Early Years
At first Tucker thought his new academic home was gloomy and unimpressive. Soon, however, he was enjoying social life in Williamsburg, and in 1797, upon graduating, he married his first wife, Mary Byrd Farley, the great-granddaughter of the colonial-era planter and writer from Charles City County William Byrd II. Farley was plagued by health problems even before the marriage, and despite a trip to Bermuda to improve her health, she died two years later. Most of her large estate was willed to Tucker, but due to legal technicalities Tucker spent close to twenty years fighting in court for her property and other valuable assets.
In 1800 Tucker moved to Richmond, where he excelled socially, and in 1802, prompted by news of her pregnancy, married his second wife, Maria Ball Carter, a grandniece of George Washington and a relative of Tucker's first wife. He was not immediately successful as a lawyer, admitting in his Autobiography that he possessed "neither the requisite self-possession nor fluency" to engage effectively in public arguments. He also failed in his land investments and sank even further into debt. In 1806, Tucker left Richmond and, in an effort to settle those debts, moved his family to the Frederick County home of his in-laws. A year later he was arrested for outstanding loans in Richmond, and after being released on bail he worked hard to establish his financial security.
Politics and Slavery
In 1808 Tucker moved to Pittsylvania County, where he continued to practice law and was appointed commonwealth's attorney. After twice being defeated in his bid for a seat in the state legislature, he was finally elected to the House of Delegates, where he served one term, from 1815 until 1816. In 1818, he moved to Lynchburg and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Republican Party, the party of Jefferson, James Madison, and then-U.S. president James Monroe. Tucker supported the federal bank, opposed government regulation of business, and resolutely opposed slavery. In his Autobiography, Tucker attributes his stance on slavery in part to the experience of being taught to count by a boy of African descent, leaving him with "doubts about the inferiority of the colored race." He also was influenced by the antislavery views of St. George Tucker. Alarmed by the planned uprising of the slave known as Gabriel in Richmond in 1800, George Tucker, in his earliest publication, composed a letter to the General Assembly arguing that slaves should be freed and colonized outside of the United States.
Beginning in the 1830s, Tucker's views on slavery began to change again, as he opposed what he considered to be the extreme views of abolitionists and, in so doing, looked for what he considered to be the institution's redeeming aspects. "In retrospect," the scholar James Fieser has argued, "Tucker migrated to the wrong side of the issue, and his skills as a philosopher and economist were misdirected."
Tucker and Maria Ball Carter had six children. Their youngest child, Harriet, died in 1816 at the age of three from whooping cough. The death of Harriet, followed by the passing of the eldest daughter, Eleanor Rosalie, two years after that, propelled Tucker's wife into a depression. Though doctors advised her to not have any more children, she became pregnant again and eventually died of complications from the pregnancy in 1823. Tucker was devastated by the loss of his wife, and felt that his financial failures contributed to her unhappiness.
The University of Virginia
Tucker had reservations about the job, but finally accepted it, mostly for financial reasons. He stayed in Charlottesville for twenty years, teaching, writing novels and essays, and editing a university journal, the Virginia Literary Museum. Although the new university experienced some problems as a result of financial troubles, Tucker became a well-respected professor and was elected chair of the faculty three times, making him the school's chief administrator for at least eight years.
In 1837, Tucker wrote the first biography of Jefferson, followed by a study of economics in 1839 and of demographics in 1843. While at the University of Virginia, he also wrote on literature, aesthetics, and philosophy. In particular, he displayed an interest in psychology, or what was then called "mental philosophy." In 1830, he wrote an essay for the Virginia Literary Museum on the subject of Chang and Eng, the famous Thai conjoined identical twins who were "discovered" by a British merchant in 1829 and who later settled in North Carolina and owned slaves. Tucker proposed an interview methodology to settle, through the twins' experiences, the question of whether human character is primarily developed by nature or through nurture. In 1836, Tucker secured an interview with the twins and published the results through the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.
Later Years
Tucker married his third and final wife, Louisa A. Thompson, in 1828, and in 1845 he retired from teaching and moved to Philadelphia. There, he wrote one of the first comprehensive histories of the United States, the four-volume History of the United States, from Their Colonization to the end of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, in 1841. In it he argues with Jefferson over the former president's claim, in Notes on the State of Virginia, that slavery is bad for the character of slave owners; to the contrary, according to Tucker, it encouraged qualities of patience and mercy. He also suggested that civil war in the United States was unlikely. Following his history, Tucker published another book on economics and another collection of philosophical essays.
Major Works
- Letter to a Member of the General Assembly of Virginia on the Subject of the Late Conspiracy of the Slaves with a Proposal for Their Colonization (1801)
- A Letter to a Member of the General Assembly of North Carolina, on the Navigation of the Roanoke and Its Branches (1811)
- Recollections of the Life of Eleanor Rosalie Tucker: Addressed to Her Surviving Sisters (1818)
- Speech of Mr. Tucker, of Virginia, on the Restriction of Slavery in Missouri Delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, February 25, 1820 (1820)
- Essays on Various Subjects of Taste, Morals, and National Policy (1822)
- The Valley of Shenandoah; or, Memoirs of the Graysons (2 v., 1824)
- A Voyage to the Moon; with Some Account of the Manners and Customs, Science and Philosophy, of the People of Morosofia, and Other Lunarians (1827)
- The Life of Thomas Jefferson, Third President of the United States (2 v., 1837)
- Defence of the Character of Thomas Jefferson, against a writer in the New-York review and Quarterly Church Journal (1838)
- The Theory of Money and Banks Investigated (1839)
- Progress of the United States in Population and Wealth in Fifty Years, as Exhibited by the Decennial Census (1843)
- Memoir of the Life and Character of John P. Emmet, M.D., Professor of Chemistry and Materia Medica in the University of Virginia (1845)
- The History of the United States, from Their Colonization to the end of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, in 1841 (4 v., 1856–1857)
- Political Economy for the People (1859)
- Essays, Moral and Metaphysical (1860)
- The Laws of Wages, Profits and Rent, Investigated (1937)
- Autobiography, 1858 (1961, 2004)
- A Century Hence; or, a Romance of 1941 (1977)
Time Line
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August 20, 1775 - George Tucker is born in Saint George, Saint George's Island, Bermuda.
