A Dissertation on Slavery

St. George Tucker was a Bermudian-born American lawyer, military officer, and professor who taught at the College of William and Mary. He increased the prerequisites for a law degree at the college because he believed lawyers need extensive education. He was a General Court of Virginia judge before joining the Court of Appeals. Tucker supported gradual emancipation of slaves after the American Revolutionary War, as presented to the state assembly in a pamphlet published in 1796. He created an American copy of Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, which became an essential reference work for many American lawyers and law students in the early nineteenth century. Tucker was born near Port Royal, Bermuda, to English immigrants Anne Butterfield and Colonel Henry Tucker (1713-1787). His father was the great-grandson of George Tucker, who moved to Bermuda from England in 1662. The Tuckers were highly regarded in Port Royal. St. George's older brother, Thomas Tudor Tucker, moved to Virginia in the 1760s after finishing medical school in Scotland and settling in South Carolina before the American Revolutionary War. Another brother was Henry Tucker, who served as President of the Bermuda Council and as acting Governor on occasion. They had a relative named George Tucker, a politician and author.