William Blount (26 March 1749 – 21 March 1800) was a US Senator from Tennessee from 2 August 1796 to 8 July 1797, preceding Joseph Anderson. He was a member of the Democratic-Republican Party.
Biography[]
William Blount was born in Windsor, North Carolina in 1749 to a prominent family, and he served as a paymaster during the American Revolutionary War. In 1781, he was elected to the North Carolina legislature, and he served in the Continental Congress in 1782 and 1786. Blount was a member of the North Carolina delegation to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, and he led efforts in North Carolina to ratify the US Constitution in 1789. Blount pushed efforts to open the frontier to settlement, and he served as Governor of the Southwest Territory from 1790 to 1796. He went on to serve as one of Tennessee's inaugural US Senators, but he conspired with Great Britain to seize Spanish Louisiana in hopes of boosting western land prices, forcing him to resign in 1797. However, he remained popular in Tennessee, and he served in the State Senate during the last years of his life.