Early Years
Daniel was born on September 5, 1842, in Lynchburg. Through his father, William Daniel, a judge of the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, he was connected to many of the leading families in the state. His mother, Sarah Ann Warwick Daniel, was the daughter of a wealthy Lynchburg tobacco merchant. After she died in August 1845, Daniel was raised in the Lynchburg household of his maternal grandparents. He attended local primary schools and from 1855 to 1859 Lynchburg College. He then matriculated at a preparatory academy that operated for one year in Albemarle County and the following year in Nelson County.
After the Civil War, Daniel studied law at the University of Virginia for one year and then joined his father's practice in Lynchburg. When not busy with cases, he continued his legal studies and indulged his passion for oratory by memorializing the Confederate war effort and speaking out against Reconstruction. In 1868 Daniel published one of his lectures as The Character of Stonewall Jackson, followed the next year by a compilation entitled The Law and Practice of Attachment, under the Code of Virginia. On November 24, 1869, he married Julia Elizabeth Murrell, also of Lynchburg. They had two daughters and three sons, the youngest of whom died in a horseback-riding accident in 1894.
Early Political Career
Daniel's political career began with his election as a Conservative to the House of Delegates in July 1869. As one of three men representing Campbell County from 1869 to 1871, he served on the Committee for Courts of Justice and chaired the Committee on the Library. Although Daniel did not seek reelection in 1871, he may already have set his sights on higher office. He unsuccessfully sought nomination to the Sixth Congressional District seat in the House of Representatives in 1872 and 1874 and canvassed the state in behalf of Conservative candidates during the 1873 campaign. Most of his time during this period, however, was devoted to the law. Through intensive study of the legal codes governing financial transactions Daniel made his most important contribution to the profession, A Treatise on the Law of Negotiable Instruments (1876). Reprinted several times, the two-volume work became the standard text on the subject throughout the United States and gained a substantial reading in other English-speaking courts.
Virginia's massive public debt emerged as the principal fault line of state politics. In 1871 the General Assembly passed the Funding Act, which committed the state to assume the full burden of its antebellum debt. The issue split the Conservative Party into two factions. Opponents of the act, later known as Readjusters, favored a debt adjustment that would leave Virginia in a better position to maintain government services, particularly the new public education system, while defenders of the act, called Funders, argued that the state's honor and future ability to attract capital depended on paying its creditors in full. Although Daniel had voted against the Funding Act, he emerged as one of the most prominent Funder spokesmen.
Despite the loss, Daniel's popularity was growing, and he continued to help lead the Funder faction in the state senate. Although not opposed in principle to a new debt settlement, he vehemently fought any plan that did not make debt payment the state's top budgetary priority. In making his case during one debate, Daniel argued that it "were better to burn the schools," the key focus of the Readjuster camp, "than sustain them on money taken by force" from the state's creditors. Although not intended as an attack on the public schools, Daniel's clumsy rhetoric provided fodder for Readjuster assertions that Funders opposed not only a debt adjustment but public education as well. The publicity that the incident aroused and the philosophy that it reflected—that the property rights of bondholders superseded all other interests—helped spur the Readjusters to sweeping victories in the 1879 elections, although Daniel himself easily won reelection.
Road to the U.S. Senate
Daniel stepped onto the national stage for the first time in 1880 when, as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, he gave a celebrated nominating speech in behalf of Winfield Scott Hancock. He praised Hancock as a candidate who offered the best hope for reconciliation between North and South, a theme that often appeared in his rhetoric. The following year Daniel secured the Conservative Party nomination for governor. Despite an energetic campaign, he lost by almost 12,000 votes, of more than 211,000 cast, to William E. Cameron, the candidate of a coalition of Readjusters and Republicans.
Pride in Virginia and in the efforts of its white people during the Civil War emerged as primary vehicles in the resurgence of the Conservatives. Reorganized as the Democratic Party in 1883, they regarded the state debt controversy as settled and placed race and the presumed cronyism of their opponents at the heart of the 1883 campaign. Although not running for office, Daniel campaigned vigorously and in a celebrated speech, which linked the Readjuster-Republican coalition with Reconstruction-era hostility toward former Confederates, summarized the reasons for supporting his party: "I am a Democrat because I am a white man and a Virginian."
One of the first acts of the victorious Democrats in the General Assembly was a reapportionment of the state's ten congressional districts. Daniel was removed from the same district as the popular John Randolph Tucker, and when Republicans challenged the plan, Daniel successfully defended it before the Supreme Court of Appeals. In November 1884 Daniel easily won election to the House of Representatives from the Sixth District, which comprised Lynchburg and the counties of Bedford, Botetourt, Campbell, Charlotte, Halifax, Montgomery, and Roanoke. Already well-known at the national level, he received prestigious assignments to the Committees on Foreign Affairs and on Labor. Daniel's tenure in the House was short-lived, however; in December 1885 the General Assembly elected him to succeed Mahone in the U.S. Senate.
