Representative Ebenezer Pettigrew

Ebenezer Pettigrew (March 10, 1783 – July 8, 1848) was a Congressional Representative from North Carolina and a prominent planter and slaveholder in the Albemarle region. He was born near Plymouth, Washington County, North Carolina, on March 10, 1783, into a family of substantial local standing. His early years were spent on his family’s plantation in eastern North Carolina, an area whose economy and social structure were deeply rooted in plantation agriculture and enslaved labor, circumstances that would shape his later career and status.

Pettigrew received his early education under private tutors at home, reflecting both his family’s resources and the limited availability of formal schooling in rural North Carolina at the turn of the nineteenth century. He later attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the earliest public universities in the United States. While at the university, he was a charter member of the Debating Society, an organization that became the foundation for the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies, the institution’s historic literary and debating societies. His participation in these societies suggests an early engagement with public affairs, rhetoric, and political thought that would later inform his legislative service.

After leaving the university, Pettigrew returned to the Albemarle region and established himself as a planter. He owned and operated Magnolia Plantation on Lake Scuppernong in what is now Washington and Tyrrell counties, where he held enslaved people who labored on his lands. As a planter slaveholder, he was part of the antebellum Southern planter class that dominated the political and economic life of eastern North Carolina. His management of extensive agricultural interests, centered on crops suited to the coastal plain, provided the wealth and social position that underpinned his entry into public office. He was also a slave owner throughout his adult life, and his economic and political influence rested in significant part on the institution of slavery.

Pettigrew’s political career began at the state level. He served as a member of the North Carolina State Senate in 1809 and 1810, representing his region during a period when the state was grappling with questions of internal improvements, representation, and the balance of power between the eastern and western counties. His service in the senate placed him among the eastern elite who sought to preserve their political influence and the plantation-based social order. Although detailed records of his specific legislative initiatives are limited, his tenure coincided with ongoing debates over infrastructure, economic development, and the legal framework surrounding slavery and landholding.

In national politics, Pettigrew emerged as a critic of the policies of President Andrew Jackson. He was elected as an Anti-Jacksonian to the Twenty-fourth Congress and served in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1835, to March 3, 1837. The Anti-Jacksonians, often associated with the emerging Whig coalition, opposed Jackson’s strong use of executive power, his stance on the national bank, and aspects of his economic policy. Representing North Carolina in this context, Pettigrew aligned with those who favored a more balanced distribution of federal authority and were wary of Jacksonian populism. His single term in Congress took place during a period of intense national debate over banking, tariffs, and federal involvement in internal improvements, issues of particular importance to commercial and planting interests in his home state.

After the conclusion of his congressional service, Pettigrew did not seek further national office and instead resumed his agricultural pursuits at Magnolia Plantation. He continued to live as a member of the planter class, overseeing his lands and enslaved workforce on Lake Scuppernong. His later years were spent in the same region where he had been born and had built his career, maintaining his position within the local elite of eastern North Carolina. The plantation remained both his economic base and his principal residence, anchoring his family’s presence in the Albemarle area.

Ebenezer Pettigrew died at Magnolia Plantation on Lake Scuppernong on July 8, 1848. He was interred in the family cemetery on the plantation, in keeping with the customs of prominent planter families of the era. His legacy extended into the Civil War period through his son, James Johnston Pettigrew, who became a Confederate general and one of North Carolina’s most noted military figures. The Pettigrew family thus bridged the political world of the early republic and the secessionist South, with Ebenezer’s life and career reflecting the intertwined histories of plantation agriculture, slavery, and public service in antebellum North Carolina.