John Floyd (April 24, 1783 – August 17, 1837) was an American politician and military officer. He represented Virginia in the United States House of Representatives and later served as the 25th governor of Virginia.
During his career in the House of Representatives, Floyd advocated for settling the Oregon Country, unsuccessfully arguing on its behalf from 1820 until he left Congress in 1829; the area did not become a territory of the United States until 1848.
During the 1832 presidential election, Floyd was selected by John C. Calhoun to serve as the Nullifier Party's candidate. The state legislature of South Carolina voted to give the state's eleven electoral votes to Floyd. While governor of Virginia, Nat Turner's Rebellion occurred. Although Floyd was an outspoken advocate for state's rights, he supported the gradual abolition of slavery on account of its inefficiency. His term as governor oversaw a period of economic prosperity for the state.
Family and early life Floyd was born at Floyds Station, Virginia, near what is now Louisville, Kentucky. His parents were pioneer John Floyd, who Native Americans killed twelve days before his son's birth, and Jane Buchanan. His first cousin was Charles Floyd, the only member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to die. In a letter dated 15 December 1830, Sam Houston stated that Floyd was the first cousin of another member of the expedition, Nathaniel Pryor.
Floyd was educated at home and a nearby log schoolhouse before enrolling in Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at the age of thirteen. He became a member of the Union Philosophical Society in 1797.Dorman (1982), p. 68. Although he enrolled in the class of 1798, he had to withdraw due to financial troubles. His guardian had failed in his payments, and family accounts relate Floyd was so poor that "he was obliged to borrow a pair of panteloons from a boatman" to return to his home in Kentucky.
When his step-father, Alexander Breckinridge, died in 1801, he could return but had to withdraw again due to a lung illness. He moved to Philadelphia and was placed under the care of Dr. Benjamin Rush, an experience that influenced his decision to pursue a medical career. After an apprenticeship in Louisville, Kentucky, Floyd enrolled in the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1804 and became an honorary member of the Philadelphia Medical Society and a member of the Philadelphia Medical Lyceum.Ambler (1914), pp. 31-32. Floyd graduated in 1806, and his graduating dissertation was entitled An Enquiry into the Medical Properties of the Magnolia Tripetala and Magnolia Acuminata. He moved to Lexington, Virginia and then to the town of Christiansburg, Virginia. Floyd also served as a Justice of the Peace in 1807. In 1810, he was recorded as owning four slaves in Christiansburg.
In 1804, Floyd married Letitia Preston, who came from a prominent southwest Virginian family. She was the daughter of William Preston and Susannah Smith and sister of Francis Preston, of Abingdon, Washington County, Virginia. They had 12 children, including:
John Buchanan Floyd (1806–1863), Governor of Virginia and Secretary of War under President Buchanan. Nicketti Buchanan Floyd, married United States Senator John Warfield Johnston. George Rogers Clark Floyd (1810–1895), Secretary of Wisconsin Territory and later a member of the West Virginia Legislature Eliza Lavalette Floyd, married professor George Frederick Holmes
Floyd was a surgeon with the rank of major in the Virginia State Militia from 1807 to 1812. At the outbreak of the War of 1812, Floyd moved his family to a new home near present-day Virginia Tech to be near friends and entered the regular army.Ambler (1914), p. 34. On July 13, 1813, he was appointed surgeon of Lt. Col. James McDowell's Flying Camp in the Virginia militia.Dorman (1982), pp. 69-70. When he returned from a leave of absence, he discovered someone else had been appointed to replace him, so his service in this role ended on November 16, 1813. Floyd was then commissioned as major of the militia on April 20, 1814, and was promoted to the rank of brigadier general of the 17th Brigade of Virginia militia. He served until he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1814. During this time, he moved his family again, this time to Thorn Spring, a large plantation in Montgomery County, Virginia. Thornspring (Pulaski) (now Thornspring Golf Course) was inherited by Letitia Preston Floyd from her father William Preston and was located near her older brother, Virginia Treasurer, Gen John Preston, and his Horseshoe Bottoms Plantation (now the site of the Radford Army Ammunition Plant). They both were near Preston's home at Smithfield plantation (now the campus of Virginia Tech) that their father had completed in Montgomery county for their mother, Susannah Smith Preston, before he died. John Floyd used to keep Bears chained to the tree on the lawns of the Thornspring Plantation (Pulaski, Virginia).
Political career From 1814 to 1815, Floyd was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates and established a record as a strong nationalist. He supported a joint resolution to coordinate Virginia's defense with the Federal government as opposed to the contending resolution to "authorize the governor to 'communicate' with the 'Government of the United States.Ambler (1914), p. 35. In addition, Floyd supported a bill that authorized Virginia to raise troops and place them at the federal government's order, as well as supporting a resolution to condemn the terms of peace proposed by the British commissioners at Ghent. He was also an opponent of the tactics of the Federalist leader, Charles F. Mercer, who questioned whether the United States was a sovereign country.
