Background
JONES, George Washington was born on March 15, 1806 in King and Queen County, Virginia, where the elder Jones was a sheriff, United States. Son of James and Jane (Slaughter) Jones.
Businessman congressman politician Laborer
JONES, George Washington was born on March 15, 1806 in King and Queen County, Virginia, where the elder Jones was a sheriff, United States. Son of James and Jane (Slaughter) Jones.
He received a common school and academical education, also apprenticed to the saddler"s trade.
In March 1816, the family moved to Giles County, Tennessee, and the younger Jones was apprenticed to the saddler’s trade. He was a Democrat and a bachelor. He was elected justice of the peace for Lincoln County, Tennessee, and served from 1832 to 1835.
He represented Lincoln County in the Tennessee House from 1835 to 1839 and in the state Senate from 1839 to 1841, during which time he sponsored a bill to abolish imprisonment for debt. From 1840 to 1843, he was the clerk of the Lincoln County court. At one time before the war, he was also president of the Bank of Fayetteville.
As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1843 to 1859, he supported the annexation of Texas and the Compromise of 1850 but did not advocate nullification or secession. In 1860, he supported Stephen A. Douglas for president. He was a late convert to secession, and although he was elected a delegate to the peace convention in Washington in 1861, he did not attend.
Jones served in the first permanent Confederate House from 1862 to 1864 but refused to stand for reelection. A member of the Rules, Ways and Means, and Currency Committees, Jones generally supported the Davis administration. He performed no further duty in the Confederacy.
After the war, he obtained an early pardon from President Johnson and returned to Lincoln County. He was a delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1870 and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Tennessee Hospital for the Insane from 1871 to 1884. Jones held no postwar political office.
"Peculiar institution" of slavery was not only expedient but also ordained by God and upheld in Holy Scripture.
Stands for preserving slavery, states' rights, and political liberty for whites. Every individual state is sovereign, even to the point of secession.
He was a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1835 to 1839. He was elected from Tennessee as a member of the Confederate House of Representatives in the First Confederate Congress and served from February 18, 1862, to February 18, 1864.