WHITE, HUGH LAWSON (1773-1840), American states man, was born in Iredell county (N.C.), Oct. 3o, 1773. In 1787 he crossed the mountains into East Tennessee (then a part of North Carolina) with his father, James White (1737-1815). Hugh became in 1790 secretary to Governor William Blount, and in 1792-93 served under John Sevier against the Creek and Chero kee Indians, and according to the accepted tradition, killed with his own hand the Cherokee chief, Kingfisher. He studied in Phila delphia, and in 1796 he was admitted to the bar at Knoxville. He was a judge of the superior court of Tennessee (1801-07), a State senator (1807-09), and (1809-15) was judge of the newly organized supreme court of errors and appeals of the State. From 1812 to 1827 he was president of the State Bank of Tennessee, the only western bank that in the trying period during and after the War of 1812 did not suspend specie payments. In 1821-24 he was a member of the Spanish Claims Commission and in 1825 succeeded Andrew Jackson in the U.S. Senate, serving until 1840 and being president pro tem. in 5832-34. In the Senate he sup
ported in general the measures of President Jackson, though his opposition to the latter's indiscriminate appointments caused a coolness between himself and Jackson. In 1830, as chairman of the committee on Indian affairs, he secured the passage of a bill looking to the removal of the Indians to land west of the Missis sippi. He was opposed to Van Buren, Jackson's candidate for the presidency in 1836, was himself nominated in several States as an independent candidate, and received the 26 electoral votes of Tennessee and Georgia. About 1838 he became a Whig in poli tics, and when the Democratic legislature of Tennessee instructed him to vote for Van Buren's sub-treasury scheme he objected and resigned (Jan. 1840). His strict principles and his conservatism won for him the sobriquet of "The Cato of the United States Senate." He died at Knoxville, April 1 o, 1840.
See Nancy N. Scott (ed.) A Memoir of Hugh Lawson White (Phila delphia, 1856).