U.S. Senator, U.S. Congressman. A member of the Democratic-Republican and later the Democratic Parties, he served in the U.S. Senate from Missouri for five consecutive terms from August 1821 until March 1851 and in the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri's 1st district for one term from March 1853 until March 1855. Born in Harts Mill, North Carolina (now Hillsborough, North Carolina), the son of a wealthy lawyer and landowner, he studied law at the University of North Carolina but was expelled for stealing. After returning home, he moved his family to Tennessee where he acquired a 40,000 acre tract of land near Nashville and continued his pursuit of a law degree. In 1805, he was admitted to the Tennessee bar and four years later, he was elected to the Tennessee State Senate. When the War of 1812 broke out, he served as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and became General Andrew Jackson's aide-de-camp but was never engaged in combat. In 1815, he left the Army and moved to St. Louis in the Missouri Territory, continued to practice law as well as becoming the editor of the Missouri Enquirer newspaper, and once killed a man in a duel. When the Missouri Compromise of 1820 created the state of Missouri, he was elected as one of its two first U.S. Senators. Nicknamed "Old Bullion" for his support of "hard" currency, he championed U.S. expansion to the West, a cause that would become known as Manifest Destiny. He was instrumental in settling the border between the Oregon Territory and Canada, which he chose as the 49th parallel set by the Oregon Treaty in 1846. He authored the first Homestead Acts, pushed for public support of the intercontinental railroad, and advocated greater use of the telegraph to communicate over long distances. Additionally, he pushed for exploration of the West, to include his son-in-law John C. Frémont's numerous treks. While he was a strong advocate of the annexation of the Republic of Texas, he was opposed to the events that led to its annexation in 1845 as well as the Mexican-American War. In 1849, he parted ways with many of his fellow pro-Southern Democratic politicians over the issue of slavery, declaring himself against the institution of slavery, even though he was a slave owner. In April 1850, he was nearly shot by Mississippi Senator Henry S. Foote during a heated debate on the Senate floor over the Compromise of 1850. In 1851, the Missouri legislature denied him a 6th U.S. Senate term but he won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives the following year. Two years later, he was defeated for a second term and in 1856, he ran for Governor of Missouri but lost. In 1854, he published his autobiography, "Thirty Years' View." He died in Washington, D.C. at the age of 76. In 1868, a statue in his honor was erected in St. Louis, Missouri's Washington Park.