Tucker, Henry St. George, 1853-1932

Epithet: Colonel

Lawyer, law professor, and U.S. Congressman.

Henry St. George Tucker was born in Winchester, Virginia in 1853. He was educated in Virginia, attending a private school in Richmond, preparatory school at Middleburg, and graduating from the law department of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, in 1876. In that same year he was admitted to the bar and began practice in Staunton, Virginia. Tucker was elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-first, Fifty-second, Fifty-third, and Fifty-fourth Congresses (March 4, 1889-March 3, 1897). He did not run for reelection in 1896. He was appointed professor of constitutional law and equity at Washington and Lee University in 1897, succeeding his father, John Randolph Tucker, who had died that same year. In 1900, he was appointed dean of the law school. After serving as acting president of Washington and Lee for one year, Tucker took the position of dean of the school of law of Columbian (now George Washington) University, Washington, DC in 1905. Tucker also served as president of the Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition in 1904-1905, and as president of the American Bar Association in 1905. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the nomination for Virginia governor in both 1909 and 1921. He edited Tucker On Constitutional Law, Woman Suffrage by Constitutional Amendment, and Limitations on the Treaty Making Power. Elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-seventh Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Henry D. Flood, Tucker was reelected to the Sixty-eighth and to the four succeeding Congresses, serving from March 21, 1922 until his death. At the time of his death in Lexington, Virginia on July 23, 1932, Tucker had already been nominated for reelection to the Seventy-third Congress.