James Philemon Holcombe
From Dixiepedia: The PC-Free Encyclopedia
James Philemon Holcombe (20 September 1820 - 22 August 1873) was born in Powhatan County, Virginia. He was educated at Yale and the University of Virginia and later served as law professor at the University of Virginia. He was elected delegate to the Virginia Convention of 1861 from Albemarle County and voted for secession on 4 April 1861, and then again on the 17th of April.
Holcombe was a prolific writer, authoring An Introduction to Equity Jurisprudence, On the Basis of Story's Commentaries (Derby, Bradley & Company, 1846), The Law of Debtor and Creditor in the United States and Canada (D. Appleton and Company, 1848), and Literature in Letters, Or, Manners, Art, Criticism, Biography, History, and Morals (D. Appleton and Company, 1866). He also delivered a speech on the election of Abraham Lincoln on 2 January 1860 which was published as a pamphlet entitled, The Election of a Black Republican President an Overt Act of Aggression on the Right of Property in Slaves.
Holcomb died in Capon Springs, in what became West Virginia and was buried at Presbyterian Cemetery in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Excerpts From Speeches
"Shall we rely upon good faith, the good feeling or justice of the Northern people for security against the wrong and degradation of a sectional ascendancy? Jealousy, not confidence, has been the tutelary genius of English and American liberty. Shall we believe that men are better than institutions, or shall we bind them in the chains of the Constitution? [If the South is not vigilant,] No future foreigner, like de Tocqueville, when he visits our Southern land, will gaze with admiration on our grand Olympic spectacles of a free people, the enthusiasm of a mass meetings, the magnificent displays of the highest genius in public oratory, the press teeming with wit and eloquence, addressed to public policy. Instead of this life, animation and enthusiasm for liberty, we should have the apathy, the torpor, the brooding, waveless calm of a despotism.” (Proceedings of the Virginia Convention of 1861, Vol. 2, pg. 93)
"But there is an inspiration in their 'lives sublime,' which teaches us another yet a higher sentiment - ... 'Whenever this Union and your liberties cannot exist together, throw the Union to the winds, and clasp the liberty of your country to your heart.' ... I have also maintained, that, with friendship gone, equality gone, liberty gone, this Union, if it was commended to us by the ignoble dictates of prudence, would be spurned by the truer and more generous instincts of manhood. Unless it be planted upon the everlasting rock of justice, the sooner it is overthrown the wiser, and manlier, and better. I, and many another worthier and better son, ... will rather abandoned the ashes than the principles of our fathers, and will say, with the old Roman, 'where liberty is, there is my country.' The true colors of your country are the spirit and the principles of your fathers; live under them in freedom, or perish with them in honor." (Proceedings of the Virginia Convention of 1861, Vol. 2, pg. 111).
Books Authored
An Introduction to Equity Jurisprudence, On the Basis of Story's Commentaries (Derby, Bradley & Company, 1846)
A Selection of Leading Cases Upon Commercial Law Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States (D. Appleton and Company, 1847)
The Law of Debtor and Creditor in the United States and Canada (D. Appleton and Company, 1848)
Literature in Letters, Or, Manners, Art, Criticism, Biography, History, and Morals (D. Appleton and Company, 1866)
