Political Career
Sevier was elected to the Territorial House of Representatives and served from 1823 to 1827; he was elected as Speaker of that body in 1827.
He was elected as a Delegate to the Twentieth US Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Henry Wharton Conway, killed as a result of a duel with a former friend. Sevier was reelected and served as delegate in three successive congresses from 1828 to 1836, when Arkansas was admitted to the Union. Sevier is known as the "Father of Arkansas Statehood".
In 1836 Sevier was elected as the first member of the United States Senate from Arkansas. He was reelected in 1837 and 1843. He resigned from office in 1848. During the twenty-ninth Congress, he was allowed to hold the seat of President pro tem of the Senate for a day, though he was not elected to that post. During his tenure, he served as chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs and was a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations.
In 1848 Sevier and Nathan Clifford, the Attorney General of the United States, were appointed ambassadors to Mexico by President James K. Polk to negotiate the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the end of the Mexican-American War.
After completing this project, Ambrose Hundley Sevier died the last day of that year on his plantation in Pulaski County, Arkansas. He was buried in the historic Mount Holly Cemetery. The State of Arkansas erected a monument in the cemetery in his honor.
Sevier was part of the powerful "Family" of Democratic politicians in Arkansas, who included his first cousins: Representative Henry Wharton Conway, Governor James Sevier Conway, and Governor Elias Nelson Conway; brother-in-law Senator Robert Ward Johnson, and father-in-law Governor Thomas James Churchill.
Read more about this topic: Ambrose Hundley Sevier
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