Background
George Wallace Jones was born on April 12, 1804, in Vincennes, Indiana, United States; the son of John Rice Jones and Mary Barger. As a young man, he spent much time in such slave states as Missouri.
George Jones
300 N Broadway, Lexington, KY 40508, USA
In 1825 George graduated from Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, United States.
George W. Jones in his elder years.
300 N Broadway, Lexington, KY 40508, USA
In 1825 George graduated from Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, United States.
entrepreneur judge attorney legislator politician
George Wallace Jones was born on April 12, 1804, in Vincennes, Indiana, United States; the son of John Rice Jones and Mary Barger. As a young man, he spent much time in such slave states as Missouri.
Jones' early education was obtained in Saint Louis. In 1825 he graduated from Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, United States. While in college he was the protege of Henry Clay and formed lasting friendships with Jefferson Davis and other Southerners who greatly influenced his later career.
In 1825, George won admittance to the bar. In his early career, he lived in the Wisconsin area of Michigan Territory, developing lead mines and other business interests near Sinsinawa Mound. During the Black Hawk War of 1832, he served as an aide to General Henry Dodge, father to Augustus C. Dodge, another Iowa senator. Together, Dodge and Jones later became notorious for supporting proslavery initiatives while representing Iowa.
In 1836 Jones settled in Dubuque, Iowa, United States. Jones quickly became a key political power broker in predominantly Democratic Dubuque. Thanks to fortunate political connections, he won a series of advantageous government appointments, including a surveyor of public lands for Wisconsin and Iowa from 1840 to 1848. From 1835 to 1839 he served as territorial delegate first for Michigan and then for Wisconsin. In that role, he was instrumental in crafting territorial status for both Wisconsin and Iowa. While in Washington, he almost ended his political career in 1838 by serving as a second in the infamous duel between William J. Graves and Jonathan Cilley.
In 1848 Iowa’s Democratic legislature elected Jones one of the state’s first U.S. senators. As a senator, his service to Iowa came primarily in terms of railroad development. He helped to bring the Illinois Central to Dubuque and then helped win federal land grants for several railroad lines to cross Iowa from east to west. Always interested in land development deals, Jones thus served to promote Iowa’s emergence as a modern state.
In other respects, Senator Jones failed to represent Iowa’s emerging politics. The state’s early Southern orientation eventually gave way to a growing migration from Northern states and from Europe. As a Democratic politician with ties to Southern leaders, Jones earned the dubious status as a “doughface,” a free-state leader who supported proslavery positions. Even while living in Iowa, Jones had owned several slaves. In 1850 he supported the passage of the harsh new Fugitive Slave Act, which helped owners reclaim their escaped slaves. Then, in 1854, along with Senator Dodge, Jones supported the Kansas- Nebraska Act, which reopened the slavery controversy in the territory on Iowa’s western border. Iowa’s Democratic senators sup-ported such territorial organization to promote further western development and to benefit their party, but the resulting sectional debate over slavery’s expansion backfired for them. In this respect, both Jones and Dodge indirectly and inadvertently contributed to the rise of the Republican Party in their state, a development that ultimately doomed their careers.
Jones had secured his reelection to the Senate in 1852, but was unable to withstand the growing antislavery sentiment in Iowa and failed in his bid for reelection in 1858. By that time, he had further antagonized Northern interests by supporting the notorious Lecompton Constitution, a failed proposal that would have made Kansas a slave state. Jones remained loyal to the Buchanan administration, which rewarded him with another political appointment. At that point in his career, he opposed the leadership of fellow midwestern Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois. In the heated presidential campaign of 1860, he favored the proslavery candidacy of Kentucky’s John C. Breckinridge. Years later Jones would be one of the few Northerners to attend the funeral of his old friend Jefferson Davis.
Aside from his doughface politics, Jones proved an unusual antebellum political leader in another way. Jones’s regard for the Catholic religion helped to win him an appointment in 1859 as an American minister to New Granada, today’s Colombia. However, during that period his letters of support for the new president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, brought an order of arrest by Secretary of State William Seward. Jones did not stand trial, and after 64 days in detention, President Abraham Lincoln ordered his release. Thus Jones exemplifies Lincoln’s policy of detaining potential subversives until the initial crisis passed. Jones’s unpopular stances forced him into a long political retirement. He returned to his business interests and relative obscurity until his death in Dubuque at age 92. He was buried in that city’s Mount Olivet Cemetery.
George Jones's chief achievement came in 1848 when he was elected as one of the first Senators from Iowa and served until 1859. Prior to that, Jones became the first Congressional delegate from the Territory of Wisconsin, which was formed from a portion of the Michigan Territory. In that position, he successfully persuaded voting members to support the designation of areas of Wisconsin Territory west of the Mississippi River as Iowa Territory.
Jones was also appointed as Surveyor-General of the Wisconsin and Iowa Territories, where he served, most likely in Dubuque, in Iowa Territory, from early 1840 until 1841. In 1845 he was reappointed Surveyor-General of Iowa Territory, one year before the southeastern eastern area of Iowa Territory became the State of Iowa. Jones County, Iowa, was named in his honor.
Jones was a member of the Catholic faith. He was baptized by Bishop John Hughes of New York, who later became the first archbishop of New York.
As a Democrat in politics and a Southerner in all his instincts, Jones reflected the character of Iowa which was Southern in population and sympathies down to 1853-1854.
George Wallace Jones was married Marie Josephine Gregoire Jone, on January 7, 1829. The couple had five children.
Henry was an American attorney and statesman, who represented Kentucky in both the United States Senate.
Jefferson was an American politician, who served as the only President of the Confederate States, from 1861 to 1865.
