William Blount

William Blount
Portrait of Blount by Washington B. Cooper
United States Senator from Tennessee
In office August 2, 1796 – July 8, 1797
Preceded by	(none)
Succeeded by	Joseph Anderson
Governor of the Southwest Territory
In office September 20, 1790 – March 30, 1796
Preceded by	(none)
Succeeded by	(none)
Speaker of the Tennessee Senate
In office 1798–1799
Preceded by	James White
Succeeded by	Alexander Outlaw
Continental Congressman from North Carolina
In office 1782–1783
In office 1786–1787
Personal details
Born	(1749-04-06)April 6, 1749 (March 26, 1749 (O.S.)) Windsor, North Carolina
Died	March 21, 1800(1800-03-21) (aged 50) Knoxville, Tennessee
Resting place	First Presbyterian Church Cemetery Knoxville, Tennessee
Nationality	American
Political party	Democratic-Republican
Spouse(s)	Mary Grainger Blount
Relations	Thomas Blount (brother) Willie Blount (half-brother) William Grainger Blount (son) Pleasant Miller (son-in-law) Edmund P. Gaines (son-in-law)
Signature

William Blount (March 26, 1749 – March 21, 1800) was an American statesman and land speculator, and a signer of the United States Constitution. He was a member of the North Carolina delegation at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and led efforts in North Carolina to ratify the Constitution in 1789. He subsequently served as the only governor of the Southwest Territory, and played a leading role in helping the territory gain admission to the Union as the State of Tennessee. He was selected as one of Tennessee's initial U.S. senators in 1796.

Born to a prominent North Carolina family, Blount served as a paymaster during the American Revolutionary War. He was elected to the North Carolina legislature in 1781, where he remained in one role or another for most of the decade, the exception being two terms in the Continental Congress in 1782 and 1786. Blount pushed efforts in the legislature to open the lands west of the Appalachians to settlement. As Governor of the Southwest Territory, he negotiated the Treaty of Holston in 1791, bringing thousands of acres of Indian lands under U.S. control.

An aggressive land speculator, Blount gradually acquired millions of acres in Tennessee and the trans-Appalachian west. His risky land investments left him in debt, and in the 1790s, he conspired with Great Britain to seize the Spanish-controlled Louisiana in hopes of boosting western land prices. When the conspiracy was uncovered in 1797, he was expelled from the Senate, and became the first U.S. public official to face impeachment. Blount nevertheless remained popular in Tennessee, and served in the state senate during the last years of his life.

Blount was born on Easter Sunday at Rosefield, the home of his maternal grandfather, John Gray, near Windsor in Bertie County, North Carolina. He was the eldest child of Jacob Blount (1726–1789) and Barbara Gray Blount. The Blounts had gradually risen to prominence in the first half of the 18th century as William's grandfather and father had steadily built the family fortune. In the years following William's birth, Jacob Blount built a plantation, Blount Hall, in Pitt County, North Carolina.