The Distinguished Life and Tragic Death of Peter Grayson
“Arduous, indeed, is the task before us; yet how unworthy shall we be if we do not perform it with fidelity—enthusiasm.”
Peter W. Grayson, “Vice Unmasked” pg. 4
Benjamin and Caroline (Taylor) Grayson of Bardstown, Kentucky had four children who rose to some prominence in the early 1800s. Their third son, Peter Wagener Grayson (b. 1788), is among the more prominent and yet pitiable figures in the Grayson family tree. An uncle of the same name (1770-1816) “was highly esteemed as an officer and a gentleman,” and “a warm and personal friend of General [Andrew] Jackson,”1 a fellow Tennessean with whom he served at the Battle of New Orleans. Both men were named for their shared ancestor Peter Wagener (1717-1774), an English-born Virginia attorney, militia officer, county clerk, and founder of the Potomac River trading port of Colchester.
One biography claims Kentucky-born Peter “became an attorney, a well-known poet, and also a soldier during the War of 1812. In 1825 he moved to Louisville, from where in 1828 he was elected as a Jacksonian to the state legislature.”2
“Vice Unmasked”
Examples of Peter’s poetry are difficult to locate, though a long essay, “Vice Unmasked” (1830), showcases his intellect and philosophical mind. His central proposal is that the American “system of jurisprudence… is nothing better than a tax, and a grievous tax, too, upon its substantial happiness…. It actually abridges and encumbers… human enjoyment…. The whole compulsory agency of law… actually produce[s] consequences in the highest degree mischievous to the best interests of society.”3
Peter’s essay addresses the struggle for liberty, the ineffectiveness of laws and (especially) lawmakers, the ideal role of government, and the importance of virtue in the search for true happiness.
Land Law in Kentucky
Peter excerpts liberally from Thomas Paine‘s “The Rights of Man” in chapter XIV before renouncing his former profession, then pronouncing a scathing verdict on lawyers and judges. A driving cause of Peter’s dissatisfaction was the haphazard Kentucky land title system in which “the seeds were sown for an almost interminable crop of dispute in respect to them,” and the unprincipled adjudicators who benefited from the chaos. His bitterness appears personal. “Valuable tracts of land” were said to have been lost to the family through the neglect of Peter’s father Benjamin,1 though the relative who penned this accusation had no connection to the Kentucky branch. Could it be that Benjamin and Caroline lost a judicial dispute for land they had surveyed and improved in good faith? Might this explain why two sons became lawyers, and their daughter married a legislator? Peter proposes that virtuous leaders could lead the nation to a bright future, before abruptly concluding the manuscript. His ideas throughout were imperfectly connected and poorly edited and published, facts he laments in a letter eight years after its publication.
A Founding Father of Texas
Peter migrated to Texas around 1830, where he became a colleague and confidante of Stephen F. Austin, a man who had similarly lost a judicial land claim. When Austin was detained in Mexico City in 1834, Peter traveled there and petitioned for his release. Peter served as a soldier, a minister and ambassador (traveling to Washington at least twice), and interim attorney general of the Texas Republic. He was a nominee to succeed Sam Houston as president of Texas in 1838.
“The Fiend that Pursued Me Has Started Again”
Numerous sources attest to Peter’s internal demons, none more so than his handwritten words of July 1838, about six weeks after accepting the nomination:4
“It is necessary to my poor shattered name for me now to confess, that at least ten years of my life I have been a partially deranged man. I have always kept this a profound secret… The period of my suffering was from 1820 to 1830…. In this mood I actually wrote a sort of Essay upon the influence of Law, &c… and published it out of hand, without examining proof, or correcting it in any way…. The printer, silly man, made more blunders in the type than I myself made in the manuscript, and worst of all put my name in the title page against my express orders – awful exposure of my weakness.” Separately:
“To my friends…, The fiend that pursued me for a long time previous to 1830, and then let me rest, (’twas when I went to Texas,) has started on me again with redoubled fury. Farewell! To you and the few kindred of my particular affections, I yield the last pulsations of my heart.” And, finally:
“The last trap to catch my soul and send it to a very Hell of Torture, was the good feeling of my friends, urging me and prevailing on me, to be a candidate for the Presidency of Texas!! Oh God!!”
Legacy
Peter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on July 9, 1838, while en route from Texas to Washington. He left at least three handwritten missives, including one to the innkeeper: “I pray you pardon the frightful scene I have made in your house. You will, ere long, learn that I have not been wholly an unworthy man…. You will find money in my pocket to defray all my necessary expenses. I beseech you again to pardon the trouble I give you.”
One history blamed an alleged rebuff to a marriage proposal as a contributing factor to his final action.2 The thus unmarried Peter, who outlived both parents and all three siblings, left the bulk of his estate to be shared equally by his three nephews, ages 20, 18, and 16, and one niece, age 7.
Shortly after Texas was annexed as the 28th state in 1846, Grayson County was named for Peter. “He was a man of fine physique, courtliness of manners, an ardent and true patriot and an upright honorable gentleman. In the society of the learned and refined he was ever the magnet of a host of admiring and distinguished men and women.”1
1 “The Grayson Family” ca. 1877 unpublished manuscript pg. 34, 25, 26
2 “Grayson, Peter Wagener” by Leslie Southwick (1952) via Texas State Historical Association https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/grayson-peter-wagener accessed 12/26/24
3 “Vice Unmasked: An Essay Being a Consideration of the Influence of Law Upon the Moral Essence of Man, with Other Reflections, ” 1830, G.H. Evans, New York, 79 pages. (PDF below)
4 “The Late Colonel Grayson,” Nashville TN Daily Republican Banner, Thursday 23 Aug 1838, pg. 2
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