemporary called “Peace and good Order.” Lingley, Transition in Virginia, 70, 114 (fee bill); Shepard, “The Administration of Justice,” 48–51; Alan McKinley Smith, “Virginia Lawyers, 1680–1776: The Birth of a Profession” (PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1967), 39–40; Cullen, Charles T., St. George Tucker and Law in Virginia, 1772–1804 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987), 31Google Scholar; and Scribner, Robert L., ed., Revolutionary Virginia, The Road to Independence, vol. 1, Forming Thunderclouds and the First Convention, 1763–1774 (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press), 280Google Scholar (“Peace and good Order”). In July 1776, after enacting the state's new constitution, the Provincial Convention authorized county courts to resume sitting. Hening, Statutes at Large, 9:126. Norfolk courts would not sit regularly for at least another year.
101. Shepard, “The Administration of Justice,” 52–53; Hast, Loyalism in Revolutionary Virginia, 92, 99; and An act to empower the justices of the county of Norfolk to hold Court at such place as they shall appoint, in Hening, Statutes at Large, 9:231.
102. Beeman, Richard R., “The Political Response to Social Conflict in the Southern Backcountry: A Comparative View of Virginia and the Carolinas during the Revolution,” in An Uncivil War: The Southern Backcountry During the American Revolution, ed. Hoffman, Ronald, Tate, Thad W., and Albert, Peter J. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1985), 228Google Scholar, 233; and Ward, Between the Lines, 154 (“freely raided”).
103. McIlwaine, H. R., ed., Journals of the Council of the State of Virginia, vol. 1, July 12, 1776–October 2, 1777 (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1931), 435–36Google Scholar; and McIlwaine, H. R., ed., Journals of the Council of the State of Virginia, vol. 2, October 6, 1777–November 30, 1781 (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1932), 58Google Scholar. The Journal states that Philips had been “outlawed by the Governor … as a Traitor to the State,” rather than simply bountied, but this is probably incorrect. Outlawry was a procedure at common law and in a strict sense beyond the power of the governor to perform. Elsewhere, as will be discussed, Henry expressly acknowledged the limits of his powers as governor to address the Philips threat.
104. McIlwaine, H. R., ed., Official Letters of the Governors of the State of Virginia, vol. 1, The Letters of Patrick Henry (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1926), 267–68Google Scholar; and McIlwaine, Journals of the Council, 2:127.
105. John Wilson to Patrick Henry, May 20, 1778, in Wirt, William, The Life of Patrick Henry (Philadelphia: 1836), 237–38Google Scholar.
106. Lee, Crowds and Soldiers, 157–58. Congress examined witnesses to a reprisal killing and offered a reward for the capture of those believed responsible for the attack. In addition, its proclamation authorized pursuers to “kill and destroy” the suspects if they resisted.
107. Henry to Benjamin Harrison, May 27, 1778, in McIlwaine, Official Letters of the Governors, 1:282–83. The council had recommended that Henry remove the “[f]amilies as are in League with the Insurgents,” and that for this purpose he should forward Wilson's letter to the assembly; in addition, the council recommended that Henry order a company of regulars to the area to cooperate with militia “in Crushing these Desperadoes.” McIlwaine, Journals of the Council, 2:140.
108. Report of the Committee on the State of the Commonwealth, May 28, 1778, in Journal of the House of Delegates [May 1778], 22–23. The clerk of the House who docketed the bill was Edmund Randolph. Journal of the House of Delegates [May 1778], 30; Kaminski, John P. and Saladino, Gaspare J., eds., The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, vol. 9, Virginia, No. 2 (Madison, WI: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 1990)Google Scholar, 1004 n. 5.
109. Jefferson to William Wirt, August 14, 1814, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, vol. 7, 28 November 1813–30 September 1814, ed. J. Jefferson Looney (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2010), 548–49 (Henry shared Wilson's letter with Jefferson); Evans, Emory G., “Executive Leadership in Virginia, 1776–1781: Henry, Jefferson, and Nelson,” in Sovereign States in an Age of Uncertainty, ed. Hoffman, Ronald and Albert, Peter J. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1981), 192–93Google Scholar, 204; Journal of the House of Delegates [May 1778], 22, 24, 28, 29, 35; Bill to Attaint Josiah Philips, May 28, 1778, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 2:189–91; and Hening, Statutes at Large, 9:463–64.
