|
Senate Years of Service: 1847-1855; 1855-1857; 1857-1859 Party: Jacksonian; Anti-Jackson; Whig; Opposition; American
(Know-Nothing)
BELL, John, a Representative and a Senator from Tennessee; born near Nashville,
Tenn., February 18, 1796; graduated from Cumberland College in 1814; studied
law; admitted to the bar in 1816 and commenced practice in Franklin, Tenn.;
member, State senate 1817; declined to be a candidate for reelection and moved
to Nashville; elected to the Twentieth, and to the six succeeding Congresses
(March 4, 1827-March 3, 1841); Speaker of the House of Representatives
(Twenty-third Congress); chairman, Committee on Indian Affairs (Twenty-first
through Twenty-sixth Congresses, except for Twenty-third), Committee on
Judiciary (Twenty-second and Twenty-third Congresses); appointed by President
William Henry Harrison as Secretary of War March 5, 1841, and served until
September 12, 1841, when he resigned; member, State house of representatives in
1847; elected as a Whig to the United States Senate in 1847; reelected in 1853,
and served from November 22, 1847, to March 3, 1859; unsuccessful candidate in
1860 for President of the United States on the Constitutional Union ticket;
investor in ironworks at Cumberland Furnace in Chattanooga, Tenn.; died at his
home on the banks of the Cumberland River, near Cumberland Furnace, September
10, 1869; interment in Mount Olivet Cemetery, near Nashville, Tenn.
BibliographyDictionary of American Biography; Parks, Joseph
H.
John Bell Of Tennessee. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1950.
|