William Gaston Papers Inventory (#272)

Manuscripts Department, Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Contact Information:

Manuscripts Department

CB#3926, Wilson Library

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Chapel Hill, NC 27514-8890

Phone: 919/962-1345

Fax: 919/962-3594

Email: mss@email.unc.edu

URL: http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/

Processed by

SHC Staff

Date Completed

1940-2000

Encoded by

Linda Sellars

Revisions:

Finding aid updated in June 2001 by Lynn Holdzkom.

Descriptive Summary Including Abstract

Title

William Gaston Papers (#272)1744-1950 (bulk 1791-1844)

Creator

Gaston, William, 1778-1844.

Extent

About 1400 items (4.0 linear feet)

Repository

Southern Historical Collection

Language

English.

Administrative Information

Access

No restrictions.

Usage Restrictions

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Provenance

Received from R. D. W. Connor before 1940; from Isobel Busbee of Raleigh, N.C., in 1952; from Mrs. Lyman Cotten in 1965; from the family of John Steele Henderson in 1969; from the estate of Archibald Henderson in 1971; from Chalmers Davidson of Davidson, N.C., in 1974; and from Katharine Vaux McCauley and Mary Vaux in December 1999 (Acc. 98538), March 2000 (Acc. 98595), and February 2001 (Acc. 98848).

Processing Notes

National Historical Publications Commission microfilm copy (1966), which contains most, but not all, of the items in the collection, is available.

This description is largely based on the "Guide to the Microfilm Edition of the William Gaston Papers," 1966.

This collection was rehoused with support from a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Office of Preservation, Washington, D.C., 1990-1993.

Additional Descriptive Resources

Online Catalog Terms

Badger, George Edmund, 1795-1866.

Banks and banking--North Carolina--History--19th century.

Burgwyn, John Fanning.

Catholic Church--United States.

Connor, Henry G. (Henry Groves), 1852-1924.

Devereux, Thomas P. (Thomas Pollock), 1793-1860.

Donaldson, Robert, 1800-1872.

Education--North Carolina--Finance--History--19th century.

Elections--United States--History--19th century.

Family--North Carolina--Social life and customs.

Federal Party (U.S.).

Federalist Party (N.C.).

Gaston family.

Gaston, William, 1778-1844.

Hamilton, Alexander, 1757-1804.

Judges--North Carolina--History--19th century.

Kron, Francis Joseph, 1798-1883.

Lawyers--North Carolina--History--19th century.

Lawyers--North Carolina--Political activity.

Mangum, Willie Person, 1792-1861.

Marshall, John, 1755-1835.

Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815--Foreign public opinion, American.

North Carolina--Economic conditions--19th century.

North Carolina--Politics and government--1775-1865.

North Carolina--Social life and customs.

Nullification.

Ruffin, Thomas, 1787-1870.

Slavery--North Carolina.

Stephens, Marcus Cicero.

Swain, David L. (David Lowry), 1801-1868.

Taney, Roger Brooke, 1777-1864.

United States--Economic conditions--19th century.

United States--Foreign relations--France.

United States--History--War of 1812.

Webster, Daniel, 1782-1852.

West Florida--History.

Related Collections

Henry Groves Connor Papers (#175), Southern Historical Collection;
William Gaston Papers, North Carolina Division of Archives and History.

Biographical Note

William Gaston was born in New Bern, N.C., on 19 September 1778. His father, Alexander Gaston, was a prominent physician of the New Bern region who had received his medical degree from the University of Edinburgh and had served as a surgeon in the British navy. The elder Gaston, a Protestant Irishman of Huguenot descent, settled in North Carolina in 1765. He was married in 1775 to Margaret Sharpe, a convent-educated Englishwoman from a family of devout Catholics. The couple had three children: William; his sister Jane, three years his junior, who married John Louis Taylor; and an elder son who died in infancy.

With the outbreak of the American Revolution, Alexander Gaston became active in the patriot cause. On 19 August 1781, he was killed by the leader of a band of Tory raiders at New Bern. Margaret Sharpe Gaston, left with the care of two infants, raised her children in the Catholic faith.

In the spring of 1791, the twelve-year-old William Gaston was sent to Philadelphia to be prepared for college. From there, in the following fall, he went to Georgetown College to become its first student. Poor health dictated his return to New Bern in 1793. Gaston studied for a year at New Bern Academy and then enrolled at Princeton, where he was graduated in 1796 with highest honors. He studied law in New Bern under the direction of Francois Xavier Martin, and, on 22 September 1798, he was admitted to the bar. Later in the year, when Gaston's brother-in-law, John Louis Taylor, was appointed judge of the North Carolina Superior Court, Taylor diverted a large part of his practice to Gaston.

In political matters, Gaston was a Federalist and then a Whig. He served four terms in the North Carolina Senate and seven terms in the North Carolina House of Commons. Gaston was a Federalist presidential elector in 1808, and, from 1813 until 1817, he was a member of the United States House of Representatives. As a congressman, Gaston acquired a reputation for the eloquence of his speeches, especially those supporting the Bank of the United States and opposing the Loan Bill. He denounced generally the War of 1812. He voluntarily retired from national politics in 1817 and on at least one subsequent occasion refused nomination to the United States Senate.

Gaston remained active in North Carolina politics. He served as chair of the judiciary committee of the North Carolina Senate and chair of the joint legislative committee that framed the act creating the North Carolina Supreme Court. In the North Carolina House of Commons, 1827-1833, Gaston served on the judiciary committee and as chair of the finance committee, a position that coincided with his interest in banking. In 1828, he was appointed president of the Bank of New Bern and while in the House of Commons cooperated with conservative financial groups in an effort to maintain sound banking policies for North Carolina. He helped to lead the fight in North Carolina against the nullification doctrine in 1832.

