County bears name of Va. politician

By Tom Rodgers
Published: May 9, 2008

James Barbour, the man for whom Barbour County was named, was born in Orange County, Va., on June 10, 1775, when America was in the first year of its war for independence from Britain. 
He was named for his great-great-grandfather, a Scottish merchant who settled in Virginia in the seventeenth century. Barbour’s father, a wealthy landowner, was a member of Virginia’s lawmaking body, the House of Burgesses. 
Following in his father’s footsteps, James Barbour was elected to Virginia’s House of Delegates in 1796. The youngest member of the legislature, he became known as an articulate speechmaker. He strongly supported education and considered the Literary Fund of Virginia, which provided funding for public schools in every county of the state, as his greatest achievement. 
In January 1812, Barbour was appointed to fill out the term of Governor George William Smith, who had died in a tragic Christmas night fire in Richmond. By mid-June, the United States was at war for a second time with Britain. Like many in the South and West, who viewed the British as sponsors of Indian raids that plagued the frontier, Barbour was a strong supporter of the war. He was called the “war governor,” because he put Virginia on a war footing by strengthening the state’s militia.
In December 1814, the Virginia legislature appointed James Barbour to the U.S. Senate, where he served for another decade. He played a major role in the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which allowed for the admission of Missouri into the union as a slave state, while Maine would come in as a free state. Slavery was not to be allowed in the remainder of the old Louisiana Territory on the Great Plains.
Like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe, Barbour was a leader in the (old, not present-day) Republican Party. From 1817 to 1824, it was the only political party in the United States, but in 1824 it split into two factions, the National Republicans and Democratic Republicans. 
Barbour stayed with the National Republicans, who supported John Quincy Adams in the 1824 presidential election. The Democratic Republicans, later the (present-day) Democratic Party, became the party of Andrew Jackson, who beat Adams in 1828. The National Republicans morphed into the Whigs before fizzling out in the 1850s. (The present-day Republican Party appeared on the national scene in 1854.)
Barbour was a friend of Thomas Jefferson, whose home at Monticello was only 20 miles away in neighboring Albemarle County, and he kept up a correspondence with him on many subjects. Jefferson designed the mansion, Barboursville, that Barbour built in Orange County.  Other political allies were James Madison (whose home at Montpelier was eight miles away), James Monroe and John Quincy Adams.
When Adams became president in March 1825, he appointed Barbour his Secretary of War. Barbour turned down the chance to run for vice president in 1828, but he did accept an appointment as U. S. Minister to England. 
The election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 sounded the death knell for Barbour’s political party. Barbour was recalled to the United States in September 1829. He retired from public office in February 1831.
The Alabama legislature created Barbour County on Dec. 18, 1832, along with nine other new counties (the most ever created in a single day in the state’s history). Perhaps one reason why James Barbour was chosen as the county’s namesake was his support of Indian removal, popular with many Alabamians. Like Andrew Jackson, Barbour had long favored setting aside land west of the Mississippi for the Native Americans.
James Barbour died on June 7, 1842. Barbour County in West Virginia is also named for him, as well as Barboursville, Ky.