Born in the village of
Tongue,
Sutherland on the north coast of
Scotland, Campbell immigrated as a young boy to
North Carolina in 1772 with his parents. George was the youngest son of Dr. Archibald Campbell and Elizabeth Mackay Matheson Campbell, who settled on Crooked Creek in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. After teaching school in his early 20's, he entered the junior class at the College of New Jersey (which is now
Princeton University) in 1792. He was admitted to the
bar in North Carolina and began practicing in
Knoxville, Tennessee in 1798.
U.S. House Campbell was elected to the
United States House of Representatives as the Representative from
Tennessee's at-large congressional district in 1803. He served in the House from 1805 to 1809, in the
8th,
9th, and
10th Congresses. During the 10th Congress, he was the chairman of the
Ways and Means Committee. He was also one of the
House managers appointed in 1804 to prosecute the case in the
impeachment trial of
John Pickering, judge of the
United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire, and, later that year, he was also appointed a House manager for
the impeachment trial of
Samuel Chase,
associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He left Congress in 1809 to become judge of the
Tennessee Supreme Court, serving until 1811. On leaving Congress he moved his residence from Knoxville to Nashville, Tennessee. In July 1812 he married Harriet Stoddert (1788-1848) in Prince George's County, Maryland. Harriet was from a prominent Maryland family, the daughter of
Benjamin Stoddert, the first Secretary of the United States Navy.
U.S. Senate and ambassadorship Campbell served as a
United States Senator from Tennessee twice, once from 1811 to 1814, having been elected to fill the seat of
Jenkin Whiteside, and again from 1815 to 1818. His first service was from October 8, 1811, to February 11, 1814, when he resigned to accept appointment as the
United States Secretary of the Treasury. He returned to the Senate on October 10, 1815. He served as the first chairman of the
Senate Finance Committee and its predecessor from December 4, 1815, until his resignation from the Senate on April 20, 1818; on this occasion to accept appointment as
United States Ambassador to Russia, a position he held from 1818 to 1821. Three of the couple's four young children died in April 1819, and Campbell wrote Secretary of State
John Quincy Adams asking to be recalled and return home. He was not recalled, however, until 1820. Campbell served as a member of the French Spoliation Claims Commission in 1831.
Secretary of the Treasury Appointed
Secretary of the Treasury on his forty-fifth birthday by
James Madison, Campbell faced national financial disorder brought on by the
War of 1812. Congress had failed to recharter the
First Bank of the United States after its charter expired in 1811, and appropriations for the
war were unavailable, so Campbell had to convince Americans to buy government
bonds. He was forced to meet lenders' terms, selling government bonds at exorbitant
interest rates. In September 1814 the British occupied
Washington, D.C., and the
credit of the government was lowered even further. He was unsuccessful in his efforts to raise money through additional bond sales and he resigned that October after only eight months in office, disillusioned and in bad health. Campbell died in 1848 and is buried at
Nashville City Cemetery in
Nashville, Tennessee. ==See also==