Alexander McIlhenny (November 10, 1778 – January 25, 1835) was an American military officer, Maryland state legislator, occasional federal judge (?

During the fraught 1828 U.S. presidential election McIlhenny wrote a public letter describing his recollection of an Andrew Jackson scandal that occurred during their military service in colonial-territorial Mississippi.

McIlhenny's preserved diaries describe his career, family life, and the society and economy of Maryland and southern Pennsylvania during the early 19th century.

[4] According to a schoolteacher and lifelong resident of north-central Maryland named Ella Beam, writing in 1914, "In my childhood the Major's life-size portrait in oil hung in the living room at the residence of his daughter Mrs. [Elizabeth] Ross Mcllhenny Danner, Uniontown, Md...I remember the portrait as that of a handsome man in uniform, with dark hair and expressive, dark eyes.

"[5] Alexander McIlhenny seems to have worked as a farmer[6] before he joined the U.S. Army from Pennsylvania on June 18, 1808, initially serving as a first lieutenant in the 5th Infantry.

According to John J. McGrath of the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, during the War of 1812, there were approximately 12 brigadier-generals in the U.S. Army at any one time.

"[18] In summer 1828, during the course of the presidential campaign, a controversy broke out over whether or not candidate Andrew Jackson, while in the course of transporting slaves through the Choctaw Nation without the necessary identity documents, had physically threatened a federal agent for doing his job.

But he thus set at defiance a wise and salutary regulation, designed for the protection of Slave holders in this and the adjoining States.

"[19] This incident was surfaced in part because it was additional evidence for the claim that Andrew Jackson had been a professional slave trader.

"[20] The incident continues to be examined by Jacksonian scholars studying the future president's sense of privilege and entitlement, as Jackson reportedly claimed that "an American citizen did not need any permission to cross through Indian country" and that "a U.S. citizen required only 'an honest face and a good reputation' to pass by.

Later, explained McIlhenny, while he was socializing in Washington, the Mississippi territorial capital, "in company with Cowles Meade [sic], Speaker of the House of Delegates, Silas Dismore, Choctaw Agent, and several of my brother officers" the conversation turned to the "good effects" of the passport system, such that territorial legislators present made a point to carry and present them, since the system had resulted in the successful arrest of "deserters from the army, runaway negroes, kidnappers, horse-thieves, and many others, fugitives from justice.

I had left a young man in charge of the agency house, and directed him, though not employed in the public service, to receive passports from travellers, and to record them in a book kept for that purpose.

"[5] McIlhenny wrote in his journals about elections, sermons, trading books with neighbors, visiting with kin, establishing fruit trees, butchering animals, making candles, snowstorms, floods, and the arrival of their babies.

"[27] Another topic covered in the 1830 diary is the work of their slave Harry, who was between 36 and 55 years old, and who may have been a bequest to Elizabeth Reid McIlhenny from her great-uncle Upton Scott.

"[30] The entry of February 7, 1830 records "snow began to fall" and "Harry went to see his wife," suggesting that McIlhenny personally acknowledged slave marriages.

[31] The McIlhennys may have also occasionally employed a free woman of color named Ann Hays for household help.

[34] McIlhenny's literacy was valuable to his community; in one case he recorded in his diary, "I wrote 10 advertisements for Mr. Jacob Appler, he pd.

[5][39] The cemetery is near Tyrone, a rural village located about halfway between Taneytown and Westminister in present-day Carroll County.