BELL, JOHN
John Bell was born February 15, 1797, near
Nashville, Tennessee. He graduated from Cumberland
College in Nashville in 1817 and was
admitted to the bar in the same year. He practiced
law in Franklin and Nashville, Tennessee,
before entering politics.
From 1827 to 1841, Bell served as a congressman
for Tennessee in the U.S. House of
Representatives. He voiced strong opposition to
Andrew Jackson’s program for the deposit of
federal funds into state banks and to the elimination
of the BANK OF THE UNITED STATES.
Bell was secretary of war in 1841 and then
U.S. senator for Tennessee for twelve years
beginning in 1847.
In 1860 Bell was the unsuccessful presidential
candidate of a small party known as the
Constitutional Union Party. He favored a cautious
policy concerning SLAVERY and opposed the South’s secession from the Union until the
battle of Fort Sumter signaled the outbreak of
the Civil War; he then encouraged Tennessee to
join the Confederacy.
Bell died September 10, 1869, in Stewart
County, Tennessee.
