Thomas Dickens Arnold (3 May 1798-26 May 1870) was a member of the US House of Representatives (W-TN 2) from 4 March 1831 to 3 March 1833 (succeeding Pryor Lea and preceding Samuel Bunch) and from TN-1 from 4 March 1841 to 3 March 1843 (succeeding William Blount Carter and preceding Andrew Johnson).
Biography[]
Thomas Dickens Arnold was born in Spotsylvania, Virginia in 1798, and he was raised in Knoxville, Tennessee. He served as a US Army drummer boy during the War of 1812, and he came to despise Andrew Jackson for executing a straggler. He became a lawyer in Knoxville in 1822, and he assailed Jackson's character and supported John Quincy Adams' 1828 presidential bid. Arnold went on to serve in the US House of Representatives from 1831 to 1833 and from 1841 to 1843, and he supported banking interests and feuded with Sam Houston, Felix Grundy, and Thomas Amos Rogers Nelson. He rallied support for the Union in East Tennessee during the American Civil War, and he died in 1870.