Alexander Hamilton Jones

          Alexander Hamilton Jones was born on July 21st, 1822, in Asheville, Buncombe County, North Carolina.  During his youth Jones read about the lives of famous Americans and the history of the country.  After his early schooling he attended Emory and Henry College.  This patriotic reading would lead him “to love the Union next to my God.”  In 1843 he was married to Sarah D. Brittain and became a farmer.  The couple eventually had five children:  Charlotte, Julia, Hester, Thadeus, and Otto.  Jones participated in the War with Mexico and afterwards developed rheumatism.  Because of this his doctor told him to give up farming and Jones had to begin a search for a new profession. 

In 1851 he and his family moved to Hendersonville and Jones began life as a merchant.  He made decent money at this and in 1860 he entered into politics.  While acting as administrator to the Hendersonville Times Jones was unexpectedly asked to be editor.  While doing so he clearly showed his support for the Whig political party and condemned the idea of succession from the Union.  In 1861 he actively campaigned against calling a convention to discuss the possibility of leaving the Union.  He was considered as a potential representative to the convention, but was not chosen.

            During the early years of the Civil War Jones was part of a secret Union League, where all the members vowed to never fight against the Union.  Jones helped the cause by writing various articles under false names that called the Confederates traitors and declared that the war was a rich man’s cause and a poor man’s fight.  In 1862 he made an unsuccessful campaign to be elected to the state legislature as a Unionist.

            By 1863 Confederate conscription officers were in North Carolina forcing men to join in the army, and the Unionists in the state began to form groups to protect themselves.  Jones felt the need to do more and so in August he left for eastern Tennessee to join the Union Army.  Once there he reported to Generals Burnside and Carter and received permission to recruit a regiment of Unionist North Carolinians.  Just as he crossed back into east Tennessee he was captured by Confederate troops.  Under their power he was imprisoned at Asheville, Camp Vance, Camp Holmes, and in Libby prison in Richmond.  Eventually, determined to get free, Jones volunteered to join the Confederate army, but in November 1864 he escaped from prison without ever fighting for the Confederacy.  Jones made it to Maryland and reported back to the Union army.  They sent him to Knoxville in the March of 1865, and the war ended one month later.  He is not listed in either the Union or Confederate army records.

After the end of the Civil War he returned home to Hendersonville and became active in the Reconstruction.  He worked for the return to peace and also for the legal equality of the newly freed slaves.  Jones was elected to the State Constitutional convention of 1865, and there the convention abolished slavery, declared the order of succession null and void, and repudiated the state’s Confederate debt.  The same year he was elected to the national Congress as a Republican.  Sadly, since North Carolina at that time was still in chaos and did not have an established civil government, Jones was not received into Congress.  He was elected to the next two Congresses and served from July 20th, 1868 to March 3rd, 1871.  While there he served on the Committees on Revolutionary Pensions, Revolutionary Claims, and Public Expenditures.  He ran again the next year but was defeated.

Back in Hendersonville Jones continued to be active in local politics.  In 1866 he began the Henderson Pioneer, a newspaper that supported the Union and the idea of the common man while criticizing Governor Worth and the old slaveholding class.  Jones spoke out for internal improvements, such as railroads.  His newspaper also supported the Fourteenth Amendment and spoke out for legal and political equality for blacks.  By the year 1867 he and his newspaper completely supported the Republican viewpoint of Reconstruction and Jones became one the founding members of North Carolina’s Union League.  In July the same year he moved the newspaper to Asheville and continued to be its editor until he entered into politics in 1868.

Jones continued to live in Washington D.C. until 1876 when he moved to Maryland.  In 1884 he moved to Asheville, in 1890 to Oklahoma, and in 1897 to Long Beach California where he died on January 29th, 1901, and was buried in Signal Hill Cemetery.   

 
"...was born in Buncombe county July 21, 1822, was educated at Emory and Henry College; he was a merchant, a strong Union man during the Civil War, and in 1863 joined the Union Army and was captured in East Tennessee while raising a regiment and imprisoned at Asheville and at Camp Vance below Morganton, and at Camp Holmes and at Libby Prison at Richmond, Virginia.  He made his escape Nov. 14, 1864, and joined the Union Army at Cumberland, Maryland. After the war he returned to Hendersonville and was elected a delegate to the State Convention to frame a new constitution in 1865.  He was elected a representative to the 39th Congress but was refused a seat.  He was reelected to the 40th Congress and was admitted July 6, 1868.  He was reelected to the 41st Congress and made his home in Washington, D.C., till 1876, and in Maryland till 1884, when he came to Asheville where he resided till 1890, going thence to Oklahoma, where he remained till 1897, when he moved to Long Beach, California, where he died Jan. 19, 1901...His widow, Sarah Brittain Jones, of Mills river, whom he married in 1843, died in January 1913. (1914. Arthur, John P. Western North Carolina, A History, pp. 645, 646.)

 

Bibliography

Arthur, John Preston.  Western North Carolina:  A History 1730-1913.  Raleigh, NC:  Edwards & Broughton Printing Company, 1914.

Fiske, John, and Wilson, James Grant, editors.  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography.  New York:  D. Appleton & Co., 1888-1889.  Reprint.  Detroit:  Gale Research, 1968.

Lanman, Charles.  Biographical Annals of the Civil Government of the United States.  During its first century; from original and official sources.  Washington, DC:  James Anglim, 1876.  Reprint.  Detroit:  Gale Research, 1976.

Powell, William S., ed.  Dictionary of North Carolina Biography.  Chapel Hill, NC:  University of North Carolina Press, 1979.