George Washington Jones (Tennessee politician)

George Washington Jones (March 15, 1806 – November 14, 1884) was an American politician who represented Tennessee's fifth district in the United States House of Representatives. He served in the Confederate States Congress during the American Civil War.

Biography

Jones was born in King and Queen County, Virginia, on March 15, 1806. He moved to Tennessee with his parents, who settled in Fayetteville. He received a common school and academical education, also apprenticed to the saddler's trade.

Career

Jones was a justice of the peace from 1832 to 1835. He was a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1835 to 1839. He served in the Tennessee Senate from 1839 to 1841. He was Clerk of Lincoln County Court from 1840 to 1843.

Elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-eighth and to the seven succeeding Congresses, Jones served in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1843 to March 3, 1853 for the fifth district and from March 4, 1853 to March 4, 1859 for the sixth district. During the Thirty-first Congress and the Thirty-second Congresses he was chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Rules, and during the Thirty-fifth Congress he was chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Roads and Canals. Jones represented the U.S. Congress at the swearing in of the terminally ill, newly elected Vice-President Willam Rufus deVane King in Matanzas, Cuba.

With war impending, Jones was a delegate to the Peace Convention of 1861 held in Washington, D.C., in an effort to devise means to prevent the conflict, but he did not attend. 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. He was not a candidate for re-election. Friend and former political ally President Andrew Johnson pardoned Jones for his Civil War activities in June 1865.

Jones was a delegate to the State constitutional convention in 1870. Jones strongly opposed the Poll Tax provision of the 1870 Tennessee Constitution.

Death

Jones died in Fayetteville, Tennessee, on November 14, 1884 (age 78 years, 244 days). He is interred at Rose Hill Cemetery.