Pryor Lea

Pryor Lea (August 31, 1794 – September 14, 1879) was an American politician, lawyer, and railroad entrepreneur who represented Tennessee’s 2nd District in the United States House of Representatives from 1827 to 1831 and later served in the Texas Senate. He was born in what is now Grainger County, Tennessee, then part of Knox County, the son of Major Lea and Lavinia (Jarnagin) Lea. In his youth he attended Greeneville College (now Tusculum University), after which he read law. During the Creek War of 1813 he served as a major under General Andrew Jackson, an early association that would shape his later political alignment with the Jacksonian movement.

Following his military service, Lea entered public life in Tennessee. In 1816 he clerked for the Tennessee House of Representatives, gaining experience in legislative procedure. He was admitted to the bar in 1817 and began practicing law in Knoxville, Tennessee. Lea owned slaves, reflecting the social and economic order of the time in the regions where he lived and worked. On October 6, 1818, he married Maria Kennedy; the couple had four children: Abraham, Julia, Centhia, and James Kennedy. After Maria’s death, Lea married Minerva Heard, and following her, he married Mary Perkins. In 1821 he was appointed to the Board of Trustees of East Tennessee College, the forerunner of the University of Tennessee, later serving as the board’s secretary. That same year he was appointed United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, consolidating his position as a prominent attorney and public official in East Tennessee. His brothers included Luke Lea and Albert Miller Lea, both of whom also achieved public distinction.

A supporter of Andrew Jackson and an adherent of the emerging Jackson Party, Lea entered national politics in the late 1820s. In 1827 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee’s 2nd District, defeating outspoken anti-Jacksonite Thomas D. Arnold by a vote of 3,688 to 3,316. He again defeated Arnold in a closely contested race in 1829, winning 4,713 votes to Arnold’s 4,496. Arnold accused Lea of voter fraud, but the House Committee on Elections found no evidence of irregularities, and Lea was permitted to take his seat. He served two terms in Congress, in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Congresses, from March 4, 1827, to March 4, 1831. In 1830 he delivered a speech on a bill to construct a “National Road” from Buffalo, New York, to New Orleans, a major internal improvements proposal of the era. In 1831 he narrowly lost a bid for a third term to Arnold, who defeated him by a margin of 4,935 to 4,702.

During his congressional service, Lea was identified with the Jacksonian wing of the Democratic movement and was known as a strict constructionist and advocate of states’ rights. He generally opposed federal funding for internal improvements, most notably voting against the 1830 “Hemphill Bill,” which would have financed the construction of a road connecting Buffalo and New Orleans. He voted in favor of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and later described the House debate on that measure as “one of the severest struggles that I have ever witnessed in Congress.” Lea frequently clashed with fellow Tennessee congressman David “Davy” Crockett; Crockett, a critic of Jacksonian policies, denounced Lea as a “poltroon, a scoundrel, and a puppy,” and warned that they would fight if they ever crossed paths. As a member of the Jackson Party representing Tennessee, Lea contributed to the legislative process during his two terms in office, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his East Tennessee constituents during a formative period in American political history.

After leaving Congress, Lea increasingly turned his attention to transportation and economic development. During the mid-1830s he became an advocate of railroad construction, which many in East Tennessee viewed as a means to overcome the region’s geographic isolation. He served as secretary of an 1836 convention in Knoxville that mapped out the proposed Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad, an ambitious regional line whose prospects were ultimately undermined by the financial turmoil of the Panic of 1837. That same year, 1836, Lea moved to Jackson, Mississippi, expanding his professional and business interests beyond Tennessee. In the course of his southern migration he was also associated with the early development of higher education in the region, serving as a founding trustee of the University of Mississippi.

In 1846 Lea relocated to Goliad, Texas, where he devoted himself to promoting railroad construction on the southwestern frontier. He became involved with the Aransas Railroad Company, which sought to build a line from the Aransas Bay area inland to Goliad and eventually from Goliad to San Antonio. His brother, Albert Miller Lea, served as chief engineer of the company. After the Civil War, in 1866, the enterprise was reincorporated as the Central Transit Company, which re-mapped its projected line from Goliad to Galveston as part of a broader transcontinental vision. Despite vigorous promotion by Lea, the company’s plans never came to fruition. Both Pryor and Albert Lea were also associated with the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret pro-slavery society that envisioned the creation of a vast slaveholding empire encircling the Gulf of Mexico through the invasion of Mexico and Central America. In 1860 the brothers presented the society’s plans to Texas Governor Sam Houston, who rejected the proposal and ordered the Texas Rangers to break up the Knights’ assemblies.

Lea played a significant role in Texas politics on the eve of and during the Civil War. He was a delegate to the Texas Secession Convention, which met in Austin in January 1861 and adopted the Ordinance of Secession, leading to Texas’s eventual membership in the Confederacy. Later that year he was elected to the Texas Senate, in which he served a single term. During the war he worked with the Goliad Aid Association, an organization that provided relief to indigent families affected by the conflict, and he served as a commissioner with the Aransas Salt Works, an important local resource in wartime Texas. His activities reflected both his longstanding commitment to states’ rights and his engagement with the economic and social needs of his adopted community.

In the immediate postwar period, Lea continued to hold public office in Texas. In 1866 Governor James W. Throckmorton appointed him state superintendent of public instruction, placing him at the head of the state’s educational administration during the early Reconstruction era. His tenure was short-lived, as he was removed from the position for his opposition to Reconstruction policies. In 1875 the voters of Goliad County elected Lea as their delegate to the Texas Constitutional Convention, but he declined to serve, citing his “extreme age.” Pryor Lea died in Goliad on September 14, 1879, at the age of 85 years and 14 days, and was interred in Oak Hill Cemetery in Goliad.