From Yale's Confederates: A Biographical Dictionary by Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr.:
B. Dec. 1806 Hagerstown, MD, son of VA Congressman Thomas Jr. and Mrs. Margaret Jordan Pool Newton; md. (1835) Marth Tucker [Newton] of VA; d. 15 Nov. 1886, Norfolk, VA.
Newton entered YC his junior year and after graduation studied law in Staunton, VA and was admitted to the bar in Norfolk, preacticing there several years until he inherited a large estate. Thereafter he never practiced. Newton represented Norfolk in the VA House of Delegates in 1835, 1837, and 1845-46, as a Whig, but retired "with the conviction that the life of a politician was not suited to his tastes."
Nevertheless, in 1860 he became a presidential elector for his congressional dist., voting for Bell and Everet. As such, and despite being a Union man on principle, he supported the Confederacy and assisted in the organization of its government, voting for Jefferson Davis as a presidential elector in 1861. Absolution for this act required a special pardon from President Abraham Lincoln, even though Newton had chosen to remain in occupied Norfolk and was the elder brother of U.S. Gen. John Newton. Union Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, who had been in charge of Norfolk, wrote to President Abraham Lincoln on Newton's behalf in Jan. 1865: "I believed his character, in all respects, but fro loyalty to be unblemished." "In person and charcter," wrote the class secretary, Cincinnatus "was a typical Virginia gentleman."
