Representative George French Strother

George French Strother (1783 – November 28, 1840) was a nineteenth-century politician, lawyer, and slaveowner in Virginia and Missouri. Born in 1783, he was a member of the prominent Strother family of Virginia, a lineage that produced several lawyers and public officials in the early republic. His early life unfolded in the post-Revolutionary era, when Virginia’s planter and legal elites were consolidating their influence in both state and national affairs. Raised in this environment, Strother was positioned from a young age to enter the legal profession and public service.

Strother received a legal education consistent with the period, reading law and training for the bar rather than attending a formal law school, as was customary in the early nineteenth century. He established himself as a lawyer in Virginia, where his practice was closely tied to the region’s plantation economy and legal disputes over land, property, and enslaved people. As a slaveowner, he participated directly in the system of chattel slavery that underpinned much of Virginia’s social and economic structure at the time, and his legal and political work was shaped by the interests of that class.

By the second decade of the nineteenth century, Strother had entered public life in Virginia. Aligning himself with the Republican Party—often referred to as the Democratic-Republican Party—he became part of the dominant political movement that traced its lineage to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. As a member of the Republican Party representing Virginia, George French Strother contributed to the legislative process during two terms in office. His service in Congress occurred during a significant period in American history, when debates over federal power, economic policy, territorial expansion, and slavery were intensifying. In this role, he participated in the democratic process and represented the interests of his constituents, who were largely drawn from Virginia’s agrarian and slaveholding society.

Strother’s congressional service placed him in the midst of the evolving politics of the early republic, as the nation grappled with the consequences of the Louisiana Purchase, the War of 1812, and the early stages of sectional conflict. During his two terms, he took part in the routine work of legislation, deliberation, and committee activity that shaped federal policy in these years. His alignment with the Republican Party reflected support for limited federal government, a strict construction of the Constitution, and the protection of states’ rights, positions that were especially important to Virginia’s political leadership.

After his service in Congress, Strother continued his legal and political career as part of the westward movement of many Virginians in the early nineteenth century. He relocated to Missouri, a frontier region that was rapidly developing and that would soon become central to national debates over the expansion of slavery. In Missouri, he resumed the practice of law and maintained his status as a slaveowner, integrating himself into the emerging political and legal establishment of the new state. His experience and connections from Virginia and Congress helped him to navigate the shifting political landscape of the trans-Mississippi West.

In Missouri, Strother’s work as a lawyer and public figure coincided with the period following the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state and marked a critical moment in the balance between free and slave states. His presence there as a former Virginia Republican and slaveholding attorney exemplified the migration of Southern political culture into the western territories and states. He remained active in professional and civic life as Missouri grew in population and political importance.

George French Strother died on November 28, 1840. At the time of his death, he had lived through and participated in a formative era of American political development, spanning the early republic, the rise of organized national parties, and the expansion of the United States westward. His career as a lawyer, slaveowner, and Republican officeholder in both Virginia and Missouri reflected the priorities and contradictions of the slaveholding political class in the first half of the nineteenth century.