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George Tucker, 1775-1861
Virginia lawyer, politician, novelist, historian, first professor of moral philosophy at the University of Virginia and early American economist.
George Tucker was born and raised in Bermuda, the son of prominent British West Indian merchant family. After his mother's death in 1795, young George Tucker was sent by his father to the United States, with intention on pursuing a legal career under the tutelage of his cousin (sometimes characterized as an uncle), the notable jurist St George Tucker, then a professor of law at William & Mary in Virginia. But the lures of American high society got the better of him. After a period of wild youth as a man-about-town in Philadelphia, the broke young George finally came to his cousin's door in Williamsburg. George Tucker enrolled in the College of William & Mary, obtaining his degree in law in 1797 and married a local socialite. Tucker's dissolute life tempered a bit, but did not settle down. Upon his wife's death in 1799, Tucker spent some time shuttling between Virginia and the West Indies, to secure his late wife's estate.
Eventually, Tucker returned in 1800 and settled into a law practice in Richmond, Virginia by 1801. That same year, after Gabriel's "slave conspiracy" had raised alarms among Virginian plantation owners, Tucker published a pamphlet proposing to re-settle free Blacks far away, somewhere west of the Mississippi River, where they could not influence their enslaved brethren. Tucker remarried in 1802, nonetheless his extravagant lifestyle continued while the income from his law practice, only ineptly followed, could hardly cover his expenses. Hoping for a quick and easy fortune, Tucker tried his hand at dubious investment schemes, blowing not only his family's savings, but that of several other persons, resulting in a series of court cases and investigations for embezzlement and other financial improprieties (most notably a lottery scandal in 1803). His cousin, St. George Tucker, had to repeatedly intervene to bail him out of trouble, both legal and financial.
Drummed out of Richmond society in 1806, Tucker moved onto a relative's property in rural Shenandoah valley. In 1808, Tucker set up a plantation in Pittsylvania, including slaves (despite his moral opposition to slavery), in an effort to start a new life as a country lawyer. But it bored him, and George Tucker entertained himself by writing, putting out a few pamphlets on a variety of issues, of local and national interest. A series of letters on navigation on the Roanaoke River and a canal scheme brought him attention, and Tucker was encouraged to enter politics directly. Despite his early allegiance as a Jeffersonian Republican-Democrat, Tucker flipped over to the Federalists, and was elected to the Virginia Assembly in 1819, and then to the US Congress in 1823. But he did not stay there for long.
Tucker's political career was hampered by a rapid series of misfortunes. Tucker suffered financial setbacks, the loss of his Pittsylvania plantation to public auction, the death of two of his children, the confinement of a third to a mental institution, and finally the death of his second wife in 1823. Hoping for some pennies from royalties, Tucker put out his Essays in 1822, and followed it up with a long novel, Valley of the Shenadoah. The latter, published in 1824, it is one of the earliest examples of the genre of Southern epic romances. It describes the decline and fall of an aristocratic plantation family to the machinations of hard-hearted bourgeois merchants. He would put out a second novel, Voyage to the Moon, a Swift-like science fiction satire in 1827. Tucker married for a third time in 1828.
Although the novels were not financially successful, Tucker's Essays were well-received - most notably by then-president James Madison - and it put him on the landscape when the newly-erected University of Virginia in Charlottesville was looking to hire some teachers. George Tucker slid into the professorship of moral philosophy at the University of Virginia after the candidacy of Thomas Cooper - Thomas Jefferson's preferred candidate - was rejected by the Virginia Assembly. Tucker was appointed in 1825, on a salary of $1,500, as a compromise candidate between various religious and political factions.
George Tucker began delivering his first lectures on political economy at Virginia in 1826, and continued doing so continuously for the next two decades. George Tucker's economics was of the "clerical" apologist school, defending laissez faire and free trade, widely embraced in the South, against the protectionist American System being pushed in the North. His 1837 Laws was critical of Ricardo's theory of rent and distribution. Tucker continued to write
Tucker's most notable economics work was perhaps his Progress of the United States (1843), constructing a portrait of the demography and economy of the United States on the basis of the censuses from 1790 to 1840 (the 1855 edition contains an appendix on the 1850 Census). In this work, among other things, Tucker tracks the expansion of slavery. Despite his personal moral opposition to slavery, Tucker finds Abolitionist agitation to be counter-productive, making the political atmosphere so toxic that it is impossible for Southern opponents of slavery to speak out against it or stake a moderate position. Tucker conjectures slavery becomes unprofitable as population density increases, and predicts that slavery in the US will naturally come to an end in eighty years. Tucker's Progress was quite well-received abroad and earned him membership to a French scientific academy in Paris.
In his lifetime, Tucker was perhaps best known for his monumental biography Life of Jefferson (1837). It was a judicious biography, trying to paint a balanced picture of the statesman, which satisfied neither Jeffersonians nor his opponents.
In 1845, Tucker resigned from the chair at Virginia, freed his slaves and moved to Philadelphia. He continued publishing articles on economics and philosophy (notably on Hume in 1850). Tucker's 1856-57 History of the United States, met only moderate success. Its defense of slavery in the South, however lukewarm, made it outdated almost immediately. Tucker published his lecture notes from UVa as Political Economy for the People in 1859.
George Tucker died in April 1861, in a freak accident, killed by falling cargo from a steamboat in the port of Mobile, Alabama.
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All rights reserved, Gonçalo L. Fonseca