Location: Routledge Road east of bypass, Kenansville, at Routledge Cemetery
County: Duplin
Original Date Cast: 2017
James Gillespie was a four-term Congressman in the early days of the Republic but, before ascending to that office, took part in the Revolutionary War and served as a representative in conventions and assemblies. Sources conflict about the place of his birth. Most indicate that he was born in County Monaghan, Ireland, and traveled to North Carolina, likely educated there, and in time travelled with his family to America. A Presbyterian, he settled in Duplin County near the Kenan family and present-day Kenansville. A successful planter, Gillespie owned over 2,000 acres at the time of the 1790 census. He was appointed captain of the First Battalion of North Carolina Volunteers in November 1776.
His plantation, “Golden Grove,” was destroyed in 1781 by British troops led by Major James Craig. Gillespie’s friend and neighbor, William Dickson, in 1810 recalled the incident: “Craig traveled up to the Grove and encamped at Colo. Routledge’s house, lay there for three days, collected some cattle, destroyed some crops of corn burned Captain Gillespie’s and Lt. Houston’s houses, and destroyed such of their property as they could not carry away.”
Of his military service there can be no doubt that he played a leadership role and, ultimately, paid the price personally for his involvement. The war in southeastern North Carolina was, in many respects, a civil war with local Tories just as lethal for the Patriots as the British. Gillespie had a more important role in two battles in 1781. On August 2, he was a militia captain when the British under Major James Craig defeated the Patriots at the Battle of Rockfish in his home county of Duplin. And, within weeks, on August 27, the Patriots gained their revenge in the neighboring county of Bladen at the Battle of Elizabethtown. There the Tories in the British cause were driven into the “Tory Hole” and humiliated. Nineteen were killed, wounded, or captured with four wounded among the Patriots.
Gillespie’s involvement in early campaigns precluded his presence at the convention in Halifax on April 12, 1776, where the Resolves were endorsed. He was present in November 1776 at Halifax when the first state constitution was approved. He was elected to the State House, 1779-1780 and 1782-1784, and the State Senate, 1784-1786, 1789, and 1792, and defeated James Kenan in the 1791 race. He was a member of the constitutional conventions in 1788 and 1789, where he was avowedly Antifederalist.
With respect to Gillespie’s role at the two conventions where the U.S. Constitution was debated, he was in the majority in Hillsborough when the document was rejected and in the minority in Fayetteville when it was ratified. His opposition was rooted in his strong antifederalism. He and others advocated for a Bill of Rights. William S. Price Jr. examined the philosophy of the antifederalists in an essay in 1991 and wrote that such principled advocacy was based on the hope that they would maintain “at least as much control of their own political affairs at they had wrenched earlier from royal authority.” Gillespie held other positions of responsibility, serving as secretary to the governor, on the Council of State, as superintendent of the press, and as commissioner of confiscated property.
While in Congress, 1793-1799 and 1803-1805, Gillespie opposed the Jay Treaty, signed by George Washington with Great Britain, in 1794. In 1778 Gillespie took part in the meetings that led to the merger of Cross Creek and Campbelton to form Fayetteville. That city’s Gillespie Street is named in his honor. In 1800, while in Washington, Gillespie broke his hip and labored under a disability thereafter. He died in 1805 and was buried in Presbyterian Cemetery in Georgetown. His remains were moved to Congressional Cemetery in 1891.
Clearer is the record of Gillespie’s service for four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. After three terms in the 1790s, Gillespie returned to the rough and tumble of partisan politics in 1803, defeating his opponent Alexander Moore by 500 votes. In announcing his candidacy for the fourth term, Gillespie defended President Thomas Jefferson as “pure, economical, and just, and calculated to serve the right, liberties and true interest of the people” despite the “calumny of a few individuals.”
References:
William Moore and David B. Nolan, Quest for Freedom: The Scots-Irish Presbyterian Rebellion for Political and Religious Freedom (privately published, 2013)
Patrick O’Kelley, “Nothing but Blood and Slaughter”: Military Operations and the Order of Battle in the Revolutionary War in North Carolina, 4 volumes (2004-2006)
William S. Price, Jr., “There Ought to Be a Bill of Rights”: North Carolina Enters a New Nation (1991)
A.R. Newsome, “Twelve North Carolina Counties in 1810-1811,” North Carolina Historical Review (October 1928): 413-446
William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, II (1986), 279—sketch by Richard Shrader
Gillespie-Wright Papers, Southern Historical Collection, UNC
John L. Cheney Jr., ed., North Carolina Government: A Narrative and Statistical History, 1585-1974 (1975)
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (online)