Background
William Hendricks was born on November 12, 1782 in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of Abraham and Ann (Jamison) Hendricks.
William Hendricks was born on November 12, 1782 in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of Abraham and Ann (Jamison) Hendricks.
Hendricks received an elementary education in the common schools at Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Jefferson (later Washington and Jefferson) College in 1810.
In early manhood he moved to Cincinnati where he taught school and studied law, and in 1813 he removed to Madison, Ind. , while that state was still a territory.
Hendricks joined with a partner in publishing the Western Eagle and in the same year he was elected to the territorial legislature. Reëlected in 1814, he was chosen speaker of the Assembly. He was also made territorial printer. In 1816, when the territorial convention met at Corydon to draw a constitution for the new state, Hendricks became secretary of the convention although he was not a delegate.
In the first election under the constitution in August 1816 he was elected to Congress and was reelected in 1818 and 1820.
In 1822 Hendricks was elected governor of Indiana without opposition, receiving nearly all the votes that were cast. He resigned from Congress to accept the governorship, but in 1825 he was elected to the United States Senate and resigned the governorship to take his seat there. In December 1830, he was elected to a second term in the Senate.
During his twelve years of senatorial service he was a member of the committee on roads and canals, acting as chairman from 1830 to 1837.
In 1837 Hendricks retired from public life as the result of Whig triumphs in his state. During his nearly twenty years of service in Congress he had followed the habit of sending an annual letter, or report, to his constituents, giving an account of his stewardship and setting forth the leading topics and features of the session just closed.
On May 16, 1850, while he was overseeing the construction of his family vault, he suddenly became ill. He died the same day and was buried in the Fairmount Cemetery.
Hendricks favored placing an anti-slavery restriction on Missouri in the controversy over the admission of that state. He denounced slavery as "morally wrong, " and "an epidemic in the body politic. "
Contending that Congress had power to impose conditions on a territory, he held that the people of a territory "are not possessed of sovereign State powers when making a constitution, nor when it is made, until Congress shall admit them to the Union".
Although he was a Jackson Democrat he was a firm believer in internal improvements and favored the building of roads and canals in all parts of the country. He sought to have the public lands ceded to the states in which they lay, since otherwise he saw no escape from federal appropriations. There was, he contended, no equality between the old states and the new so long as the old states owned their lands while the new states did not. He particularly insisted that the Western states should have title to the public lands within their borders.
In financial matters he stood for a central national bank, with its seat in Washington, empowered to establish branches in the states, but only by the consent of the states themselves.
On May 19, 1816, Hendricks married Ann P. Paul. Vice-President Thomas A. Hendricks was his nephew.