In 1816, Floyd was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the United States House of Representatives and served from March 4, 1817, to March 3, 1829. When Henry Clay's proposition to send a minister to Buenos Aires and therefore recognize Argentina in its bid for independence from Spain, Floyd was in support and urged recognition as a matter of national self-interest and justice.Ambler (1914), p. 38, 41 As Floyd's biographer noted:
This proposed recognition meant more to Floyd even than trade advantages and justice; it was another step in the disenthrallment of America. It would afford relief from that political plexus that had made it impossible for one European nation to move, even in matters relating to America, without creating a corresponding movement in each of the others. He was tired of negotiating the things which related exclusively to America in London, Paris, and Madrid.Ambler (1914), p. 41
When General Andrew Jackson tried and executed two British agents during the First Seminole War in Spanish-held Florida, it precipitated the Great Seminole Debate of 1818–1819 in Congress, with some claiming he exceeded his orders from President James Monroe and demanding his censure. Floyd, however, supported Jackson's actions, maintaining he had acted according to precedent and his orders.Ambler (1914), p. 44 He also denied the sovereignty of the Seminole tribe.
When Missouri sought statehood in 1820, it sparked a heated debate that eventually ended with the Missouri Compromise, which allowed it to be a slave state with the admission of Maine as a free state. Before this compromise, various proposals were floated, all swirling around allowing or prohibiting slavery in the new state. A majority of Virginia's representatives in Congress desired the retention of slavery in Missouri at any price; however, Floyd was silent, and his biographer, Charles Henry Ambler, has inferred from various statements made by Floyd that he preferred immediate statehood to an extension of slavery, though admits there is "little evidence to show that he opposed the latter on general principles." However, when anti-slavery forces in Congress tried to delete a clause in Missouri's state constitution that would have prevented free blacks from settling in the state, Floyd opposed, on the principle of state's rights to decide its own matters and also because he was opposed to the growing Federal power.Ambler (1914), pp. 47-49. He stated:
If gentlemen would only expunge from their memories the progress of European liberty and institutions, they would find in America a number of states, or separate, independent, and distinct nations, confederated for common safety, and mutual protection, taught wisdom by the eternal feuds of Spain, England, France, and Germany, now consolidated into large empires. These states before the confederation could make war and peace, raise armies, or build a navy, coin money, pass bankrupt laws, naturalize foreigners, or regulate commerce ... Informed by Europe they knew Jealousies would arise, and constant strife render armies in every nation necessary to their defence, which would endanger their liberties and homes. These states then, in their sovereign and independent characters, were willing to enter into a compact, by which the power of making war and peace, and regulating commerce, possessed alike by all, should be transferred to a congress of the states, to be exercised with uniformity, for their mutual benefit; thus avoiding the evils of "superanuated and enslaved" Europe. These two were the only powers ever intended to be granted by the states. All other powers conferred by the compact are necessary to carry these two into execution.
Floyd's position was that Congress had allowed Missouri to become a sovereign state and that now its only choice was whether or not to admit it into the Union. Missouri came up again during the presidential election of 1820. At issue was whether its electoral votes were valid since it was still awaiting Congress's final approval of its constitution. Floyd argued for counting its votes, and the "debate which followed precipitated one of the liveliest 'scenes' ever witnessed ...".Ambler (1914), pp. 50-51. Disorder followed, and both Floyd and John Randolph were "so persistent in their interruptions as to necessitate an adjournment of the joint session". A compromise was brought forward to count it as "so many with the vote of Missouri and so many without it", but both Randolph and Floyd opposed this, which later prompted John Quincy Adams to describe their action as "an effort to bring Missouri into the Union 'by storm.'"
Oregon Country
Since the end of the War of 1812, the Oregon Country was claimed by both Britain and the United States, but neither side pressed their claim. Floyd wanted to pursue America's interests there more aggressively. So on December 20, 1820, he brought this question, the first person to do so, to the attention of Congress with a resolution to appoint a committee and "inquire into the situation of the settlements upon the Pacific Ocean and the expediency of occupying the Columbia River."Ambler (1914), p. 54 The resolution passed, and the committee was formed with Floyd as the chairman, and Thomas Metcalfe of Kentucky and Thomas Van Swearingen of Virginia as members. Floyd presented the committee's report on January 21, 1821, along with a bill to authorize the occupation of the Columbia River area.Ambler (1914), p. 55 Nothing happened with the bill, and John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State, criticized Floyd and characterized him as "a 'flaunting' canvasser and a politician seeking to win prestige and patronage, particularly the latter, by a vigorous opposition to the party in power" and attributed his motives for occupation by "a desire to provide a retreat for a defaulting relative and possibly for himself."Ambler (1914), p. 60 Floyd then brought forth a resolution on December 10, 1821, to inquire into the expediency of occupying the area, and a week later presented another resolution to have the Secretary of the Navy give an estimate for a survey of harbors on the Pacific Coast.Ambler (1914), p. 61