Joel Roberts Poinsett (2 March 1779-12 December 1851) was a member of the US House of Representatives (D-SC 1) from 4 March 1821 to 3 March 1825 (succeeding Charles Pinckney and preceding William Drayton) and United States Secretary of War from 7 March 1837 to 4 March 1841 (succeeding Lewis Cass and preceding John Bell).
Biography[]
Joel Roberts Poinsett was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1779, and he traveled extensively throughout Europe during the Napoleonic Wars, oging as far east as Astrakhan in Russia. He was offered the rank of colonel in the Imperial Russian Army before returning to America due to the outbreak of the War of 1812, and he sreved as a special agent to chile and Argentina from 1810 to 1814 before returning home in 1815. He served in the US House of Representatives from 1821 to 1825, supporting federally-funded internal improvements while opposing Henry Clay's system of tariffs. He served as Ambassador to Mexico from 1825 to 1829 and as Secretary of War from 1837 to 1841, presiding over the Second Seminole War. Poinsett died in 1851.