 Peter Daniel was born in April 1784 in
Virginia. Like a number of well born Virginians, he attended the College of
New Jersey (now Princeton). Daniel returned to Richmond to read law under
Edmund Randolph, a well-known and regarded Virginia lawyer who was the first
Attorney General of the United States, appointed by George Washington. In 1808, Daniel married Randolph's daughter Lucy.
Daniel's career was more as a political advisor than as a lawyer. For over two
decades (1812-35), Daniel served on the Privy Council in Virginia, which acted as the
governor's advisory council. He also served as lieutenant governor in
Virginia. In 1836, Andrew Jackson appointed Daniel to the federal district
court after
Philip
Barbour was appointed to the Supreme Court. Five years later, Daniel
again followed in Barbour's footsteps. President Martin Van Buren nominated
Daniel to the Court after Barbour's death in early 1841. Daniel distrusted corporations, northerners and anyone
agitating for an end to slavery. In the Court's tumultuous 1842 Term, he
wrote a separate opinion in
Prigg v.
Pennsylvania, which held that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was supreme
over state law, and joined in the Court's opinion in
Swift v. Tyson. Daniel's
inflammatory concurring opinion in
Dred Scott
v. Sandford, aided in the worsening of relations between North and South
in the late 1850s. Daniels first raised the stakes in Dred Scott, claiming that the
case was more important than any other the Court had decided. He then called
the United States an "American Confederacy," a phrasing he used in
Prigg, and declared that "that the African negro race never have been
acknowledged as belonging to the family of nations." The remainder of
Daniel's concurrence was an effort to find authorities in international law
and in western (European) legal history to support the Court's conclusion
the Dred Scott was not a citizen, that the Missouri Compromise was
unconstitutional, and that the "once free, always free" doctrine was not a
doctrine in law.Daniel married his
second wife in 1853. He died in Richmond in May 1860. |
