Joseph Reed Ingersoll

Joseph Reed Ingersoll
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania's 2 district
In office March 4, 1835 – March 4, 1837 Serving with James Harper
Preceded by	Horace Binney
Succeeded by	John Sergeant, George Washington Toland
In office October 12, 1841 – March 3, 1849 Serving with George Washington Toland (1841-1843)
Preceded by	John Sergeant
Succeeded by	Joseph R. Chandler
United States Minister to the United Kingdom
In office October 16, 1852 – August 23, 1853
Preceded by	Abbott Lawrence
Succeeded by	James Buchanan
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Joseph Reed Ingersoll (June 14, 1786 – February 20, 1868) was an American lawyer and statesman from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1835 he followed his father, Jared Ingersoll, and his older brother, Charles Jared Ingersoll, to represent Pennsylvania in the U.S. House.

Biography

He graduated from Princeton College in 1804. He studied law with his father, was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Philadelphia. He was elected in 1834 as a Whig anti-Jacksonian candidate to the Twenty-fourth Congress. He declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1836, serving 1835–1837. He resumed the practice of law.

Ingersoll was elected as a Whig to the Twenty-seventh Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of John Sergeant. He was reelected as a Whig to the Twenty-eighth, Twenty-ninth, and Thirtieth Congresses. He declined to accept the nomination as a candidate for reelection in 1848. In all, his second stay in office lasted from 1841 to 1849.

He was the chairman of the United States House Committee on the Judiciary during the Thirtieth Congress. He was an advocate for protection and a firm supporter of Henry Clay. One of his noted efforts in the House was a defense of Clay's tariff of 1842.

In 1852, President Millard Fillmore sent him to the United Kingdom as the U.S. Minister. He served about a year, and then retired to private life, devoting himself to literary pursuits. The degree of LL.D. was conferred on him by Lafayette and Bowdoin in 1836, and that of D.C.L. by Oxford in 1845.

He died in Philadelphia in 1868. Interment in St. Peter’s Protestant Episcopal Churchyard.

Works

He was a warm adherent of the Union, and at the time of the American Civil War prepared an essay entitled “Secession, a Folly and a Crime.” He published a translation from the Latin of Roceus's (Francesco Rocco's) tracts “De Navibus et Naulo” and “De Assecuratione” (Philadelphia, 1809), and was the author of a Memoir of Samuel Breck (1863).

Notes

Sources

• Joseph Reed Ingersoll at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• The Political Graveyard

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wilson, James Grant; Fiske, John, eds. (1892). "Ingersoll, Jared". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton