Joseph McMinn - Career

Career

McMinn was a delegate to the 1796 constitutional convention and helped write the state constitution that came into effect when Tennessee was admitted to the Union on June 1, 1796. He was chosen to deliver a copy of the completed document to the federal government in Philadelphia. He served in the Tennessee Senate from 1797 to 1801, and from 1803 to 1811, and was Speaker of the Senate from 1805 to 1811.

In 1815, McMinn ran for governor against four other prominent state politicians: Senator Jesse Wharton, Congressman Robert Weakley, former speaker of the state house Robert Foster, and fellow state constitutional convention delegate Thomas Henderson. Though his opponents assailed him in the press, McMinn won the election with a plurality of over 15,000 of the 37,000 votes cast. He was reelected in 1817, again defeating Foster, and elected to a third term in 1819, defeating Enoch Parsons.

While governor, McMinn concentrated on peaceful relationships with Native Americans in order to ease the way for more white settlement, particularly to the west. The Chickasaw Purchase Treaty, or Western Purchase, in which most of what is now West Tennessee was acquired, was accomplished during his tenure as governor. Fourteen new counties were created. The Calhoun Treaty (or Hiwassee Purchase), in which the United States acquired a portion of southeastern Tennessee, was also negotiated during his tenure.

Following the Panic of 1819, McMinn called a joint session of the state legislature in June 1820, which voted to establish a state bank that would provide low-interest loans. This agitated many of McMinn's fellow East Tennesseans, who had for years been complaining about lack of state appropriations for internal improvements, namely navigational improvements on the upper Tennessee River. The legislature used state-owned lands from the Hiwassee Purchase to provide financial backing for the new bank.

Upon his retirement as governor due to the term limits in the 1796 constitution that he had helped to draft, he returned to his farm in Hawkins County. In 1823, he moved to a farm along the Hiwassee River near Calhoun, Tennessee, and served as an agent for the federal government at the nearby Cherokee Agency until the time of his death.