He was born in 1787 in Franklin Township, Somerset County, New Jersey, to Frederick Frelinghuysen and Gertrude Schenck. His siblings include: Catharine Frelinghuysen; John Frelinghuysen the General who married Louisa Mercer and after her death married Elizabeth Mercereau Van Vechten; Maria Frelinghuysen ; and Frederick Frelinghuysen the lawyer who married Jane Dumont. His great-grandfather Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen was a minister and theologian of the Dutch Reformed Church, influential in the founding of Queen's College, now Rutgers University, and one of four key leaders of the First Great Awakening in Colonial America. Theodore was the uncle of Frederick T. Frelinghuysen and great-great-grandfather of Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.. Rodney Frelinghuysen, who represented New Jersey's 11th congressional district, is a descendant. Frelinghuysen married Charlotte Mercer in 1809, while she died in the same year. They had no children together, but when Theodore's brother, Frederick Frelinghuysen died, Theodore adopted his son, Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen, who would later become Secretary of State. Theodore Frelinghuysen remarried in 1857 to Harriet Pumpelly. He graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1804 and studied law under his brother John Frelinghuysen, and later, Richard Stockton. He was admitted to the bar as an attorney in 1808 and as a counselor in 1811, and set up a law practice in Newark during this time period. In the War of 1812, he was a captain of a company of volunteers.
Political career
He became Attorney General of New Jersey in 1817, turned down an appointment to the New Jersey Supreme Court and became a United States Senator in 1829, serving in that capacity until 1835. As a Senator, he led the opposition to Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830. His six-hour speech against the Removal Act was delivered over the course of three days, and warned of the supposed dire consequences of the policy:
Let us beware how, by oppressive encroachments upon the sacred privileges of our Indian neighbors, we minister to the agonies of future remorse.
Frelinghuysen was chided for mixing his evangelical Christianity with politics, and the Removal Act was passed. He was Mayor of Newark, New Jersey from 1837 until 1838. At the 1844 Whig National Convention, competing with Millard Fillmore, John Davis and John Sergeant, he was selected as the Whig vice-presidential candidate. He took the lead on the first ballot and never lost it, eventually being chosen by acclamation. The Whig presidential candidate, Henry Clay, was not present at the convention and expressed surprise upon hearing the news. Frelinghuysen's rectitude might have been intended to correct for Clay's reputation for moral laxity, but his opposition to Indian removal may have put off those southern voters who had suffered from their raids. Frelinghuysen was also unpopular with Catholics as groups of which he was a member, such as the Protestant American Bible Society promulgated the idea that Catholics should convert to Protestantism. The two went down to defeat in the 1844 election.
