Representative Henry Adams Bullard

Henry Adams Bullard (September 9, 1788 – April 17, 1851) was an American lawyer, slaveholder, jurist, educator, and member of the U.S. House of Representatives representing the state of Louisiana. Over the course of his public career he served two terms in Congress as a National Republican (anti-Jacksonian) and one term as a Whig, participating in the legislative process during a significant period in early nineteenth-century American political history and representing the interests of his Louisiana constituents.

Bullard was born in Pepperell, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, on September 9, 1788. He pursued higher education at Harvard, from which he graduated before undertaking the study of law. He read law in Boston and Philadelphia, gaining exposure to the legal traditions of the early American republic and preparing for a professional life at the bar. This New England upbringing and formal education at Harvard provided the foundation for his later work as a lawyer, jurist, and legal scholar.

After completing his legal studies, Bullard moved to the Southwest and established himself in Louisiana, where he became part of the state’s emerging legal and political community. He resided for periods in Natchitoches, where he practiced law, and later in Alexandria and New Orleans, building a substantial legal practice. In 1813 he accompanied General José Álvarez de Toledo y Dubois on a military expedition into Spanish Texas, an episode that reflected the turbulent conditions along the Gulf Coast and the broader conflicts over Spanish colonial authority in the region. In Louisiana, Bullard also became a slaveholder, a status that placed him within the economic and social structure of the antebellum South.

Bullard’s national political career began with his election to the U.S. House of Representatives as an anti-Jacksonian, aligned with the National Republican opposition to President Andrew Jackson. He was elected to the Twenty-second Congress and reelected to the Twenty-third Congress, serving from March 4, 1831, until his resignation in 1834. During these two terms he sat in the House as a National Republican, participating in debates over federal power, internal improvements, and other issues that divided Jacksonian Democrats from their opponents. His service in Congress during this era placed him at the center of major national controversies over banking, tariffs, and the scope of executive authority.

In 1834 Bullard resigned his seat in Congress to accept a judicial appointment, marking a transition from national legislator to state jurist. He was appointed a justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court, serving from 1834 to 1839. During his tenure on the state’s highest court he helped shape Louisiana’s distinctive civil law tradition, which was rooted in French and Spanish legal codes as well as American influences. While serving on the bench he also briefly held executive office as Secretary of State of Louisiana from 1838 to 1839, adding administrative responsibilities in state government to his judicial role.

Bullard later returned to national politics as a member of the Whig Party. He was elected as a Whig to the Thirty-first Congress, serving a third term in the U.S. House of Representatives during the period from 1849 to 1851. In this final term he continued to participate in the legislative process at a time when sectional tensions over slavery and territorial expansion were intensifying, and his service as a Whig reflected the party’s broader coalition of anti-Jacksonian and pro–internal improvement interests. In addition to his congressional and judicial work, Bullard contributed to legal education in Louisiana. In 1847 he became a professor of civil law at the University of Louisiana Law School in New Orleans, helping to train a new generation of lawyers in the state’s mixed civil-law system. He also remained active in state politics, serving in the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1850.

Henry Adams Bullard died in New Orleans, Louisiana, on April 17, 1851. He was interred in Girod Street Cemetery, one of the city’s prominent burying grounds. In 1959 that cemetery was destroyed, and unclaimed remains, including Bullard’s, were commingled with those of approximately 15,000 others and deposited beneath Hope Mausoleum in St. John’s Cemetery in New Orleans.