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ca. 1795 - George Tucker moves first to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, then to Williamsburg, the home of his famous cousin, St. George Tucker, a law professor at the College of William and Mary. George Tucker enrolls at the school to study law under his cousin.
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1797 - George Tucker graduates with a law degree from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg.
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April 1797 - George Tucker marries the first of his three wives. Mary Byrd Farley is the great-granddaughter of the colonial-era planter and writer from Charles City County William Byrd II.
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1799 - George Tucker's first wife, Mary Byrd Farley, dies. Tucker moves to Richmond and begins practicing law.
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1802 - George Tucker marries the second of his three wives, Maria Ball Carter, of Albemarle County. She is a relative of his first wife and a grandniece of George Washington. The marriage is prompted by news that she is pregnant.
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1806 - George Tucker, in an effort to settle his debts, moves his family to the Frederick County home of his in-laws.
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1807 - George Tucker is arrested for outstanding loans in Richmond and serves a few days in jail.
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1808 - George Tucker moves to Pittsylvania County in southern Virginia, having been plagued in recent years by gambling debts and a lottery scandal that earned him a few days in jail. Not long after he relocates, he is appointed to be the county's commonwealth's attorney.
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1815 - George Tucker begins his term in the House of Delegates representing Pittsylvania County. He will hold the seat until 1816.
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1818 - George Tucker moves to Lynchburg. His finances and skills as a lawyer are improved and he has begun to make a name for himself as a writer and thinker.
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March 4, 1819 - George Tucker begins his first term in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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February 25, 1820 - George Tucker speaks to the U.S. House of Representatives on the occasion of debate over the Missouri Compromise, which would restrict the spread of slavery. He argues that slavery is morally wrong but that the emancipation and relocation of freed slaves would be impractical and resisted by the South "at every hazard."
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March 4, 1821 - George Tucker begins his second term in the U.S. House of Representatives. During this and his third, and final, term he serves as chair of the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of War.
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1822 - George Tucker's book Essays on Various Subjects of Taste, Morals, and National Policy is published while he serves in the U.S. House of Representatives. The book attracts the favorable notice of Thomas Jefferson.
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1823 - George Tucker's second wife, Maria Ball Carter, dies of complications from pregnancy.
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1824 - George Tucker's novel The Valley of Shenandoah, or Memoirs of the Graysons is published while he serves in the U.S. House of Representatives. One of the first novels of the U.S. South, it dramatizes Tucker's position that slavery is a moral evil but emancipation is impractical. Tucker believes that slavery eventually will die out.
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March 3, 1825 - George Tucker ends his third term in the U.S. House of Representatives, declining to run for another term when it becomes clear that he would likely lose the election.
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March 1825 - At the invitation of Thomas Jefferson, George Tucker moves to Charlottesville to teach at the newly opened University of Virginia. As one of the university's founding faculty members, Tucker is elected by the faculty to be the university's first administrator.
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1827 - University of Virginia professor George Tucker's science fiction novel A Voyage to the Moon is published. Modeled after Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), it is a genre experiment undertaken at a time when Edgar Allan Poe—one of American literature's most famous genre writers—is a student at the University of Virginia.
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1828 - George Tucker marries the last of his three wives, Louisa A. Thompson.
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1828 - George Tucker, a member of the University of Virginia's first group of faculty, is reelected as administrator of the institution.
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1833 - George Tucker, a member of the University of Virginia's first group of faculty, is reelected to a third and final term as administrator of the institution.
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1845 - After twenty years, George Tucker retires from teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. A longtime critic of both slavery and abolitionism, he frees his five household slaves and moves to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He becomes an active member of the American Philosophical Society.
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1858 - George Tucker's third wife, Louisa A. Thompson, dies.
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February 1861 - George Tucker, in an effort to find warmer climes during the winter, leaves his home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for the South. While aboard a steamship in Mobile, Alabama, he is struck by a falling cotton bale and knocked temporarily unconscious.
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April 10, 1861 - While at the Albemarle County home of his daughter, George Tucker dies from injuries sustained after being struck by a falling cotton bale three months earlier. He is buried in the University of Virginia Cemetery.
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1977 - George Tucker's second science fiction novel, A Century Hence, or a Romance of 1941, is published. Tucker, who died in 1861, composed the novel in 1841 while a professor at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
References
Further Reading
Cite This Entry
- APA Citation:
Funderburke, S. George Tucker (1775–1861). (2014, February 3). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Tucker_George_1775-1861.
- MLA Citation:
Funderburke, Sarah. "George Tucker (1775–1861)." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, 3 Feb. 2014. Web. READ_DATE.
First published: February 25, 2009 | Last modified: February 3, 2014