110. Jefferson to William Wirt, August 14, 1814, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, 7:549.
111. Jefferson to John Page, May 25, 1766, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1, 1760–1776, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950), 19–20; Jefferson to George Wythe, February 28, 1800, in Jefferson's Parliamentary Writings, ed. Wilbur Samuel Howell (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 3 (“commonplaced what I read”); Howell, Jefferson's Parliamentary Writings, 43 (date Pocket-Book was begun); and Parliamentary Pocket-Book, para. 41, in Howell, Jefferson's Parliamentary Writings, 58 (Cromwell).
112. Jefferson to Louis Girardin, March 12, 1815, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, 8:334.
113. Perkins, Buchanan, & Brown to Jefferson, October 2, 1769, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1:34.
114. The Thomas Jefferson”s Libraries database identifies the book as belonging to the “Monticello Library,” assembled between 1770 and 1815; http://www.librarything.com/work/4069900/book/22053709 (last accessed February, 22, 2019). Sowerby writes that “[J]efferson acquired this volume though his wife's family; the autograph signature of John Wayles occurs in three places … .” E. Millicent Sowerby, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1953), 180, entry 2887. On the attribution of Of the Judicature of Parliaments, see Foster, Elizabeth Read, “The Painful Labour of Mr. Elsyng,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 62 (1972): 5, 42–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
115. Jefferson to Robert Skipwith, August 3, 1771, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1:80.
116. On the importance of Rushworth to Jefferson's thinking, see Colbourn, Trevor, The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), 159–60Google Scholar.
117. Crow, Thomas Jefferson, Legal History, and the Art of Recollection, 73.
118. Ford, Paul Leicester, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1, 1760–1775 (New York: Putnam, 1892), 10Google Scholar; and Brent Tarter, “The Library of the Council of Colonial Virginia,” in Billings and Tarter, “Esteemed Bookes of Lawe”, 45–53.
119. Colbourn, Lamp of Experience, 160.
120. Howell, Jefferson's Parliamentary Writings, 43; and Deschler, Lewis, Jefferson's Manual and the Rules of the House of Representatives (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1961)Google Scholar, 115 n. Jefferson wrote, “I could not doubt the necessity of quoting the sources of my information, among which Mr. Hatsel's most valuable book is preeminent.”
121. Hatsell, John, Precedents of Proceedings in the House of Commons, vol. 4 (London 1796), 89–90Google Scholar; Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, 8:334.
122. Kevin J. Hayes, “The Law Library of a Working Attorney: The Example of Patrick Henry,” in Billings and Tarter, “Esteemed Bookes of Lawe”, 140. This view of Henry is to some degree a product of William Wirt's early biography, whose emphasis on Henry's lack of book learning served to magnify Henry's legend in the minds of Virginia's advocates of local power, the “Old Republicans.” Miller, Juries and Judges, 3–4.
123. Randolph, History of Virginia, 255 (“terrifying picture”); and Hilldrup, The Virginia Constitution, 183 (“martial law”).
124. Kaminsky and Saladino, Documentary History of the Ratification, 9:1038; and Hayes, “The Law Library,” 149–50.
125. Miller, Juries and Judges, 25. In contrast, professional lawyers made up 6% of the membership of the House between 1720 and 1776. Roeber, Faithful Magistrates, 145.
126. Quoted in Isaac, Transformation, 133–34 (“good reason and experience”); and Greene, Jack P., ed., Diary of Landon Carter, vol. 1 (Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1965), 93Google Scholar (“knowing from whom to Copy”).
127. Quoted in Roeber, Faithful Magistrates, 78 (“superior order”); Peter S. Onuf, “Thomas Jefferson, Federalist,” in Mind of Thomas Jefferson, 90.
