Meredith Poindexter Gentry

Meredith Poindexter Gentry (September 15, 1809 – November 2, 1866) was an American politician who represented Tennessee’s eighth and seventh districts in the United States House of Representatives. He was born in Rockingham County, North Carolina, the son of Watson and Theodosia Poindexter Gentry. In 1813 he moved with his parents to Williamson County, Tennessee, where he was raised on the early Tennessee frontier. He completed preparatory studies and then read law, following the customary path of legal apprenticeship of the period. After his admission to the bar, he commenced the practice of law in Franklin, Tennessee, establishing himself as a member of the state’s legal and political community. Like many Southern politicians of his era, Gentry was a slave owner; he owned slaves at a time when 40 out of 106 members of Congress did so.

Gentry’s early public career began in state politics. He was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives, serving from 1835 to 1839. During these years he developed a reputation as an able Whig legislator and orator, aligning himself with the Whig Party’s support for internal improvements and a more active national economic policy. His growing prominence in state affairs positioned him for election to national office and introduced him to the broader issues of sectional tension and economic development that would shape his later congressional service.

In 1839 Gentry entered the United States House of Representatives as a member of the Whig Party. He was elected to the Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh Congresses from Tennessee’s eighth congressional district and served from March 4, 1839, to March 3, 1843. During these first two terms he participated in the legislative process at a time of intense partisan conflict between Whigs and Democrats over banking, tariffs, and federal authority. Because of the death of his wife during this period, he declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1842, temporarily stepping back from national politics while maintaining his standing as a leading Whig in Tennessee.

After the reduction and reapportionment of Tennessee’s congressional districts, Gentry returned to Congress as the representative of the seventh district. He was elected as a Whig to the Twenty-ninth and the three succeeding Congresses and served four consecutive terms from March 4, 1845, to March 3, 1853. His six terms in the House, spanning service in both the eighth and seventh districts, coincided with a significant period in American history marked by the Mexican–American War, the debate over the expansion of slavery, and the Compromise of 1850. During the Thirtieth Congress he served as chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Indian Affairs, a position that placed him at the center of federal policy toward Native American nations in the West and South. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1852, concluding his long tenure in the national legislature after having contributed to the legislative process over six terms and representing the interests of his Tennessee constituents during a time of growing sectional strain.

Following his departure from Congress, Gentry sought higher office in Tennessee. In 1855 he was the Whig candidate for governor, running against Democrat Andrew Johnson, who would later become President of the United States. The election was closely contested: Johnson received 67,499 votes, while Gentry received 65,342, leaving Johnson with a majority of 2,157 votes. After this defeat, Gentry retired from active political life and returned to his plantation in Tennessee, where he lived in relative seclusion from 1855 until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861.

With the secession of the Southern states and the formation of the Confederacy, Gentry reentered public life on the Confederate side. He served in the Confederate States Congress during the American Civil War. The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress lists him as a member of the Confederate House of Representatives during both the First and Second Confederate Congresses, but other authorities, including the Journal of the Confederate Congress and the Biographical Directory of the Tennessee General Assembly, indicate that his service was limited to the First Confederate Congress and only its first two sessions. Those records show that he took his seat on March 17, 1862, and that his last recorded appearance occurred near the close of the second session, around October 13, 1862. The Tennessee legislative biographical directory notes that he may not have attended the third and fourth sessions of the First Confederate Congress and that he was not a member of the Second Confederate Congress. In 1864, while in Middle Tennessee, he was captured by Union forces. Suffering from ill health, he requested that President Abraham Lincoln allow him to be sent south; the request was granted, and he was returned to Confederate territory.

Gentry’s personal life reflected both the family structures and the social order of the antebellum South. He first married Emily Saunders, with whom he had two daughters, Mary and Emily. After her death, which influenced his decision not to seek renomination to Congress in 1842, he later married Caledonia Brown; they had two sons, Albert and Charles. His family connections in Tennessee, including ties by marriage to prominent local families, reinforced his status within the state’s political and social elite.

Meredith Poindexter Gentry died in Nashville, Tennessee, on November 2, 1866, at Clover Bottom, the home of his sister-in-law Mary Ann Hoggatt. He was 57 years and 48 days old at the time of his death. He was interred at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nashville, a burial place for many of the city’s leading nineteenth-century figures. His career, spanning service in the Tennessee House of Representatives, six terms in the United States House of Representatives as a Whig from Tennessee’s eighth and seventh districts, a gubernatorial campaign, and a controversial role in the Confederate Congress, reflected the turbulent political transformations of the United States in the decades before and during the Civil War.