education for white boys and girls, administered by a board of education and financed by the state literary fund. [Jethro Neville of Hardy County, first elected the following year would introduce a similar bill, which also failed to pass.] Mercer served alongside veteran William Noland for several years, then with Thomas Gregg in 1815 and 1816, after which Mercer ran for Congress as discussed below. In his last term in the House of Delegates, Mercer chaired the finance committee and introduced a bill to construct a canal along the Potomac River. Meanwhile, during the War of 1812, Mercer accepted a commission as lieutenant colonel of a Virginia regiment. Promoted to major, he took command of the important defenses at Norfolk, Virginia. Mercer also served as inspector general in 1814, aide-de-camp to Governor James Barbour and brigadier general in command of the 2nd Virginia Brigade. In 1816 Mercer won election to the United States House of Representatives, then won re-election several times, serving from 1817 to 1839, one of the longest continuous memberships in that era. That seniority helped him become Chairman of the Committee on Roads and Canals from 1831 to 1839. In 1817, Mercer was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. At various times Mercer ran as a Federalist, Crawford Republican, Adams Republican, Anti-Jacksonian and Whig. Mercer believed in internal improvements and protection of domestic manufactures. Before his service on the House Committee on Roads and Canals, he had been the first president of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Co., serving from 1828 to 1833. He also opposed slavery and became active in the American Colonization Society, which he helped found in 1816, Bushrod Washington becoming its president and serving until his death. By the following year it had a national presence, and worked to establish the Free State of Liberia. James Madison, Henry Clay, John Marshall, John Randolph, John Taylor, William H. Crawford, Daniel Webster, Francis Scott Key, and James Monroe also became founding or early members. Members often debated two troublesome questions: how many free blacks would voluntarily agree to be deported, and who would pay for it? Federal census records are unclear whether Mercer owned slaves in 1820, but he owned no slaves in 1830. Mercer became vice president of the Virginia Colonization Society in 1836, and vice president of the National Society of Agriculture in 1842. In 1853 he again visited