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Macon was a marked advocate of [[states' rights]] and decentralized government, aligning with the [[Anti-Federalists]] during the passage of the [[United States Constitution|Constitution]], and later joining the [[Democratic-Republican|Jeffersonian Republicans]]. His opposition to a strong protective [[tariff]] and to federal interference with [[slavery]], and his support for the doctrines of [[nullification]] and [[secession]], made him an important transitional figure between [[Thomas Jefferson]] and [[John C. Calhoun]], who was greatly influenced by Macon's views.
Macon was a marked advocate of [[states' rights]] and decentralized government, aligning with the [[Anti-Federalists]] during the passage of the [[United States Constitution|Constitution]], and later joining the [[Democratic-Republican|Jeffersonian Republicans]]. His opposition to a strong protective [[tariff]] and to federal interference with [[slavery]], and his support for the doctrines of [[nullification]] and [[secession]], made him an important transitional figure between [[Thomas Jefferson]] and [[John C. Calhoun]], who was greatly influenced by Macon's views.
==Early Life==
Nathaniel Macon was born on December 17, 1758, at Macon Manor, the family home in Warren (then Edgecombe) County, North Carolina. He was the sixth and youngest child of Gideon Macon and Priscilla Jones Macon. The Macons were descended from a French [[Huguenot]] who had immigrated to [[Virginia]] sometime before 1680 and married into the local gentry; [[Martha Washington]] was a distant cousin of Nathaniel Macon's, and another relation of his was a brother-in-law of [[James Madison]]. Macon's parents had moved to North Carolina in the 1730s and established a modest [[tobacco]] plantation along Shocco Creek in the Roanoke river valley.
Gideon Macon died in 1763, and his widow managed the plantation and the children thereafter. Nathaniel and his older brother John attended a local school from 1766 to 1773; otherwise, not much is known about his youth. Surviving accounts suggest that he was an intelligent, serious-minded adolescent of some ambition, and in 1775, he left home to attend the College of New Jersey (now [[Princeton]]).
==Revolutionary War Career==
Macon's college education was cut short by the escalation of the [[American Revolutionary War]]. For a short period in the summer of 1776, he and some of his classmates joined a company of [[New Jersey]] militia; not long thereafter, the school closed down, and Macon, after only a year of attendance, returned home to study law.
Though the Roanoke region from which he hailed was among the most pro-[[Patriot]] areas in the state, Macon did not again serve in the military until 1780, when he joined one of the militia units formed in response to the British invasion of [[South Carolina]]. He enlisted as a private, declining an officer's commission and an offered cash bounty for signing up. He fought at the [[Battle of Camden]], and remained with the army until January 1781, when he was elected to represent Warren County in the state senate. Macon intended at first to decline the seat, saying he believed the need for military manpower was too great, but was eventually persuaded to take office.<ref>https://books.google.com/books?id=QG6_hdkUZo4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22William+Edward+Dodd%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwikg7_QvOnjAhVIbKwKHX3nCF0Q6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q&f=false</ref>
==Quotes==
==Quotes==