WILLIAM CABELL

See also:

• WILLIAM CABELL RIVES (1793-1868)

RIVES (1793-1868)  , American political leader and diplomat, was born in Nelson county, Virginia, on the 4th of May 1793 . He attended Hampden-Sidney and William and Mary colleges, was admitted to the bar, and practised in Nelson county (till 1821) and afterwards in Albemarle county . In politics a Democrat, he served in the state constitutional convention in 1816, in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1817-19 and in 1822, and in the Federal House of Representatives in 1823-29 . From 1829 to 1832 he was minister to France; in 1833 he entered the United States Senate, but in the following year resigned . From 1836 to 1845. he again served in the Senate, and in 1849-53 he was again minister to France . In February 1861 he was a delegate to the Peace Conference in Washington; he opposed secession, but was loyal to his state when it seceded, and was one of its representatives in the Confederate Congress during the Civil War . He died at the country estate of Castle Hill, Albemarle county, Virginia, on the 25th of April 1868 . Rives was the author of several books, the most important being his Life and Times of James Madison (3 vols., Boston, 1859-68), the completion of which was prevented by his death . He was the father of Alfred Landon Rives (1830-1903), an engineer of some prominence, whose daughter, Amelie Rives (1863- ), became well known as a novelist, her best known book being The Quick or the Dead ? (1888); she married John A . Chanler in 1888, and after their divorce married in 1896 Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy of Russia .