128. On the connection between family and state, see Peter S. Onuf, “Making Sense of Jefferson,” 33.
129. Jefferson to William Preston, March 21, 1780, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 3:534–35.
130. Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1:342. Jefferson's first draft of a constitution for the state of Virginia famously provides that the prerogative powers of declaring war or peace, issuing letters of marque and reprisal, and erecting courts are to “be exercised by the legislature alone.”
131. Crow, Thomas Jefferson, Legal History, and the Art of Recollection, 88–89, 105. Notably, Jefferson's proposed revision of Virginia's colonial criminal laws, prepared close to the time of Philips's attainder, impliedly recognized a legislative power to attaint by bill, as it would prohibit only those attainders that worked a “corruption of blood”; that is, inherited civil disability. Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments in Cases Heretofore Capital, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 2:506–7 n. 21.
132. Valsania, Jefferson's Body, 19–20, 27; and Roeber, Faithful Magistrates, 164.
133. As Emory Evans describes, both Henry and Jefferson were “sensitive to and respectful of” the primacy of the legislature in the state government, even during wartime, and they consistently sought out authority from the legislature in the form of delegation, indemnification, or pardon. Evans, “Executive Leadership in Virginia,” 191, 192, 202–3.
134. Virginia Gazette (Purdie), June 5, 1778, 2 (act of attainder); Virginia Gazette (Purdie), June 19, 1778, 2 (Parker and Hodges jailed); McIlwaine, Journals of the Council, 2:210 (Captain Amos Weeks); Princess Anne County Minute Book, May 16, 1778, microfilm, typescript, County Court Order Books, Library of Virginia (M'Clelen's arrest); Princess Anne County Minute Book, June 11, 1778 (arraignment of Philips, Hodges, Land, Moore, and Burgess); and Virginia Antiquary, 1:92–93 (Land).
135. Norfolk County Order Book, June 30, 1778 (Pinkerton); and Norfolk County Order Book, July 16, 1778 (Miller and Hodges).
136. During Jefferson's term as governor, Justices of the Peace Henry Lee and William Carr dissented from the judgment of the Prince William County Court condemning a slave Billy to death for high treason, on the grounds that he was not a citizen and therefore did not owe the state allegiance and could not commit treason. Palmer, William P., ed., Calendar of Virginia State Papers and Other Manuscripts […], vol. 2, April 1, 1781 to December 31, 1781 (Richmond, 1881), 90–91Google Scholar. Billy's owner, Mann Page, appealed to Jefferson, who granted a reprieve on that ground. Mann then petitioned the House for a pardon, and a bill of pardon was ordered prepared; whether it passed out of the House, and whether it ever went to the Senate (or was required to), is unknown. Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia; Begun […] Monday, the Seventh Day of May, in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty-One (Richmond: 1828), 12 (entry for June 9, 1781); Eckenrode, Revolution in Virginia, 259. In this case, Sandy might have been charged with petit treason for the murder of his master, although the record contains no such language.
137. Norfolk County Order Book, August 3, 1778 and August 5, 1778.
138. Shepard, “The Norfolk Courts,” 80. As Shepard notes, there were a relatively large number of slaves tried before county courts of oyer and teriminer in 1778, suggesting the possibility of other escaped slaves in Philips's gang, although the records do not confirm this.
139. Virginia Antiquary, 1:96 (Phillpot and Will); Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia; Begun […] Monday, the Fifth Day of October, in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy-Eight (Richmond, 1827), 39, 55 (entries for November 2, 1778 and November 11, 1778); McIlwaine, Letters of the Governors, 1:308; and Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Nicholson), March 26, 1779, 2 (Phillpot, Pinkerton, Miller, and Thornton sentenced).
140. Virginia Antiquary, 1:119. The discovery of this remarkable fact should be credited to Adele Hast. Hast, Loyalism in Revolutionary Virginia, 98.
141. Slaves could not appeal a conviction for felony in a county court of oyer and terminer, and had to hope for a gubernatorial pardon. Shepard, “The Administration of Justice,” 21.
