Nathaniel Beverley Tucker

Life and politics

Tucker was generally known by his middle name. He was born into a socially elite and politically influential Virginia family: his father was the noted legal scholar St. George Tucker, and his half-brother was John Randolph of Roanoke. His mother was Frances Bland Randolph Tucker, daughter of Theodorick Bland of Cawsons. Tucker's older brother Henry St. George Tucker, Sr., too, went on to have an eminent career as a law professor and Congressman in antebellum Virginia. His nephew Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, a U.S. diplomat and later secret agent for the Confederacy, was named after him. His daughter Cynthia became a notable preservationist in Virginia.

He graduated from the College of William & Mary in 1801, studied law, and practised in Virginia. After moving with his family to the Missouri territory in 1816, Tucker served as a circuit court judge from 1817 until 1832. He returned to Virginia in 1833 and served as a Professor of Law at William and Mary, his alma mater, from 1834 to his death in 1851.

Tucker opposed the nullification movement in South Carolina, but maintained that individual states had the right to secede from the Union. From the 1830s onward he was a Fire-Eater and a leading academic spokesman for states' rights and Southern unity. He wrote frequently for the Southern Literary Messenger and other periodicals, and carried on an extensive correspondence with influential Southern political leaders, including President John Tyler, Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur, and South Carolina Governor James Henry Hammond.