Joseph Reed Ingersoll Explained

Office1:United States Minister to Great Britain
President1:Millard Fillmore
Term Start1:August 21, 1852
Term End1:August 23, 1853
Predecessor1:Abbott Lawrence
Successor1:James Buchanan
Office2:Chair of the House Judiciary Committee
Term Start2:March 4, 1847
Term End2:March 4, 1849
Predecessor2:George O. Rathbun
Successor2:James Thompson
State3:Pennsylvania
Term Start3:October 12, 1841
Term End3:March 4, 1849
Predecessor3:John Sergeant
Successor3:Joseph R. Chandler
Term Start4:March 4, 1835
Term End4:March 4, 1837
Alongside4:James Harper
Predecessor4:Horace Binney
Successor4:John Sergeant
Birth Name:Joseph Reed Ingersoll
Birth Date:14 June 1786
Birth Place:Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Death Place:Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Party:Whig
Parents:Jared Ingersoll
Elizabeth Pettit
Education:Princeton College
Signature:Appletons' Ingersoll Jared - Joseph Reed signature.png

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. In 1825, Ingersoll was elected to the American Philosophical Society.[1]

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).

Sources

Attribution

Notes and References

  1. Web site: APS Member History. 2021-04-06. search.amphilsoc.org.