Nathaniel Beverley Tucker (journalist)

Nathaniel Beverley Tucker (June 8, 1820 – July 4, 1890) was an American journalist and diplomat.

Tucker was born in Winchester, Virginia, the son of Congressman Henry St. George Tucker, Sr. and Ann Evelina Hunter, brother of John Randolph Tucker, Congressman, and uncle of Henry St. George Tucker, III, Congressman. He was the namesake of his uncle, author and judge Nathaniel Beverley Tucker. He was educated at the University of Virginia. He was founder and editor of the Washington Sentinel from 1853 to 1856. In December 1853 he was elected printer to the United States Senate, and in 1857 was appointed consul to Liverpool, England, remaining there until 1861.

He joined the Confederate Army, and was sent by the Confederate government in 1862 as an economic agent to England and France, and in 1863–64 to Canada, to arrange for the exchange of cotton for Union food. He also made some secret diplomatic representations to Northern men of influence. He was included on the Union “Wanted List” during the War, and was charged as a conspirator in the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Although he was never arrested, he was never pardoned either. He went to Mexico after the Civil War ended, was there until the reign of Maximilian I of Mexico came to an end, whereupon he returned to Canada. Upon returning to the United States in 1869, he resided in Washington, D.C., and Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.

In 1840 or 1841, he married Jane Shelton Ellis (born about 1820 in Richmond, Virginia), the daughter of Charles Ellis and Jane Shelton. Among his eight children was Beverley Dandridge Tucker, Episcopal Bishop of Southern Virginia (who in turn by Anna Maria Washington was the father of Henry St. George Tucker, Episcopal Bishop of Kyoto, Japan, and later Virginia and, even later, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, USA). He died in Richmond, Virginia.