James Barbour (1775–1842) read law in Richmond and was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1793. He represented his native Orange County in the House of Delegates, 1798–1803, 1804–05, and 1807–12, with service as Speaker, 1809–12. Barbour served three terms as governor of Virginia, 1812–14, sat in the United States Senate, 1815–25, became secretary of war under John Quincy Adams, 1825–28, and was minister plenipotentiary to Great Britain from 1828 until Andrew Jackson recalled him the following year. He began his political career attacking the Alien and Sedition Acts and supporting strict-construction Republicanism, but his experience as a wartime governor altered his outlook, and he came to support protective tariffs, the Second Bank of the United States, internal improvements, and other measures to strengthen domestic manufacturing and commerce. Barbour defended states’ rights during the 1819–21 crisis over the admission of Missouri as a slave state but helped to orchestrate a compromise. He chaired national presidential conventions that nominated Henry Clay in 1831 and William Henry Harrison in 1839. Barbour served as president of the Agricultural Society of Albemarle, 1824–26, and published the results of his experiments in scientific agriculture at Barboursville, his 5,000-acre Orange County estate. He also supported the University of Virginia and other efforts to encourage public education. In 1817 TJ provided Barbour with an architectural design that he used at Barboursville, but their correspondence during TJ’s retirement was primarily political (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; DVB description begins John T. Kneebone and others, eds., Dictionary of Virginia Biography, 1998– , 3 vols. description ends ; PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 31 vols. description ends , 31:325–6; Charles D. Lowery, James Barbour, A Jeffersonian Republican [1984]; Leonard, General Assembly description begins Cynthia Miller Leonard, comp., The General Assembly of Virginia, July 30, 1619–January 11, 1978: A Bicentennial Register of Members, 1978 description ends ; Rodney H. True, “Minute Book of the Agricultural Society of Albemarle,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1918 [1921], 1:304, 307, 310, 324; Barbour to TJ, 29 Mar. 1817; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 14 Sept. 1842).

Barbour ran for governor in 1811, but the General Assembly reelected George William Smith. After Smith died in the Richmond Theatre fire on 26 Dec. of that year, Barbour was elected to the station of chief magistrate on 3 Jan. 1812 (DVB description begins John T. Kneebone and others, eds., Dictionary of Virginia Biography, 1998– , 3 vols. description ends ; Richmond Enquirer, 4 Jan. 1812). The Virginia constitution as adopted by the Convention of 1776 called for an eight-member “Privy Council, or Council of State,” elected by joint ballot of both houses of the legislature “to assist in the Administration of Government” by advising the governor on his exercise of executive power. Four members were “sufficient to act” (PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 31 vols. description ends , 1:380–1).