James Buchanan Richmond

James Buchanan Richmond (February 27, 1842 – April 30, 1910) was a nineteenth-century politician, lawyer, judge, banker, and one-term United States Representative from Virginia. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1879 to 1881, contributing to the legislative process during a single term in office and representing the interests of his constituents during a significant period in American history. His public career spanned the Civil War era, Reconstruction, and the political realignments that followed in Virginia and the broader South.

Richmond was born on February 27, 1842, in Turkey Cove, Lee County, Virginia, to Jonathan Richmond and Mary Dickenson Richmond. He grew up in a large family with many brothers and sisters in the far southwestern corner of the state, a region that would remain the base of his legal and political life. His early years were shaped by the rural environment of Lee County and by the sectional tensions that culminated in the American Civil War, in which he and several of his brothers would serve on the Confederate side.

For his education, Richmond attended Emory and Henry College in Emory, Virginia, a leading Methodist institution in the region. After his collegiate studies, he read law in the traditional manner of the time rather than attending a formal law school. Upon admission to the bar, he began his legal practice in the circuit and county courts of Lee County and the neighboring counties of Scott and Wise, as well as in the court of appeals at Wytheville, Virginia. This early legal work established his reputation as an attorney and provided the foundation for his later political and judicial roles.

With the outbreak of the American Civil War, Richmond enlisted in the Confederate Army, as did his elder brothers William, Jonathan, and Henry. His brother Jonathan died of typhus in August 1861. James Richmond initially served as an orderly sergeant and was later promoted to captain of Company A of the 15th Virginia Infantry. When that unit was consolidated with the 64th Virginia Mounted Infantry in late 1863—where his brother William served as a captain—Richmond was promoted to major and subsequently to lieutenant colonel. He served under Colonel Auburn Pridemore, whom he would later defeat in a congressional primary. After the surrender of Virginia and the end of the war, Richmond and his brothers received pardons, allowing him to resume his legal practice in southwestern Virginia.

Richmond’s formal political career began at the state level. Lee County voters elected him to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1873, and he served part-time from 1874 until 1875. In that capacity he succeeded William P. Queen and was followed in office by Democrat Ira Robinette. Building on his legislative experience and legal standing, Richmond sought national office later in the decade. In 1878, running as a Democrat and advocating sound money policies, he defeated his former commanding officer, Congressman Auburn Pridemore, in the Democratic primary. He was then elected to the United States House of Representatives, where he served one term from 1879 to 1881. During this period, he participated in the democratic process at the federal level, representing his Virginia district and contributing to the legislative work of the House at a time of post-Reconstruction adjustment. He lost renomination in the Democratic primary to fellow Confederate veteran Abram Fulkerson, who would serve a single term and play a role in organizing the Readjuster Party.

After leaving Congress, Richmond continued to build a multifaceted public career. In 1886, the Virginia General Assembly elected him judge for Scott County, Virginia, a position he held from 1886 to 1892. Following his judicial service, he became chief counsel of the South Atlantic & Ohio Railroad Company, reflecting the growing importance of railroads and corporate law in the New South economy, and he also engaged in banking. Richmond remained active in public affairs into the new century; he represented Scott County at the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1902. That convention produced a new state constitution that disenfranchised many Black voters and poor white voters while also attempting to modernize the state’s treatment and regulation of corporations, a dual legacy in which Richmond participated as a delegate.

Richmond’s personal life was closely intertwined with the legal and political networks of southwestern Virginia. He married Sarah Elizabeth (“Lizzie”) Duncan in 1864, and the couple had a son, Henry C. L. Richmond, and a daughter, Mary Elizabeth Richmond Cox Deisher, before Lizzie’s death. The year after her death, he married Catherine (“Kate”) Morison (1844–1911) of Scott County. His son Henry, who like his father attended Emory and Henry College and became a lawyer, served as Commonwealth’s Attorney of Scott County from 1891 to 1895 and again from 1919 to 1920, resigning when he was elected mayor of Gate City in 1920. Henry was a Republican, politically aligned with Campbell Slemp and C. Bascom Slemp, both born less than a mile from James B. Richmond and later representatives of Virginia’s 9th Congressional District. A Virginia highway marker near Seminary, Virginia, commemorates the proximity of the birthplaces of Richmond and the two Slemp congressmen.

James Buchanan Richmond died at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, on April 30, 1910. His life traced the arc of Virginia’s transformation from the antebellum period through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the early twentieth century. As a Confederate officer, lawyer, state legislator, member of the United States House of Representatives, county judge, railroad counsel, banker, and constitutional convention delegate, he played a notable role in the legal and political development of southwestern Virginia and left a family legacy that continued in public service into the next generation.