142. McIlwaine, Letters of the Governors, 1:300 (Philips's transfer to Williamsburg in July 1778); Virginia Gazette (Purdie), October 30, 1778, 3 (indictment); and “An endictment against Josiah Philips for robbery,” October 20, 1778, Verdict, October 27, 1778, Judgment, October 28, 1778, Report of Sentence, October 30, 1778, all in Wirt, Life of Patrick Henry, 465–68. The records of the General Court were burned in the Civil War, but William Wirt had copied them for inclusion in his biography of Henry. Wirt noted that the indictment was “endorsed … in Mr. Randolph's handwriting.” For a contemporaneous report of the sentence and execution, see Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter), October 30, 1778; and Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter), December 4, 1778, 2.
143. Thomas Newton Jr., to Thomas Nelson Jr., September 17, 1781, in Palmer, Calendar of Virginia State Papers, 2:450–51 (“neither civil nor military law”); George, “Virginia Loyalists,” 204; Shepard, “The Administration of Justice,” 79; and Thomas Newton to Benjamin Harrison, August 9, 1782, in William P. Palmer, ed., Calendar of Virginia State Papers and Other Manuscripts, vol. 3, January 1, 1782 to December 31, 1784 (Richmond, 1883), 252 (“the whole nest”).
144. Kaminsky and Saladino, Documentary History of the Ratification, 9:972.
145. The convention returned to the subject of Philips repeatedly. Patrick Henry took up the defense of Philips's attainder but did not contest the essentials of Randolph's account, other than to insist that Philips was “a fugitive murderer and an outlaw.” Kaminsky and Saladino, Documentary History of the Ratification, 9:1038. Like Randolph, Henry failed to mention the slaves in Philips's gang, although slavery and the fear of slave insurrection featured centrally in arguments that Henry advanced against ratification. Einhorn, Robin L., “Patrick Henry's Case against the Constitution: The Problem with Slavery,” Journal of the Early Republic 22 (2002): 549–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. John Marshall, George Nicholas, and Edmund Pendleton also addressed the Philips case, although none of them pressed Randolph on his description or added significant details. Kaminsky and Saladino, Documentary History of the Ratification, 9:1086, 1116, 1127, 1333; and Kaminski, John P. and Saladino, Gaspare J., eds., The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, vol. 10, Virginia, No. 3 (Madison, WI: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 1993), 1197Google Scholar.
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150. Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 120; Jefferson's Draft of a Constitution for Virginia, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6, 21 May 1781 to 1 March 1784, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952), 298; and Ralph Wormeley Letterbook (June 13, 1786), quoted in Roeber, Faithful Magistrates, 177.
151. “Vices of the Political System of the U.S.” (April 1787), in The Founders’ Constitution, vol. 1, ed. Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); and Bilder, Mary Sarah, Madison's Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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153. Roeber, Faithful Magistrates, 113, 160–202; and Miller, Juries and Judges, 5–11, 24–26. On Tucker's tenure as a General Court judge, see Charles F. Hobson, “St. George Tucker: Judge, Legal Scholar, and Reformer of Virginia Law,” in Billings and Tarter, “Esteemed Bookes of Lawe”, 198–99, 212–13. Although he did ride circuit, Tucker had initially favored the creation of locally staffed intermediate courts, presumably because such a system would better preserve local control. George Wythe to St. George Tucker, October 10, 1784, Wolf Law Library, William & Mary School of Law, http://lawlibrary.wm.edu/wythepedia/index.php/Wythe_to_St._George_Tucker,_10_October_1784 (last accessed February 22, 2019).
154. Miller, Juries and Judges, 25 (“machinery”). On the effect district courts had on Virginia legal culture and the county courts, see Cullen, Tucker and Law in Virginia, 83–84; and Hobson, Charles F., ed., St. George Tucker's Law Reports and Selected Papers, 1782–1825 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 36Google Scholar.
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163. Schwarz, Twice Condemned, chap. 8.
164. Taylor, Internal Enemy, 107.
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