| Alexander O. Anderson |
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The son of longtime U.S. Senator Joseph Anderson , he was born at his father's home, "Soldier's Rest", in Jefferson County, Tennessee . As a youth he graduated from Washington College in Greeneville, Tennessee . He volunteered for service in the War Of 1812 and fought under Andrew Jackson in the famous Battle Of New Orleans in 1814 . Later in that year he was admitted to the Bar , and began a practice in Dandridge, Tennessee . Afterwards he moved to Knoxville , and then served as the superintendent of the United States Land Office in Alabama in 1836 . He was an agent in the Indian Removal of 1838 from Alabama and Florida . He was elected to the United States Senate by the Tennessee General Assembly to the vacancy caused by the resignation of Senator Hugh L. White , serving in that body from February 26 , 1840 to March 3 , 1841 , when the term expired. Anderson did not stand for reelection to the seat; it was to remain vacant for a period when a group of Tennessee Democratic legislators called the "Immortal Thirteen" refused to meet and give a qurorum sufficient to allow the election of a successor, apparently preferring no representation to that by a member of the other party ( Whigs ). Anderson was a leader of an overland company going to California in 1849 . He served in the California State Senate in 1850 and 1851 , and then as a Judge on the California Supreme Court from 1851 to 1853 before returning to Tennessee. He later practiced law in Washington, D.C. , appearing before both the United States Court Of Claims and the Supreme Court Of The United States . During the American Civil War he returned to Alabama, practicing law in Mobile and Camden . Again returning to Tennessee, he died in Knoxville and is buried in the Old Gray Cemetery. |
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