George Washington Jones (Tennessee politician)

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George Washington Jones was an American politician who represented Tennessee's fifth district in the United States House of Representatives. He was born in King and Queen County, Virginia on March 15, 1806. He moved to Tennessee with his parents, who settled in Fayetteville. He received a common school and academical education, also apprenticed to the saddler's trade. He was a justice of the peace from 1832 to 1835. He was a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1835 to 1839. He served in the Tennessee Senate from 1839 to 1841. He was clerk of Lincoln County Court from 1840 to 1843.

He was elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-eighth and to the seven succeeding Congresses. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1843 to March 3, 1859. During the Thirty-first Congress and the Thirty-second Congresses he was chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Rules, and during the Thirty-fifth Congress he was chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Roads and Canals. Jones represented the U.S. Congress at the swearing in of Vice-President Willam Rufus DeVane King (1786-1851) of Alabama in Matanzas (near Havana) Cuba. He was a delegate to the peace convention of 1861 held in Washington, D.C. in an effort to devise means to prevent the impending impending war, but he did not attend.

He was elected from Tennessee as a member of the Confederate House of Representatives in the First Confederate Congress and served from February 18, 1862 to February 18, 1864. He was not a candidate for re-election. Friend and political ally President Andrew Johnson pardoned Jones for his Civil War activities in June 1865. He was a delegate to the State constitutional convention in 1870. Jones strongly opposed the Poll Tax provision of the 1870 Tennessee Constitution. He died in Fayetteville, Tennessee on November 14, 1884. He was interred in Rose Hill Cemetery.

Jones of Old Lincoln: A Biographical Novel by Doak Maddox Mansfield, Counterbalance Books (2006) [www.counterbalancebook.com] ISBN: 0-9774906-3-7

This article incorporates facts obtained from the public domain Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.