John Clopton

John Clopton (February 7, 1756 – September 11, 1816) was a Virginia lawyer, patriot, and politician who served as a military officer in the American Revolutionary War and later in the Virginia House of Delegates and the United States House of Representatives. A committed Democratic-Republican, he represented Virginia in Congress for ten terms during a formative period in the nation’s political development, participating actively in the legislative process and representing the interests of his constituents.

Clopton was born in St. Peter’s Parish, near Tunstall, in New Kent County in the Colony of Virginia on February 7, 1756. He was the son of William Clopton (1718–1798) and Elizabeth Dorrell Ford (1727–1785). Through his father he was descended from an earlier William Clopton, who emigrated from Warwickshire or Suffolk in England to York County, Virginia, in the seventeenth century, married the daughter of the York County clerk of court, and later moved to New Kent County sometime after 1683. His mother’s family included Rev. Reuben Ford, a prominent Baptist minister, as her brother. Raised in this established Virginia family, Clopton received a formal education that prepared him for the legal profession and public life.

Clopton studied law and attended the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania), from which he graduated in 1773. Returning to Virginia on the eve of the American Revolution, he continued his legal training while his native colony moved toward independence. His education in Philadelphia, a major intellectual and political center of the colonies, exposed him to the emerging ideas of republican government and constitutionalism that would later shape his political views.

With the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, Clopton entered military service in the New Kent County militia, serving alongside many of his relatives. His father supported the local forces by furnishing supplies and clothing. Clopton held the rank of lieutenant and notably refused promotion to captain because it would have required him to transfer to another unit, indicating his loyalty to his local command. During the war he saw active combat and was wounded at the Battle of Brandywine in 1777, an engagement in which American forces attempted to halt the British advance on Philadelphia.

After the war, Clopton was admitted to the bar and established a legal practice in New Kent County and the surrounding region. By the time of the 1787 Virginia tax census, he had become a land- and slave-owning attorney: he was taxed in New Kent County for three enslaved teenaged Black individuals and two enslaved Black adults, as well as four horses and eleven cattle. His father was also taxed for approximately double that number of enslaved people. This record reflects Clopton’s position within the plantation-based economy and social structure of late eighteenth-century Virginia, even as he pursued a professional career in the law.

Clopton’s political career began in the state legislature. New Kent County voters elected him as one of their representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1789, and he was re-elected twice, serving until 1791. During his tenure he served alongside established legislators such as Burwell Bassett, John Hockaday, and William Chamberlayne. As a member of the emerging Republican, later Democratic-Republican, movement in Virginia, he participated in debates over the new federal Constitution and the appropriate balance between state and national authority, issues that would continue to define his later congressional service.

Voters from Virginia’s 13th congressional district elected Clopton as a Democratic-Republican to the Fourth and Fifth Congresses, and he served in the United States House of Representatives from March 4, 1795, to March 3, 1799. After this initial period in Congress, he returned to state-level service as a member of the Virginia Privy Council from 1799 to 1801, advising the governor and participating in the executive administration of the Commonwealth. He was then again elected to the national legislature: voters from New Kent and surrounding areas chose him for the Seventh and seven succeeding Congresses, and he served continuously from March 4, 1801, until his death in 1816. Over these years, census-based reapportionment altered the numbering of his constituency from Virginia’s 22nd congressional district to Virginia’s 23rd congressional district, but he remained the representative voice of his region.

During his long tenure in the House, Clopton emerged as a leading proponent of strict constructionist views of the federal Constitution. He aligned with the Democratic-Republican Party’s emphasis on limited federal power and strong state authority. In the Tenth Congress he served as chairman of the Committee on Revisal and Unfinished Business, overseeing the disposition of pending legislative matters. He was among the relatively few representatives who opposed the establishment of the Second Bank of the United States on constitutional grounds, arguing that such a financial institution exceeded the powers granted to Congress. His ten terms in office spanned the administrations of multiple presidents and encompassed major events such as the Jeffersonian era, the Embargo, and the War of 1812, during which he consistently advocated for his constituents and his party’s principles.

On May 15, 1784, Clopton married Sarah Bacon, the daughter of Edmund Bacon and Elizabeth Edloe. The couple had several children: Izard (born 1785), Maria L. Adelaide (born 1788), John Bacon (1789–1860), William Edmund (1791–1848), and Sarah Elizabeth (1804–1843). Through his family connections and his own public career, Clopton was firmly embedded in the network of Virginia’s political and planter elite, and his descendants continued to play roles in the social and civic life of the state.

John Clopton died near Tunstall in New Kent County on September 11, 1816, while still serving in Congress. He was interred in the family burying ground on his plantation. His death created a vacancy in the House of Representatives, and future President John Tyler was elected to fill his seat. Clopton is remembered as a Revolutionary War officer, a Virginia lawyer and legislator, and a long-serving Democratic-Republican congressman whose strict constructionist views helped shape early debates over the scope of federal power.