John Mercer Patton

John Mercer Patton (August 10, 1797 – October 29, 1858) was a nineteenth-century politician and lawyer from Virginia who served five terms in the United States House of Representatives representing two different Virginia districts and was acting governor of Virginia for twelve days in 1841. He was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, to Robert Patton (1760–1851), an English immigrant of Scottish extraction, and Ann Gordon Mercer (1762–1857), a Philadelphia-born daughter of General Hugh Mercer, the Revolutionary War officer who was mortally wounded while defending Princeton, New Jersey, in 1777. In the first federal census of 1810, the Robert Patton household in Fredericksburg enslaved a person, reflecting the family’s participation in the slaveholding society of early nineteenth-century Virginia. A member of his family, Robert Patton Jr. (either his father or an elder brother), later represented Spotsylvania County in the Virginia House of Delegates during the 1820–1821 session.

Patton received a substantial formal education for his time. He attended the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and subsequently enrolled in the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1818. Although trained as a physician, he never practiced medicine. Instead, he turned to the study of law, was admitted to the Virginia bar, and began a legal practice in Fredericksburg. As he established himself professionally, he also became a planter and enslaver in nearby Spotsylvania County, participating directly in the system of chattel slavery that underpinned much of Virginia’s economy and social order.

In his personal life, Patton married Margaret (“Peggy”) French, a member of a local family of planters and lawyers. The couple had a large family whose members would later play prominent roles in the Civil War and in public life. Their children included sons John M. Patton Jr. (1826–1899); Isaac Williams Patton (1828–1890), who established a plantation in Louisiana after the Mexican–American War; George S. Patton Sr. (1833–1864); Waller T. Patton (1835–1863); Hugh M. Patton (1841–1916); James French Patton (1843–1882); Joseph F. Patton (1844–?); and William (often cited as William McFarland) Patton (1845–1905). They also had daughters Lucy A. Williamson, who by 1850 had returned to live with the family, and Eliza Patton, who married John Gilmer and lived in Pittsylvania County. Over the course of his adult life, Patton enslaved multiple people. In the 1830 federal census he was recorded as enslaving nine individuals—two boys and a girl under ten, two men under thirty-five, two women under thirty-five, and two women between thirty-five and fifty-five. In the last census taken during his lifetime, he enslaved a similar number of people in Richmond, including an older man, two older women, a forty-year-old Black woman, a twenty-six-year-old mulatto woman, and mulatto boys aged fifteen, ten, and two. He may also have enslaved two people in Pittsylvania County, where his daughter Eliza resided. Robert Patton, likely a close relative, enslaved eight people in Culpeper County in 1850, of whom only two were children, further illustrating the family’s continued involvement in slaveholding.

Patton’s public career developed alongside his legal practice. He began practicing law in Fredericksburg and soon entered politics as a supporter of Andrew Jackson. Voters in the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania area elected him as a Jacksonian and Democrat to the United States House of Representatives in 1830 to fill a vacancy. He won reelection twice and served continuously until 1838, completing five terms in Congress as a member of the Democratic Party representing Virginia. During this period he participated in the legislative process at a time of intense national debate over issues such as federal power, territorial expansion, and economic policy. From 1835 to 1839 he served as chairman of the House Committee on Territories, a key position that placed him at the center of congressional deliberations over the governance and organization of the nation’s western territories. In 1834, the Virginia General Assembly came close to choosing him as the state’s attorney general, but he lost the appointment to western Virginia lawyer Sidney Smith Baxter by a margin of four votes.

After leaving the House of Representatives in 1838, Patton continued to hold influential positions in Virginia’s state government. The Virginia legislature appointed him senior councilor of the Virginia Council of State, a body that functioned as an executive advisory council and, at that time, conferred upon its senior member the role of lieutenant governor. By virtue of this office, Patton stood next in line to the governorship. When Governor Thomas W. Gilmer resigned in 1841, Patton became acting governor of Virginia and served in that capacity for twelve days, until his term as senior councilor ended on March 31, 1841. His brief tenure as acting governor nonetheless placed him among the small number of Virginians who have formally exercised the powers of the state’s chief executive.

Following his service in statewide office, Patton returned to private legal practice, relocating his principal activities to Richmond, Virginia. There he resumed a prominent role at the bar and contributed to the modernization of Virginia’s legal framework. Working with fellow lawyer Conway Robinson, he undertook a substantial revision of the Code of Virginia, and the two men published their revised code in 1849. This work reflected Patton’s continued engagement with legal reform and his influence on the development of Virginia’s statutory law in the mid-nineteenth century.

John Mercer Patton died in Richmond on October 29, 1858, and was interred at Shockoe Hill Cemetery. His descendants played notable roles in the Civil War and in subsequent civic and professional life. During the Civil War, his sons James French Patton, Isaac Williams Patton, George S. Patton Sr., Hugh M. Patton, and Waller T. Patton all became officers in the Confederate States Army, and William McFarland Patton fought with the Virginia Military Institute cadets. Colonel Waller T. Patton was killed while leading his men at the Battle of Gettysburg, and Colonel George S. Patton died during the Third Battle of Winchester, while their brothers survived the war. Afterward, Isaac Williams Patton, who had moved to Louisiana before the conflict to operate a plantation, was elected mayor of New Orleans in 1878. Hugh M. Patton briefly served as clerk of the Virginia Senate; James French Patton became a lawyer and served for a short time on the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia; and William McFarland Patton became a professor of civil engineering at the Virginia Military Institute, where most of his brothers had studied. Patton’s grandson George S. Patton became an attorney in California, and his great-grandson, General George S. Patton Jr., achieved international prominence as a senior United States Army commander during World War II.