Blount was a senator from Tennessee and was a Republican. He served from 1796 to 1797.
Misconduct
Blount committed disloyalty to the United States by attempting to start a war between the Creek, Cherokee, and Spain in order to transfer land to Great Britain. On Jul. 8, 1797, the Senate expelled him, 25-1 and ordered him to appear on July 10 for impeachment, which he promised to do, but did not. On Dec. 17, 1798, the Senate held an impeachment trial in the Senate and in absentia, but the resolution of impeachment failed.
![Photo of Sen. William Blount [R-TN, 1796-1797]](/static/legislator-photos/401543-200px.jpeg)
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Jan 1797 to Jul 1797, Blount missed 12 of 46 roll call votes, which is 26.1%. This is worse than the median of 20.3% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Jul 1797. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses, major life events, and running for higher office.
Primary Sources
The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:
- unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional information
- United States Congressional Roll Call Voting Records, 1789-1990 by Howard L. Rosenthal and Keith T. Poole.
- Martis’s “The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress”, via Keith Poole’s roll call votes data set, for political party affiliation for Members of Congress from 1789 through about year 2000
- Biographical Directory of the United States Congress for the photo
