John Dawson (d. 31 March 1814), member of the Convention of 1788, of the Confederation Congress, of the Council of State, and of the House of Representatives, was born about 1762, probably in Caroline County. His father, Musgrave Dawson, an Anglican clergyman, died in 1764, and several years later his mother, Mary Waugh Dawson, married Joseph Jones, a Fredericksburg lawyer and uncle of James Monroe. Although his paternal uncles Thomas Dawson and William Dawson had each served as president of the College of William and Mary, Dawson attended Harvard College. He graduated in 1782, after which he studied law and was admitted to practice in the Fredericksburg court on 26 June 1789.
In 1786, Spotsylvania County voters elected Dawson to the first of four consecutive terms in the House of Delegates. Appointed to the Committee of Propositions and Grievances during his final three terms, he also served at various times on the Committees of Claims, for Courts of Justice, and of Privileges and Elections. On 4 March 1788 Dawson and Monroe were elected to represent Spotsylvania in the convention called to consider ratification of the proposed constitution of the United States. Speaking against the proposed document on 24 June, Dawson argued that prior amendments were required to protect the rights of the people, especially to a free press and to jury trials, and to restrict the power of the central government. He particularly objected to the powers of the president and Senate to make treaties, impose taxes, declare war, and raise armies. On 25 June, Dawson voted to require amendment of the Constitution before ratification, and after that motion failed he voted against ratification. Two days later he voted to propose an amendment limiting the taxing power of Congress.
On 31 October 1788 the General Assembly elected Dawson, along with James Madison (1751–1836) and three other delegates, to represent Virginia in the almost moribund final session of the Confederation Congress that met from November 1788 to March 1789. During his last term in the House of Delegates, the General Assembly named Dawson to the Council of State on 16 December 1789. He took his seat later that month and attended at least half of the meetings until 20 April 1797. Occasionally he dissented from the Council's advice to the governor. Dawson served as one of the state's presidential electors in 1793. On 9 December of that year the House of Delegates reprimanded him for threatening to inform Monroe of insults that a member of the assembly had uttered. In November 1794 the assembly chose Henry Tazewell over Dawson for one of Virginia's seats in the United States Senate.
In the spring of 1797 Dawson defeated a Federalist candidate to succeed Madison in the House of Representatives, and by 1 June he had resigned his seat on the Council. Dawson ran unopposed in subsequent elections in 1799, 1801, 1809, 1811, and 1813. He easily defeated Federalist candidates in 1803 and 1807, as well as a fellow Republican in 1805. During nine terms in Congress he represented the counties of Louisa, Madison, Orange, and Spotsylvania.
Dawson served on three standing committees of the House: Revisal and Unfinished Business (Seventh Congress), Elections (Twelfth Congress), and the District of Columbia (Thirteenth Congress), which he chaired. Throughout his seventeen years in the House he often sat on temporary committees, and during his first term, on 8 July 1797, he was named to a committee ordered to prepare articles of impeachment against a Tennessee senator for conspiracy. Like many of his fellow Republicans, Dawson opposed the Sedition Act passed in July 1798 and urged its repeal in a circular letter to his constituents. During the Seventh Congress (1801–1803) he served on several committees that dealt with relations between the United States and Indigenous Peoples. Following the presidential election of 1800, which had been decided in the House, Dawson chaired a committee that in 1803 devised what became the Twelfth Amendment clarifying the method of voting for president and vice president. From the Eighth through the Twelfth Congresses (1803–1813) he was named with increasing frequency to committees dealing with military and naval affairs and in 1807 chaired a committee with respect to the president's message on that topic. A supporter of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Dawson presented a bill on 16 March 1812 for admission of the Orleans Territory as the state of Louisiana. On 4 June 1812 he joined the majority in voting to declare war against Great Britain.
A treaty signed in France in 1800 resolved recent hostilities between the United States and France. After the United States made modifications, Dawson was named in March 1801 to carry the revised Convention of 1800 to Paris for final agreement. He sailed from Baltimore on a government warship, also carrying communications from Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe to friends in Europe. Jefferson later rejected charges that his administration had sent a man of limited talents as a messenger at great expense. While in France Dawson came to know the Marquis de Lafayette, on whose behalf he introduced a bill in Congress early in 1803 awarding the impoverished war hero 15,000 acres of land under a military warrant, an amount later slightly reduced. At various times Dawson fruitlessly sought other appointments, including the posts of acting governor of New Orleans, governor of Michigan, governor of Upper Louisiana, United States representative to Naples, and judge of the state of Louisiana.
Dawson never married and was a frequent object of ridicule among Federalists for his foppishness, especially at the time of his mission to France. Referred to regularly as "Miss Nancy Dawson," a sobriquet derived from a popular sailor chantey of the same name and commonly used for an effeminate man, he was also called Beau Dawson, the Virginia Adonis, and "our sweet-scented Envoy."
John Dawson died in Washington, D.C., on 31 March 1814. His death was attributed to the effects of a fever he had suffered in the summer of 1813 while visiting the military front in the Great Lakes region during the War of 1812. Despite having expressed in his will a preference for cremation, he was buried in Congressional Cemetery, in Washington.
Sources Consulted:
Dawson correspondence in John Dawson Papers, Virginia Museum of History and Culture, Richmond, in Thomas Jefferson Papers and James Monroe Papers, both Library of Congress (LC), Washington, D.C., and in Letters of Application and Recommendation (1801–1809, 1809–1817), Record Group 59, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C., and printed in Julian P. Boyd et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1950– ), J. Jefferson Looney et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series (2004– ), William T. Hutchinson et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison (1962–1991), Robert J. Brugger et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison: Secretary of State Series (1986– ), Robert A. Rutland et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison: Presidential Series (1984– ), and Daniel Preston et al., eds., The Papers of James Monroe (2003– ); John P. Kaminski et al., eds., The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution: Ratification of the Constitution by the States, vols. 8–10: Virginia (1988–1993), esp. 10:1488–1495, 1539, 1541, 1557; Henry R. McIlwaine et al., eds., Journals of the Council of the State of Virginia, 1776–1791 (1931–1982), esp. 5:147; Council of State Journal (1795–1798), 17, Record Group 75, Library of Virginia, Richmond; Dawson circular letter, 19 July 1798, broadside copy at LC; Washington Federalist, 31 July 1801 (quotation); will in Spotsylvania Co. Manuscript Wills and in Spotsylvania Co. Will Book, H:428–429; obituary in Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 2 Apr. 1814 ("aged about 52 years").
Portrait in The St.-Mémin Collection of Portraits: Consisting of Seven Hundred and Sixty Medallion Portraits, Principally of Distinguished Americans (1862), Library of Virginia.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Mary A. Hackett.
How to cite this page:
Mary A. Hackett, "John Dawson (d. 1814)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2025 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Dawson_John, accessed [today's date]).
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