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Senate Years of Service: 1825-1829; 1841-1845; 1845-1852 Party: Jacksonian; Whig; Whig
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BERRIEN, John Macpherson, a Senator from Georgia; born at Rocky Hill, near Princeton, N.J., August 23, 1781;
moved with his parents to Savannah, Ga., in 1782; graduated from Princeton College in 1796;
studied law in Savannah; admitted to the bar and began practice in Louisville, then the capital of
Georgia, in 1799; returned to Savannah; elected solicitor of the eastern judicial circuit of Georgia in
1809; judge of the same circuit from 1810 until January 30, 1821, when he resigned; captain of the
Georgia Hussars, a Savannah volunteer company, in the War of 1812; member, State senate
1822-1823; elected as a Jacksonian to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1825, until
March 9, 1829; resigned to accept the position of Attorney General in the Cabinet of President
Andrew Jackson and served from March 9, 1829, until June 22, 1831, when he resigned; resumed the
practice of law; again elected, as a Whig, to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1841,
until May 1845, when he again resigned to accept an appointment to the supreme court of Georgia;
again elected in 1845 to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by his second resignation;
reelected in 1846 and served from November 13, 1845, until May 28, 1852, when he resigned for the
third time; chairman, Committee on Judiciary (Twentieth, Twenty-sixth, and Twenty-seventh
Congresses); president of the American Party convention at Milledgeville in 1855; died in Savannah,
Ga., January 1, 1856; interment in Laurel Grove Cemetery.
BibliographyDictionary of American Biography;
Govan, Thomas P. John Macpherson Berrien and the Administration of Andrew Jackson. Journal of Southern History 5 (November 1939): 447-67; McCrary, Royce, Jr. John
Macpherson Berrien of Georgia: A Political Biography. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Georgia,
1971.
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