Charles Ready

Charles Ready (December 22, 1802 – June 4, 1878) was an American politician, lawyer, and three-term member of the United States House of Representatives from Tennessee’s 5th congressional district. Serving in Congress during a turbulent period in the decade before the Civil War, he participated in the national legislative process first as a Whig and later as a member of the American Party, representing the interests of his Tennessee constituents in the Thirty-third, Thirty-fourth, and Thirty-fifth Congresses.

Ready was born on December 22, 1802, in Readyville in Rutherford County, Tennessee, a community that later became part of Cannon County. He was raised in the region and attended the common schools available in the area. Pursuing higher education in the state, he enrolled at Greeneville College in Greeneville, Tennessee, from which he graduated. His early life in a rural Tennessee community and his formal education together provided the foundation for his later legal and political career.

After completing his studies, Ready read law and was admitted to the bar in 1825. He commenced the practice of law in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, an important political and commercial center in Middle Tennessee. On May 19, 1825, he married Martha Alvoid Strong in Knoxville, Tennessee. The couple had several children, including Charles, Aaron, Mary Emma, Horace, Martha (known as “Mattie”), (Cora) Alice, and Ella Love. Their daughter Martha (1840–1887) later married Confederate Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan as his second wife; of their two daughters, only one survived to adulthood and died soon after marriage. Following Morgan’s death, Martha married William Henry Williamson (1828–1887) on January 31, 1873, in Rutherford County, Tennessee, and they had five children: William Henry Williamson (born 1873), who married Mary Ready Weaver; Martha Ready Williamson (born 1874), who married Winstead P. Bone; Charles Ready Williamson (born 1876); Alice Martin Williamson (born 1878), who married Amzi W. Hooker; and Nannie Williamson (1881–1883).

Ready’s public career began at the state level. In 1835 he was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives, representing Rutherford County alongside Granville Smith Crockett. His service in the state legislature introduced him to the broader political issues of Tennessee and the nation during the Jacksonian and post-Jacksonian eras, and it established him as a figure in Whig politics in Middle Tennessee. After his term in the state House, he returned to his law practice in Murfreesboro while remaining active in public affairs and party politics.

Ready entered national politics in the early 1850s. He was elected as a Whig to the Thirty-third Congress and subsequently re-elected as a member of the American Party, also known as the Know Nothing Party, to the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Congresses. He represented Tennessee’s 5th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1853, to March 3, 1859. As a member of the American Party representing Tennessee, Ready contributed to the legislative process during three terms in office. His congressional service occurred during a significant period in American history marked by sectional conflict, debates over slavery and territorial expansion, and the realignment of national political parties. Within this context, he participated in the democratic process in Washington and worked to represent the interests and concerns of his Middle Tennessee constituents. In 1858 he was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election to the Thirty-sixth Congress.

Following his departure from Congress in March 1859, Ready resumed the practice of law in Murfreesboro. He lived through the Civil War and Reconstruction years in a region heavily affected by military campaigns and political upheaval, although he did not again hold high public office. He continued his professional and family life in Murfreesboro until his death there on June 4, 1878. Charles Ready was interred in Evergreen Cemetery in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, closing a long life that had spanned the early national period, the rise and fall of the Whig and American Parties, and the profound transformations of the mid-nineteenth-century United States.