James Philemon Holcombe

James Philemon Holcombe (September 20, 1820 – August 22, 1873) was an American lawyer, politician and professor of law at the University of Virginia. He represented the Town of Charlottesville and Albemarle County in the Virginia Secession Convention (1861) when the County had 52.27% of its population enslaved. He also represented Virginia’s 7th District in the Confederate House of Representatives and was the Confederate Commissioner to Canada.

Early life

James Philemon Holcombe bore the names of his two grandfathers, James Warwick and Philemon Holcombe. The eldest of six sons, he was born on September 20, 1820 in Powhatan County, Virginia and raised in Lynchburg.

Family

James belonged to an old Virginia family. His great-grandfather, Philemon, a grandson of Andrew Holcombe who was banished from England to the colonies (Barbados) for his part in Monmouth's Rebellion (1685), aided in the founding of the academy which became Hampden-Sidney College; his grandfather, also Philemon, was a major on the staff of Lafayette in the Virginia campaign, and in the War of 1812 was commissioned lieutenant-colonel; his father, Doctor William James Holcombe, graduated in medicine at Philadelphia in 1818 and married Ann Eliza Clopton the following year. He later freed all his slaves, aiding the emigration of several to Liberia. According to granddaughter, Dr. and Mrs. Holcombe were unwilling to raise their sons in a slave-holding State and "refusing an inheritance of eight thousand dollars in black chattels", they removed to La Porte, Indiana in 1843. ($80,000 in 1840 is equivalent to approx. $342,300 today.)

James' younger brother William Henry Holcombe (1825 - 1893) was an American orthodox doctor who converted to homeopathy when he witnessed its success in the 1849 cholera epidemic and began his own experiments on homeopathy.

When twenty-one, James P. Holcombe married Ann Selden Watts (1820–1888) on November 4, 1841, daughter of Colonel Edward and Elizabeth (Breckinridge) Watts. They had six children - three sons and three daughters. By 1851, Holcombe had rejected his emancipating parents’ antislavery convictions and had moved to Charlottesville, to teach law at the University of Virginia.

Career

Education and legal career

After studying with a private tutor, Holcombe enrolled at Yale and later attended the University of Virginia but did not graduate from either school. After studies at the Staunton Law School, he began practicing law in Fincastle, Virginia. Removing to Alexandria, Virginia, to use the nearby Library of Congress in further professional writing, he was admitted to the bar at the age of twenty-two years. In 1844 he left Virginia and practiced law in law firms in Ohio, including a partnership with William Y. Gholson, an anti-slavery advocate. While in Cincinnati, he produced an extensive list of publications on legal matters, including: "An Introduction to Equity Jurisprudence" (1846).

University of Virginia

Holcombe was elected (1851) adjunct professor of law at the University of Virginia to join Professor John B. Minor. After the resignation of Judge Tucker in 1845, Minor was sole professor for six years, teaching the whole course. The appointment of Holcombe as Adjunct Professor of Constitutional and International Law, Mercantile Law, and Equity, left Professor Minor Common and Statue Law.  In 1854 he was made full professor. Holcombe was a firm believer in the right of secession, and taught this constitutional principle. His lectures on Constitutional Law were so attractive that they were often attended by others than his regular law students, and the course was frequently taken as part of a general education by others than law students.

Publications

Among his published addresses of this period were:

• Sketches of the Political Issues and Controversies of the Revolution (1856)
• An Address Delivered before the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Virginia State Agricultural Society (1858), "on the Right of the State to Institute Slavery"
• The Election of a Black Republican President an Overt Act of Aggression on the Right of Property in Slaves (1860).

Early in 1861, he resigned his professorship to become a successful candidate to the Confederate Convention (1861). His stirring speeches were considered instrumental in the passage of the Ordinance of Secession and he was afterwards elected a member of the Confederate Congress for two years.

Politics

Although census records do not show he owned enslaved persons, Holcombe was a secessionist and was one of the first to propose a conference of representatives of each section with a view to settlement without war. During the secession crisis, Professor Holcombe delivered a speech to the voters of Albemarle County and then advocated secession in Richmond's Secession Convention's debates in March 1861.

Virginia Convention of 1861

Professor James Philemon Holcombe, representing the western Piedmont’s Albemarle County (52.3 percent enslaved).

On March 20, 1861 he told the convention,

“The institution of slavery is so indissolubly interwoven with the whole framework of society in a large portion of our State, and constitutes so immense an element of material wealth and political power to the whole Commonwealth, that its subversion through the operation of an unfriendly [federal government] policy … would, of necessity, dry up the very fountains of the public strength, change the whole frame of our civilization, and inflict a mortal wound upon our liberties. … I believe that this danger is impending; that it is of overshadowing magnitude; and that there is no rational hope of escaping from it, but in the prompt severance of the relations of this Commonwealth through the Federal Government, with the free States of the North.”

“March 20, 1861,” Proceedings of the Virginia State Convention of 1861, February 13-May 1, ed. George H. Reese (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1965), 2:78.

On April 4, 1861, the vote for secession failed. Albemarle delegates votes were also split. University of Virginia law professor James P. Holcombe voted for secession while prominent local lawyer Valentine Wood Southall voted against it.

On April 17, 1861, the Virginia Convention voted to secede from the Union. The delegates passed the Ordinance of Secession with 88 “yea” and 55 “no” votes. Albemarle delegates James P. Holcombe and Valentine W. Southall both voted for secession. The move came just days after the Civil War had erupted at Fort Sumter and after President Abraham Lincoln had called for 75,000 volunteers. For months, Virginia and other states in the Upper South had refused to join the new Confederate States of America. But, Lincoln’s call for volunteers tipped the balance.

American Civil War

He also represented Virginia’s 7th District in the Confederate House of Representatives and was the Confederate Commissioner to Canada. In 1873, he was described as a "conspicuous character throughout the great strife for the Lost Cause, having been sent by President Davis as a secret agent to Canada.

Bellevue

On January 2, 1863, seeking to benefit his health and desiring to provide a home and employment for valuable slaves which his wife had inherited, he purchased a farm of 600 acres at Bellevue, Bedford County. The original house had been built in two campaigns (1824 and 1840) and placed to command long vistas of Bedford County’s landscape, including Peaks of Otter. Settling here at the close of the war, Holcombe edited Literature in Letters, a volume of selections which was published in 1866, and in that year opened a private school known as Bellevue High School which attracted students from prominent Southern families. The attendance increased from forty-three students in 1866-1867 to 101 in 1869-1870, but decreased thereafter because of Holcombe's failing health. Competition from free public schools forced Bellevue’s closing in 1909. Bellevue was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.

Death and burial

Holcombe retired to Capon Springs, West Virginia where he died on August 22, 1873 (aged 52) from gastroholnr. He was buried in the Presbyterian cemetery, Lynchburg, Virginia, beside his parents.

Legacy

Holocombe is remembered as a prominent educator, author of numerous legal texts, and notable politician of Virginia. He was an accomplished orator, and his brilliant speeches exerted considerable influence in bringing about the withdrawal of the state from the Union.