perhaps four or five; and they could have elected Mr. Rives to the Senate if all had united on him. But some half-a-dozen Whigs, led by General Bayley of Accomac, persistently refused to vote for Mr. Rives, who was thought by these impracticables (as they came to be called) to have com mitted the unpardonable sin in voting for Mr. Benton's famous expunging resolutions. The protracted and bitter contest between Mr. Rives and John Y. Mason, the Demo cratic nominee, was apparently to continue indefinitely; so John J. Allen was placed in nomination, in the hope that he would unite the Whig factions; but the highest vote he received was eighty to Mr. Mason's eightyone, with four scattering, and there was no choice by the Legislature. By the time the next Legislature was elected, — the same year in which Benjamin -Harrison so over whelmingly defeated the Democratic or Van Buren party, — a vacancy had occurred on the Court of Appeals, caused by the death of Judge Richard E. Parker; and on the 1 2th of December, 1840, Allen was elected without opposition to fill it. He rapidly gained a reputation for solid learning and ability as the associate of such men as Cabell, Brooke, Stanard, and Tucker. He survived all of his illustrious associates, and on the reorganization of the court after the adoption of the Reformed Constitution of 1851, was made its President. Thereafter, as the senior judge on the bench, he guided its judgments until the close of the war in April, 1865, when he voluntarily retired to the shades of domestic life, 11th and i2th Leigh, ist and 2d Robinson, and the first sixteen volumes of Grattan's Reports will transmit to future generations the deci sions that will make the name of Judge Allen ever memorable in the history of the jurisprudence of Vriginia and of the whole country. He was a believer in the doctrine of secession; and for a very masterly state ment of that view of the Federal Constitu tion those interested in that once live issue may find his opinion on the subject in the
January, 1876, number of the" Southern His torical Society Papers." He was a firm believer in the Christian revelation, and at the advanced age of seventy-four, in child like and humble reliance, he entered, full of years and full of honors, into the presence of the Great Judge of the quick and the dead. A tall and beautiful marble column marks the spot in which his mortal remains lie in Lauderdale Burial-ground, by the side of his father, Judge James Allen, his prede cessor on the bench of the Circuit Court. Briscoe Gerard Baldwin, — a relative of the famous Joseph B. Baldwin, the author of "Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi," which has grown to be one of the humorous classics of the American Bar,— the eldest son of Dr. Cornelius Baldwin and his wife Mary, who was a daughter of Col. Gerard Briscoe, of Frederick County, was born in Winchester, Va., Jan. 18, 1789. After attending a private school he entered William and Mary College, where he was the fellow-student of John Tyler, William S. Archer, and others who afterwards held distinguished public posi tions. After his return from college, by invitation of Judge William Daniel, Senior, the grandfather of United States Senator John W. Daniel, he went to Cumberland County, where Judge Daniel then resided, and studied law under his direction and advice. He made such rapid progress that he was licensed to practise before he had attained the age of twenty-one. He re turned to Winchester, and remained some months; but in 1809 removed to Staun.ton, and practised his profession with diligence and success until Jan. 29, 1842. He was elected a member of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia,— a position which he continued to hold until his death, May 18, 1852. He married in 1811, and devoted himself ex clusively to his profession and polite litera ture. He had no taste for political life, and although eminently qualified for almost any public trust, and one of the most popular men of his day, he never sought to obtain any political office. He represented the county
