Biography
A Representative and a Senator from North Carolina; born in Orange (now Durham) County, N.C., May 10, 1792; attended academies at Hillsboro, Fayetteville, and Raleigh; graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1815; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1817 and commenced practice in Red Mountain, N.C.; member, State house of representatives 1818-1819; twice elected a superior court judge; elected as a Crawford Republican to the Eighteenth Congress and reelected as a Jacksonian candidate Nineteenth Congress and served from March 4, 1823, until March 18, 1826, when he resigned; elected as a Jacksonian (later Anti-Jacksonian) to the United States Senate in 1830 and served from March 4, 1831, until his resignation on November 26, 1836; chairman, Committee on Naval Affairs (Twenty-seventh Congress), Committee on Printing (Twenty-seventh Congress); received the eleven electoral votes of South Carolina for President of the United States in 1837; again elected, as a Whig, to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Bedford Brown; reelected in 1841 and in 1847, and served from November 25, 1840, to March 3, 1853; served as President pro tempore of the Senate during the Twenty-seventh and Twenty-eighth Congresses; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1853; continued the practice of law until his death in Red Mountain, N.C., September 7, 1861; interment in the family burial ground at his home, 'Walnut Hall,' near Red Mountain, N.C.
Courtesy of Biographical Directory of the United States Congress