William Branch Giles (12 August 1762 – 4 December 1830) was a member of the US House of Representatives from Virginia's 9th district from 7 December 1790 to 2 October 1798 (succeeding Theodorick Bland and preceding Joseph Eggleston) and from 4 March 1801 to 3 March 1803 (succeeding Eggleston and preceding Philip R. Thompson), a US Senator from 11 August to 4 December 1804 (succeeding Abraham B. Venable and preceding Andrew Moore) and from 4 December 1804 to 4 March 1815 (succeeding Moore and preceding Armstrong Thomson Mason), and Governor of Virginia from 4 March 1827 to 4 March 1830 (succeeding John Tyler and preceding John Floyd. He was a Democratic-Republican.
Biography[]
William Branch Giles was born in Amelia County, Virginia in 1762, and he became a lawyer in 1786. He supported the US Constitution during the ratification debates of 1788, and he served in the US House of Representatives from 1790 to 1798 and from 1803, as well as in the US Senate from 1804 to 1815 and as Governor from 1827 to 1830. He fervently supported James Madison and Thomas Jefferson against Alexander Hamilton and his ideas for a national bank, and he resisted naval appropriations during the Quasi-War in 1798. In 1808, he was Madison's chief advocate in Virginia. During the War of 1812, he attacked John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay as "corrupt Anglophiles". Giles died in 1830.