Biography
A Representative from New York; born in Washington, Beaufort County, N.C., October 24, 1786; attended school in New Bern, N.C.; moved to New York City in 1802, where he became a clerk and subsequently engaged in the mercantile business; elected as a Democratic Republican to the Seventeenth Congress; reelected as a Crawford Republican to the Eighteenth Congress; reelected as a Jacksonian candidate to the Nineteenth and to the five succeeding Congresses; reelected as a Democrat to the Twenty-fifth Congress (March 4, 1821-March 3, 1839); chairman, Committee on Commerce (Twentieth through Twenty-second Congresses), Committee on Foreign Affairs (Twenty-third Congress), Committee on Ways and Means (Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Congresses); unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1838 to the Twenty-sixth Congress; appointed United States Minister to Russia by President Van Buren and served from May 20, 1840, to July 13, 1841; member of the State constitutional convention in 1846; died at his residence near Huntington, Suffolk County, N.Y., April 30, 1862; interment in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Courtesy of Biographical Directory of the United States Congress