Background
Joseph Duncan was born on February 22, 1794 at Paris, Kentucky, United States. He was the son of Major Joseph Duncan, of the United States army, and Anna Maria (McLaughlin) Duncan, both of whom had removed to Kentucky from Virginia.
Joseph Duncan was born on February 22, 1794 at Paris, Kentucky, United States. He was the son of Major Joseph Duncan, of the United States army, and Anna Maria (McLaughlin) Duncan, both of whom had removed to Kentucky from Virginia.
Duncan had little formal schooling and this lack may have been responsible for the keen interest he later displayed in the cause of popular education.
Upon the outbreak of the War of 1812 Duncan secured an ensign’s commission and was assigned to the 17th United States Infantry. He saw service in the frontier campaigns of the war and participated in the defense of Fort Stephenson on August 2, 1813. In 1818, he removed from Kentucky to Illinois. In the course of time he acquired tracts of land in various parts of the state.
As early as 1823, however, he was commissioned major-general of Illinois militia, and later, during the Black Hawk War, served for a time as brigadier-general of the state volunteer forces.
In 1826, he was elected congressman from Illinois, and served from March 1827 until 1834.
He was governor of Illinois from 1834 to 1838, and strongly supported the construction of the Illinois and Michigan canal, though he ultimately assumed the position that, in general, internal improvements within the state should be left to private initiative.
In 1842, four years after his retirement, he ran for governor a second time, being nominated by the Whigs, but was decisively defeated, and his public career was ended.
As a member of Congress he had the social and political outlook of the frontiersman. He was keenly interested in frontier defense; he advocated the immediate survey and sale of public lands in Illinois and the region to the northward, and favored the distribution among the states of the proceeds of public land sales, the money to be used for internal improvements and education.
As time went on, he found himself in marked opposition to President Jackson on various issues, including the bank, internal improvements, and appointments to office. Lack of sympathy with the Jackson administration may have been in part responsible for his decision to return to the field of state politics. In his successful campaign for the governorship in 1834, he was supported by most of the Whigs, though party lines were not yet clearly drawn and his position was still a trifle ambiguous.
On May 13, 1828 Duncan married Elizabeth Caldwell Smith of New York City.