John MacPherson Berrien Papers, 1778-1938

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Summary

Creator:
Berrien, John MacPherson, 1781-1856.
Abstract:

Lawyer, U.S. senator from Georgia, and U.S. attorney general.

Includes legal papers relative to the Florida-Georgia boundary controversy, 1851-1856; financial papers of a rice plantation and farm near Savannah and Clarksville, Ga., respectively; and correspondence (1830-1852) with men prominent in the Jackson administration and in Georgia politics. Also includes papers (1778-1786) relating to the military service during the Revolution of Berrien's father, John Berrien; Civil War letters from Robert Falligant in Virginia and Phil Falligant in Georgia; letter books; a receipt book; and a ledger. Correspondents include John Quincy Adams, George Edmund Badger, Thomas Hart Benton, Francis Preston Blair, Henry Clay, Howell Cobb, George W. Crawford, Hamilton Fish, Richard W. Habersham, James Hamilton Junior, S. D. Ingram, Andrew Jackson, Alexander H. Stephens, George M. Troup, John Tyler, Daniel Webster, Thurlow Weed, and Richard Henry Wilde.

Extent:
550 items (2.0 linear feet)
Language:
Materials in English
Library Catalog Link:
View UNC library catalog record for this item

Background

Biographical / historical:

John MacPherson Berrien was born at Rockingham, N.J., on 23 August 1781, but grew up in Savannah, Ga., after his father, John Berrien, a major in the Continental Army, acquired a number of plantations in Georgia. Berrien attended preparatory school in New York and was graduated from Princeton in 1796. He studied law in the office of Joseph Clay and, after he was admitted to the bar, began to practice in Georgia in 1799. He was elected solicitor of the eastern circuit in 1809 and judge of that same circuit in 1810-1821. He was in the state Senate, 1822-1823, and was elected to the United States Senate as a Democrat in 1824. He served there until 1829 when he accepted appointment as Attorney General under Andrew Jackson. He resigned from Jackson's cabinet on 22 June 1831, as a consequence of the Eaton affair.

Berrien was again elected to the United States Senate as a Whig in 1841. He was a delegate from Georgia to the 1844 Whig National Convention in Baltimore. In May 1845, he resigned his seat in the Senate because of his dissatisfaction with politics in Georgia. He apparently intended to accept an appointment on the Georgia Supreme Court, but his Whig friends in Georgia promptly re-elected him to the Senate seat he had vacated. He served from November 1845 to March 1847, when he was reelected. He resigned from the Senate again in 1852 after the election of Robert Augustus Toombs, then a member of the Constitutional Union Party, to that seat. Berrien had withdrawn from the Whig Party in 1850 and had joined the American or Know-Nothing Party. He presided over the Georgia American Party convention in December 1855 shortly before his death on 1 January 1856.

Scope and content:

The John MacPherson Berrien collection includes legal papers relative to the Florida-Georgia boundary controversy, 1851-1856; financial papers of a rice plantation and farm near Savannah and Clarksville, Ga., respectively; and correspondence (1830-1852) with men prominent in the Jackson administration and in Georgia politics. Also includes papers (1778-1786) relating to the military service during the Revolution of Berrien's father, John Berrien; Civil War letters from Robert Falligant in Virginia and Phil Falligant in Georgia; letter books; a receipt book; and a ledger. Correspondents include John Quincy Adams, George Edmund Badger, Thomas Hart Benton, Francis Preston Blair, Henry Clay, Howell Cobb, George W. Crawford, Hamilton Fish, Richard W. Habersham, James Hamilton Junior, S. D. Ingram, Andrew Jackson, Alexander H. Stephens, George M. Troup, John Tyler, Daniel Webster, Thurlow Weed, and Richard Henry Wilde.

Acquisition information:

Received from Cecil B. and Eugenia A. Burroughs, of Savannah, Ga., in May 1945, and purchased from Kenneth W. Rendell, Inc., of Newton, Mass., in August 1974.

Processing information:

Processed by: Suzanne Ruffing, July 1996

Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008

Updated by: Nancy Kaiser, 2020

This collection was processed with support from the Randleigh Foundation Trust.

Sensitive materials statement:

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Access and use

Restrictions to access:

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to use:

Retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], in the John MacPherson Berrien Papers #63, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Location of this collection:
Louis Round Wilson Library
200 South Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27515
Contact:
(919) 962-3765
wilsonlibrary@unc.edu