Representative James Madison Hite Beale

James Madison Hite Beale (February 7, 1786 – August 2, 1866) was a slave owner and U.S. Representative from Virginia. He was born on February 7, 1786, at Mount Airy, Virginia, where he pursued preparatory studies in his youth. Raised in a region dominated by plantation agriculture, he became engaged early in life in agricultural pursuits, an occupation that would remain central throughout his career and to which he repeatedly returned between periods of public service.

Beale’s formal early political career began at the state level. He served as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates from 1818 to 1819, participating in the legislative affairs of the Commonwealth during the post–War of 1812 era. His service in the state legislature helped establish his standing as a public figure and laid the groundwork for his later election to national office.

Beale entered the national political arena as a supporter of Andrew Jackson. He was elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Congresses, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1833, to March 3, 1837, as a member of the Democratic Party representing Virginia. During this first period in Congress, he contributed to the legislative process at a time of intense national debate over issues such as the Bank of the United States and federal power. In the Twenty-fourth Congress he served as chairman of the Committee on Invalid Pensions, overseeing matters related to the support and claims of disabled veterans and their families. At the conclusion of this term, he left Congress and resumed his agricultural pursuits in Virginia.

After more than a decade away from federal office, Beale returned to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat, being elected to the Thirty-first and Thirty-second Congresses and serving from March 4, 1849, to March 3, 1853. His second period of congressional service occurred during a significant and contentious era in American history marked by sectional conflict and the Compromise of 1850. During the Thirty-first Congress he served as chairman of the Committee on Expenditures on Public Buildings, which oversaw federal spending on government structures. In the Thirty-second Congress he was chairman of the Committee on Manufactures, a position that placed him at the center of legislative consideration of industrial and commercial policy. Over the course of his four terms in the House—two in the 1830s and two in the early 1850s—Beale participated in the democratic process and represented the interests of his Virginia constituents within the framework of the Democratic Party.

At the end of his final term, Beale declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1852 and again returned to private life. He resumed agricultural pursuits, continuing the plantation-based livelihood that had long defined his economic and social position and was inseparable from the system of slavery in which he participated as a slave owner. He lived through the Civil War and the early years of Reconstruction, witnessing the dissolution of the slave system that had underpinned much of his public and private life.

James Madison Hite Beale died in Putnam County, West Virginia, on August 2, 1866. He was interred in Beale Cemetery near Gallipolis Ferry in neighboring Mason County, West Virginia. His career, spanning state and federal service, reflected the political evolution of Virginia and the nation during the first half of the nineteenth century, as well as the central role of slavery and agriculture in the society from which he emerged.