Bell, John (1796-1869), a prominent American statesman, was the Constitutional Union Party candidate for president in 1860. The party campaigned on the issue of national unity at a time when efforts to limit slavery threatened to drive the Southern States from the Union. Bell carried only the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. See Constitutional Union Party .
Bell was born on Feb. 18, 1796, near Nashville, Tennessee. He became a noted lawyer in Tennessee and served as a U.S. representative from that state from 1827 to 1841. Bell was speaker of the House in 1834 and 1835, secretary of war under President William Henry Harrison in 1841, and a United States senator from 1847 to 1859. Bell was a slaveowner, but he took some stands against the expansion of slavery to help preserve the Union. But when the Civil War began in 1861, Bell supported the Confederate States of America and retired from public life. He died on Sept. 10, 1869.