Although an adherent to states' rights Virginia conservatism and aligned with a nascent party organization that had isolated political power in the hands of a few business-oriented brokers, Daniel often took positions that appealed to the mass of voters. He supported an education bill that would have secured federal funding for schools in the South. Most important, Daniel became a leading advocate of a more-inflationary monetary policy. Although opposed to the free circulation of greenbacks and other more-radical measures, he believed that a significant portion of the nation's currency should be based on silver, in addition to gold. In perhaps his most important congressional speech, Daniel argued against repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which gold advocates had blamed for the economic panic of 1893. He excoriated the deflationary constraints that had governed the nation's economic policy since British creditors had gained influence after the Civil War.
Convention of 1901–1902
As chair of the Committee on the Elective Franchise, Daniel was expected to exercise a controlling influence over the key question facing the convention, the disfranchisement of African Americans. On the committee he led the minority faction, which proposed slightly less-onerous suffrage restrictions than did the majority plan. The convention could not decide between the plans, and Daniel was widely viewed as having failed to provide the leadership necessary to break the deadlock. Exhausted and ill, he retreated to Lynchburg and had to be dissuaded from resigning. Daniel returned in March 1902 and served as a chief floor advocate for Carter Glass's amended plan, which the convention eventually adopted. Daniel's address before the convention deprecated the loss of suffrage that many white voters would face but declared it proof that "the Anglo-Saxon … will accept tyranny rather than … surrender to the inevitable consequences of a putrid electorate." Although he maintained his opposition to proclaiming the constitution in force, rather than submitting it to the electorate for approval in a referendum, he crafted the compromise scheme that made proclamation virtually inevitable. Daniel sat on the Committee on Final Revision, and on June 6, 1902, he voted to approve and place in effect the new constitution.
Later Years
Time Line
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September 5, 1842 - John Warwick Daniel is born in Lynchburg. He is the son of William Daniel and Sarah Ann Warwick Daniel.
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1861 - John Warwick Daniel enlists in a Lynchburg cavalry troop, and secures a commission as a second lieutenant in the 27th Virginia Infantry Regiment in early May. After being wounded at the First Battle of Manassas he gains commission as a second lieutenant in the 11th Virginia Infantry Regiment.
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July 11, 1862 - John Warwick Daniel is promoted to first lieutenant and adjutant.
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March 24, 1863 - John Warwick Daniel is named assistant adjutant general for Major General Jubal A. Early and is promoted to major.
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May 1864 - John Warwick Daniel suffers a shattered femur at the Battle of the Wilderness. The injury requires him to use a crutch for the rest of his life and later earns him the nickname "The Lame Lion of Lynchburg."
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1868 - John Warwick Daniel publishes one of his lectures as The Character of Stonewall Jackson.
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1869 - John Warwick Daniel publishes The Law and Practice of Attachment, under the Code of Virginia.
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July 6, 1869 - John Warwick Daniel is elected as a Conservative to the House of Delegates.
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November 24, 1869 - John Warwick Daniel marries Julia Elizabeth Murrell. They will have two daughters and three sons.
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1871 - John Warwick Daniel emerges as one of the most prominent Funder spokesmen.
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1872–1874 - John Warwick Daniel unsuccessfully seeks nomination to the Sixth Congressional District seat in the House of Representatives twice.
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1875 - John Warwick Daniel is elected to the Senate of Virginia from Campbell County.
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1876 - John Warwick Daniel publishes A Treatise on the Law of Negotiable Instruments, which becomes the standard text on the subject throughout the United States.
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1880 - John Warwick Daniel gives a celebrated nominating speech at the Democratic National Convention in Cincinnati in behalf of Winfield Scott Hancock.
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1881 - John Warwick Daniel secures the Conservative Party nomination for governor, but loses the general election to William E. Cameron.
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June 28, 1883 - John Warwick Daniel delivers the keynote speech at the unveiling of Edward Virginius Valentine's recumbent statue of Robert Edward Lee for the chapel at Washington and Lee University.
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November 1884 - John Warwick Daniel wins election to the House of Representatives from the Sixth District.
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February 21, 1885 - John Warwick Daniel delivers an address during the dedication of the Washington Monument.
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December 1885 - The General Assembly elects John Warwick Daniel to succeed William Mahone in the U.S. Senate. Daniel remains a senator until his death.
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1896 - John Warwick Daniel is elected the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
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Spring 1900 - John Warwick Daniel runs unopposed to represent Campbell County in the convention to revise the state constitution.
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January 1910 - John Warwick Daniel wins election to the U.S. Senate for the fifth time.
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June 29, 1910 - John Warwick Daniel dies in a Lynchburg sanitarium of a cerebral hemorrhage.
References
Further Reading
Cite This Entry
- APA Citation:
Whitley, W. B., & the Dictionary of Virginia Biography. John Warwick Daniel (1842–1910). (2015, November 4). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Daniel_John_Warwick_1842-1910.
- MLA Citation:
Whitley, William Bland and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography. "John Warwick Daniel (1842–1910)." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 4 Nov. 2015. Web. READ_DATE.
First published: May 2, 2013 | Last modified: November 4, 2015