Richard Thomas Walker Duke (6 June 1822–2 July 1898), member of the House of Representatives, was born in Albemarle County and was the son of Richard Duke, a county magistrate, and Maria B. Walker Duke, a granddaughter of Thomas Walker, a physician best known for exploring the southwestern Virginia and Kentucky frontier. One of his sisters married Hervey Deskins, who represented Floyd County at the Convention of 1861. Walker Duke, as he was familiarly known, matriculated at the Virginia Military Institute, where he served as cadet assistant professor of mathematics for the 1843–1844 academic year before graduating second in his class in 1845. On 23 July 1846 he executed a bond and most likely on that date (or three days later, according to family tradition), married Elizabeth Scott Eskridge in Lexington. Two of their three daughters died in infancy; their two sons included Richard Thomas Walker Duke (1853–1926), who became a Charlottesville civic leader and editor of the Virginia Law Register.
After teaching at Richmond Academy and in Greenbrier County, Duke returned to Charlottesville, studied law at the University of Virginia during the 1849–1850 term, and then opened a law office. Duke's talent and reputation earned him election in 1858 as commonwealth's attorney for Albemarle County, a post he held for twelve years. In the 1860 census he reported $2,600 in real property, $10,000 in personal property, and six slaves, two of whom were elderly.
Civil War
In November 1859, in the aftermath of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Duke helped organize the Albemarle Rifles, which in 1861 became Company B, 19th Regiment Virginia Infantry, with himself as captain. In May 1862 he was elected colonel of the 46th Regiment Virginia Infantry, under Brigadier General Henry Alexander Wise. Conflicts between the two men led to Duke's resignation on 28 March 1864. In May he took command as a lieutenant colonel of the 1st Battalion Virginia Reserves, which guarded Union prisoners at Richmond's Belle Isle, participated in defending the city's perimeter at Fort Harrison during the autumn, and in February 1865 began guard duty at Libby Prison. With the capture of Richmond imminent early in April, Duke obeyed an order to set fire to public warehouses, a blaze that soon burned out of control and destroyed much of the city's business district. The battalion evacuated the city and marched west before being captured on 6 April at the Battle of Saylers Creek. Duke was imprisoned at Johnson's Island, Ohio, until his release on 25 July 1865. A Charlottesville Sons of Confederate Veterans camp established in 1893 bears his name.
Congressional Career
Duke won election on 8 November 1870 to fill the unexpired term of Robert Ridgway in the Forty-first Congress (1869–1871) representing the Fifth District, which comprised Albemarle, Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford, Buckingham, Campbell, Fluvanna, Greene, Nelson, and Prince Edward Counties. A Conservative, he defeated the Republican candidate, Alexander Rives, in this special election with 12,469 to 11,378 votes. On that same day he defeated Rives in a general election by a tally of 12,596 to 11,430 votes to represent the district in the Forty-second Congress (1871–1873).
Duke took his seat in the Forty-first Congress on 5 December 1870 and quickly set to work. Later that month he gave a speech against the restrictions on office holding by former Confederate leaders under the Fourteenth Amendment. He insisted that political amnesty should be granted to all because all Virginians shared responsibility for the Civil War and that depriving the state of its prewar leadership left Virginia in the hands of inexperienced politicians or newcomers who might not understand the best interests of its citizens. Duke also introduced bills to supply the nation's colleges with congressional documents, allocate thousands of acres of public lands for use in establishing common schools in Virginia, and repeal all taxes imposed on alcoholic spirits exclusively manufactured from fruit.
During the Forty-second Congress, Duke sat on the Committee on Expenditures on the Public Buildings. He presented many bills, including legislation related to federal taxes on tobacco and regulating fees charged by federal judicial officers. He also sponsored bills for a public building in Lynchburg and to establish a port of entry there. On 3 April 1871 Duke gave a fiery speech against a bill designed to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment. He questioned the bill's constitutionality for being directed at the South, challenged his colleagues to produce evidence that Virginia leaders restricted African American voting, decried the negative influence of northerners in the state, and condemned Congress for ceding enforcement powers to the executive branch. Duke also presented resolutions from the General Assembly requesting federal funds to complete the James River and Kanawha Canal. In a speech on 13 February 1873 he argued that canals were not obsolete and that they provided a cheaper alternative to railroads in transporting such bulky items as iron, coal, salt, and agricultural commodities.
Later Years
Declining to seek reelection, Duke returned to his Charlottesville law practice. He did not remain out of public service for long, however, and in 1879 he was elected to a one-year term representing Albemarle County in the House of Delegates as a Democrat who favored paying Virginia's prewar public debt in full. He sat on the Committees on Finance, on Manufactures and Mechanic Arts, and on Executive Expenditures. In 1882 Duke represented Thomas Jefferson's descendants as they successfully blocked a proposal by the trustees of Glenwood Cemetery, in Washington, D.C., to move Jefferson's remains from Monticello to the nation's capital.
Duke served as secretary to the University of Virginia's board of visitors from 1853 to 1865 and as secretary to the Trustees of the Miller Fund, which oversaw a bequest to the university for organizing an agriculture department and student scholarships, from 1869 until the 1893–1894 school year, at which time he became treasurer. He also helped to rebuild the collection of the university library after the Rotunda burned in 1895. Displaying a keen interest in agriculture, Duke presented papers before agricultural meetings and published articles in the Southern Planter during the 1880s and 1890s. His wife died on 13 January 1896. Richard Thomas Walker Duke died at his Albemarle County home on 2 July 1898 and was buried at Maplewood Cemetery.
Sources Consulted:
Biographies in William Wirt Henry and Ainsworth R. Spofford, Eminent and Representative Men of Virginia and the District of Columbia of the Nineteenth Century (1893), 435–437 (variant marriage date of 26 July 1846), Philip Alexander Bruce at al., History of Virginia (1924), 5:6–7, and Elizabeth F. Archer, "Paper Memories: Recalling the Dukes of Albemarle," Magazine of Albemarle County History 59 (2001): 85–125 (portraits); Rockbridge Co. Marriage Bonds (bond dated 23 July 1846) and Rockbridge Co. Ministers' Returns (marriage solemnized 23 July 1846), both Library of Virginia; Richard Thomas Walker Duke Papers, Duke Family Papers, and Duke's "History of the Reserve Forces Under Command of Colonel R. T. W Duke" in Kent Family Papers, all Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.; Duke and Duke Papers, Arthur J. Morris Law Library, University of Virginia; Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers (1861–1865), War Department Collection of Confederate Records, Record Group 109, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; Election Record No. 3, Secretary of the Commonwealth, Election Records, 1776–1941, Record Group 13, Library of Virginia; Congressional Globe, 41st Cong., 3d sess., 11–12, 206–208, 42d Cong., 1st sess., Appendix, 88–94, 2d sess., 1438–1439, 2243–2244, 3012–3016, 3d sess., Appendix, 64–69; Albemarle Co. Will Book, 30:370–373, Library of Virginia; obituaries in Charlottesville Daily Progress, 2 July 1898, and Washington Post, 3 July 1898; memorials in University of Virginia Alumni Bulletin 5 (1898): 57, ibid. 6 (1899): 77–79, and Virginia State Bar Association Proceedings (1898), 152–153.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Lisa A. Francavilla.
How to cite this page:
Lisa A. Francavilla,"Richard Thomas Walker Duke (1822–1898)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2015 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Duke_Richard_Thomas_Walker_1822-1898, accessed [today's date]).
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