Gaston took a lively interest in internal improvements for North Carolina. In July 1833, he attended an internal improvements convention in Raleigh, serving as chair of the committee to prepare an address to the state and to lay the convention's proceedings before the state legislature. The address stressed the need for colleges, railroads, hospitals, and asylums for the handicapped. As a member of the House of Commons, Gaston introduced the bill to charter the North Carolina Central Railroad.

In 1835, Gaston was an influential delegate to the North Carolina Constitutional Convention, where he fought to have religious qualifications for office holding dropped and where he attempted to protect the voting privileges of free people of color. Gaston also supported federal representation as the basis for representation in the House of Commons and biennial meetings of the state legislature.

Gaston's law practice was very successful and his reputation in legal circles was of national scope. Daniel Webster and John Marshall, among others, consulted with him on legal questions. In 1833, Gaston was elected by the state legislature to a post as an associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, where he served until his death in 1844. Gaston's most famous decision on the bench came in 1834 with the case of State v. Negro Will. Gaston ruled that a slave had the right to defend himself against an unlawful attempt of a master, or an agent of a master, to kill him. In the significant case of State v. William Manuel in 1838, he held that a manumitted slave was a citizen of the state and thus entitled to the guarantees of the constitution. Gaston purchased a library for the state Supreme Court while on a trip to New York City in 1835.

In addition to his service as legislator and judge, Gaston served the public as a trustee of the University of North Carolina from 1802 until his death in 1844. For many years, he was chair of the trustees of the New Bern Academy.

Gaston received many honors during his lifetime. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1817 and of the American Academy of Languages and Belles Lettres in 1821. He received honorary degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in 1819, from Harvard and Columbia in 1825, and from Princeton in 1835.

Gaston owned a plantation and slaves (163 at the time of his death) in Craven County, N.C., and a town house and a law office in New Bern. During the sessions of the Supreme Court in Raleigh, Gaston stayed at the home of Mrs. James F. Taylor. At his office nearby, in 1840, he wrote the words for "The Old North State," the music for which he apparently adopted from a melody sung by a group of Swiss bellringers who had visited the capital. "The Old North State" was first performed in public at the Whig state convention in Raleigh in October 1840 and has been North Carolina's official state song since 1927.

Gaston was married three times: on 4 September 1803 to Susan Hay (d. 1804); on 6 October 1805 to Hannah McClure (d. 1813); and on 3 September 1816 to Eliza Ann Worthington (d. 1819). With his second wife, he had one son, Alexander (1807-1848), who married Eliza W. Jones and then Sarah Lauretta Murphy, and two daughters, Susan Jane (1808-1866), who married Robert Donaldson, and Hannah Margaret (1811-1835), who married Matthias E. Manly. With his third wife, Gaston had two daughters, Elizabeth (1817-1874), who married George W. Graham, and Catherine Jane (1819-1885), who did not marry.

William Gaston died in his office in Raleigh in 1844.

Collection Overview

The collection consists of William Gaston's papers, including personal, business, and political correspondence, 1791-1844; law notes and other papers; notes, 1896-1915, of Judge Henry Groves Connor (1852-1924) for his proposed biography of Gaston; and pictures.

Materials touch upon a great variety of topics. Significant items concerning the history of the Catholic Church in America are scattered throughout, as are items relating to banks and banking. Gaston's letters to members of his family and to his personal friends are revealing of family and social life in North Carolina, and political affairs are the subject of much comment. Topics include national elections between the years 1800 and 1844, preparations for war with France in 1800, subsequent negotiations with France, financial affairs of the United States, the possible effects upon the United States of the ending of the Napoleonic wars, De Witt Clinton's presidential candidacy, plans for a meeting in New York of Federalists from all parts of the nation for the purpose of considering a Federalist course of action in the 1812 elections, legal matters concerning the outbreak of the War of 1812, the nullification controversy, proposals for the appropriation of public lands for the support of public education, internal improvements, and some discussion of scientific matters.

Letters to Gaston from Marcus Cicero Stephens describe life in West Florida in the 1830s, including information concerning the Seminole wars. Also in the collection are items relating to Gaston's speech in Chapel Hill, N.C., on 21 June 1832, in which he condemned both the nullification scheme and the institution of slavery. There are a number of letters concerned with the suit for the recovery of land in North Carolina owned prior to the Revolution by Lord Carteret, Earl of Granville, in which Gaston served as attorney for the Carteret heirs.

Major correspondents include George E. Badger, John Fanning Burgwyn, Thomas Pollock Devereux, Robert Donaldson, Alexander Hamilton, Francis Joseph Kron, Willie Person Mangum, Matthias Manly, John Marshall, Thomas Ruffin, Marcus Cicero Stephens, David Lowry Swain, Roger B. Taney, and Daniel Webster.

Typed copies made for Henry Groves Connor of many of the letters and of Gaston letters from other collections are included. Undated material includes copies of Gaston family records, letters and notes, drafts of speeches and of letters to newspapers, newspaper clippings, copies of biographical sketches of Gaston, and drafts of Henry Groves Connor's writings on Gaston.

Also included are a letter book, 1816-1836, of Gaston's business correspondence relating primarily to his law practice, and a late 18th- or early 19th-century manuscript volume of law reports. Pictures are of William Gaston, Zebulon Baird Vance, William A. Graham, Willie Person Mangum, John Motley Morehead, and John Louis Taylor. There are also pictures of places associated with Gaston, including his law office in New Bern, his law office in Raleigh, and Gaston Hall at Georgetown University.

Items Separated

Items separated include pictures (P-272).

Description

Digital version: Letter from Samuel B. Stephens to William Gaston, 11 July 1831