John Sergeant (politician)
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
John Sergeant was a Pennsylvania politican from a family of American politicans, including his father, Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant, his grandsons, John Sergeant Wise and Richard Alsop Wise, and his great-grandson, John Crain Kunkel. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 5, 1779. He was educated in the common schools and at the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia. He graduated from Princeton College in 1795. He became a lawyer and, after being admitted to the bar in 1799, practiced law for fifty years.
He also immediately became a politician. In 1800 he became duputy attorney general for Philadelphia and then commissioner of bankruptcy for Pennsylvania the following year. He was a member of the State house of representatives from 1808 to 1810. He was elected as a Federalist to the United States House of Representatives to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Jonathan Williams. He was re-elected three times, serving from October 10, 1815 to March 3, 1823, and managed to reach the position of chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary. He then retired (albeit temporarily) from Congress.
In 1825, he was president of the Pennsylvania Board of Canal Commissioners. The following year, he was an envoy to the Panama Congress, and then was returned to the U.S. House of Representatives for the term starting March 4, 1827. He failed re-election to the following term and left Congress for the second time on March 3, 1829.
Sergeant was Henry Clay's running mate on the National Republican ticket in 1832 but lost to Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren in a landslide and again retreated from public life. He returned as president of the Pennsylvania constitutional convention in 1838, and then was elected as a Whig to the U.S. House of Representatives. He served this last time from March 4, 1837 until he resigned on September 15, 1841, and again was chair of the Committee on the Judiciary for the 1837 – 1839 term.
Sergeant died in Philadelphia on November 23, 1852 and was buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery.
| Preceded by: Richard Rush | National Republican Party Vice Presidential candidate 1832 (lost) | Succeeded by: (none) |
This article incorporates facts obtained from the public domain Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
