William Cocke

Quality 0.50 · 1 view · Updated 2 months ago

American politician (1748–1828)

title: "William Cocke" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1748-births", "1828-deaths", "people-from-amelia-county,-virginia", "people-from-colonial-virginia", "people-from-the-state-of-franklin", "american-people-of-english-descent", "democratic-republican-party-united-states-senators-from-tennessee", "members-of-the-mississippi-house-of-representatives", "united-states-indian-agents", "virginia-lawyers", "american-lawyers-admitted-to-the-practice-of-law-by-reading-law", "people-of-the-creek-war", "united-states-senators-who-owned-slaves", "impeached-united-states-judges-removed-from-office-by-state-or-territorial-governments", "19th-century-united-states-senators", "19th-century-members-of-the-mississippi-legislature", "18th-century-united-states-senators", "burials-at-friendship-cemetery"] description: "American politician (1748–1828)" topic_path: "law" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cocke" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American politician (1748–1828) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox officeholder"]

Field	Value
name	William Cocke
image	William Cocke, US Senator.jpg
jr/sr	United States Senator
state	Tennessee
term_start	March 4, 1799
term_end	March 3, 1805
predecessor	Joseph Anderson
successor	Daniel Smith
term_start1	August 2, 1796
term_end1	September 26, 1797
predecessor1	Himself (Shadow Senator from the Southwest Territory)
successor1	Andrew Jackson
office2	United States Shadow Senator
from the Southwest Territory
term_start2	March 30, 1796
term_end2	August 2, 1796
predecessor2	Seat established
successor2	Himself (U.S. Senator from Tennessee)
office3	Member of the Mississippi House of Representatives
term_start3	1813
term_end3	1813
birth_date	1748
birth_place	Amelia County, Virginia, British America
death_date	August 22,
death_place	Columbus, Mississippi, U.S.
party	Democratic-Republican
allegiance	United States
branch	North Carolina militia
serviceyears	c. 1776
battles	American Revolutionary War
::

Battle of Island Flats William Cocke (1748August 22, 1828) was an American lawyer, pioneer, and statesman. He has the distinction of having served in the state legislatures of four different states: Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi, and was one of the first two United States senators for Tennessee.

Early life and education

Cocke was born in Amelia County, Virginia in 1748. He was of English descent. He was the sixth of ten or eleven children of Abraham (c.1695–1760) and Mary (Batte) Cocke. He was educated at home before reading law, and was admitted to the bar in Virginia. He owned four large plantations in Brunswick County, Virginia, operated with enslaved labor before Cocke moved to Tennessee. He owned slaves.

Political career

Cocke was an elected member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. In 1776, as a colonel of militia, he led a company of men into North Carolina's Washington District for action against the Indians. Cocke suffered accusations of cowardice following his actions at the Battle of Island Flats that followed him throughout his life. Later that year, he left Virginia and moved to what was to become Tennessee. During the organization of the State of Franklin, Cocke was elected as the would-be state's delegate to the Congress of the Confederation.

In 1796, Cocke was chosen as a delegate to the convention that wrote the first Tennessee Constitution. The newly formed government selected Cocke to be one of the new state's initial senators, along with William Blount. Cocke and Blount presented their credentials to the United States Senate on May 9, 1796. The Senate, however, refused to seat Cocke and Blount while the debate regarding the admission of Tennessee into the Union was on. When Tennessee was finally admitted on June 1, the issue of Cocke and Blount's seating was again raised. The Federalist Senate held by a narrow margin (11–10) that Cocke and Blount's election was illegal because it had occurred without congressional authorization. The Tennessee legislature duly re-selected Cocke and Blount on August 2.

Cocke's initial term expired on March 3, 1797. The Tennessee General Assembly, however, neglected to elect a successor to Cocke; he was subsequently appointed to his former seat by Governor John Sevier on April 22, 1797, until the General Assembly belatedly elected his successor, Andrew Jackson. Later, he was elected by the Tennessee Assembly to the other U.S. Senate seat, and served from March 4, 1799, to March 3, 1805.

Cocke was appointed a judge of the First Circuit Court of Tennessee. On November 7, 1811, he was impeached by the Tennessee House of Representatives, and on October 10, 1812, at the end of his impeachment trial, he was convicted by the Tennessee Senate on one of the three articles of impeachment and thereby removed from office. In 1816 he was a witness to a treaty with the Chickasaw that was negotiated by Andrew Jackson and others.

Personal life and family

Cocke engaged in a limited law practice, and spent more time on the frontier than he did in a law office. He was involved in exploration while in the company of Daniel Boone, traveling through much of what was to become eastern Kentucky and East Tennessee.

His son, John Alexander Cocke, was a four-term U.S. Representative from Tennessee; his grandson, William Michael Cocke, was a two-term U.S. Representative from Tennessee.

Later life and death

Cocke was appointed a judge of the First Judicial Circuit of Tennessee in 1809. He later resigned this position and moved to Mississippi. There, he was elected to the state legislature in 1813. He briefly returned to military duty, serving under Andrew Jackson in the Creek War. In 1814, he was appointed by President James Madison to be an Indian agent to the Chickasaw nation.

Cocke died in Columbus, Lowndes County, Mississippi, in 1828 and is buried there, in Friendship Cemetery.

Legacy

Cocke County, Tennessee is named in his honor.

Notes

References

''A School History of Tennessee''; Dyer; Gustavus W.; p. 52, {{ISBN needed. (November 2022)
Gay Neale: Brunswick County, Virginia: 1720-1975 Revised to 2000 (Lawrenceville: Brunswick County Bicentennial Committee, LC Catalog Card 74-29817) pp. 135
(2022-01-19). "Congress Slaveowners". The Washington Post.
Lynch, Wayne; [https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/05/william-cocke-at-the-battle-of-long-island-flats-1776/ ''William Cocke at the Battle of Long Island Flats, 1776'']; "Journal of the American Revolution"; [via WebPage; May 7, 2013; All Things Liberty online]; retrieved March 2023
Butler, Anne M.. (1995). "Senate Election, Expulsion and Censure Cases from 1793 to 1990". Government Printing Office.
(1957). "Early Tennessee Impeachments". Tennessee Historical Quarterly.
Kappler, Charles J.. "The Avalon Project : Treaty With the Chickasaw : 1816".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::