Representative Albert Galiton Watkins - Contact Information

Albert Galiton Watkins (May 5, 1818 – November 9, 1895) was an American politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives from Tennessee who served four terms in Congress during a pivotal era in the nation’s history. A member of both the Whig and later the Democratic Party at different points in his career, he participated actively in the legislative process and represented the interests of his East Tennessee constituents in the decades preceding the Civil War.

Watkins was born near Jefferson City, Jefferson County, Tennessee, on May 5, 1818. Raised in the hill country of East Tennessee, he came of age in a region that was developing politically and economically in the early nineteenth century. He pursued formal education at Holston College in Tennessee, an institution that served the educational needs of the region’s aspiring professionals. After completing his studies there, he turned to the law, undertaking legal study in preparation for a career at the bar.

In 1839 Watkins was admitted to the bar and commenced the practice of law at Panther Springs, Tennessee. Establishing himself as a lawyer in a rural community, he built a professional reputation that soon led him into public life. Like many Southern politicians of his generation, he was a slaveholder, a fact that placed him within the prevailing social and economic order of the antebellum South and shaped the context in which he practiced law and entered politics.

Watkins’s formal political career began at the state level. In 1845 he served as a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, where he gained legislative experience and visibility in state politics. His service in the state legislature helped position him for national office and connected him with the broader Whig political network in Tennessee at a time when the party was a major force in American politics.

Watkins was first elected to the United States House of Representatives as a Whig, representing Tennessee’s 2nd congressional district in the Thirty-first and Thirty-second Congresses. He served in this capacity from March 4, 1849, to March 3, 1853, participating in the national legislative debates of the turbulent decade that included the Compromise of 1850 and growing sectional tensions over slavery and territorial expansion. He was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election in 1852 to the Thirty-third Congress, temporarily interrupting his service in the national legislature.

Following the reapportionment and redrawing of congressional districts in Tennessee, Watkins returned to Congress from a different constituency and under a different party banner. He was elected as a member of the Democratic Party to represent Tennessee’s 1st congressional district in the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Congresses, serving from March 4, 1855, to March 3, 1859. Over the course of these four terms in the House—two as a Whig and two as a Democrat—Watkins contributed to the legislative process during a significant period in American history, taking part in the democratic process and representing the interests of his East Tennessee constituents as the nation moved closer to civil conflict. He was not a candidate for re-election in 1858, bringing his congressional career to a close.

After leaving Congress, Watkins withdrew from national political life and engaged in the ministry. Turning from law and politics to religious work, he spent his later years in clerical pursuits, reflecting a shift in focus from public office to spiritual service. He continued to reside in East Tennessee, remaining connected to the region where he had been born, educated, and had built his career.

Albert Galiton Watkins died in Mooresburg, Hawkins County, Tennessee, on November 9, 1895. He was interred in Westview Cemetery in Jefferson City, Tennessee, returning in death to the community near which he had been born. His life spanned the antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction eras, and his four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives marked him as a significant, if regionally focused, figure in nineteenth-century Tennessee politics.