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Senate Years of Service: 1844-1848 Party: Democrat
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LEWIS, Dixon Hall, a Representative and a Senator from Alabama; born on Bothwick plantation,
Dinwiddie County, Va., August 10, 1802; moved to Hancock County, Ga., with his parents in 1806;
graduated from Mount Zion Academy and from South Carolina College at Columbia in 1820; moved
to Autauga County, Ala., the same year; studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1823, and
commenced the practice of law in Montgomery, Ala.; member, State house of representatives
1826-1828; elected as a States Rights Democrat to the Twenty-first and to the seven succeeding
Congresses and served from March 4, 1829, to April 22, 1844, when he resigned, having been
appointed Senator; chairman, Committee on Indian Affairs (Twenty-second and Twenty-third
Congresses); appointed and subsequently elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate to fill the
vacancy caused by the resignation of William R. King; reelected in 1847 and served from April 22,
1844, until his death in New York City on October 25, 1848; chairman, Committee on Finance
(Twenty-ninth Congress), Committee on Retrenchment (Twenty-ninth Congress); interment in
Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, N.Y.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Moore, Frederick W., ed. Calhoun as Seen by His
Political Friends: Letters of Duff Green, Dixon H. Lewis and Richard K. Crallé During the Period from
1831 to 1848. Publications of the Southern History Association 7 (May 1903):
159-69; (July 1903): 269-91; (September 1903): 353-61; (November 1903): 419-26; Watson,
Elbert L. Dixon Hall Lewis. In Alabama United States Senators, pp. 45-48.
Huntsville, AL: Strode Publishers, 1982.
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