Virgil Maxcy (1785–1844), attorney, public official, and diplomat, was born in Massachusetts in a section of Attleboro later annexed by Wrentham. He graduated in 1804 from the College of Rhode Island (renamed Brown University that year) and studied law at the school of Tapping Reeve and James Gould in Litchfield, Connecticut, from 1805 until at least 1807, and then in Baltimore under Robert Goodloe Harper before his admission to the Maryland bar. In Baltimore in 1811, Maxcy published in three volumes The Laws of Maryland, with the Charter, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution of the State, and its alterations, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States, and its amendments. He served a one-year term on the governor’s council, 1815–16, sat in the state senate, 1817–21, and represented Anne Arundel County in the state house of representatives for two terms, 1824–26. Initially a Federalist who was nonetheless a longtime friend and ally of John C. Calhoun, he became a supporter of Andrew Jackson. Maxcy was appointed the first solicitor of the United States Treasury in 1830 and held the position until 1837. President Martin Van Buren appointed him chargé d’affaires to Belgium in the latter year. Maxcy resigned his diplomatic post in 1842, returned to Maryland, and resumed his private law practice. While he was a guest of President John Tyler aboard the USS Princeton, Maxcy died when a gun on the ship exploded (DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; Historical Catalogue of Brown University, 1764–1904 [1905], 95; Litchfield Law School description begins The Litchfield Law School, 1784–1833, 1900 description ends , 9; Edward C. Papenfuse and others, eds., An Historical List of Public Officials of Maryland [1990– ], 1:21, 43–4, 137; Calhoun, Papers description begins Robert L. Meriwether, W. Edwin Hemphill, Clyde N. Wilson, and others, eds., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, 1959–2003, 28 vols. description ends , esp. 1:51, 101–2, 8:263–7, 11:xxi–xxii, 15–22; JEP description begins Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States description ends , 4:119, 5:30, 32, 6:57 [29 May 1830, 19, 25 Sept. 1837, 28 Apr. 1842]; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 27 Apr. 1844; gravestone inscription at Maxcy’s Tulip Hill estate, Anne Arundel Co.).

In the enclosed pamphlet, Maxcy defended the Maryland Resolutions, which asserted that all states had an equal right to appropriations from public lands for the purpose of extending common education (see John Patterson to TJ, 3 May 1821, and note), against the adverse report and resolutions of massachusetts, which had concluded that “the reservation of certain lots of land in townships offered for sale by the United States, for the support of schools in such townships, in pursuance of standing laws, cannot justly be considered as a donation to the States within which such lands are situated, and cannot, therefore, entitle any other State to demand any land or other donation by way of equivalent” (21 Jan. 1822 report of Massachusetts legislative committee chaired by Lemuel Shaw, pamphlet in MHi, quote on p. 18; reprinted in American Farmer 4 [1823]: 177–81, quote on p. 181).

Maxcy sent the same enclosure in letters to John Quincy Adams and James Madison of 8 and 10 Nov. 1822, respectively (MHi: Adams Papers; Madison, Papers description begins William T. Hutchinson, Robert A. Rutland, John C. A. Stagg, and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison, 1962– , 43 vols.: Congress. Ser., 17 vols.: Pres. Ser., 11 vols.: Retirement Ser., 3 vols.: Sec. of State Ser., 12 vols. description ends , Retirement Ser., 2:600).