Early Years
John Moncure Daniel was born on October 24, 1825, in Stafford County and was the son of John Moncure Daniel, a physician, and his first wife, Eliza Mitchell Daniel. He was educated by his father and attended school in Richmond, where he lived with his granduncle Peter V. Daniel, a member of the Council of State and an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Early in the 1840s he read law in Fredericksburg in the office of John Tayloe Lomax.
Penniless after the death of his father, Daniel moved to Richmond in 1845 and worked initially as librarian of the Patrick Henry Society, a gentleman’s literary club. Late in 1846 he became coeditor of the monthly