 He married, secondly, Marian Titus, of Detroit, Michigan, by whom he had two sons and two daughters.He was prosecuting attorney for Richland County, Ohio, from 1839 to 1843, and was then elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth Congresses (March 4, 1843 – March 3, 1847), where he was chairman of the Committee on Invalid Pensions (Twenty-eighth Congress).He became affiliated with the Free Soil party and drew up the famous resolution known as the Wilmot Proviso; the original draft in his handwriting is in the Congressional Library.