Hugh Lawson White

Hugh Lawson White ( born October 30, 1773 in Iredell County, North Carolina, † April 10, 1840 in Knoxville, Tennessee ) was an American politician. He was from 1825 until his resignation in 1840 representatives of Tennessee in the United States Senate. He was also a candidate of the Whig Party United States for the presidency in 1836.

White had fought in Tennessee in the years 1792-1793 in the war against Indian tribes. Subsequently, he studied in Philadelphia and Lancaster, where he earned a law degree. He started in 1796 as an attorney practicing in Knoxville. In 1801 he was appointed as a judge, 1808, he was district attorney. From 1807 to 1809 and again from 1817 to 1825 he sat in the Senate from Tennessee. 1809-1815 it belonged to the Tennessee Supreme Court to. He was later also worked as a banker and 1812-1827 President of the Bank of Tennessee. In 1825 he was the Democratic- Republican Party ( Jacksonians ) elected to the Senate of the United States and confirmed in 1829 in his mandate. In 1835 he was elected to the Senate again for the Democratic Party, temporarily he was vice-president of the Senate. 1829 - 1830 he wrote as a senator the Indian Removal Act, a law by which the President was able to relocate the Indian tribes of the east in areas west of the Mississippi, which had the Trail of Tears result. His independent spirit and his strict honesty procured White nicknamed " The Cato the United States."

First he was a strong supporter of President Jackson. Their relationship broke up after the legislature of Tennessee White 1835 suggested as a presidential candidate. He was thus one of the four candidates of established until 1833, yet little organized Whig Party, which was then held together almost exclusively by the opposition to Jackson. In the elections in 1836, he won more than 146,000 votes and was next to Tennessee, where he scored a landslide victory, bring Georgia behind. However, Jackson's Vice vormaliger Martin Van Buren of the Democratic Party could easily decide for the election against the splintered Whig opposition.

Senator White resigned on 13 January 1840. The Parliament of Tennessee had asked him to vote for a financial law, which he perceived as fundamentally flawed because of his own experiences as a banker. Alexander O. Anderson replaced him in the Senate on February 26, 1840. White died a few weeks after his resignation.

White County, Arkansas was named in his honor.